One of the most underreported events in the world today is the national democratic revolution currently taking place in the Philippines, led by the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), its armed wing, the New People’s Army (NPA), and its united front, the National Democratic Front of the Philippines.
In late March a presentation from a visiting speaker from Friends of the Filipino People in Struggle took place in north London with a showing of the documentary “Communist Lives.” The meeting opened with a minute silence to commemorate the revolutionary life of Founder-leader Joma Sison (1939-2022).
The meeting, part of a promotion of support work for the Philippine revolution, raised the question of how solidarity could be expressed for one of the world’s longest ongoing struggles for national liberation. It served to raising a wider awareness of the intensifying struggle, providing information and explanation of the National Democratic strategy of civic society united front work, and armed struggle from its rural base with the New People’s Army. The NPA active in guerrilla warfare in all but a handful of the 81 provinces of the Philippines. Due to the archipelagic nature of the Philippines, (discussed by Sison in his Specific Characteristics of our People’s War) the NPA is not aiming to build liberated zones, as were built during the people’s wars in China and Vietnam, and as is being built in the present day by the forces of the people’s war in India. Instead, as the London presentation illustrated, the NPA has built over 110 guerrilla fronts, across the archipelago, in which, organs of new popular power are developed.
Since the 2016 2nd Congress of the CPP, calls have multiplied to enlist in the New People’s Army that sees its 54th anniversary in 2023. The vision and aspiration is to have reach a state of strategic equilibrium by the decade’s end. The reintroduction of American military bases in the Philippines – seen in terms of superpower contention and pivot in American foreign policy to face rising China – could complicate the balance of power through its intervention in the field of training, logistics and field advisers to state forces. Direct foreign intervention cannot be ruled out.
Solidarity opposes the terrorist designation
Western nations, by designating one party to the conflict as a ‘terrorist entity’, the CPP/NPA, has provided encouragement to elements within the Armed Forces of the Philippines counter-insurgency solution to the conflict, that includes the targeting of members of non-violent civilian legal left wing political parties, trade unions, student groups and peasant organisations. Extrajudicial killings, disappearances, and torture of left wing activists by the military have intensified following the overseas terrorist designations.
Norway’s government, which has not designated the CPP/NPA, facilitated peace talks between the movement and the Philippines government. The US and European Union, whom designated the group in 2002, have not provided support to peace talks to end the conflict.
Over the decades the government and the communist party have held intermittent peace talks. Following the overthrow of the US-Marcos dictatorship, the first peace negotiation between the new government of then President Corazon Aquino and the NDFP took place in November 1986. Sison had been released from prison detention by Aquino that year, but talks with the government quickly stalled.
Negotiations reopened during the administration of President Fidel Ramos, resulting in the signing of various pacts, including the 1992 Joint Hague Declaration urging both parties to resolve the armed conflict through political negotiations, although little movement in that direction was made by the Philippine state.
Talks resumed under successive presidencies interrupted by clashes between the NPA and state forces. Rodrigo Duterte also continued peace talks when he became president in 2016. But he terminated Peace Talks in November 2017.
There are, of course, conflicting claims about the struggle, however, through the past decades, all of the Armed Forces of the Philippines’s past predictions of crushing the NPA have all been proven wrong. The government has no plans to resume peace negotiations with the Communist Party of the Philippines-New People’s Army (CPP-NPA), instead opting to sustain the use of military force to end the decades-old rebellion. Major General Jose Maria Cuerpo, commander of the Army division in northern and eastern Mindanao, acknowledged, “I admit that fulfilling the command’s mandated mission will prove challenging.”
Strands of solidarity
Every broad transnational solidarity social justice movement, should have a broad range of participants, from humanitarian impulse to political response, women’s organizations, trade federations, civil society groups, and concerned individuals engaged in the traditional awareness activities from petitions, letter writing campaigns, sharing on today’s social media to street protests and boycotts.
There are a multitude of strands to the solidarity banner with various activist coalitions for Human Rights in the Philippines. Often active in the diaspora – there are over 10 million Filipinos working abroad, making the Philippines one of the biggest export countries of labour – People of faith often subject to lurid accusations of a Communist conspiracy that was driving church aid projects in the Philippines. This, the consequence of a red-baiting analysis and intimidation of those concerned about human rights violations. They may not go as far as “Christians for National Liberation” but there is an ecumenism of solidarity in defence of civil society. The concerns extend beyond the question of governance as expressed in solidarity with Indigenous communities in the Philippines e.g. Canadian commemoration, Cordillera Day: A Day of Solidarity for Life, Land and Rights.
There is increasing international concern and support developing for environmental practices and sustainable economy development in the country. An important concern when the Philippines was identified as the fourth-most affected country in the world by long-term climate change as its geographical location renders it vulnerable to stronger typhoons, longer droughts, higher temperatures adversarial affecting both people and production.
Next Steps
On the solidarity front there is a need to raise awareness and provide informed commentary and analysis to shape the actions in aiding that struggle. Further developments maybe in the offering as a more political identity as Friends of the Filipino People in Struggle may see concrete expressions of solidarity that go beyond a signature on a statement, supportive of the Philippines movement forging of alliances while building for a mass armed revolutionary seizure of power.
In February, the two final volumes of this book series completes the translations of Mao Zedong’s writings from 1912 to 1949 providing abundant documentation in his own words on his life and thoughts as well as developments in China during the pre-1949 period.
The penultimate volume in the series, Volume IX, covers in 690 pages the period from the Japanese Surrender through the Chinese Communist Party’s Strategic Defense during the Civil War, August 1945 to June 1947. Volume X runs to 942 pages , covers the period from the Chinese Communist Party’s Strategic Offense during the Civil War to the Establishment of the People’s Republic of China, July 1947 to October 1949.
The Routledge published Mao’s Road to Power: Revolutionary Writings: Volume IX and Volume X, were co-edited by Joseph Fewsmith, Professor of International Relations at Boston University, and Nancy Hearst, the librarian at Harvard University’s Fairbank Collection of the H.C. Fung Library. Previous volumes involved the scholarship of Stuart R. Schram, Nancy Hearst, Roderick MacFarquhar, and toil of researchers, typists and unnamed librarians etc.
Mao’s Road to Power Revolutionary Writings was an academic endeavour with matching price tag:
Volume IX – Published February 2023, the Blackwell website prices it at £233.50 print copy, there is also an eBook edition available.
Volume X – the final volume runs to 942 pages, takes us up to October 1949, the creation of the People’s Republic of China, marking the completion of the long process of revolutionary upheaval begun by the Chinese Revolution of 1911.
W H Smith prices a copy at £120 but offers ebook at £33.99
[Whereas the Selected Works of Mao published by Foreign language Press (Paris) are available at $15 each.]
The first 8 volumes of the Mao’s Road to Power: Revolutionary Writings: series have been scanned and can be found on various internet sites, and is referenced in the on-going exploration of the Chinese revolution at People’s History of Ideas Podcast.
v. 1. The pre-Marxist period, 1912-1920
v. 2. National revolution and social revolution, December 1920-June 1927
v. 3. From the Jinggangshan to the establishment of the Jiangxi Soviets, July 1927-December 1930
v. 4. Th rise and fall of the Chinese Soviet Republic, 1931-1934
v. 5. Toward the second united front, January 1935-July 1937
v. 6. The new stage, August 1937-1938
v. 7. New democracy, 1939-1941
v. 8. From rectification to coalition government, 1942-July 1945.
Students of the Chinese Revolution might be interested in the podcasts (and transcripts provided) by the independent academic, Dr Matthew Rothwell, author of Transpacific Revolutionaries: The Chinese Revolution in Latin America (New York: Routledge, 2013).
Now approaching 100 episodes People’s History of Ideas Podcast, ongoing since May 2019, looks at the course of the struggle in 20th century China. It is not a hymn of praise but an endeavour of understanding the difficulties, mistakes, innovations and achievement within the context and environment they actually happened. It is not a narrative of unflinching advance but a far greater appreciation of the actuality of what was one of the defining struggles, the issues and themes it was engaged in and the continuing relevance to the 21st century struggle for a fairer and just global society.
The appeal of Rothwell’s approach to the subject is in its honest reporting and analysis, evident throughout the series and in this extract from the introduction to podcast 96:
“Last episode, we discussed the first half of the “Draft Resolution of the 2nd Congress of the [County] Party Organizations in the Hunan-Jiangxi Border Area.” That first half of the resolution later became an important document in Mao’s Selected Works, titled “Why Is It that Red Political Power Can Exist in China?” This episode, I want to move on to consider the second half of the resolution. As I mentioned last episode, it had a more concrete and immediate focus, listing recent actions and, in particular, mistakes, committed by the Party and its organizations, and stating actions to be taken to correct these mistakes in the future. It can even be read in some parts as something of a self-criticism on Mao’s part.”
Mao had been active before the Communist Party of China foundation in 1921, and the first volume of his Selected Works that covers the periods of the First Revolutionary Civil War (1924-27) begins, as Rothwell says,
“where he began to lay out his new strategic thinking on how the Chinese Revolution should be based on the peasantry. This was an article titled “Analysis of All the Classes in Chinese Society,” and was published on December 1, 1925 in Revolution, which was the semi-monthly journal of the National Revolutionary Army.”
The Beginning of Maoism: Mao Zedong’s “Analysis of All the Classes in Chinese Society” 20/08/2020
Without undermining the impact or importance of this strategic offering of Mao’s, Rothwell points to considerations of context when approaching the historical record of a text being studied.
“While the idea that Communists should organize and mobilize peasants was not new, what was new in Mao’s “Analysis of All the Classes in Chinese Society” was that Mao was saying that the strategy for revolution should be based on mobilizing the peasantry. Now, Mao implied this strongly but did not say it explicitly in this work….
The article was edited to be more consistent with the terminology which came to predominate later in the revolution. The main reason for this editing was because this article, and some other important early works of Mao’s, were later used primarily for ongoing ideological education…..because we’re studying the historical development of Mao’s thinking in this podcast episode, it makes much more sense for us to use the terms that Mao used at the time, and not those which appear in Mao’s Selected Works. (Listeners who have Mao’s Selected Works at hand may notice that the chart that I am about to read from does not even appear in the version published there, and that a different date of publication is given for the article. It was only in the 1980s that Chinese historians discovered that the article was originally published in December 1925, not in March 1926, as had been thought when the Selected Works were published.)”
Rothwell concludes that particular episode noting that although peasant organizing had been an issue for the young party, the party leadership definitely did not endorse a peasant-based strategy. Any reading on the revolution illustrates that line struggle . The podcast ends with the comment that:
“In fact, Mao’s ideas would run up against deterministic and non-revolutionary articulations of Marxism all the way up until Mao’s death in 1976 and beyond, so it’s fitting that Mao’s first major work on revolutionary strategy, a work which can be considered the beginning of Maoism in a certain sense, was already being criticized in terms which relied on an interpretation of Marxism which removed the revolutionary heart from the theory..”
The exploration of the Chinese revolution has reached 1928 with occasional divergences into the author’s specialism, Maoism in Latin America. Reviewing Transpacific Revolutionaries: The Chinese Revolution in Latin America, it was observed that
“Rothwell amply and clearly demonstrates that Maoist ideas circulated within each of the countries mentioned because of transnational networks that had been established between Latin American activists, communists, politicians, and artists and their Chinese counterparts through a wide variety of forums, including guided trips to China, political and military training courses organized by the Chinese government for Latin American revolutionaries, and the translation and distribution of Chinese materials by Latin American interlocutors. Rothwell convincingly demonstrates that Latin American actors were not passive in relation to Maoist ideas and did the hard work of trying to indigenize these ideas for Latin American conditions.” Dhruv Jain (2019) Rethinking Marxism, 31:4, 536-540.
