Titoism

[Tolstoy]

Ive been reading alot about Titoism and find it a pretty interesting current in Marxist history. I admire the man for having the balls to split from Stalin. The odd thing is, im a Trotskyite and I actually really like Titoism in certain regards, especially the economic model of SFR Yugoslavia and the formation of the NAM

[Questionable]

He had the balls to split with Stalin...and buddy up with the West. A true hero of the proletariat.

[Ismail]

He had the "balls" to ally with US imperialism and be welcomed back into Soviet arms after the Khrushchevite revisionists attacked Stalin and moved to restore capitalism in the USSR.

The "Non-Aligned Movement" had as its leading lights besides Tito bourgeois nationalists like Nasser and Nehru, who oppressed communist movements in their own countries and who were likewise on friendly terms with the Soviet revisionists. Among Tito's other allies were Ceaușescu and Kim Il Sung.

Yugoslavia accrued billions in debts to the West, was the only self-described "socialist" country to have rampant unemployment and sell out a significant portion of its labor force to the West (mainly West Germany) in exchange for funds. Its system of "workers' self-management" was based on the study of the works of Proudhon and was warmly praised by the likes of Hua Guofeng and Deng Xiaoping, who incorporated elements of it into their own economic "reforms."

Tito's "theories" also included the claim that technological progress rendered differences between capitalism and socialism increasingly remote, as initiatives like FDR's New Deal and bourgeois nationalizations objectively became "steps towards socialism" and that the march towards socialism progressed through increasingly "evolutionary" rather than revolutionary paths.

And in the end Yugoslavia descended into civil wars and genocides, in large part due to the inequality between the regions which was engendered by the capitalist structure of the economy.

Tito was a renegade from Communism, an ally of capitalism and revisionism of all hues.

For citations on the capitalist nature of the Yugoslav economy and its alliance with other revisionists see: http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=2456205&postcount=75

[Tolstoy]

There was a pretty strong current of worker control in the Yugoslav economy, most corporations were collectively owned by Yugoslav workers. Naturally, a man who wanted to be independent from Stalin would need to look to the US for help and ultimately he didnt allign with anybody, choosing to allow Yugoslavia to choose its own path. He also (temporarilly) united all of the different ethnicities of the reigon

[Ismail]

There was a pretty strong current of worker control in the Yugoslav economy, most corporations were collectively owned by Yugoslav workers.And those corporations were structured like capitalist entities. Yugoslav "self-management" was a demagogic maneuver, little different from the "workers' control" preached in Venezuela and in other countries whose governments practiced petty-bourgeois "socialism." Socialism calls for the social ownership of property by the working-class, not by individual "workers" (in the Yugoslav case managers and bureaucrats) who manage firms for the purpose of maximizing profit.

Hoxha wrote a work on the Yugoslav economy and its capitalist basis: http://www.enverhoxha.ru/Archive_of_books/English/enver_hoxha_yugoslav_selfadministration_a_capitali st_theory_and_practice.pdf


Naturally, a man who wanted to be independent from Stalin would need to look to the US for helpOnly because to be "independent from Stalin" meant to seek alliance with imperialism. Just as Mao sought ties with the US during the 40's, with various American government officials seeing Mao as a "reasonable" figure whose program of agrarian reform was relatively moderate and who was seen as an "independent" force against the USSR.

Khrushchev likewise claimed that Stalin's actions "forced" Tito to enter the camp of imperialism. Hoxha noted that this was untrue, that even if Tito's attacks on Stalin were correct it would not logically follow that Yugoslavia would praise and collaborate with US imperialism. In this regard Tito was not unlike his ally Ceaușescu, an opportunist whose "maverick" foreign policy masked a service to imperialism.

Milovan Đilas' memoirs make clear that the imperialists praised Titoism because of its revisionist, anti-Marxist content:

"The most interesting and striking person we dined with [during a visit to New York in 1949-50] was Canadian Minister of External Affairs Lester Pearson. In the UN circles he was considered one of the most intelligent of Western diplomats—and rightly so. Half in jest, he remarked, 'I don't suppose I'll ever be a Communist, but if I were, I'd be a Yugoslav Communist!' Regarding the Soviet Union, he said: 'The Russians have the atom bomb now, but we Westerners are stronger. We could occupy them, but it would demand enormous sacrifice and who'd know what to do with them? They're such awful nationalists, they'd never simmer down.'"
(Djilas, Milovan. Rise and Fall. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. 1985. p. 264.)

"A representative Labour delegation, headed by Morgan Phillips and Hugh Seton-Watson, had spent some time in Yugoslavia in 1950, holding candid talks with our leadership. These talks, which I conducted in large measure, had done much to bring us closer. Official relations with the Labour government also grew more open and cordial. Thus the British Labourites, along with other European socialists, provided a bridge toward collaboration with the West, while also freeing us from our ideological prejudice that only Communists truly represent the working class and socialism."
(Ibid. p. 273.)

"Filled with curiosity and joyous anticipation, we went to see Churchill at his London house, an establishment no larger or more luxurious than the average middle-class villa at Dedinje—the type that our top Yugoslav officials acquired after the war. We found him in his bedroom, in bed. He begged our pardon for receiving us thus and at once invited us to dinner. We had a prior engagement for dinner with the British government, and so had to decline, with genuine regret. Churchill then said, 'I have a feeling that you and we are on the same side of the barricade.' We confirmed his feeling, whereupon he inquired with delight, 'And how is my old friend Tito?'"
(Ibid. p. 275.)


and ultimately he didnt allign with anybody, choosing to allow Yugoslavia to choose its own path.Again, Yugoslavia was billions in debt to the West, including the IMF of which it was a member. When he died his funeral was attended by such militant revolutionaries as Margaret Thatcher and Zia-ul-Haq of Pakistan. His "own path" was a capitalist path, his "theories" as I noted were reformist and anti-Marxist.

