Date: Sat, 15 Mar 1997 11:26:41 +0000
Subject: M-G: Albania forward


-.
Forwarded from PO Peru.

+++Vladimir Bilenkin wrote: 

"And the situation in Albania shows no sign of a socialist
revolution, let alone a revolution led by workers councils.  Not only both
reports fail to produce any evidence that such councils exist in Albania, 
but LCMRCI tacitly acknowledges that *so far* the rebellion remains within 
strictly bourgeois demands."  

"If indeed, the "workers and poor created new organs" for all this, 
why do they need to be democratised? And even less clear is why to 
"centralise" them? What will happen with "centralised" organs, who 
will control them?  Albanian Bolsheviks? They do not exist presently.
As I have said, the LCMRCI believes that the Stalinist remnants 
are waiting on the wings to take leadership of the rebellion and
they mention no other left force in the country who could present
an alternative to them. It follows that the proposed "centralised" 
organs can fall only under the control of Hoxa's heirs."

Vladimir doesn't understand what is a revolutionary process. In Albania 
doesn't exist a Bolshevik party. However, you can have revolutions without a 

communist party. What you can not have is an internationalist socialist 
revolution led by a workers council democratic and marxist regime. 
We never said that in Albania there is a socialist revolution led by 
workers' councils. We said that this is an spontaneous uprising. In this 
rebellion the poor people are creating communal militias and power bodies, 
whcih we described. The tasks of Revolutionary marxists is to intervene in 
such bodies with the aim to transform them into real soviets. That meant 
that we should be for thir democratisation and centralisation.
Why they need to be democratise? We want that all the leaders of these new 
bodies have to be elected and recallable under rank and file assemblies. We 
want to porevent that they became puppets of former bureaucrats and 
generals. We want to avoid the possibility that these bodies could be 
dissolve or deformed after the rebellion. We want that all of these 
insurrectionary espontaneous bodies should have to centralise into a 
national struggle commando with delegates elected and recallable in rank and 
file assemblies.
In that struggle we need to create the basis of a new revolutionary 
leadership.
Vladimir only criticises and he doesn't give any suggestion. What he should 
advise to Albanian revolutionaries? 
We don't want a new Hoxha stalinist leadership. That is why we need to fight 
in such new bodies against their dispersion and bureaucratisation. 
Vladimir showed in the past that he is the one that have some illusions in 
Stalinism. For him a revolutionary party was the PCP-SL. For us it is an 
anti-imperialist, but also anti-working class, petite bourgeoise Stalinist 
militarist  party.


+++ Rosser jr. wrote:

" I think the hopes of the Trotskyists on this list 
are likely to be frustrated.  One reason is that the 
Socialist Party of Albania is deeply rooted in its 
Hoxha-Stalinist past.  On the one hand, the Trotskyist 
analysis of the problems associated with Albania's past 
policies leading to extreme poverty are accurate.  On the 
other, hand there is an opportunity here for a party that 
declares at least a passing affection for Stalin to show 
that it can develop a modern, relevant, non-oppressive form 
of socialism, if it can come to power.  I note here that 
there are various Communist and Socialist parties in the 
Third World that admire Stalin of which the above can be 
said, notably some of those in India."

* The trotskyists are not trying to transfor the Socialist party into a 
Revolutionary party. We want to create a new anti-stalinist and Bolshevik 
party. The SP is a former Hoxha-hard Stalinist party which is becaming a 
socialdemocratic neo-liberal formation. We need to work with all their 
left-moving tendencies but our aim is to found a new Leninist party.

There is no evidence that Stalin is popular in Albania. Of course, there are 


few people in the world that have some admiration for Stalin, but they are 
very few and don't have any importance in world's politics. 


Daniel PO





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