Available online are other articles and talks (either in English or Spanish) that looked at the transmission of Maoism across the globe such as the presentation last year to the University of Hamburg on Clandestine Transcripts of Revolutionary Globalization: The Shining Paths of Late Cultural Revolution Maoism; subsequently re-recorded as episode 91 of the People’s History of Ideas Podcast. Others that can be found include,
The Chinese Revolution and Latin America: The Impact of Global Communist Networks on Latin American Social Movements and Guerrilla Groups
Gonzalo in the Middle Kingdom: What Abimael Guzmán Tells Us in His Three Discussions of His Two Trips to China” in Transmodernity: Journal of Peripheral Cultural Production of the Luso-Hispanic World 9, no. 3, May 2020. Podcast 27
The Road Is Tortuous: The Chinese Revolution and the End of the Global Sixties” in Revista Izquierdas (Santiago, Chile) 49, abril 2020. Podcast 21
“Secret Agent for International Maoism: José Venturelli, Chinese Informal Diplomacy and Latin American Maoism” in Radical Americas no. 1, December 2016. Podcast 69
“Transpacific Solidarities: A Mexican Case Study on the Diffusion of Maoism in Latin America” in The Cold War in Asia: The Battle for Hearts and Minds, Zheng Yangwen, Hong Liu and Michael Szonyi, eds., Brill, 2010.
The online news site, Communist International carried pictures of graffiti and public displays of banners, flags and posters, all actions carried out worldwide on the occassion of the announcement of the Gonzaloist ICL throughout January 2023. 15 communist parties and organizations from 14 countries had come together under the name International Communist League after the holding of their Unified Maoist International Conference. These were:
Committees for the Foundation of the (Maoist) Communist Party of Austria (KG(m)KPÖ) Communist Party of Brazil (P.C.B.)
Red Fraction of the Communist Party of Chile (FRPCCh) Communist Party of Colombia (Red Fraction) (PCC(FR)) Poder Proletário – M-L-M Party Organization Colombia (PP-OP-MLM) Communist Party of Equator – Red Sun (PCE-SR) Maoist Committee in Finland (MKS) Maoist Communist Party (PCM) [French State] Committee Red Flag (KRF) [Federal Republic of Germany] Committee for the Reconstitution of the Communist Party of Mexico (CR-PCM) Serve the People – Communist League of Norway Communist Party of Peru (PCP) Maoist Communist Party (PCM) [Spanish State] Communist League of Sweden Communist Party of Turkey/ Marxist-Leninist (TKP/ML)
One of the more substantial display of support was from the annual celebration held in Germany, the Lenin, Luxemburg and Liebknecht demonstration.
“This year again the LLL demonstration took place in Berlin in January. While this annual event is primarily a showdown of the various forces of the revolutionist movement in the FRG, this year the Maoists had a different message: the International Communist League – ICL was founded! A manifold international contingent proclaimed this historic message at the demonstration, fulfilling the demand that had been made in the previous years at the same demonstration – also in the struggle: For the new organization of the international proletariat!
This message was not only powerfully spread, but also joyfully accepted by many masses. Several times masses asked for the flags of the ICL, which were carried on the demonstration in four languages – Spanish, English, Turkish and German. Some even wanted to buy them on the spot. An excerpt of the ICL’s Political Declaration and Principles was distributed as a leaflet, and Partizan comrades handed out printed brochures with the Declaration in English and Turkish. Thus, the radiance that the LLL demonstration has in the FRG and parts of Western Europe was used to celebrate and spread this success of the Maoists.”
The participants of the contingent look now full of joy and proletarian optimism into the future to develop under new, better conditions the work for the goal of the communists – the communism – and the unification of the International Communist Movement to push further.
While looking forward to expanding its international relations, establishing more Marxist-Leninist-Maoist and anti-imperialist ties, and forging greater unity and cooperation with communist parties and organizations, including those in the ICL, the Communist Party of the Philippines expressed its different perspective and judgement that it did “not presently see the conditions for establishing an international center that assumes the role of world proletarian vanguard”. It welcomed the undertaking to promote Marxism-Leninism-Maoism and carry out revolutionary struggles across the world, reiterating that “Marxist-Leninist-Maoist parties and organizations are the most competent in determining the revolutionary path in their own countries. It is their responsibility to take initiative in determining the line of struggle based on the application of the universal principles of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism to their particular concrete conditions.”
Setting out its position in a statement, On the announced formation by the International Communist League, the Central Committee Communist Party of the Philippines, released January 18, 2023, in part, expressed its critical assessments of the ICL’s approach commonly voiced by other Maoists.
It is our view that the most urgent task currently facing communist parties and organizations around the world is to apply Marxism-Leninism-Maoism to conduct class analysis and social investigation into the varied conditions in their countries, in order to determine the particular strategy and tactics to lead the proletariat and all oppressed and exploited classes in waging new democratic and socialist revolutionary struggles.
Arguing that organizations, while benefit in drawing lessons from the history of revolutionary struggles in different parts of the world, and to exchange views and experiences with other communist parties, they must strive to raise their capacity to become independent and self-reliant.
“It will be counterproductive, however, for them to subordinate themselves to a presumptive international center and lose their independence and initiative in carrying out revolutionary work within the scope of their competence and leadership. …
The CPP encourages parties and organizations towards greater international unity and cooperation, to conduct bilateral meetings and multilateral conferences and consultations where crucial questions of theory and practice can be discussed, threshed out and agreed upon, while setting aside points of disagreement for further study and discussion. It stated “We must always strive to build unity on the basis of upholding Marxism-Leninism, promoting Maoism as the third stage in the development of the proletarian ideology, exposing and fighting revisionism, advancing the struggle against imperialism and all reaction, and carrying forward the new democratic and socialist revolutions.”
Sentiments that may seem familiar with what the ICL expresses in language and terms that differ greatly in actual meaning. The declaration of two barely concealed antagonistic positions remains muted for the time being.
Other organisation that have explicitly expressed their reservations and criticisms include:
The Construction Committee of the Maoist Communist Party of Galicia stated in a post on Maoist Road blogsite January 26, 2023 that “From our point of view, launching a new international organisation with political authority without being able to hold a unified conference first, is a practice that leads to separating part of the ICM from the rest. It also leads to making the rest do the same and that the confrontation within the ICM becomes not a two-line struggle, but a sum of useless confrontations between various tendencies, as well as creating a dynamic that ‘forces’ each tendency to differentiate itself from the rest.”
It expressed support for the proposal proposal from the Communist Party of India (Maoist) – CPI (Maoist) – to create a world Maoist ‘Forum’, expressed its views on revolutionary violence that defend the universality of the people’s war and specifically noted
“We consider that the CWU (mlm) defends its political line with honesty. We must be critical between all communist detachments, but the treatment that certain parties have given to CWU (mlm) is unfair. If in all the international contacts we have had within the ICM, all the organizations have always treated us with great courtesy and comradeship, the same has not happened to CWU (mlm), being subjected to an unfair treatment for an organization that dedicates efforts to contribute to the strengthening of the ICM.“
The Communist Workers Union (mlm) of Colombia – CWU (mlm) – has been subject to harsh polemical comments by some of the component groups of the ICL. The organisation had quickly offered its own explanation on December 27, 2022 as to “why we decided not to participate in that Conference, which far from being «Unified» as announced, represents the positions of a particular hue within the Marxist-Leninist-Maoists.”
Furthermore questioning the status of its claims, “The non-participation in this event, by the comrades of the Communist Party of the Philippines, the Communist Party of India (Maoist), the Construction Committee of the Maoist Communist Party of Galicia, the Maoist Communist Party of Italy, the Maoist Communist Party of Afghanistan, among other Marxist-Leninist-Maoist organizations and parties, is evidence that the Conference held was not «unified» as announced; for our part we renew to the comrades participating in that Conference and of the new organization International Communist League, the fraternal call to give primacy to the general needs of the world class struggle, which impose as a necessity the struggle for unity in a truly unified International Conference of all Marxist-Leninist-Maoists, a struggle to which the Union remains fully committed.“
“We uphold the acute necessity of unifying the International Communist Movement (ICM) under Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, and welcome any genuine steps in this direction. However, we believe that the level of unity necessary for the founding of an international organization has not yet been reached, nor do we believe the proposal for a General Line has been sufficiently debated on an international level. Therefore we consider the establishment of ICL to be premature, as the international Maoist movement has not reached the ideological unity necessary for organizational unity. We fear that the premature formation of an international Maoist organization will serve as an obstacle to the development of two-line struggle, thus preventing real unity. We hope this fear will be proven wrong, and that the two-line struggle will continue so that a greater unity can be achieved.”
“The founding of the ICL may or may not be a genuine step towards the unity of the international Maoist movement, depending on how the ICL relates to MLM parties and organizations that are outside of it; especially those non-member parties that are actively engaged in People’s Wars (India, Philippines… In spite of our criticisms, and although we consider the founding of an international Maoist organization to be premature at this stage, we welcome the increased collaboration between Maoist forces and hope to continue to engage in comradely criticism and debate.”
Back in 2021, the PCm Italy had made the declaration that it supports and works for an Unified International Conference of all mlm parties and organisations on basis of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, on the balance of the application of mlm on different parties and organisations in their countries in the years post GRCP in China, on the balance of RIM experience and history – against revisionist line such as Avakian RCP USA/ Prachanda in Nepal/ LOD in Perù and ‘leftism and revolutionarism pretty bourgeois’ for a New international mlm organisation today, as second step towards a new Communist International
There were many testimonies on the passing of comrade Sison that referenced his political contribution and achievements of his remarkable life. The sentiments expressed in more than one observation should suffice to speak volumes:
“At every stage of his life, Joma could have taken the easy path. He could have settled into the life of a petty-bourgeois professor or intellectual, making his peace with the class inequalities of Philippine society. He could have capitulated into the revisionist PKP and become another hack apparatchik. He could have capitulated to Marcos avoiding years of isolation and torture. He could have accepted one of many offers to order the NPA to put down their guns and joined one of the post-Marcos administrations. He could have settled into a quiet retirement, instead of writing and giving interviews up until the very end of his life. Comrade Joma Sison lived his whole life going against the tide, upholding revolution until the very end.”
In November 2022, Maoist Road announced the appearance of a new online journal focused on various positions and criticisms around a Unified Maoist International Conference. The journal“Two Lines Struggle”, reproduces statements previously made on the subject. The journal is described as …. not the journal of a party, or a block, a faction or particular trend within the Marxist-Leninist-Maoists, but the decision of different parties and organizations in order to promote the two-lines-struggle within the communists, as its name and slogan indicate, and to contribute to its unity, in particular, with the preparation of a Marxist-Leninist-Maoist Unified International Conference.
Contents
Editorial For an International Marxist-Leninist-Maoist Conference
Proposal Regarding the Balance of the International Communist Movement and of its Current General Political Line – CUMIC
On the “Proposal on the Balance of the International Communist Movement and its current General Political Line – For a Unified Maoist International Conference!” – UOC (mlm) Colombia
Some critical notes on “For a Unified Maoist International Conference! – Proposal regarding the balance of the International Communist Movement and of its current General Political Line” – PCm Italy
On the Unified Maoist Conference (UMIC) – CCPCM Galicia
The Approach of Our Party on the Prepared Draft – TKP/ML Turkey
Info for other documents in web-site
Debate
Brief critical Notes on “Our Position Against the Imperialist War in Ukraine” of Communist International website – PCm Italy
On the “criticism” of the Italian comrades – CI-IC.org
On the Necessary Development of the Two Lines Struggle on the War in Ukraine – PCm Italy
Communist Party of Nepal (Revolutionary – Maoist) by Maoist Outlook
People’s Wars
Answers of Basavraj, General Secretary of CC, CPI (Maoist) to the Questions of Journalist Alf
Let’s develop the Revolutionary Struggle against the Imperialist World War Preparations! Joint Declaration by Communist Workers Union (mlm) – Colombia / Construction Committee of the Maoist Communist Party of Galicia / Maoist Communist Party Italy/ Communist (Maoist) Party of Afghanistan. One of the initial signatories was missing for the journal’s republication, that of Red Road of Iran (Maoist group).