And as I said, after 1956 Tito's relations with the USSR were patched up since revisionism became ascendant there. Thus Brezhnev in 1971 declared during a visit to Yugoslavia: "Another thing we always remember is that it was in the crucible of the Russian revolution that Comrade Tito started on the path of a revolutionary; today he is known to us all as the organiser and hero of the liberation, revolutionary struggle of the Yugoslav people, the leader of the Communists of Yugoslavia, the head of the Yugoslav socialist state."

Albania by contrast was scorned by the imperialists east and west, was called a "dogmatic," "sectarian" and "isolated" country. And it was precisely because it exposed the machinations of the superpowers, including their encouragement of supposedly "non-aligned" regimes. As Hoxha noted, "The slogan of 'non-aligned countries' gives the false impression that a group of states which have the possibility of 'opposing' the superpower blocs is being created. It gives the impression that these countries, all of them, are anti-imperialist, opposed to war, opposed to the dictate of others, that they are 'democratic', and even 'socialist'. This helps to strengthen the pseudo-democratic and anti-popular positions of the leading groups of some states which are participating among the 'non-aligned', and creates the impression among the peoples of these countries that when their chiefs establish or dissolve relations of any kind and nature, with the imperialists and the social-imperialists, openly or in secret, they do this not only in the capacity of 'popular governments', but also in the capacity of a group of states 'with which even the superpowers must reckon'." - Report Submitted to the 7th Congress of the Party of Labour of Albania, 1977, p. 175.


He also (temporarilly) united all of the different ethnicities of the reigonSo did the prewar Yugoslav monarchy. Tsarist Russia likewise had under it a dazzling array of nations. What's important is whether there was genuine equality or instead national oppression, and certainly the Kosovar Albanians were denied their right to self-determination, while economic inequalities between the republics grew rather than shrank (http://kasamaproject.org/international/1228-60how-capitalism-caused-the-balkan-wars) under the Yugoslav revisionists.

[Tolstoy]

Im prepared to admit that I have been pretty cynical of the factory factor and Tito is starting to look like a sell out

[EdvardK]

Im prepared to admit that I have been pretty cynical of the factory factor and Tito is starting to look like a sell out
Dear Tolstoy,

this ismail guy is also appearing on the Soviet Empire forum where he adamantly and rabidly defends hoxhaism and stalinism.
I'm from SFRY and I can attest to your claims about worker's participation in factories. I would rather live in a country like SFRY where workers had the right to choose their own CEOs than being forced to accept whatever the allmighty communist party gave them.
The concept of self-management is great.

Regards,
E.K.

[Ismail]

Dear Tolstoy,

this ismail guy is also appearing on the Soviet Empire forum where he adamantly and rabidly defends hoxhaism and stalinism.
I'm from SFRY and I can attest to your claims about worker's participation in factories. I would rather live in a country like SFRY where workers had the right to choose their own CEOs than being forced to accept whatever the allmighty communist party gave them.
The concept of self-management is great.

Regards,
E.K.If you'd rather live a in country where CEOs and international capital dictated to workers rather than the vanguard of the working-class guiding the construction of a socialist society, then Yugoslavia is indeed a great country by such a criteria.

As your posts on Soviet Empire show, to you "socialism" isn't about waging class struggle, revolutionizing society, and achieving communism, but is about social-democracy and higher living standards (without regard to how those standards are obtained and how illusory/temporary they are.) By your own admission what was in Yugoslavia had little in common with the works of Marx, Engels and Lenin, which you attack as "outdated."

I've never seen a single defender of Yugoslavia actually explain how its economy was "socialist" or how its foreign policy was based on proletarian internationalism. You just hear slogans like "workers' self-management" and "non-alignment." One might as well extol Libya (Gaddafi being another one of Tito's allies) for all its "socialist" slogans like "partners, not wage-earners" and calls for "direct democracy."

[EdvardK]

If you'd rather live a in country where CEOs and international capital dictated to workers rather than the vanguard of the working-class guiding the construction of a socialist society, then Yugoslavia is indeed a great country by such a criteria.
Have you lived in SFRY that you know so much about it? Workers were protected, they had the actual (not just paper-written) right to state their own opinion and elect their CEO.
We had social security, appartments were organised for the majority of families, and workers as well as people in rural areas lived quite well. The downfall did happen as well, it was from 1979 to 1991.
If you want to call SFRY a filthy rotten capitalist stooge, it is your prerogative.

Not everything is less worthy than your almighty Stalin and his stalinism. You just show how narrow-minded and short-sighted you are having him as your idol and omnipotent being.


As your posts on Soviet Empire show, to you "socialism" isn't about waging class struggle, revolutionizing society, and achieving communism, ...blah blah blah
Indeed. Socialism to wage class struggle in a country which already has socialism as socio-economic order? Of course not. In a socialist country socialism should benefit the people and make their lives better, easier. I'm sorry as we seem to differ in this notion, too.


By your own admission what was in Yugoslavia had little in common with the works of Marx, Engels and Lenin, which you attack as "outdated."
I admit that you cannot live sentence-by-sentence from an old book. To give you an example, how do you find christians who want live the way the bible tells them to live? Would you find them in sheds, disregarding the human development and its achievements, such as mobile telephony, internet, etc? I think not. They ADAPT to circumstances, amigo. Dinosaurs did not adapt, ergo...


