First Published: Unity, Vol. 1, No. 2, October 1978.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
Copyright: This work is in the Public Domain under the Creative Commons Common Deed. You can freely copy, distribute and display this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit the Encyclopedia of Anti-Revisionism On-Line as your source, include the url to this work, and note any of the transcribers, editors & proofreaders above.
On July 29, the Party of Labor of Albania (PLA) issued an open Letter to the Communist Party of China (CPC) and the Chinese government. This Letter is a vicious and slanderous attack on the Communist Party of China and the Chinese revolution. It echoes the lies which the U.S. and Soviet imperialists have been spreading about socialist China for a number of years. The Letter supposedly is a response to China’s suspension of aid to Albania, which came about due to the PLA’s sabotage of China’s assistance. The content of the Letter, though, makes it clear that the PLA has been preparing its attack on the CPC for some time.
The Letter goes far beyond the other recent attacks and criticisms that the PLA has leveled at the CPC. The open Letter vilifies the Chinese leadership for departing from “Marxism-Leninism” and “proletarian internationalism,” and accuses China of being a “war instigator,” a “great power chauvinist,” and incredibly, a “superpower.”
The PLA does not just attack the present leadership of China, but is maligning the entire history of the Chinese revolution and the Communist Party of China. The PLA is openly attacking Chairman Mao Tsetung, charging that under his leadership, the Communist Party of China was marked by ”eclecticism,” “pragmatism,” “factionalism,” and that it had joined the “dance of imperialist alliances” (Letter, p. 41). The PLA brands Premier Chou En-lai as advocating “counter-revolutionary” policies (Letter, p. 38). These disgusting slanders are accompanied by a twisting and distortion of history to support the PLA’s charges.
The PLA is also reversing many of the views it formerly held of the Chinese revolution and the CPC. It is well known that the PLA in the past, like communists and people the world over, hailed the Chinese revolution as one of the great revolutions in history. As an Albanian party and government leader said, “After the victory of the Great October Socialist Revolution, gloriously led by the Bolshevik Party and the great Lenin, the Chinese People’s Revolution marks the most significant event in the history of this century.” (Enver Hoxha, Our People and Party Will Persevere and Develop Friendship with the People’s Republic of China with All Their Strength, September, 1960).
Now, in their Letter, the PLA slanders the Chinese revolution and Communist Party for allegedly not having made “the Marxist-Leninist ideology” “the example for, the pillar and the compass of the Communist Party of China.” (Letter, p. 35)
China’s Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, too, is maligned by the PLA in its Letter. The Cultural Revolution is universally recognized among Marxist-Leninists as being a great contribution to the theory and practice of the proletarian revolution. The Cultural Revolution decisively defeated capitalist-roaders in China, and pointed the way forward to combat the threats of capitalist restoration under the dictatorship of the proletariat.
In the past, the PLA hailed the achievements and significance of the Cultural Revolution. But today, the PLA makes the ridiculous assertion that the Cultural Revolution was “an unprincipled struggle,” “not led by a genuine party of the working class,” and claims that it “ended in the establishment in China of a state power dominated by bourgeois and revisionist elements.” (Letter, p. 36)
Another PLA distortion is its rewriting of the history of the struggle against modern revisionism. The PLA arrogantly tries to claim that only the PLA was “unwavering” in the struggle, and that the CPC “vacillated.” This ridiculous charge flies in the face of reality. It is common knowledge that the CPC spearheaded the struggle against modern revisionism, taking up the struggle right after Khrushchev pushed his revisionist line at the 20th Party Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1956.
Beginning with the important article, On the Historical Experience of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat published in 1956, the CPC initiated a persistent and vigorous struggle to expose and defeat modern revisionism, analyzed the restoration of capitalism in the Soviet Union, and helped lead the fight against Soviet social-imperialism.
The CPC opposed the revisionist lines of “peaceful transition to socialism,” “state of the whole people,” and “the international division of labor.” The CPC made monumental contributions to the world communist movement in its defense of Marxism-Leninism. As recognized in 1970 by a leading member of the PLA itself, “the People’s Republic of China has become the most powerful and unconquerable citadel of revolution and socialism in the world, in which the national liberation, anti-imperialist and anti-revisionist movements of the peoples of the world find their reliable, sincere and powerful support.” (Mehmet Shehu, “Speech Delivered at the First Session of the 7th Legislature of the People’s Assembly, November 1970.) Today, however, the PLA is trying to completely twist the CPC’s history.
The purpose of all these slanders and twisting of history is to serve as a foundation for the PLA’s main charge, which is that the People’s Republic of China is trying to become an imperialist superpower. This accusation is simply outrageous, and completely divorced from reality. The two superpowers, the U.S. and U.S.S.R., are oppressing countries and peoples around the world, and are frantically contending with each other for world domination. People’s China has taken the lead in opposing the two superpowers. This is becoming more and more evident to people around the world as each day goes by.
The PLA, on the other hand, instead of dealing with the sharpening struggle against the two superpowers, has been consolidating a metaphysical outlook on the world and failing to analyze the contradictions in things. The PLA’s view of the international situation today is characterized by such metaphysics. According to the PLA, the U.S., the U.S.S.R. and the lesser capitalist countries are all one big reactionary imperialist bloc. The PLA refuses to recognize the contradictions between the lesser capitalist countries and the superpowers, nor the contradiction between the two superpowers which is leading them toward launching a new world war. Consequently, the PLA can give no guidance to show how the proletariat can develop an international united front against the two superpowers and combat the threat of war.
The Communist Party of China has consistently based itself on dialectical materialism and has developed its line in accordance with the ever-changing conditions. This is what the PLA has not been able to comprehend, due to its metaphysics, but has now resorted to attacking People’s China.
While the PLA’s charges against China are argued with a lot of “leftist” words, they are actually echoes of the same lies the U.S. and U.S.S.R. have spread for a long time. Objectively, the PLA Letter is serving the interests of the two superpowers by covering for them and maligning socialism. The PLA position is a radical departure from its past principled stands.
It is for these reasons that Marxist-Leninists and revolutionary people around the world oppose the Albanian Party’s opportunist Letter and condemn it as a serious attack on socialist China and the entire international communist movement.