Sweden
A separate , while related, contribution was posted in the Swedish section of the Banned Thought website
“Gonzaloism: A ‘Left’ Revisionist Deviation”, by Thomas Berg, 3rd Ed., September 2022, 36 pages, from the Kommunistiska Föreningen [“The Communist Association”] in Sweden. Direct link [BANNEDTHOUGHT.NET]
Italy
One of the sponsors behind Maoist Road, the (new) Italian Communist Party was the subject of an interview carried by the American Kites journal “about issues concerning international communist movement, starting with the summation of the first world proletarian revolution (1917-1976). Thus, the interest for it isn’t limited to North America (US and Canada) nor to Italy. We think that its study will be useful to all those who will make it in order to develop a frank and open debate about these issues.”
Kites (www.kites-journal.org) was founded in 2020 by two North American organizations: Revolutionary Initiative (RI) from Canada and Organization of Communist Revolutionaries (OCR) from US. It is a publication aimed to the discussion about revolutionary strategy and tactics that communists have to adopt in North America and in their respective activity contexts. Until now, they published five issues of the review.
Other news from Turtle Island
Canada
From the Communist Worker’s Front (Organizing Committee) , that has its origins as a red fraction of the student “MER-RSM”,came its analyse On the Complete Liquidation of the “PCR-RCP” It refers to the start of the year in January,[2022] when a split occurred in the Continuator faction of the PCR-RCP between the old-guard centred in the Norman Bethune House and the young-guard who have since dissolved the Continuator faction of the PCR-RCP to found the supposed “Communist Vanguard of Canada”. In passing, political attacks are made on other Canadian leftist, Revolutionary Initative, expelled opponents of the Continuator faction “CCG”/”CMU” that built a public face under the name of Young Socialists for People’s Power which would later take up the name of its magazine Youth Riseup! . Adding to the mix are defunct organizations, such as the Ontario-based the “Social Revolution Party” and the “Revolutionary Workers Party”.
As self-declared partisans of Gonzalo Thought, “We call for all communists, militants, and workers reading this document to not fall for the false flag of reconstitution raised by the revisionists, who want to turn back the clock on the “PCR-RCP”. Nor must we wait idly for a communist party to arrive while the proletariat clamour. Instead, we must look ahead at the road of hard work and struggle in reconstituting our general headquarters for people’s war!”
USA
The continuing existence of autonomous local organizations of pre-party formations pepper the American scene with a number of organizations that emerged from the breakup of the Organizing Committee for a Maoist Communist Party (MCP-OC) looking towards party building and national coordination . These, often identified by the FTP- For the People – prefix to a geographical location, comprises small Marxist-Leninist-Maoist political organization activists engaged in ideological study and localised mass work however regarding themselves as building blocks for a reconstituted national communist party.
Not all are on board as For the People – Boston (FTP – Boston) critiqued moves for the re-constitution of a national formation to coordinate leadership and unity of action among the organizations bearing the FTP name with Marxism or Idealism? Once Again on Party Building and our Tasks, a response to the “It Won’t Stop Until We Stop It” 2021 May Day statement, published on People’s Voice News. For the reasons it argues FTP-Boston believe that a centralised national network, and its lack of ideological clarity and consolidation determined to be inappropriate at this stage of struggle.
It had provided a summation of its strategic criticism as a component of the Maoist Communist Party – OC that saw the dismantling of the central structure of the MCP-OC at its 2020 congress. The document, One Step Forward Two Steps Back: mutual aid, “mass work” and communist strategy, “advances that the central work for those formations emerging from the MCP-OC is primarily organizational. The small group left remains isolated from the masses, and has failed to develop serious unity on the basis of a real revolutionary program. This deficiency can only be overcome through the summation of (and struggle over) protracted sequences of mass work”.
The Maoist Communist Union, its antecedents in the Mass Proletariat organization (2016-2020), founded in late 2020, describes itself as “an organization dedicated to advancing the principles of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism in the struggle for revolution in the United States” primarily working in Massachusetts. The MCU has produced two issues so far of a theoretical journal Red Pages.
Some of the self-declared groups may register more on the internet than anywhere else – The Cincinnati Study Collective – whereas others, while sharing a similar goal, display a more sober and modest attitude; the Revolutionary Maoist Coalition – Chicago states in its Points of Unity,
“Although we are not a party formation, we understand that no revolution can be won without the leadership of a vanguard party armed with the ideology of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. It is our hope that through the experience and theories learned from work within our revolutionary mass organization that the most politically advanced members among us will develop further and eventually be able to constitute a Maoist Party which is capable of toppling the capitalist-imperialist system.”
Late December [21, 2022] saw an unsigned commentary posted on the online site, Communist International highlighted an attempt to liquidate the Committee to Reconstitute the Communist Party of the USA (CRCPUSA).
A Reddit posting described the CRCPUSA as a clandestine organization hence the lack of public statements or organizational documents. Its origins are rooted in the Red Guard milieu dissolved around late 2018 .The posting identified Tribune of the People as a news outlet that reports on the revolutionary movement in the US and supports reconstituting the Party. US-based Internet Blogger, Black like Mao, commented two years ago that
“Tribune does not publish materials from ILPS, from FTP chapters, or from Maoist Communist Group, because they do not support these organizations. They publish materials from UNDM, the various European Gonzaloite sects, and the Brazilian pMs because they support these projects. You’re not clandestine, you’re not in the middle of a people’s war, you’re a few people that have decided to go to a few protests, wheatpaste some flyers about the peasant struggle in Brazil, and try to organize tenants. “
A statement of the situation of the Maoists in the USA
Since February/March this year, the comrades in the United States who struggle for the reconstitution of the Communist Party in their country are facing a complicated internal situation resulting from an attempt to liquidate the Committee to Reconstitute the Communist Party of the USA (CRCPUSA) – the ongoing initiative to unify all the communist in the task of reconstituting the communist Party of the United States under Maoism. The liquidationists are launching a vicious internet campaign in which they go so far as snitching, diffusing internal information about the revolutionary organizations, and, in the most repulsive cases, publicizing names and photos of alleged leading members. This helps the reaction in striking blows against the revolutionary and communist movement. It is collaboration with and legitimization of the enemy apparatuses, and does not, in any way, help to build a communist party, nor does it constitute a method of revolutionaries and communists for developing the struggle.
Chairman Mao always insisted on the necessity to correctly draw the line between Yenan and Sian, that is between revolution and counter-revolution. He also advocated to “clearly differentiating the errors that take place at the practical work (problems of application) from the errors of principle (problems with the conception), separating Marxism from revisionism”. The attempt to liquidate the CRCPUSA confuses Yenan and Sian, and the mistakes on principles with those made within the practical work, and, in doing so, it harms the effort for the reconstitution of the Communist Party in the United States.
Accusing people of being revisionist requires a serious critic of its ideological, political and organizational line. It can only be made by conducting a persistent and protracted two-line-struggle, and this is always carried out with the aim of unifying the Party and not destroying the Party. We call on all the honest comrades in the United States – which we believe constitute the overwhelming majority of those that had taken part in the process of reconstitution- who wish to serve the struggle for the reconstitution of the Communist Party of the USA to follow “Practice marxism, not revisionism; work towards unity, not for splitting; act in honest and honored way and don’t thread intrigues nor machinations”. A principled two-line-struggle through the correct internal channels must be conducted with the aim of firmly unifying on the basis of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, the struggle against imperialism, revisionism, and the reaction, and to serve the development of revolution in the US as part of and in service of the world proletarian revolution. We call all the comrades that have criticism toward other comrades to dispose all post-modernist criteria in the struggle, to reject individualism and personal disputes. All criticism must have a political sense. We call all comrades that have committed mistakes to undergo serious and honest self-criticism and to correct the mistakes in their revolutionary practice. We call on all comrades who have been left without reliable contacts to not despair, nor open any organizational debates and information online, nor cease their work with the masses, we urge them to keep developing their revolutionary activities. With the proper development of two-line-struggle, you will be able to reconnect and participate in it through the internal channels.
Liquidating the CRCPUSA does not serve revolution and does not combat revisionism, rather it destroys the efforts to unify the communist under the task of reconstituting the communist Party of the United States. Calls to “destroy the CRCPUSA” are only expression of liquidationism and is not the way Maoists struggle to impose the correct line. On international level, the CRCPUSA continues to be the only recognized organization that represents the struggle for the reconstitution of the Communist Party in the United States, and we urge all comrades to develop internal two-line-struggle, to apply unity-struggle-unity, and to firmly reject all snitching and police work.
The international communist movement fully supports the struggle of the comrades in the United States and will support the two-line-struggle to rectify mistakes and to achieve a higher unity in the path of unifying under Maoism; and reconstituting the communist Party of US.
Ireland
The third edition of An Ghrian Dhearg, produced by the Irish Socialist Republicans appears just as its first edition is posted online at the Irish left Archive:
And FLP living up to its name, and goal of providing the broadest possible access to revolutionary literature at an affordable cost, publishing high production paperbacks of over 130 Marxist titles in a variety of languages available from their web shop https://flpress.storenvy.com
There was a wide range of people paying tribute to Avtar Singh Jouhl who died on October 7th at the age of 84. Avtar Singh Jouhl was a tireless leader of the Indian Workers’ Association, as general secretary (1961-64; 1979-2015) and national organiser (1964-79), briefly working in 1967 in London to work for the IWA newspaper, ‘Lalkar’ (Challenge). Described by The Times as published in Brussels, 1500 copies “printed in Punjabi, it has been flown to London at no small expense and sold to Indian immigrants in Britain as part of an effort to convert them to Maoist revolution.” [i]
Avtar had been active in the organisation since coming to Britain in 1958, a leading workplace militant and antiracist activist in the West Midlands from the late 1950s until the 1990s. He was a respected and listen too activist: as he said,
“We learned to take up the issues that related to the workers, rather than just talking to them from a Marxist viewpoint. If you organise in that manner, the workers will trust you and respect you.”[ii]
In 1958, Avtar Jouhl was instrumental in setting up the Birmingham branch of the IWA. The Association’s initial role was to support local workers, helping them to write letters and supporting any claims of unfair dismissal. One of the IWA’s main campaigns during the 1960s was against immigration legislation, in particular the 1962 Commonwealth Immigration Bill.
The Birmingham Mail reported the death of Avtar Singh Jouhl has triggered an outpouring of tributes from activists and campaigners.