I've never seen a single defender of Yugoslavia actually explain how its economy was "socialist" or how its foreign policy was based on proletarian internationalism.
Thank you for pointing this out. Let me ask you one thing and one thing alone - knowing you're from Albania, please tell me TWO (2) world-recognized accomplishments that the brave and glorious socialist Albania contributed to world peace, progress, or economy. "Having a seashore" or "holding the capitalists away from Albania" or "having a light-bulb factory in Vlora" are not really achievements I am looking for.

Thank you.

[Ismail]

Have you lived in SFRY that you know so much about it?No, but you can find many Russians in New York who say that Obama reminds them of Communists. Being from a country does not give one ultimate authority over how to analyze said country, especially since I'm pretty sure you didn't actually live during the Titoite period.


Workers were protected, they had the actual (not just paper-written) right to state their own opinion and elect their CEO.
We had social security, appartments were organised for the majority of families, and workers as well as people in rural areas lived quite well. The downfall did happen as well, it was from 1979 to 1991.
If you want to call SFRY a filthy rotten capitalist stooge, it is your prerogative.Again, you are absolutizing living standards. An average American lives incomparably better than the average African, Latin American, or Asian. Sweden had an extensive social security apparatus which was only scaled back in the past few decades. What's important is how these countries maintain such living standards. In the USA's case, it is through imperialism and the obtainment of superprofits. In the case of Yugoslavia it was the large investments the West gave it to serve as a buffer against the Soviets. These investments also brought with them loans, which resulted in the crippling debt the country had.

The Yugoslav state responded to this debt, imposed by the IMF and the Western countries, by implementing austerity measures in the 80's which targeted the working-class. The debt also intensified infighting within the republics, which thanks to the capitalist system in the country had various disparities (displayed among other things by Slovenia accusing the others of trying to drag its economy down to their level.)


Socialism to wage class struggle in a country which already has socialism as socio-economic order? Of course not. In a socialist country socialism should benefit the people and make their lives better, easier. I'm sorry as we seem to differ in this notion, too.Class struggle necessarily continues under socialism, both to further the revolutionization of society and to defeat the internal and external enemies, who attempt to restore capitalism. The Soviet revisionists, like their Yugoslav counterparts, disclaimed this fact in order to give theoretical justification to opposing class struggle within their countries.


I admit that you cannot live sentence-by-sentence from an old book. To give you an example, how do you find christians who want live the way the bible tells them to live? Would you find them in sheds, disregarding the human development and its achievements, such as mobile telephony, internet, etc? I think not. They ADAPT to circumstances, amigo. Dinosaurs did not adapt, ergo...Except Marxism is scientific, it is not dogma. Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin pointed this out various times. There is a clear difference between this and opportunism under the guise of "embracing new conditions" and whatnot. Revisionists have always used the excuse of "new conditions" to deprive Marxism of its scientific and revolutionary content. This includes both those posing as "orthodox" defenders of it, such as the Soviet revisionists, to nationalists like Tito, Kim Il Sung, Ceaușescu, etc.

And the fact is that there is nothing to gain from the Yugoslav "experience." Whereas Albania abolished taxation, set up new forms of cooperatives (known as higher-type cooperatives) as transitional forms towards state ownership, oversaw the complete abolition of artisan and petty commodity production, and other unique initiatives which communists could actually study and learn from, the only thing Yugoslav "self-management" inspired were bourgeois nationalists in Algeria, Libya and elsewhere with economic policies designed to foster class-collaborationism.


knowing you're from Albania,I'm not.


please tell me TWO (2) world-recognized accomplishments that the brave and glorious socialist Albania contributed to world peace, progress, or economy.On the subject of world peace the Albanians consistently advocated for it by calling for the total defeat of imperialism and colonialism, exposure of the aggressive policies of the two superpowers, exposure of the so-called "Non-Aligned Movement" and other organizations meant to deceive the peoples, and made clear that only the triumph of the revolution across the world could avert the prospects of a new imperialist world war and the annihilation of humanity.

By contrast the Soviet revisionists, backed by the Yugoslavs, demagogically pretended to advocate "peace" by declaring that imperialist wars were no longer inevitable in the nuclear age, by promoting the fiction of nuclear disarmament talks, by declaring that socialism could be achieved peacefully through parliamentary means, and that through peaceful economic competition between the "socialist world" around the social-imperialist USSR and the capitalist world headed by the USA the former would naturally outproduce and outshine the latter.

In this way the Soviet revisionists, with their Yugoslav assistants, promoted reformism and disarmed the peoples of various countries, thus leading to events such as the coup in Chile. At this same time the Soviets also tried to present as "internationalist" their aggression against Afghanistan and their neo-colonialist intrigues in Angola among other places.

In terms of progress the Albanians rallied the Marxist-Leninists of the world against revisionism of all hues, whether it be Soviet, Chinese, Yugoslav, Cuban, or of other origin. The Albanians gave correct lines on various international issues and through the experience of socialist construction, as the only state genuinely constructing socialism in the world at that point, contributed to the common fund of Marxism-Leninism.

In terms of economy Albania was transformed from a backward feudal country into an industrial-agrarian one, with an educated and healthy workforce as opposed to one with a life expectancy of 38 and over 80% illiteracy on the eve of the Italian invasion in 1939. The achievement of complete electrification in 1971 made Albania the first country in Europe to bring electricity to even the remotest areas of the country. In the view of every single bourgeois analysis of Albania covering the 40's-80's, the country made great strides in all fields of life and national economy.

