What in the world is "Enver Hoxha?"

[Professional Revolution]

Hello comrades & friends, a quick question for all of you. I was just browsing the 'tendencies' list that you have here and saw a rather bizarre tendency named "Enver Hoxha." I attempted to read the group description but it did not seem to make much sense. I assume Enver Hoxha was a man? Why is it not "Hoxhaist?" The other tendencies aren't titled with the person's names (e.g. "Leninist" is not "Vladimir Lenin", etc.)

I would also like to know more about why this Enver Hoxha character needs his own tendency, and perhaps some explanation as to how it is different from other Stalinist ideologies.


Thanks!

[Domela Nieuwenhuis]

Start here (http://marxists.org/reference/archive/hoxha/index.htm).

[evermilion]

Ask Ismail.

[TheEmancipator]

An anti-revisionist revisionist Albanian dictator. Thought Stalinist policies should have continued in the USSR after his death and that his successors were incompetent fools (I can't deny that). Most Hoxhaists are Orthodox Maoists who lamented the sino Russian split or just Stalin apologists. They tend to be nice blokes though. I'm sure Ishmael will make an appearance.

[Professional Revolution]

Ah, thank you. I tried reading through some but they seemed very dry; often making it a point to mention Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin whenever possible.

Socialist Albania and Enver Hoxha seem like very interesting topics, indeed. I have also read that he was credited with inventing the theory of gravity in Albanian textbooks. An interesting man indeed. He gives the "Dos Equis" commercial character a run for his money!

[Brutus]

Hoxhaism is not a tendency. Enver Hoxha was the only man to truly uphold Marxism-Leninism after Khrushchev denounced Stalin at the XX party congress. As said above, Ismail can give you much more information- he is the Hoxha expert.

[Professional Revolution]

Hoxhaism is not a tendency. Enver Hoxha was the only man to truly uphold Marxism-Leninism after Khrushchev denounced Stalin at the XX party congress. As said above, Ismail can give you much more information- he is the Hoxha expert.

But the Soviet State continued to call itself Marxist-Leninist! As did the People's Republic of China, though it did adopt "Mao Tse-tung thought" at one point, so I must give this unusual tendency credit there.

Thanks for your post!

[Ismail]

Because Albanian materials never used "Hoxhaist" to describe their ideology. They always used Marxism-Leninism. Unfortunately so did the Soviet revisionists, the Chinese, the Cubans, the Yugoslavs, and practically every other strand of modern revisionism. Thus some differentiation is necessary.

The tendency just means those who agree with Enver Hoxha's stands on revisionism and concur with the following: "The whole development of the political, economic and ideological life in socialist Albania has been carried out on the basis of the general laws of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Because the PLA adheres to these laws, Albania is the only country in which genuine socialism is being built today." (Luan Omari, The People's Revolution in Albania and the Question of State Power, 1986, p. 163.)


I have also read that he was credited with inventing the theory of gravity in Albanian textbooks.I've spoken to Albanians who note that's inaccurate. I myself know it comes from James S. O'Donnell's A Coming of Age: Albania under Enver Hoxha, wherein the author recalled an anti-communist who was referring to the fact that Hoxha quotes were inserted into physics textbooks, just as they were inserted into all textbooks. These textbooks also had quotes from Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin, as is to be expected when they approach things from a Marxist angle.


As did the People's Republic of China, though it did adopt "Mao Tse-tung thought" at one pointYes, the full title of the modern-day Chinese state ideology is "Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought-Deng Xiaoping Theory." Ergo it actually still claims to be "Marxist-Leninist" in some way, which furthers the point that saying "Enver Hoxha was a Marxist-Leninist" can be rather confusing in some situations.

[evermilion]

I actually wouldn't mind calling myself a soft-on-revisionism Hoxhaist. I did several research papers about Albania then and now, and it's difficult to look at Hoxha as a tyrant when you consider just how much better the Albanians were under him then they are fending for themselves in a chaotic "transition" economy.

[Ismail]

I actually wouldn't mind calling myself a soft-on-revisionism Hoxhaist. I did several research papers about Albania then and now, and it's difficult to look at Hoxha as a tyrant when you consider just how much better the Albanians were under him then they are fending for themselves in a chaotic "transition" economy.For reference:

"With the fall of Communism schoolhouses were often see as symbols of the regime and therefore destroyed. The virulent revival of blood feuds, which a hapless central authority can do little to remedy, requires thousands of school-age children to stay at home. The economic disaster that is Albania has little funding left for education. The population of Tirana grew from approximately 300,000 in 1991 to almost one million in 2003, but not one new high school was built during that twelve-year period. The mass exodus of the best and the brightest — in the first ten years following the collapse of Communism possibly 20% of the population fled what they considered a hopeless situation — has resulted in an unprecedented brain-drain. Albanian education is in crisis with no quick fix in sight. Women's rights, another of Hoxha's achievements, have been severely set back with the explosion of human trafficking which has seen thousands of Albanian girls and women transported abroad for prostitution and thousands more kept home from school by their parents for fear of such forcible abduction... with patriotic intellectuals openly suggesting that the only way out of the morass may be for Albania to become a ward of the United Nations or an Italian condominium."
(Bernd J. Fischer (ed). Balkan Strongmen. West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press. 2007. pp. 266-267.)

[evermilion]

For reference:

"With the fall of Communism schoolhouses were often see as symbols of the regime and therefore destroyed. The virulent revival of blood feuds, which a hapless central authority can do little to remedy, requires thousands of school-age children to stay at home. The economic disaster that is Albania has little funding left for education. The population of Tirana grew from approximately 300,000 in 1991 to almost one million in 2003, but not one new high school was built during that twelve-year period. The mass exodus of the best and the brightest — in the first ten years following the collapse of Communism possibly 20% of the population fled what they considered a hopeless situation — has resulted in an unprecedented brain-drain. Albanian education is in crisis with no quick fix in sight. Women's rights, another of Hoxha's achievements, have been severely set back with the explosion of human trafficking which has seen thousands of Albanian girls and women transported abroad for prostitution and thousands more kept home from school by their parents for fear of such forcible abduction... with patriotic intellectuals openly suggesting that the only way out of the morass may be for Albania to become a ward of the United Nations or an Italian condominium."
(Bernd J. Fischer (ed). Balkan Strongmen. West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press. 2007. pp. 266-267.)

For all my bullshitting about north Korea, Hoxha is my favorite Communist, bar none.

[Ismail]

Also, Hoxha speaking to Albanians who had left their country in the 20's or 30's and revisited: "How greatly this Albania of ours has changed! True, the time has been short and we do not boast about the progress we have made but the truth is that changes are great. You, in particular, understand these changes correctly, because you compare the situation with what it was before. Of course, you do not compare these things with the palaces which you see in the centre of Ankara, in the Champs-Elysees of Paris, or with the sky-scrapers of New York, which were not built in 25 years, but began to be built centuries ago with the sweat, blood and the sufferings of the working people for the benefit of the magnates, the wealthy, the millionaires. Looking at Albania from this correct angle, the differences within 25 years are like the difference of night from day." (quoted in O'Donnell, A Coming of Age: Albania under Enver Hoxha, p. 243.)

It is worth noting this because Albania was the poorest country in Europe upon independence in 1912, upon liberation in 1944, and upon Hoxha's death in 1985. And yet during that time the first University was created in 1957 (Albania was the only European state without one), the country became the first in Europe to be fully electrified (thus Greek peasants using lamps had on the other side of the border Albanian peasants with access to radios and lights), illiteracy was abolished, the life expectancy raised from 38 to 71, etc.