It is testimony to the work and the style it was done that a tribute carried in the Morning Star, written by Avtar’s friend Paul Mackney, the former General Secretary of NATFHE/UCU, the trade union for teachers in further and higher education, noted that Avtar opposed all organisational sectarianism and threw the full support of the IWA behind united fronts such as the Campaign Against Racism and Fascism (CARF), Campaign Against Racist Laws (CARL) and the Anti-Nazi League (ANL) . [iii]
That Avtar’s life was marked across the political spectrum from the mainstream BBC, favourably featured in Radio 4’s “Last Word”, to various small leftist groups, uniting Trotskyists and supporters of Xi’s China, meant The Socialist Worker carried an obituary, stating “Avtar was a principled fighter all his life. The struggles he led made a difference to black, Asian and white workers.” But not mentioning his adherence to Maoism. Often in interviews the focus was on his lifetime of activism rather than his Marxist philosophy as evident when reflecting on a life of struggle in the IWA and the trade unions in 2019. Republished on ‘The Communists’ website, a self-attributed description from the CPGB(ML), an interview carried in the SWP’s International Socialism journal in October 2019. The article, “Lifelong class fighter against racism”, rightly describes Avtar as “part of a generation of black and Asian militants whose struggles against racism and for workers’ rights have transformed the working class and the trade union movement in Britain.”[iv]
A life-long Marxist, Avtar was awarded the Order of the British Empire (civil division) in 2000 for ‘services to Community Relations and to Trade Unionism’. This does raise issues for others when a life time of activism, politically campaigning and welfare work within the community has seemingly eschewed a revolutionary party-building orientation.
The Guardian obituary was headline, “Anti-racism campaigner and trade unionist who successfully challenged segregation in 1960s Britain”.Like other tributes recalled thatin 1965, Avtar invited Malcom X to Smethwick, near Birmingham, to see the type and extent of racism and the ‘colour bar’ then prevalent in the area, just weeks before the African-American revolutionary leader was assassinated.
His work campaigning to end the racial segregation in drinking establishments in Smethwick, West Midlands drew the attention of Malcolm X who visited the town, on 12 February 1965, and was taken to a segregated pub, the Blue Gates, with Jouhl and Indian activists to witness where non-white customers were forced to drink in separate rooms.
There are many colourful examples of local actions and campaigns in Birmingham that illustrate that Avtar played a very full role in the life of the community. The IWA took up welfare and political issues affecting Indians living in Britain, including fighting all forms of discrimination. They also took positions on some social issues. For example, in the 1960s and 1970s the IWA held a campaign against the marriage dowry. They were active on a local and national level – swelling demonstrations in the struggle against racism, work among the industrial unorganised leading them into the trade union movement, and the struggles of the working class in Britain. Not surprisingly there was a focus on the revolutionary struggle in India, but also mobilising support for anti-imperialist struggles throughout the world, and in support of the socialist countries.
Feb 1978: IWA (GB) leaders Jagmohan Joshi (bottom left), Teja Singh (second from bottom right) and Avatar Johal (bottom right) meet members of the Communist Party of China at Mao’s birth place in Shaoshan, China. The image is indicative of the IWA (GB)’s Maoist tilt, which informed their stance on the Naxalbari insurgency as well as their anti-racism work in Britain. [i]
Besides the IWA, and the trade union movement, Avtar played a leading role in the Association of Indian Communists in Britain (Marxist-Leninist) (AICML), which guided the work IWA. Part of a triumvirate leadership with Jagmohan Joshi and Teja Singh Sahota, who was elected as Vice President of the national IWA in 1959 and served as its President from 1967-1991, the IWA and the AIC were staunch supporters of the Chinese revolution and friends of China, maintaining close comradely connections with the country, particularly through the 1960s and 1970s.
There was a danger of exaggerated expectations on the political Left of the Association of Indian Communists because of its association with the IWA, whose large membership did not necessarily exceed the objectives “to further India’s attempt to achieve independence, to promote social and cultural activities and to foster greater understanding between Indian and British people.”
There was also the added factor that curtailed the contribution of such national minority organisations like the AIC. Nationality based formations reflected the issues and divisions of evident in Indian politics and the fractious nature of the IWA is seen in the catalogue of organisational splits and creation of alternative (but similarly named) rivals.[ii]
A Unity Conference on June 9th 1990 at Smethwick, Birmingham, with the merger conference taking place 16-17 February 1991 saw Avtar Jouhl became General Secretary of the merged Indian Workers Association (GB) and Prem Singh, General Secretary of the other Indian Workers Association, became the President.
There was a retained friendship and support for China in the post-Mao era, becoming a patron of the “Hands off China! Campaign” launched in 2008 by the CPGB-ML, who claimed Avtar as a member. Maybe that commitment to anti-revisionist politics morphed into the generic Marxism-Leninism that encompasses the mishmash of revisionist fragments and those who see socialism in action in China and North Korea?
After almost 30 years in the foundry industry, in 1987 Avtar was appointed by South Birmingham College as a trade union studies tutor at Birmingham Trade Union Studies Centre. He remained an active trade unionist. In the early-1990s, Avtar was elected to the National Executive Committee (NEC) of the lecturers’ union, the National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education (Natfhe) 1992-97.
When asked in an interview in 2019, “Looking back on your life as an activist, what are you most proud of? “Avtar replied,
I am content that I have served the working class by advancing socialist policies, building trade union organisation, antiracist and anti-imperialist campaigns, as well as leading struggles for equal rights and participating in welfare work.”
With a small population of under a million, located between Somalia, Eritrea, and Yemen, Djibouti occupies a strategic location adjacent to the Bab el Mandab Strait, situated at the mouth of the Red Sea, which is a critical corridor for international shipping.
Djibouti is the third smallest country on the continent’s mainland, but given its geographic location it is easy to see why the US, France, Great Britain, Japan, and Saudi Arabia and China, agree that Djibouti is the place to be. It is little known that the only Japanese military base in the entire world is located in Djibouti City. This tiny African port state hosts military bases belonging to Italy, France, the United States, China, and Saudi Arabia at a very little distance from one another. Russia and India too have strong interests in setting up military bases there.
Power projection
Yet much of the international discourse about Djibouti focuses on its relationship with China. The spectre of Chinese hegemony is raised in a scenario whereby China is described as operating at an advantageous position in Djibouti because of deep economic ties and financing infrastructure projects. And then this is extended by strategists into part of a push for great power dominance.
Western analysis emphasises the perspective of strategic manoeuvring from China secured by major investment projects in Djibouti. The infrastructure projects include the Djibouti-Ethiopia Railway project, Djibouti-Ethiopia Water pipeline, and it is stressed, importantly the Chinese-operated Dolareh port. The importance of the port is said to be, not only does it boost the Chinese Belt and Road initiative but also its military goals in the region.
“In many ways the relationship between Djibouti and China is a case study in how Beijing is using its global infrastructure investment strategy, the Belt and Road Initiative, to aggrandise its economic influence and strengthen its position as the top investor in Africa – a major geopolitical priority, with its booming economies and populations.”
The Chinese People’s Liberation Army Support Base is located by the Port of Doraleh to the west of Djibouti City. The base was formally opened on August 1, 2017. It is designated a supply centre for their peacekeeping and humanitarian missions in the region.
To the south of the city are several, more substantial, foreign military bases, including :
Camp Lemonnier, a former military base established as a garrison for the French foreign Legion, is a Naval Expeditionary Base, situated next to Djibouti–Ambouli International Airport in Djibouti City. It is the largest American permanent military base in Africa on a lease that ends in 2044. Camp Lemonnier is home to more than 4,000 personnel – mostly part of the Combined Joint Task Force – Horn of Africa. The US hosts visiting British military personnel as well.
The United States has established a second base at Chabelley Airfield for Drone operations since 2018. This has reduced aviation congestion at Lemonnier with conventional air force operations
Base Aerienne 188 (French Air Force). France, former colonial power over Djibouti, signed the 2011 Defence cooperation treaty that sets out the operational facilities granted to stationed French forces, which make up Frances largest military base abroad with some 1,450 troops, warships, aircraft and armoured vehicles in Djibouti. France hosts German & Spanish military forces.
Since 2011 the Japan Self-Defense Force Base Djibouti has 1,200 troops and is situated next to Camp Lemonnier. Japan’s Djibouti base is dedicated to curbing piracy, but also imports the Indo-Pacific power rivalry to the Gulf of Aden and the western Indian Ocean. A decade later, the pirates have been largely defeated, but Tokyo intends to expand its Djibouti base.
Italy’s establishment of a Djibouti base came at the same time as the launch of the European Union Naval Force (or Operation Atalanta) to protect vessels from armed piracy at sea off the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean. This infrastructure is the first real operational logistic base of the Italian armed forces outside the national borders and has approximately 300 personnel.
Sunni Arab states like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, who are concerned about the expanding influence of the Shiite-led Iran, have been taking an interest in Djibouti as a base to prosecute their war in Yemen. Djibouti is a longstanding ally of Saudi Arabia. In 2016, it followed Riyadh’s lead and severed relations with Tehran. Djibouti is also a member of the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen. The alliance launched a military intervention in Yemen in 2015 to support the country’s internationally recognized government and fight the Iranian-backed Yemeni rebels, the Houthis (also known as the Ansarullah movement).
The UAE already has military bases in Eritrea and Somaliland, an autonomous region of Somalia that has yet to achieve international recognition. Saudi Arabia and the UAE’s rival Turkey – a key ally of Qatar – has its biggest overseas military base in Somalia’s Mogadishu where more than 10,000 Somali soldiers receive training.
India, as an alternative to Indian military presence in Djibouti, has secured strategic military bases in Oman, Singapore and Seychelles. It maintains a twin track strategy working on options for securing a military base of operations in Djibouti and Japan and India are discussing India’s use of Japanese military facilities in Djibouti.
Benefits?
So far, the land lease business to international players for these foreign bases both provide income and it is argued a degree of protection from external aggression.
The United States pays $63 million annually for ten-year lease on its base, while the Chinese reported to be paying $20 million a year besides the billions they are investing in building a railway, a port, an industrial park, and banks.
With very little in the way of natural resources or human capital, Djibouti’s government “has spared no effort to translate geopolitical fortune into commercial and political advantage,” says Matthew Bryden, the director of the think tank Sahan Research. There is an unproven argument raised that in the case of Djibouti, the leasing of multiple bases can be presented as a sign of skilful foreign policy.
“The aim is clear: Like Singapore, harness its unique geography astride a major commercial shipping route to become a global logistics, services, and trans-shipment hub in a world shifting toward Asia and the Indo-Pacific.”
Who can view Djibouti’s economic policy prospects of emerging as an important commercial hub in the Horn of Africa positively? While Djibouti handles an estimated 90% of landlocked Ethiopia’s maritime trade, and the foreign bases seen the form of cash, infrastructure, and economic opportunities arise from a very dependent and unsustainable economic model of development unless investment in an internal economic structure and activity is a priority.
Djibouti could be walking a fine line between neutrality and opportunism, says analysts. A dispute with the Dubai-based DP World pushed the UAE to fund ports and military bases in both Eritrea and Somaliland. After Djibouti reduced its diplomatic status with Qatar, the latter removed its peacekeeping forces from the Djibouti-Eritrea border, raising tensions of a renewed border dispute. And with the arrival of the Chinese, any friction with Western powers who are just a few miles away from each other might test the limits of Djiboutian diplomacy.”
Hosting military bases of different flags can pose a threat to the country’s ability to make independent decisions on political, economic, and social policies. The various – and sometimes conflicting – interests of international actors may influence the policy-making processes.
The western emphasis on China’s role, ironically given their own neo-colonialist practices, points to a situation of such economic dependence that Djibouti “risks threatening its autonomy”.
Like any other developing nation, Djibouti’s capacity to act independently has already been limited and overshadowed by the economic international order dominated by a few rich countries. Dependency on foreign loans could provide a leverage for others to influence and intervene in the country’s various domestic and international affairs. There are plenty of precedents that global actors toil to redesign domestic political divisions in the country in order to bring their own loyal ruler to power.
Not that it gets much mainstream western media attention, the country risks becoming a “nest of spies” where the international powers based there can watch each other closely. This congestion might also lead to friction among these powers, turning Djibouti into an arena of great power contention.