[EdvardK]

No, but you can find many Russians in New York who say that Obama reminds them of Communists.
Obama is as communist as you are impartial.


Being from a country does not give one ultimate authority over how to analyze said country
But Russians can judge anyone a communist because they are Russians? Another inconsistency.


I'm pretty sure you didn't actually live during the Titoite period.
Do not judge others by yourself. Unlike you, i'm not a kiddie stalinist.


Slovenia accusing the others of trying to drag its economy down to their level.)
You mean to Albanian level, as the rest of the republics were much closer to Albania than Slovenia?


Class struggle necessarily continues under socialism,
Indeed - if you live in stalinism, there's always an inner enemy, and lo and behold, it is in the image of a worker! There were no "class enemies" within SFRY in mid-70s, my friend.


Except Marxism is scientific, it is not dogma. Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin pointed this out various times.
Oh, yes, if Marx and Engels said it about "marxism", then it must be true.
Also, whatever Stalin said is inevitable truth... So, yes, must be scientific...


This includes both those posing as "orthodox" defenders of it, such as the Soviet revisionists, to nationalists like Tito, Kim Il Sung, Ceaușescu, etc.
Are there any other people in your life beside Stalin and Hoxha? I really want to know.


And the fact is that there is nothing to gain from the Yugoslav "experience."
Whereas Albania abolished taxation,
Please, my hoxhaist friend, explain to me in MARXIST terms how did Albania get enough funds for their alleged social security, free education, etc.? By creating - Marx forbid - a surplus, ie PROFIT from their workers in factories? That's the essence of capitalism, my friend, making profit in factories. Otherwise, i do not know how Albania got the money to provide for all the socialist goods. Explain, please. If you cannot, I will understand you hide yourself behind glorious socialist-marxist babble and have no real idea of how state-management actually works.


On the subject of world peace the Albanians consistently advocated for it by calling for the total defeat of imperialism and colonialism,
Is taht a world-class accomplishment? And what happened of that? I can call for world peace and I'll be just as influental as Hoxha's Albania was. Try again.


In this way the Soviet revisionists, with their Yugoslav assistants, promoted reformism and disarmed the peoples of various countries, thus leading to events such as the coup in Chile.
You're not seriously accusing Yugoslavia for the overthrow of Allende?
I have no words to respond to that, sorry.

[TheEmancipator]

Ismail's one-sided view of Tito, being a lover of Albania and Stalin, is understandable, and exposes an almost tribalistic nationalism (or patriotism?). What I don't understand is how Ismail dumps all the responsibility of the chaos that succeeded Tito on the man himself, despite keeping an already volatile region at peace for a good 30 years, all this while Stalin is faultless for letting the revisionists take power and the USSR's ensuing problems.

The hypocrisy of Marxist-Leninists and their tendency (to hate one another) is staggering sometimes..

[Ismail]

Obama is as communist as you are impartial.Which is irrelevant to the subject of you trying to use the fact that you're a citizen of the former Yugoslavia as a way of silencing any other views.


But Russians can judge anyone a communist because they are Russians? Another inconsistency.No, and you know very well I said nothing of the sort. How could I even say that if I uphold the activities of Enver Hoxha, who precisely attacked the claim that because the CPSU was "the party of Lenin" it could not be criticized? The issue is one of Marxism-Leninism against revisionism.


You mean to Albanian level, as the rest of the republics were much closer to Albania than Slovenia?What is with these random chauvinist comments?


There were no "class enemies" within SFRY in mid-70s, my friend.One would think the fact that Yugoslavia broke up into competing republics, some carrying out wars of genocide against each other and all openly embracing some form of capitalism, would render this statement absurd.


Oh, yes, if Marx and Engels said it about "marxism", then it must be true.
Also, whatever Stalin said is inevitable truth... So, yes, must be scientific...Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin certainly wrote more works of lasting significance to the world than Tito, Kim Il Sung, Khrushchev, Ceaușescu, or anyone else who railed against "dogmatism" as an excuse to propose revisionism and bourgeois nationalism.


Please, my hoxhaist friend, explain to me in MARXIST terms how did Albania get enough funds for their alleged social security, free education, etc.? By creating - Marx forbid - a surplus, ie PROFIT from their workers in factories? That's the essence of capitalism, my friend, making profit in factories. Otherwise, i do not know how Albania got the money to provide for all the socialist goods. Explain, please. If you cannot, I will understand you hide yourself behind glorious socialist-marxist babble and have no real idea of how state-management actually works.Surplus labor is reinvested into socialist society. Surplus value is appropriated by the capitalist as part of the exploitation of the working-class under capitalism. Using your logic Yugoslavia was not only not socialist (not that I'd mind you arriving at such a conclusion), but social security, universal access to education and health care, etc. are somehow reactionary measures obtained through the exploitation of workers.

It's things like this that demonstrate your fundamental ignorance of Marxism and make you look like an utter fool.


Is taht a world-class accomplishment? And what happened of that? I can call for world peace and I'll be just as influental as Hoxha's Albania was. Try again.It was certainly an accomplishment to be just about the only country on earth after the 50's pointing out the actual obstacles to world peace, which lay in the continued existence of the capitalist system and not merely a lack of subjective wishes of "reasonable" bourgeois statesmen at the highest positions of power in the capitalist states.


You're not seriously accusing Yugoslavia for the overthrow of Allende?
I have no words to respond to that, sorry.Certainly it was the Soviet revisionists who bore the responsibility for the fascist coup in Chile, encouraging the Allende government to attain "socialism" through reformist means. But the Yugoslavs certainly didn't provide a Marxist-Leninist rebuff to this, instead encouraging such trends.