The author of Downfall, Alan McCombes had been a leading member of the Scottish Socialist Party for several years, and the editor of the Scottish Socialist Voice until 2003.
Together with Sheridan, a fellow member of Militant, McCombes had played a leading role in the anti-poll tax movement. His 1988 pamphlet, How To Beat The Poll Tax, advocated a mass non-payment campaign. With Tommy Sheridan, he was also author of Imagine: A Socialist Vision for the 21st Century [Canongate Books 2000]
In 1992 McCombes was a leading figure in persuading Militant in Scotland to organize openly independently of the Labour Party resulting in the creation of Scottish Militant Labour. Throughout the 1990s, he challenged the traditional “British Road to Socialism”, arguing for the left to champion the idea of an independent Scottish socialist republic. In 1995, he promoted a Scottish Socialist Alliance to unite the left that laid the basis for the emergence of the SSP in which McCombes held the position of policy co-ordinator.
The events recalled in Alan McCombes’ Downfall seem both sadly realistic and depressingly common. Published in 2011, it is an intensely individual story, obviously partisan in the telling, and immensely political in its message. One can read it as a narrative of a flawed individual who made some bad decisions, but it is not a morality tale; it is more a statement of record of a contested account that split the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP) over Tommy Sheridan’s defamation action against the News International.
The background
The Scottish Socialist Party was formed in 1998 to contest the first elections of Scotland’s new parliament.
It was created after a number of left-wing organisations which made up the Scottish Socialist Alliance aligned to form a single party which allowed various fractions or platforms to operate within it. Former Militant members – organized as International Socialist Movement – were the largest group but the Alliance contained other representatives from the Trotskyist Left as well as non-aligned Scottish socialist members.
The roots of this development lay organisationally in the break-up of the entryist Trotskyist organisation Committee for a Workers’ International better known south of the border for the Militant Tendency organised within the British Labour Party. [Read more about the origins of the Militant tendency in Ted Grant’s opinionated account History of British Trotskyism.]
There had been the sanctioned division of the CWI’s British section into two organisational units in the mid-1990s. In England and Wales, following a series of exclusions from the Labour Party, Militant Labour changed its name to the Socialist Party after a somewhat fraught internal debate during 1996-97. In Scotland, the organisation retained the name, Scottish Militant Labour. It advocated a broader socialist alignment in the Scottish Socialist Alliance. Their English-based comrades disagreed.
Between them was a bitter row over the transformation of the Scottish Socialist Alliance into the Scottish Socialist Party in September 1998. In 2001, the International Socialist Movement – formerly Scottish Militant Labour – finally completed its break.
The SSP advocated proportional representation, abolition of the monarchy and an end to the union through the creation of an independent, Scottish republic.
The SSP achieved electoral success almost instantly when one of its founders, Tommy Sheridan, was elected to Holyrood as a list MSP for Glasgow in 1999. Tommy Sheridan was central to the initial success of the party.
He had been the face and the voice of the anti-poll tax demonstrations in Scotland in the 1980s, and was jailed three times over protests against warrant sales, poindings and nuclear weapons. And he was more media savvy than most.
And at the end of 2000 the party’s campaign to have warrant sales and poindings abolished paid off when Mr Sheridan’s members’ bill made it through parliament.
The SSP leader caused a stir in parliament from the start, when he swore the oath of allegiance to the Queen with a clenched fist raised to signal his protest. He was in parliament for four years before being joined by five of his party colleagues in 2003 – making the SSP the largest left-wing party in Scotland. At its height, as well as six MSPs, the SSP boasted 3,000 members, scores of branches and the support of important trade union organisations. In 2003, at its annual delegate conference, the Labour-affiliated Rail Maritime and Transport (RMT) trade union voted to allow its branches to affiliate to the SSP. It secured more than 245,000 votes across the country.
Six MSPs were elected on the regional list: Carolyne Leckie in Central, Colin Fox in the Lothians, Frances Curran in the West of Scotland seat, Rosemary Byrne in the South of Scotland and Tommy Sheridan and Rosie Kane in Glasgow.
The facts
In November 2004 the News of the World ran a series of stories, smutty allegations and innuendoes claiming a married MSP had visited a swingers’ club and had committed adultery.
Shortly afterwards, Tommy Sheridan resigned as convener of the SSP, citing personal reasons, and announced his intention to sue. When Sheridan stated he was going to sue the newspapers over the allegations, SSP MP Caroline Leckie said: “There is no official backing behind any legal challenge.” Alan McCombes, the SSP’s policy coordinator and one-time close friend of Sheridan’s, casually said: “The executive committee does not want to go down a road where we are helping Tommy Sheridan build a tower of lies.”
The Workers’ Weekly, a reporting source for any confrontation within the British Left (while continuing to relentlessly criticise their failings) stated it understood that
“the executive committee of the SSP urged Sheridan not to fight the thing out in the courts. It voted unanimously to tell him to fight using other, political, methods. Events so far have tended to indicate this would have been the best course.”
Weekly Worker Issue 628 07.06.2006 Defend SSP’s Alan McCombes
Scottish Socialist Party official Alan McCombes was jailed for refusing to hand over party documents to the Court. The now-closed News of the World had requested the internal minutes, which it claims would help defend a defamation case brought by former SSP leader . McCombes was jailed for 12 days after he ignored a deadline to release the papers. SSP offices and comrades’ homes were search in a vain attempt to find the required document, minutes of the November 9 2004 SSP executive meeting which forced Tommy Sheridan to resign as convenor.
Four SSP MSPs gave evidence against their former leader during his legal action against the newspaper, which Sheridan won in 2006, along with £200,000 in damages.
He was later retried and found guilty of perjury, and was jailed for three years in 2011. The investigation and subsequent perjury trial were estimated to have cost £4 million to £5 million, which shows the State has deep pockets when its interests are involved.
His former comrades said while this outcome had vindicated them, the socialist movement in Scotland had been very badly damaged in the process. In the midst of the saga, in the 2007 Scottish elections, the SSP’s vote slumped and the party lost all its MSPs.
Sheridan left the SSP after he won the first court case and formed another party, Solidarity. He failed in his bid to return to Holyrood as a Solidarity MSP in 2007. The group failed to make any progress and in 2020, he joined Alex Salmond’s Alba Party.
Accusation & charges
Throughout the whole episode the reporting on the Left was posturing and the sectarian left’s condemnatory vocabulary was given full expression. The political analysis shaped by an understanding of what caused the internal crisis within the SSP. Beside political disagreements, hostile to the “opportunistic and abject surrender to nationalism” of the SSP, there were differences as to where the emphasis was placed: the central issue being mistakenly presented as Sheridan’s alleged personal behaviour or the News International’s attacks on a leading socialist.
After the first court case, Sheridan described his former colleagues as “scabs” in a tabloid interview, and those who had given evidence against him reportedly faced threats and attacks by his supporters. Sheridan did not explain he had wanted the Executive Committee for political expediency to lie in defence of his personal interests. The first case saw him victorious, awarded a cash settlement.
In the second case he was later found guilty of perjury, and was jailed for three years at the start of 2011. Sheridan spent a year in prison.
A false argument was raised that the conviction of Tommy Sheridan for perjury was the result of a political vendetta, waged by Rupert Murdoch’s News International in a de facto alliance with the Lothian and Borders Police and the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP). However, McCombes did observe that “Like Jeffrey Archer and Jonathan Aitken, two top Tory politicians who served lengthy jail sentences for their actions, Tommy Sheridan took out a libel action based on a fraud: at least some of the material published in the trashy tabloid News of the World was substantially true.”
Sheridan’s former comrades had said while this outcome had vindicated them, however their movement in Scotland had been very badly damaged in the process.
Far from joining forces with The News of the World in bringing Sheridan down as critics claim, McCombes’ explanation is the more believable:
He declared himself a hostile witness, describing the case as a “squalid little squabble” but was ordered to answer questions by the judge. He said: “I am here under the strongest possible protest. […] Your client, I have to say, the News of the World, symbolises everything that as a socialist I have stood against my whole adult life. […] It should have been settled by one of both parties before innocent people were dragged into this bizarre pantomime.”
McCombes published account does provide a detailed, convincing rationale for why the SSP members who testified ‘against’ Sheridan did what they did. On 7 July 2006, McCombes gave evidence in the defamation proceedings launched by Tommy Sheridan against the News of the World stating that Sheridan had admitted to him that he had visited swingers clubs. His version of events was supported by ten other people who were present at the meeting and matched the minutes of the meeting presented in court, though these were naturally disputed during the court case.
August 2006, in the aftermath of the Sheridan defamation case, McCombes publicly released an all-members bulletin addressed to SSP membership, entitled “The Fight for the Truth” in which he said Tommy Sheridan’s libel victory over the News of the World “could set back the cause of socialism by years if not decades” because of the divisions that had occurred within the party and went on to give his view of the events leading up to the trial.
Downfall reads well, with a few jarring exceptions and Tommy Sheridan’s implosion recounted with insider perspective could not resist a few incidental snipes about Sheridan, understandable given the personal enmity, and consequences of the anger at the selfish actions of the man who wrought destruction on the SSP. Some might describe Downfall as a forensic indictment of a man who sold out his comrades for ego. Along the way is an insight to a fraying strand of early 21st century Scottish political radicalism. Tommy Sheridan should be commended for his anti poll tax stance, but like so many others somewhere along the way he was twisted by his fame; Yes victimised by the press, but also losing traction with the political service as too often the Left lauds the individual rather than the movement and its aims.
In August 2022 the disgraced former MSP Tommy Sheridan was declared bankrupt over an £82,000 legal bill after his failed bid to prove he was the victim of a miscarriage of justice.
When McCombes left the SSP employment he moved to central Scotland to work engaged in environmental activity. With Roz Paterson, he co-authoured the 2014 publication, Restless Land: A Radical Journey Through Scotland’s History. Glasgow: Calton Books.
In the autumn of 1982, Enver Hoxha explained, he had “examine a problem that is as delicate and important, as well as dangerous for the fate of the Homeland. I do not want to dwell on the issue of which we are now aware, that the enemy and traitor Mehmet Shehu, for 40 years has worked in our country, organising plots to overthrow popular power and liquidate the Party. We know these plots because we discovered them ourselves. Today I want to emphasise the issue that all the plots have been revealed by the Politburo and not State Security.” [i]
As far as the outside world could see, Hoxha had internally attacked and humiliated his most important and loyal companions. For decades Hoxha’s most loyal acolyte was his long-standing comrade-in-arms, prime minister Mehmet Shehu. An old revolutionary who had distinguished himself as a commanding officer of a brigade in the Spanish Civil War, returning to occupied Albania, via a spell in an internment camp in France. He had a fearsome reputation as ruthless military strategist, commander of 1st Partisan Assault Division of the National Liberation Army. He led the forces which liberated the capital, Tirana, from the Germans in November 1944. Albania was the only country in Europe, indeed the only country in the world occupied by any of the Axis powers, which freed itself without a foreign army landing on its territory in force.
After the German withdrawal, General Shehu became chief of the general staff under Enver Hoxha. When Xoxe was sacked as Albania’s internal affairs minister in October 1948, he was replaced with Mehmet Shehu. He served as the Prime Minister of Albania from 1954 to 1981. From 1974 he was also the Minister of People’s Defence while from 1947 to his death he was a deputy of the People’s Assembly. Shehu was clearly the number two in the power hierarchy. [ii]
The backstory lays in the previous winter, when on December 17. a marathon session of the Secretariat was held to review and analyse the self-criticism of the former Prime Minister, Mehmet Shehu because of a family matter involving the engagement of his son, Skender to a volleyball player who happened to have family with a “bad political biography”, links to an exiled anti-communist dissident in the US. Whether the suspicion aroused by this liaison or the speculation that Shehu’s favoured re-establishing official links with foreign western powers sealed his fate has remained unproven.
When Hoxha learned of this engagement he confronted the prime minister and accused him of neglecting the class struggle. Shehu had the engagement annulled.
Hoxha gave him the task of writing a self-criticism
The session, that began in the afternoon continued until late hours, involved a litany of criticisms and accusations that politically “crucified” Mehmet. He was attacked and humiliated at the Politburo meeting. Hoxha himself sent out many and partially contradictory signals. He acted as an interrogator, but at the same time staged himself as a kind of impartial arbiter. He also ostensibly cleared Shehu of any possible allegation of having acted with hostile intent.
However, it was reported that Shehu appeared demolished and paralysed. The next morning Shehu was found shot in his bed with a pistol next to him. He committed suicide according to official sources.
Hoxha declared him an enemy before the Politburo. A few hours later, at a CC emergency plenum, he spoke of a “masked and dangerous enemy” whose aims and plans had to be revealed. Hoxha claimed that the suicide could only be explained by the fact that Shehu’s conscience must have been burdened by “other mistakes, exceptionally serious ones, and acts still unknown to the party.”
In conclusion, he had Shehu posthumously expelled from the party as a “dangerous enemy” along with his wife Fiqrete as his “close collaborator in anti-party and hostile activities.” The Shehu family was immediately placed under house arrest.
Whether Mehmet Shehu committed suicide as officially stated, or was killed on orders from Hoxha to resolve an argument is still rumoured today. Enver dismissed such speculation in his presentation of the case against his old colleague:
“The foreign news agencies related the fact as we had given it, that Mehmet Shehu «committed suicide in a crisis of nervous breakdown.» Here and there some comment secretly paid for by the Yugoslavs was made. However, even the Yugoslavs were unable to exploit this act in their official press, apart from charging a students’ newspaper in Zagreb to write about the «drama» which had occurred at the meeting of the Albanian leadership (according to the version which the UDB had planned). According to this newspaper, «… Mehmet Shehu fired some shots with a Chinese revolver of this or that calibre(!), but Enver Hoxha’s comrades killed him. The fate of Enver Hoxha is not known…»
A scenario modelled on westerns with gunfights which occurred in the saloons at the time! But what could they do? This is what they wanted! But their agent was buried like a dog, or better to say that their trump card, the super agent of the CIA and the UDB in Albania was thrown away for nothing.” [iii]
Mehmet Shehu, who had delivered a speech, The History of the Albanian People is written in blood [iv] joined the litany of traitors: Yugoslav use of the Koci Xoxe group, Khrushchev revisionists through Liri Belishova and Koco Tashko, the putschist plot of Beqir Balluku, Abclyl Killezi and others the subject of such accusations.
Jon Halliday’s speculative discussion in London Review of Books described Hoxha’s allegations as widely greeted with derision as a figment of Hoxha’s paranoia. Support for the credibility of the accusations was sought by delving into official British state archives, “this does not prove anything except wishful thinking”. The well-researched investigation From the Annals of British Diplomacy: The Anti-Albanian Plans of Great Britain during the Second World War according to Foreign Office Documents of 1939-1944 by Arben Puto contains no reference to British intelligence’s speculations. Published in 1981 in an English language edition, the foreword is dated April 1976. However, Halliday offers the scenario that Puto found the files in which Shehu was portrayed as a ‘pro-British element’. He had to show them to Hoxha, who saw documents drawn up by British intelligence agents, some of whom were later active in the invasion of Albania in 1949, which list his prime minister as No 2 on a list of ‘pro-British elements’ to be protected and ‘built up unobtrusively’, Halliday suggests “would have been enough to detonate lethal suspicion in a chronically suspicious mind.”
This provoked readers’ response, raising the point:
“if Mr Halliday is right in thinking that Puto passed information concerning Shehu culled from FO archives to Enver Hoxha, this must have happened by autumn 1972. In which case the question obtrudes itself: why, despite his ‘chronically suspicious mind’, and the ‘lethal detonation’ which these documents set off, did Hoxha sit on them and take no further action for another nine years?” [v]
Associated Press reported in July 2001, nearly 20 years after his reported suicide, the remains of former Prime Minister Mehmet Shehu were found on 21 July near the Erzen River in the village of Ndroq between Tirana and the Adriatic. [vi]
The death of Mehmet was a curtain-raiser for the last major purge of the Hoxha era. Idrit Idrizi suggests the purging of prominent party leaders clearly elevated and consolidated the position of Ramiz Alia, as his successor. The succession to Hoxha (aged 73 in December 1981) was a political concern. A number of party leaders who had started rising to power in the course of the 1970s, with striking aggression and cynicism, had helped Hoxha push his old guard into the abyss. [vii]
The Albanian leadership would publicise its past struggle citing examples of early anti-party groups like the Koci Xoxe’s group, and in later years, the Party uncovered and liquidated the hostile groups of F. Pacrami and T. Lubonja, of B. Balluku, P. Dume and H. Cako, and of A. Kellezi, K. Theodhosi and K. Ngjela. In a reference to Lenin calling purging a law of development of the revolutionary party of the working class,
“Our party has never allowed opportunist softness, liberalism and sentimentality in the implementation of this law.” [viii]
The ripples from the suicide of Mehmet Shehu led to a deeper investigation of his political career. Released in the 6th volume of his Selected Works was Enver Hoxha’s Speech delivered at the 4th Plenum of the CC of the PLA in September 24, 1982, A Synopsis of the Secret Activity of the Enemy Mehmet Shehu laying out allegations, unsubstantiated by others investigation, and in the absence of non-party archival sources, testimony or Wikileak type revelations. Enver Hoxha also laid out the details of Shehu’s alleged plans to poison him at the alleged behest of the Yugoslav authorities in the publication The Titoites (1982). [ix]
The Albanian leadership, as if to emphasis the political nature of the incidents, was told by Enver Hoxha that these traitors were “not discovered by the State Security. The State security then acted to conduct the investigation … [Again] This work was done by the Central Committee, not by the State Security. All of these constitute a major minus for State Security … those who acted in the most dangerous way, it turns out that they were gathered in the Ministry of Internal Affairs and in the Ministry of National Defense.” Alluding to Begir Balluku , after 22 uninterrupted years of service as the Minister of Defense with a group of officers purged, tried and then shot in 1974/75. Enver Hoxha alleged in his memories that the “enemy groups” of Abdyl Këllezi (Minister of the Economy) and Beqir Balluku (Minister of Defense) had drafted their inimical plan based on suggestions from Zhou Enlai, Premier of the People’s Republic of China.[x]
Hoxha claimed that for 40 years, Mehmet Shehu had been working with many accomplices and on behalf of several enemy secret services to destroy socialism in Albania. One by one Minister of Health Llambi Ziçishti, his brother Mihallaq, who had previously served as head of the Sigurimi, and Foreign Minister Nesti Nase ended up behind bars. The purge of several of the highest-ranking political officials in communist Albania from 1981 to 1983, included the arrest of the removed minister of the interior, Feçor Shehu, for “high treason”. [xi]
The arrest of Foreign Minister Nesti Nase in mid-September, after Hoxha had already sent him into early retirement in the June of that year, on an alleged lack of initiative. Around the same time as Nase’s arrest, accusations were also levelled against Minister of Defence Kadri Hazbiu, who had previously headed the Ministry of the Interior for some 26 years, from 1954 to 1980. Now he was suspected of not having been sufficiently vigilant. In the face of hostile harangement before the Party leadership bodies, Hazbiu’s denial of treason and his reiteration of his loyalty to Hoxha critically threatened the success of the show trial against him.
The arrests within the political elite were then accompanied by allegation that back-dated the activities of seemingly regime loyalist to involvement in crimes in the early days of communist rule. Those levelled against Minister of Defence Kadri Hazbiu were that he had been involved in the crimes of Koçi Xoxe, the minister of the interior executed in 1948 and Enver Hoxha’s former arch-enemy, and subsequently in Mehmet Shehu’s conspiracy plans. That such traitors could remain brooding within, and rise to the leadership of the Party and State, for such a length of time does not seem to have stimulated a response other than repeat the constant, and much-vaunted calls for vigilance and implementation of party education. No structural or managerial issues addressed why they survived and thrived, even nurtured during the building of socialism in Albania.
Hazbiu was accused of not having carried out comprehensive purges of ‘Feçor Shehu’s main brood’ in the Ministry of the Interior, expanding the circle of suspects. During the “trial” against Hazbiu, the two Deputy Defence Ministers Veli Llakaj and Nazar Berber, faced Hoxha who accused them as complicit saying Shehu had planned a military coup with them.
The purge also reached the PLA Institute for Marxist-Leninist Studies. It was not its director, Hoxha’s wife, but the deputy director Ndreçi Plasari who was held accountable for the praise of Mehmet Shehu in the institute’s publications. He was also accused of having concealed a document of the British secret service concerning the then prime minister, which he had found in the London archives. [An event raised earlier and alluded by Jon Halliday.] Plasari ‘s compliant self-reproach was that he had been an opportunist, a coward and politically short-sighted. However, he never acted with, nor had he ever suspected that Shehu was a traitor.
Enver Hoxha accused them all of being traitors and part of a monstrous conspiracy on behalf of hostile foreign powers and under the leadership of Shehu. The documentation of accusations from the Politburo and Secretariat of the Party of Labour of Albania of “hostile activities” implicated dissidents real and imagined from within the Party and state are translated and reproduced in the extensive postings on the anti-regime Memorie.al of archival material sourced from the Central State Archive (fund of the former Central Committee.)
In connection with the alleged conspiracy under the leadership of Mehmet Shehu, two prominent court proceedings, one civil and one military, took place almost parallel to each other. In the first, the defendants were Mehmet Shehu’s wife Fiqrete, his son Skënder, former Foreign Minister Nesti Nase and former Health Minister Llambi Ziçishti. The second trial was directed against Kadri Hazbiu, who was arrested two days after the CC plenum, the former Minister of the Interior Feçor Shehu, three Sigurimi officials, Mehmet Shehu’s head bodyguard and a hairdresser also accused of collaboration in conspiracy. The accused in the first trial also appeared as witnesses in the second.
Kadri Hazbiu, Feçor Shehu and Sigurimi official Llambi Peqini refused to accept the charge that they had been members of a counterrevolutionary organisation. All three were sentenced to death. They were shot on the night of 9 to 10 September 1983. The same fate befell the former Minister of Health, Ziçishti. The rest of the accused received long prison sentences.
The main defendants were executed and buried in secret locations in 1983.
Anti-party groups, revolutionary justice and class struggle
The Party leadership was in no doubt that, the struggle against anti-party elements, groups and views, like the entire class struggle within the party, was an ideological struggle for the Marxist-Leninist ideology and purity of its theory, of its general line, and of the communists themselves.
The danger of capitalist restoration was understood in terms of individual degeneration of individual members, lack of Party diligences and foreign conspiracies. In post-war Albanian politics, any dispute, whether over internal or external policy, has always been given a foreign dimension reflecting both traditional Albanian xenophobia and practice from the Stalin era.
Class struggle within the Albanian party was seen in orthodox Stalinist terms that avoided the thesis of “capitalist roaders” and regenerative class exploitation developing that emerged during the cultural revolution in Mao’s China. Against the Maoist position, they can hardly argue that there is no danger of the formation of opposing, hostile currents and lines in the party, but the emergence and formation of such currents and lines, while not an unalterable fate were also rarely prevented, as seen in the experience of the Party of Labour of Albania.