"We Jugoslavs have discarded classic deviations between revolutionary and evolutionary socialism. History has erased such a distinction. Life now pushes toward the evolutionary progress... I think that even in the United States there is a tendency toward socialism. A big change began with your New Deal and your economy retains many of its features. For example, state intervention in the economy is much larger."
(Tito, quoted in Cyrus Leo Sulzberger. The Last of the Giants. New York: Macmillan. 1970. p. 270.)

You are free to provide Yugoslav analyses of Allende's downfall. This (http://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/archive/hoxhachile.htm), at any rate, was Hoxha's:

All the revisionists, from those of Moscow to those of Italy, France and elsewhere, presented the “Chilean experience” as a concrete example which proved their “new theories” about the “peaceful road of the revolution”, the transition to socialism under the leadership of many parties, the moderation of the nature of imperialism, the dying out of the class struggle in the conditions of peaceful coexistence, etc. The revisionist press made great play with the “Chilean road” in order to advertise the opportunist theses of the 20th Congress of the CPSU and the reformist and utopian programs of the Togliattist type.

From the “Chilean experience” the revisionists expected not only confirmation of their “theories” about “the parliamentary road”, but also a “classical” example of the building of socialism under the leadership of a coalition of Marxist and bourgeois parties. They expected confirmation of their thesis that the transition to socialism is possible through parliamentary elections and without revolution, that socialism can be built, not only without smashing the old state apparatus of the bourgeoisie, but even with its aid, not only without establishing the revolutionary people’s power, but by negating it....

The Communist Party of Chile, which was one of the main forces of the Allende government, fervently adhered to the Khrushchevite theses of “peaceful transition”, both in theory and practice. Following instructions from Moscow, it claimed that the national bourgeoisie and imperialism had now been tamed, had become tolerant and reasonable, and that in the new class conditions, allegedly created by the present-day world development, they were no longer able to go over to counter-revolution.

However, as the case of Chile proved once again these and similar theories make the working masses irresolute and disorientated, weaken their revolutionary spirit, and keep them immobilized in the face of the threats of the bourgeoisie, paralyse their capacity and make it impossible for them to carry out decisive revolutionary actions against the counter-revolutionary plans and actions of the bourgeoisie...

The revisionists try to prove that the dividing line between the revolution and reforms has been wiped out, that in today’s conditions of world development there is no longer any need for a revolutionary overthrow, because, they allege, the present technical-scientific revolution is doing away with the social class contradictions of bourgeois society, is allegedly a means for the integration of capitalism into socialism, a means to create a “new society” of prosperity for all. Thus; according to this confusing logic, one can no longer speak about exploiters and exploited, hence according to them, social revolution, the smashing of the bourgeois state machine and the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat become unnecessary....

History has proved, and the events in Chile, where it was not yet a question of socialism but of a democratic regime, again made clear, that the establishment of socialism through the parliamentary road is utterly impossible. In the first place, it must be said that up till now it has never happened that the bourgeoisie has allowed the communists to win a majority in parliament and form their own government. Even in the occasional instance where the communists and their allies have managed to ensure a balance in their favour in parliament and enter the government; this has not led to any change in the bourgeois character of the parliament or the government, and their action has never gone so far as to smash the old state machine and establish a new one.

In the conditions when the bourgeoisie controls the bureaucratic-administrative apparatus, securing a “parliamentary majority” that would change the destiny of the country is not only impossible but also unreliable. The main parts of the bourgeois state machine are the political and economic power and the armed forces. As long as these forces remain intact, i.e., as long as they have not been dissolved and new forces created in their stead, as long as the old apparatus of the police, the secret intelligence services, etc.; is retained, there is no guarantee that a parliament or a democratic government will be able to last long; Not only the case of Chile, but many others have proved that the counter-revolutionary coups d’état have been carried out precisely by the armed forces commanded by the bourgeoisie....

As long as imperialism exists, there still exists the basis and possibility for, and its unchangeable policy of, interference in the internal affairs of other countries, counter-revolutionary plots, the overthrow of lawful governments, the liquidation of democratic and progressive forces, and the strangling of the revolution....

The Allende government was also sabotaged and savagely opposed by the Christian-democratic and other factions of the bourgeoisie, so-called radical democratic forces similar to those together with which the communist parties of Italy and France claim that they will advance to socialism through reforms and the peaceful parliamentary road. The Frey party in Chile does not bear only “intellectual responsibility”, as some claim, because it refused to collaborate with the Allende government, or because it was lacking in loyalty to the legal government. It bears responsibility also because it used all possible means to sabotage the normal activity of the government, because it united with the forces of the Right to undermine the nationalized economy and to create confusion in the country, because it perpetrated a thousand and one acts of subversion.I think you can agree that this analysis is far more trenchant than anything a Yugoslav theorist ever wrote.


Ismail's one-sided view of Tito, being a lover of Albania and Stalin, is understandable, and exposes an almost tribalistic nationalism (or patriotism?). What I don't understand is how Ismail dumps all the responsibility of the chaos that succeeded Tito on the man himself, despite keeping an already volatile region at peace for a good 30 years, all this while Stalin is faultless for letting the revisionists take power and the USSR's ensuing problems.It was Tito who allowed Yugoslavia to join the IMF and accrue billions of dollars in credits to the West, who allowed for great disparities between the republics, and who allowed Serbian chauvinism to reign supreme against the demands of the Kosovar Albanians for a republic. He laid the foundations for the collapse of Yugoslavia by ensuring that it would always follow the capitalist road using "socialist" phraseology. As Hoxha noted, Yugoslavia was already in crisis at the time of Tito's death.