Hoxhists raise criticism of Mao aimed at the fact that he was alleged to approve the formation of hostile lines in the party and allowed recognized revisionists to continue working in the party.[xii] They misrepresent the two line struggle, personalised as Mao Tse-tung’s thesis of the bourgeoisie sitting in the middle of the party, tolerated and Mao Tse-tung allowing hostile currents to developed in the Central Committee, even though their anti-Party activities were well known.
Whereas Vice-director of the Institute of Marxist-Leninist studies, Ndreci Plasari, repeated the well-rehearsed position that “class struggle within the party is directed against enemies and traitors; against deviations, distortions and violations of party decisions and directives; against shortcomings, mistakes and gaps in the work of the leading organs and basic organizations of the party; against opportunism, dogmatism, sectarianism, and any kind of alien, un-Marxist views.”[xiii]
He noted that all the enemies and traitors who have emerged from the ranks of the Party have been rightists. Opposing the onslaught from the CPSU [xiv], Mehmet Shehu had warned:
“Messrs. plotters! Albania is a hard bone as sharp as a knife which sticks in the throat of whoever tries to bite at or swallow it.”
Not as famous as the Stasi or KGB, the Sigurimi [Drejtorija e Sigurimit të Shtetit] gets a bad press from Enver Hoxha; in essence, he implied that the Directorate of State Security failed in its duty to protect the People’s Socialist Republic of Albania. Formed in December 1944 (dissolved August 1991) the mission of the Sigurimi was to prevent counterrevolutions and to suppress opposition to the existing political system. [xv] Yet, there was Hoxha explaining, that in the circumstances of an attack at the very heart of the regime, by its hidden enemies, “I want to emphasise the issue that all the plots have been revealed by the Politburo and not State Security.”
The standard western view suggests the history of communist rule in Albania is a history of recurring purges, mass arrests and campaigns of “ideological purification.” In 1948, when President Josip Broz Tito in neighbouring Yugoslavia broke with Stalinism, the Albanian party was purged of identified individuals closely associated with “Titoites and revisionists”; in 1960, top leaders were executed as “modern revisionists and Khrushchevites”; in 1977, attention was turned to the “pro-Chinese elements” and in December 1981 Hoxha’s prime minister of 28 years, Mehmet Shehu, “committed suicide” and then was denounced as an agent of the KGB, the CIA, British Intelligence and the Yugoslav secret service.
The narrative remains the same: behind domestic opponents lay foreign hands: Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union, or China, after Albania broke from successive alliances with each of those countries, Albanian communists were purged and some executed. “They have been very few in numbers, but the danger they posed was very great”. One estimate indicated that at least 170 communist party Politburo or Central Committee members were executed as a result of the Sigurimi’s investigations.
Deputy director of the PLA Institute for Marxist-Leninist Studies, Ndreçi Plasari, subjected to questioning in the aftermath of Mehmet Shehu’s death, had summarised that
“class struggle within the ranks of party organisations is linked, and cannot but be closely linked with the class struggle in the ranks of the people against the blemishes from the old society, against petty-bourgeois psychology and all remnants of old reactionary ideologies, against backward customs, as well as with the struggle against the [external-added] bourgeois-revisionist aggression.”[xvi]
The Sigurimi had proved effective in smashing the various plots of Albanian émigrés given Western support for their efforts to overthrow the Communist government in the late 1940s and early 1950s, and even in September 1982, The New York Times reported “The Albanian Interior Ministry announced that a ”band of Albanian emigre criminals” landed by boat on the Adriatic coast of Albania and were ”liquidated” five hours later.” But in the face of the political and ideological opposition at the apex of the state, and although it was responsible for purging the party, government, military, and its own apparatus, the Directorate had failed to detect Mehmet Shehu’s alleged forty years of counter-revolutionary activity.
Unspoken incompetence characterises the narrative that spun around the death of the Albanian communist Mehmet Shehu. There is the failure to detect his alleged activities over the span of four decades, and his failure to decisively fulfil the alleged sabotage and destruction of socialism in Albania. There is also the implicit criticism raised that the Directorate of State Security failed in its duty to protect the People’s Socialist Republic of Albania.
Enver tells it to Zhou
Enver Hoxha explained at length, in a conversation with Zhou Enlai, the Albanian leadership limiting view on class struggle within the party, and capitalist restoration. The degeneration of party life and conspiratorial activity by traitors and revisionists elements are seen as key factors in the undermining of the socialist state. The PLA analysis was that a worker aristocracy made up of bureaucratic cadres was being created in the Communist Party of the USSR, and that bureaucratic distortions led to ideological and political distortions, to the creation of the current of modern revisionists.[xvii]
“The seizure of power by the Soviet modern revisionists from within, without using weapons or violence, is so to speak, a new phenomenon. We think that in fact Stalin had not envisaged this, for the Soviet Union least of all. He never underrated the ferocity of the elements left over from the exploiting classes who, the closer they draw to their grave, the more fiercely they fight socialism and the dictatorship of the proletariat, but we think that considering the state these remnants were in, Stalin assessed the internal situation as sound and correctly foresaw that the ally which could revive these remnants was foreign imperialism. Stalin put the stress on the danger from outside, while we can say that he did not foresee the full implication of the danger of the revisionist elements who, as a result of many subjective and objective circumstances, might emerge within the party and the socialist state and be gradually transformed, wittingly or unwittingly, consciously or unconsciously, with or without a premeditated plan, into an anti-Marxist trend, especially within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Soviet Union itself. He was convinced that if some anti-party hostile activity emerged within the party, this might be developed and organized in the usual ways, but he was also firmly convinced that this activity would be attacked and liquidated by the same methods and forms that had been used to expose and liquidate all such activities in the past.
… If there is anything for which we can blame Stalin it is the fact that after the war, and especially in the last years of his life, he did not realize that the pulse of his Party was not beating as before, that it was losing its revolutionary vigour, was becoming sclerotic and, despite the heroic deeds of the Great Patriotic War, it never recovered properly and the Khrushchevite traitors took advantage of this. Here, if I am not mistaken, is where we must seek the origin of the tragedy that occurred in the Soviet Union
… generally speaking, no errors of principle will be found, but we shall see that little by little the Party was becoming bureaucratized, that it was becoming overwhelmed with routine work and dangerous formalism which paralyze the party and sap its revolutionary spirit and vigour. The Party had been covered by a heavy layer of rust, by political apathy and the mistaken idea spread that only the head, the leadership, acted and solved everything. It was this concept of work that led to the situation in which everybody, everywhere, said about every question: «The leadership knows this», «the Central Committee knows every Committee does not make mistakes», «Stalin said this and that’s the end of it». Many things which Stalin may not have said at all were attributed to him. The apparatuses and officials became «omnipotent», «infallible», and operated in bureaucratic ways, misusing the formulae of democratic centralism and Bolshevik criticism and self-criticism which were no longer Bolshevik. There is no doubt that in this way the Bolshevik Party lost its former vitality, it lived by correct formulae, but only formulae; it carried out orders, but did not act on its own initiative.
.. Careerism, servility, charlatanism, cronyism, anti-proletarian morality, etc. developed and eroded the Party from within, smothered the spirit of the class struggle and sacrifice and encouraged the hankering after a «good», comfortable life with personal privileges and gain, and with the least possible work and toil. «We worked and fought for this socialist state and we won. Now let us enjoy it and profit from it. We are untouchable, our past covers everything.» This was the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois mentality which was being created in the Soviet Union and the great danger was that this was developing in the old cadres of the Party with an irreproachable past and of proletarian origin, cadres who ought to have been examples of purity for the others.
…the lack of revolutionary vigilance, the weakening of the class struggle inside and outside the Party, the enfeebling of the revolutionary spirit in everything, lack of profound revolutionary political and ideological work on a mass scale and the bureaucratization of the Party brought about that a whole stratum of the Party completely lost the features of the proletariat, of revolutionaries, and became bourgeois, created its own cadres in the Party and the state and took power into its own hands.”
<< It is of decisive importance that the working class and its Party never allow the cadres to become bureaucratic and degenerate, never allow the emergence of the new bureaucratic bourgeoisie, as in the Soviet Union, where the bureaucratized and degenerate cadres, the new bureaucratic bourgeoisie, seized the leadership from the hands of the working class. «In the Soviet Union,» says Comrade Enver Hoxha, «the cadres, naturally the bad cadres — carried out the counter-revolution… Cadres have their place, their role, but they must not impose their law on the Party, but the Party and the class must impose their law on them… The cadres must understand this hegemony of the Party and its class correctly from the ideological angle and fight for the implementation of principles in practice» [xviii]
There is an evident lack of appreciation of the application of mass line, supervision from below and the transformation of social relations that sees greater control of the conditions of social life reside at a lower level within a developing socialist society. Instead, on the main focus to nipped the process of degeneration in the bud and prevent the weakening of the dictatorship of the proletariat in Albania, Hoxha said,
“…. The main task it [the Party] has set itself is to keep the revolutionary spirit consistently high, to temper and retemper itself ideologically and politically day by day, to keep its ranks pure, to purge itself of rotten elements, sluggards, mere talkers, careerists and incorrigible bureaucrats through an active struggle within the Party and the real and factual verification of the activity of each party member in struggle and life.” [xix]
There was a consistent view, expressed by Nexhmije Hoxha (1977) [xx] that
“All the internal enemies, without exception, are at the same time, in one way or the other, agencies of external imperialist and revisionist enemies regardless of whether these connections and this collaboration are realized directly or indirectly. The threads which unite the former with the latter are numerous. They are not united only by their common anti-communist ideology and identical aim of eliminating the Party and the dictatorship of the proletariat, and the whole socialist order in our country. They are united also by the support they render each other in the practical activity they carry out, the former from within, the second from abroad, to achieve this aim.”
The explanation repeated, that class struggle in Socialist Albania had its source
“ …in the existence of remnants of the exploiting classes and in their aims and efforts to regain their lost class power, riches, privileges and prerogatives; in the hostile imperialist-revisionist encirclement and in the aims and efforts of external enemies to destroy our socialist order by means of ideological aggression or military aggression; in the emergence of new capitalist elements and new internal enemies, who become a great danger to the Party and the proletarian power, to socialism; in the blemishes from the old society which continue to exist for a long time in the consciousness of men, blemishes which become an obstacle to the proletarian ideology and policy of the Party as dominant ideology and policy; in the so-called «bourgeois right» in the field of distribution, which socialist society is obliged to use, although it limits it more and more; in the differences between town and countryside, physical work and mental work, etc., which cannot be eliminated immediately.
… The class struggle has its source not only in these things mentioned above, but also in another aspect, which is sometimes overlooked: in the aims and efforts of the working class and its ally, the cooperativist peasantry, under the leadership of the proletarian party, to uproot every last trace of capitalist society, to carry the socialist revolution through to complete and final victory, to the complete construction of socialist and communist society, to defend every victory of the revolution and prevent a return to capitalism, to eliminate classes completely, as well as to contribute in the elimination of imperialist-revisionist oppression and exploitation and the triumph of socialism on a world scale.”
Speeches reiterated the reciprocal connection and interdependence between internal and external enemies so the waging of the class struggle in Albania cannot be taken separately from national patriotism:
“All the internal enemies, without exception, are at the same time, in one way or the other, agencies of external imperialist and revisionist enemies regardless of whether these connections and this collaboration are realized directly or indirectly. The threads which unite the former with the latter are numerous. They are not united only by their common anti-communist ideology and identical aim of eliminating the Party and the dictatorship of the proletariat, and the whole socialist order in our country. They are united also by the support they render each other in the practical activity they carry out, the former from within, the second from abroad, to achieve this aim.” [xxi]
E N D N O T E S
[i] September 20 1982, Meeting of the Secretariat of the PLA Central Committee.
[ii] Yet part of the post-justification apparently suggested a long-standing personal feud going back to when Hoxha imprisoned Shehu briefly in 1946. Nexhmije Hoxha, following the restoration of capitalism in Albania in 1991, spent six years in prison. Upon release she wrote two volumes of her memoirs which narrates some of the early post-war experiences that the PLA had of Mehmet Shehu and the relations between Enver Hoxha and Mehmet Shehu, ‘Miqësi e tradhtuar (in Albanian), ‘Betrayed Friendship, Historical Notes and Memories on the Relationship between Enver Hoxha and Mehmet Shehu’, Tirana, 2004.
[iii] Source: A Synopsis of the Secret Activity of the Enemy Mehmet Shehu. Speech delivered at the 4th Plenum of the CC of the PLA . Enver Hoxha, Selected Works, Vol. 6, pp. 568–596
[v] The Strange Death of Mehmet Shehu, London Review of Books Vol. 8 No. 17 · 9 October 1986. Frank Walbank’s Letter Vol. 8 No. 20 · 20 November 1986. Typically, ping pong disputed correspondence ensued as Halliday’s replied to reader’s critical points questioning the scholarship involved. Halliday had edited and provided commentary in the western published Artful Albanian: Memoirs of Enver Hoxha (Chatto & Windus. 1986) But perhaps better known later as co-author of best-selling although critically panned, ‘Mao – the Unknown Story’.
[vi] The Shehu’s family fate was equally dramatic: Skender Shehu returned from studies in Sweden shortly after his father’s death. He was detained in January 1982 and condemned to 15 years on charges of treason, espionage and sabotage, as well as plotting to assassinate Hoxha. He said the charges were trumped up. His mother Figret, was sentenced to 25 years in prison on murky accusations, one year after the death of Mehmet Shehu, died after seven years of internal exile in 1988.
The oldest son, unable to bear the family disgrace, Vladimir, electrocuted himself in 1982 after refusing to provide incriminating evidence to authorities trying to build a posthumous case against their father
The middle brother, Bashkim Shehu, a writer, was arrested after being accused the same year of disseminating unlawful propaganda. He was released in 1989 but rearrested several months later on the same charges. His untranslated autobiographical novel, Vjeshta e ankthit: Esse [Autumn of Fear: Essay] was published in Albania in 1994 . His father’s death was subject to literary treatment at the hands of Albania’s best-known novelist in The Successor by Ismail Kadare [translated by David Bellos. Canongate 2005]. Two versions of his death circulate among the people. The first, that The Successor killed himself, unable to bear the disclosure of his supposed crimes against the state; the second, unspoken, is that he was murdered by order of The Guide himself.
[vii] Idrit Idrizi, Enver Hoxha’s Last Purge: Inside the Ruling Circle of Communist Albania (1981–1983). East European Politics and Societies and Cultures Aug. 2021, doi:10.1177/08883254211036184.
[viii] “The Class Struggle in the Party Is the Guarantee That the Party Will Always Remain a Revolutionary Party of the Working Class” Albania Today [38] 1 /1978. p19
[ix] The Titoites (1982) Tirana: The “8 Nentori” Publishing House p623-628 [English-language edition]
[xi] The following accounts draws heavily upon Idrit Idrizi, Enver Hoxha’s Last Purge: Inside the Ruling Circle of Communist Albania (1981–1983) . East European Politics and Societies and Cultures Aug. 2021, doi:10.1177/08883254211036184.
[xii] See №4 / 1978 of “The Way of the Party” — Theoretical Organ of the KPD/ML))
[xiii] “The Class Struggle in the Party Is the Guarantee That the Party Will Always Remain a Revolutionary Party of the Working Class” Albania Today [38] 1 /1978.
[xiv] Khrushchev’s in his speech on Albania at the October 1961 22nd Congress of CPSU – The Road to Communism –was explicitly hostile to the anti-revisionist criticisms raised from the Albanian authorities, and scathing of its leadership under Hoxha.
“For a long time now there has existed in the Albanian Party of Labor an abnormal, evil situation in which any person objectionable to the leadership liable to meet with cruel persecution.
Where today are the Albanian Communists who built the Party, who fought Italian and German invaders? Nearly of them are victims of the bloody misdeeds of Mehmet Shehu and Enver Hoxha”.
The Albanian leaders reproach us with meddling in the internal affairs of the Albanian Party of Labor. I should like to tell you what form this so-called meddling took.
A few years ago the Central Committee of the CPSU interceded with the Albanian leaders over the fate of Liri Gega, a former member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Albanian Party of Labor, who had been sentenced to death along with her husband. This woman had for a number of years been a member of leading bodies of the Albanian Party of Labor and had taken part in the Albanian people’s struggle for liberation. In approaching the Albanian leaders at the time, we were guided by considerations of humanity, by anxiety to prevent the shooting of a woman, and a pregnant woman at that. We felt and still feel that as a fraternal party we had a right to state our opinion in the matter. After all, even in the blackest days of rampant reaction, the tsarist satraps, who tortured revolutionaries, scrupled to execute pregnant women. And here, in a socialist country, they had sentenced to death, and they executed, a woman who was about to become a mother, they had shown altogether unwarranted cruelty. (Stir in the hall. Shouts: “Shame! Shame!”)
Comrades Liri Belishova and Koço Tashko, prominent figures in the Albanian Party of Labor, were not only expelled from the Party’s Central Committee but are now being called enemies of the Party and the people. And all this merely because Liri Belishova and Koço Tashko had the courage honestly and openly to voice their disagreement with the policy of the Albanian leaders and took a stand for Albanian solidarity with the Soviet Union and the other socialist countries.
People who today advocate friendship with the Soviet Union, with the CPSU, are regarded by the Albanian leaders as enemies.
[xvii] Enver Hoxha Our Party Will Continue to Wage the Class Struggle As It Has Always Done — Consistently, Courageously and with Maturity (June 24, 1966) The 8th November Publishing House 2022
[xviii] Quoted in Nexhmije Hoxha 2022 p38 Enver Hoxha, Contribution to the Discussion at the Meeting of the Secretariat of CC of the PLA, March 26, 1975, Central Archives of the Party.
[xx] Nexhmije Hoxha (1977) Some Fundemental Questions of the Class Struggle p16
Originally Published as: “Some Fundamental Questions of the Revolutionary Policy of the Party of Labour of Albania About the Development of the Class Struggle” in the theoretical and political organ of the Central Committee of the Party of Labour of Albania, «Rruga e Partisë», Nr. 6, Tirana, 1977. Reprinted 2022. Toronto: The November 8th Publishing House. P16
Nexhmije Hoxha, née Xhulgini, (1921-2020) Member of the Central Committee of the Party and from 1966, Director of the Institute of Marxist-Leninist Studies. The wife and companion for forty-three years of Enver Hoxha, she was in fact a convinced, important and active communist who joined the Party very early in its history, rose in its ranks in her own right, and never shrank from her duty, as she conceived it. As head of the Institute of Marxist-Leninist Studies, she oversaw the publication of her husband’s voluminous writings.
Established in Canada in 2021, this site provides access to English-language pdfs of anti-revisionist literature and the name should sound familiar. The original “8 Nëntori” Publishing House, literally meaning “8 November” in Albanian, honours the founding of the Party of Labour of Albania on November 8th, 1941. It published Enver Hoxha’s Selected Works, his Reflections, his many theoretical works, his memoirs, historical notes, and more.
The new incarnation, while republishing material from the Hoxha’s canon, aims “to promote discussion among Marxist-Leninists, even reprinting controversial figures and literature. In this work, we should note that reprinting does not mean we endorse the content — nor does it necessarily represent our views — it only means that we acknowledge that there may be some value in studying it.” Amongst its existing list are titles from the usual suspects, Lenin, Stalin, Dimitrov, Zhdanov, Ramiz Alia , Nexhmije Hoxha, and Wang Ming and Kim Il Sung. Being based near Ottawa (formerly at Toronto), there are some specifically Canadian communist literature reprinted.
Amongst its publications is a new collection Congress of Betrayal – The November 8th Publishing House (wordpress.com) partially of previous untranslated comments from Enver’s Diary and other more familiar material. This selection covers the decade 1955-1966, covering such events as the 20th Congress and the denunciation of Stalin, including his epochal 1960 Moscow Meeting speech, the Hungarian counter-revolution and its source, the “anti-party” plot of Molotov et al., to the break of diplomatic relations by the Soviets in 1961, and the removal of Khrushchev and the 23rd Brezhnev Congress in 1964-66.
seek truth to serve the people
What it illustrates is the argumentation forcibly and persistently offered in the through-going contradictions with the revisionist developments under Khrushchev. Far from being a pawn in the Sino-Soviet split, as if Albania was a side show in the anti-revisionist struggle, it highlights the contribution made sincerely and independently in that anti-revisionist struggle. Having read Albania Challenges Khrushchev Revisionism (New York 1976) or The Party of Labor of Albania in Battle with Modern Revisionism (Tirana 1972) you will know what to expect, and the speech delivered at the meeting of 81 Communist and Workers’ parties in Moscow (November 16, 1960) is included in the collection. That self-reverential sense that “we have done our sacred duty to Marxism-Leninism” still pervades the selection but then again, reality proved the life-and-death class struggle they were engaged in. The disruption of the international movement and eventual disintegration did see the attempted formation and reorganisation of anti-revisionist Marxist-Leninist forces. Something the Albanian party did pay close attention too.
Any evaluation of the struggle experienced by the Party of Labour of Albania led by Enver Hoxha should acknowledge it opened up the gates for the formation of the new Marxist-Leninist parties and the end of the old “fossilized and demobilized” Communist parties in the early stages of that struggle. The subsequent stance raises other questions which seems to have influenced some of the selected inclusions in the collection, before Hoxhaism was clearly delineated from Maoism,to reinforce the (contested) position that the PLA were the only forces to assess every deviationist move of the USSR correctly from the very beginning.
Congress of Betrayal | CONTENTS
KHRUSHCHEV ANNULS THE INFORMBUREAU DECISION (May 23, 1955)
WE ARE ALONE AGAINST TITO (May 25, 1955)
DITYRAMBS FROM TITO TO KHRUSHCHEV (February 18, 1956)
ON KHRUSHCHEV’S SECRET SPEECH (February 26, 1956)
THE AMERICAN IMPERIALISTS CAN NEVER CHANGE THEIR ESSENCE (March 8, 1956)
THE “ITALIAN WAY TOWARDS SOCIALISM” (March 18, 1956)
THE TRAITORS REHABILIATED UNDER THE PRETEXT OF THE “CULT OF THE INDIVIDUAL” (March 30, 1956)
A REVISIONIST PLOT AGAINST THE PARTY (April 16, 1956)
THE LESSONS WE SHOULD DRAW FROM THE PARTY CONFERENCE OF THE CITY OF TIRANA (April 21,1956)
THE 20th CONGRESS DID NOT PUT MATTERS RIGHT (May 26, 1956)
MOLOTOV HAS BEEN SACRIFICED FOR TITO (June 4, 1956)
KHRUSHCHEV SUGGESTS TO USE THE EXPERIENCE OF HITLER (June 23, 1956)
ANOTHER SLANDER LAID ON STALIN (July 2, 1956)
THE FOREIGN PRESS SALIVATES OVER THE MANOEVRE OF KHRUSHCHEV (July 3, 1956)
THE CHINESE ARE FOLLOWING THE ROAD OF THE SOVIETS (September 17, 1956)
IN NO WAY WILL WE MAKE CONCESSIONS ON PRINCIPLES (November 13, 1956)
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