By contrast, Stalin was unaware that Khrushchev was going to become an open renegade after his death, since no man possesses psychic powers. He did not let the revisionists take power so long as he lived; he had their foremost economist (Voznesensky) shot and one of their main ideologues (Varga) rebuffed and forced to submit to self-criticism, while he wrote Economic Problems of Socialism in the U.S.S.R. which attacked various revisionist theories such as those calling for the abolition of the machine-tractor stations in agriculture (which Khrushchev carried out in 1958.)

Bit of a difference there.

And again, I'm not Albanian. I can hardly be a nationalist, much less express patriotic sentiments, towards a nation and country I have no personal bonds with.

[Questionable]

@Titoites: in every thread where Ismail debates this with you lot, you all seem to avoid the fact that Tito made deals with the IMF which resulted in him having to implement austerity measures later on to pay them back. So far, neither EdvardK nor TheEmancipator have addressed this, instead choosing to focus on how dumb Ismail and Albania are in their eyes.

Can either of you, or someone else with Titoite sympathies, explain what makes IMF loans and austerity so revolutionary?

[TheEmancipator]

@Titoites: in every thread where Ismail debates this with you lot, you all seem to avoid the fact that Tito made deals with the IMF which resulted in him having to implement austerity measures later on to pay them back. So far, neither EdvardK nor TheEmancipator have addressed this, instead choosing to focus on how dumb Ismail and Albania are in their eyes.

Can either of you, or someone else with Titoite sympathies, explain what makes IMF loans and austerity so revolutionary?

I am no Titoite. I find the de facto condemnation of him by M-L who worship the likes of Stalin ludicrously hypocritical and dogmatic. I also think he was a good statesman and most of all a war hero who defeated the Nazis (without the Red Army's help). So to see him insulted by some Stalin fanboys who continuously play the revisionist/bourgeois propaganda cards to deny that Stalin ever did anything wrong, is really frustrating.

To play the Devils Advocate for Tito, it is worth noting that most Eastern European countries were offered help after one of the most destructive wars ever. They were not aware that the US would subscribe and ensure to literal capitalist ideology and infringe on their sovereignty. Their sovereignty being already infringed by the USSR and Stalin's social imperialism and Russian centralism, they were forced to refuse loans. Since Yugoslavia refused to receive orders from Moscow, it was allowed to make the mistake of accepting "aid" without realising the consequences. I don't think this means Tito is some kind of Western puppet following Western foreign policy in exchange for money. Far from it. Tito was defending his people's interests, nothing more, and very unlike the Eastern satellites of the USSR, ready to bend over backwards to suit Russian nationalist interests.

And honestly, you pick up on the fact that us apparent "Titoites" have never justified the IMF loans, yet Stalinists are never confronted for their own blatant revisionism, the purges, etc...I will not fall into the same trap as them, unable to admit basic facts for the sake of a dogma that barely resembles the revolutionary leftism and Marxism this forum is supposed to promote.

[Ismail]

I am no Titoite. I find the de facto condemnation of him by M-L who worship the likes of Stalin ludicrously hypocritical and dogmatic. I also think he was a good statesman and most of all a war hero who defeated the Nazis (without the Red Army's help).Without the Red Army's help? Really? I guess those troops assisting in the liberation of Belgrade were Panamanian.

What's funny is that Albania actually did liberate itself without the slightest Soviet assistance. And unlike Tito, Hoxha didn't use that opportunity to act like a bourgeois nationalist.


To play the Devils Advocate for Tito, it is worth noting that most Eastern European countries were offered help after one of the most destructive wars ever. They were not aware that the US would subscribe and ensure to literal capitalist ideology and infringe on their sovereignty. Their sovereignty being already infringed by the USSR and Stalin's social imperialism and Russian centralism, they were forced to refuse loans. Since Yugoslavia refused to receive orders from Moscow, it was allowed to make the mistake of accepting "aid" without realising the consequences. I don't think this means Tito is some kind of Western puppet following Western foreign policy in exchange for money. Far from it. Tito was defending his people's interests, nothing more, and very unlike the Eastern satellites of the USSR, ready to bend over backwards to suit Russian nationalist interests.Again, this is little different from Khrushchev's claim that Stalin "forced" Tito into the lap of imperialism which, as Hoxha noted, was really an attempt to justify Tito's alliance with the imperialists against socialism, both ideologically (Tito and Co. claimed the Korean War was started by the Soviets, that socialism could be obtained through parliament, etc.) and militarily (the Balkan Pact of 1953 with NATO members Greece and Turkey.)

For Tito to be defending his peoples' interests he would have constructed socialism in Yugoslavia, not capitalism. The fact that he indebted his country, as was the case of his ally Ceaușescu in Romania, stemmed from his aspirations to construct a capitalist Yugoslavia, not the other way around.

If you want to talk about a leader who genuinely defended his people's interests, Hoxha is your man. The Constitution of 1976 makes this apparent, for in Article 28 we read: "The granting of concessions to, and the creation of, foreign economic and financial companies and other institutions or ones formed jointly with bourgeois and revisionist capitalist monopolies and states, as well as obtaining credits from them, are prohibited in the People's Socialist Republic of Albania." This single step had a greater anti-imperialist character than the entire activity of the "Non-Aligned Movement."

[TheEmancipator]

Without the Red Army's help? Really? I guess those troops assisting in the liberation of Belgrade were Panamanian.

War was already won by then. I think you are nitpicking though. The point is that the only reason Yugoslavia remained independent from Russian rule ( along with Albania) was because the Red Army did not liberate then cynically occupy the country.


What's funny is that Albania actually did liberate itself without the slightest Soviet assistance. And unlike Tito, Hoxha didn't use that opportunity to act like a bourgeois nationalist.

Hoxha is a bourgeois nationalist as much as Tito is. Both staked claims for parts of each other's lands. One can only look at Albania's encouragement of Kosovar rebellion with disgust. You'd have thought ''internationalist'' Hoxha would not have been reduced to exploiting ethnic tensions to suit his geopolitical interests.



Again, this is little different from Khrushchev's claim that Stalin "forced" Tito into the lap of imperialism which, as Hoxha noted, was really an attempt to justify Tito's alliance with the imperialists against socialism, both ideologically

Well it's pretty blatant isn't it? Stalin wanted Tito to submit himself to his rule, in an almost feudal-like manner. Tito refused. Please stop denying that the USSR had total hegemony over the countries they ''liberated'' during WW2. Most serious Marxist scholars agree about forced elections and the concept of social imperialism. Hoxha agreed, but only once Stalin died.


(Tito and Co. claimed the Korean War was started by the Soviets,

Unless you take the UN and international law seriously, the war was started by both Soviet social imperialism and American imperialism.


that socialism could be obtained through parliament, etc.)

Why is this a problem?


and militarily (the Balkan Pact of 1953 with NATO members Greece and Turkey.)

Because fuck peace after WW2, right?


For Stalin to be defending his peoples' interests he would have constructed socialism in Russia, not capitalism.




The fact that he indebted his country, as was the case of his ally Ceaușescu in Romania, stemmed from his aspirations to construct a capitalist Yugoslavia, not the other way around.

He was busy constructed ''The yugoslav ideology'' itself, and what could be called yugoslav nationalism, which was a necessary path towards socialism (eradication of ethnic divides). His capitalist tendencies are no more evident than those found in Lenin's NEP or Stalin's centralised, bureaucratic control of capital.

He ultimately failed of course. But then so did most M-Ls in the 20th century with their ludicrously utopic plans and geopolitical egotism.


If you want to talk about a leader who genuinely defended his people's interests, Hoxha is your man. The Constitution of 1976 makes this apparent, for in Article 28 we read: "The granting of concessions to, and the creation of, foreign economic and financial companies and other institutions or ones formed jointly with bourgeois and revisionist capitalist monopolies and states, as well as obtaining credits from them, are prohibited in the People's Socialist Republic of Albania." This single step had a greater anti-imperialist character than the entire activity of the "Non-Aligned Movement."

The same Hoxha that received Maoist backing, Maoism being another ideology that promotes social imperialism, but only as a guise for chinese/russian nationalism.

[Ismail]

Hoxha is a bourgeois nationalist as much as Tito is. Both staked claims for parts of each other's lands. One can only look at Albania's encouragement of Kosovar rebellion with disgust. You'd have thought ''internationalist'' Hoxha would not have been reduced to exploiting ethnic tensions to suit his geopolitical interests.Hoxha noted that Albania did not seek Yugoslav territory, but only voiced its view that the demand of the Kosovar Albanians for a republic within Yugoslavia was a just one, and that the ethnic equality promised in Yugoslavia could hardly be implemented in practice without such a basic demand being realized. The fact you speak of looking upon such a thing "with disgust" suggests the Kosovar Albanians should not have had this basic demand realized.

Indeed, the Yugoslav revisionists not only went against the historical policies of the Comintern but, in fact, the very policy of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia itself, which called for self-determination for Kosovar Albanians up until halfway into the war when Tito sought to appease Serbian nationalism, which bounced back in the 80's with chauvinist claims against the Kosovar Albanians, and which culminated in genocidal war in the 90's. And it is a widely accepted fact that in the 40's and 50's Kosovar Albanians were actively oppressed within Yugoslavia, while Kosovo remained by far the poorest area of the federation throughout the ensuing decades. It is not hard to see why this was the case when the Yugoslav authorities reacted with tanks to the demands of Kosovar Albanian workers and students in 1981.


Please stop denying that the USSR had total hegemony over the countries they ''liberated'' during WW2. Most serious Marxist scholars agree about forced elections and the concept of social imperialism. Hoxha agreed, but only once Stalin died.You speak of "hegemony," but what sort of "hegemony" was it? After all, Mongolia was under Soviet "hegemony" from Lenin onwards using this same logic, but this does not constitute social-imperialism.

Hoxha noted in his memoirs that Stalin's policies were in defense of socialism in Eastern Europe. He pointed out in his memoirs that in Romania, for example, the local communist party was so weak and so afraid to touch the bourgeoisie that without Soviet assistance it was quite unlikely to have obtained a leading role in the country's life.


Unless you take the UN and international law seriously, the war was started by both Soviet social imperialism and American imperialism.What does this mean? It was Kim Il Sung who continuously asked Stalin for the forces of the Korean People's Army to march southwards in response to border provocations by the Southern regime, which was about as popular as Chiang Kai-shek's and had a similar treatment of leftists. Stalin said no multiple times until he finally relented and gave Kim the go-ahead (see Geoffrey Robert's Stalin's Wars.)

Such border provocations by the South made it clear that the North could hardly be accused of "starting" the war outside of obviously seeking to end the fundamental conflict once and for all. Two good reads on this subject are Bruce Cumings' Korea's Place in the Sun and Hugh Deane's The Korean War: 1945-1953.


Why is this a problem?Because it disarms the proletariat by teaching them to believe that socialism can be achieved without the smashing of the bourgeois state and the suppression of the bourgeoisie as a class. Again, see Hoxha's analysis of Chile above as a great example of what this reformist road leads towards.


Because fuck peace after WW2, right?No, fully support peace by exposing imperialism and colonialism, not joining forces with it or otherwise prettifying it as the revisionists did. I also fail to see what the Balkan Pact had to do with WWII.


The same Hoxha that received Maoist backing, Maoism being another ideology that promotes social imperialism, but only as a guise for chinese/russian nationalism.Hoxha pointed out that the Chinese were seeking to become a social-imperialist power as well, and that economic and political pressure was also exerted on them by the Chinese in the 60's and especially the 70's, but that such pressure was rebuffed. On matters like the Sino-Soviet border disputes and on Mao's meeting with Nixon, Hoxha sent letters to the Central Committee of the CPC criticizing the Chinese for their nationalist positions on these issues.

[Thirsty Crow]

And those corporations were structured like capitalist entities.
Not like.
They were capitalist entities.

As far as OP is concerned, Titoism can be considered a form of self-management (though that is very far from historical reality of the former Yugoslavia; at least in the aspect of workers' control) within capitalist relations of production, with the addition of nominal communism as an ideology.

[EdvardK]

I can't seriously discuss this any more. I'm so fed up with quote after quote of Hoxha and how he was (alongside Stalin) the creme de la creme of socialism, not to mention faulty interpretations and revisions of actual history (how the Red Army liberated Yugoslavia and Yugoslavia being the silent partner in Allende's overthrow while at the same time negating any real influence SFRY ever had diplomatically). I simply don't have any reply to all that any more.
Any comments, please?

[Ismail]

and Yugoslavia being the silent partner in Allende's overthrow while at the same time negating any real influence SFRY ever had diplomatically).I already pointed out that it was the Soviet revisionists who bore the main responsibility for Allende's overthrow, considering that it was obviously they who had the most influence over him. But my point is that the Yugoslavs were, alongside the Italians, the foremost advocates of the reformist road towards "socialism" and even criticized the Soviet revisionists for not going far enough in this regard.

In fact when Allende was overthrown, the opinion of the Eurocommunists and a section of the theoreticians of Soviet revisionism was that this occurred not because the proletariat was disarmed and told to place their trust in the bourgeois state and army, but because of Allende's supposedly "sectarian" politics!

Against such absurdities the Albanians gave a clearly correct line that only through proletarian revolution, the smashing of the bourgeois state, and the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat can the road towards socialism be opened.

As for me supposedly negating "any real influence SFRY ever had diplomatically," it certainly did have influence. Unfortunately such influence resulted in comments like these:

“Like our Democratic Cambodia, Yugoslavia is a non-aligned country which has adhered to the position of preserving independence. Friendship between our two countries is therefore based on the same principle. We have always esteemed and respected Comrade President Tito and the friendly Yugoslav people. Comrade President Tito and the Yugoslav people have always supported and helped us. We have sympathy for them and wish to express our thanks to Comrade President Tito and the friendly Yugoslav people.”
(Pol Pot, quoted in Journal of Contemporary Asia Vol. 8 No. 3, 1978. p. 413.)

And when Pol Pot was overthrown Yugoslavia joined forces with China, the DPRK, the USA and UK to denounce the Vietnamese and demand the return of the "legitimate" government controlled by him. The Albanians meanwhile welcomed the downfall of Pol Pot and denounced his foreign backers for enabling him to destabilize the People's Republic of Kampuchea.

Such is just one of many cases where Yugoslav revisionist influence was detrimental to any progressive (let alone socialist) cause, in contrast to the Albanian line.

[Questionable]

So to see him insulted by some Stalin fanboys who continuously play the revisionist/bourgeois propaganda cards to deny that Stalin ever did anything wrong, is really frustrating.

The reason this frustrates you is because you don't really understand the content of the word "revisionist" when Marxist-Leninists use it, and you seem to equate it to a common insult with no theoretical meaning. If you continue to not understand the nature of revisionism, it will always frustrate you when dealing with it.


To play the Devils Advocate for Tito, it is worth noting that most Eastern European countries were offered help after one of the most destructive wars ever. They were not aware that the US would subscribe and ensure to literal capitalist ideology and infringe on their sovereignty.

Are you suggesting that they couldn't have known that entering into trade agreements with imperialists was going to be harmful to them?

The IMF loans were not a mistake on Tito's part, or any other revisionist country that accepted them. It was a natural outcome of their counter-revolutionary, pro-imperialist ideologies.


Their sovereignty being already infringed by the USSR and Stalin's social imperialism and Russian centralism, they were forced to refuse loans. Since Yugoslavia refused to receive orders from Moscow, it was allowed to make the mistake of accepting "aid" without realising the consequences.

The ironic thing is that if Stalin had encouraged them to accept these loans, we'd be hearing from Anti-Stalinists about how he sold out the Eastern Bloc to imperialists.

The real issue here isn't what happened as much as who was doing it. Because he's Stalin and represents all that is evil to people like TheEmancipator, he will always be wrong, no matter what course of action he takes. It is an inherently illogical and circular viewpoint.


I don't think this means Tito is some kind of Western puppet following Western foreign policy in exchange for money. Far from it. Tito was defending his people's interests, nothing more, and very unlike the Eastern satellites of the USSR, ready to bend over backwards to suit Russian nationalist interests.

Funny how the interests of Tito's people coincided with the interests of Western imperialism.

Or maybe it's because Tito and his party did not really represent the interests of any proletarians anywhere, let alone their own country.


And honestly, you pick up on the fact that us apparent "Titoites" have never justified the IMF loans, yet Stalinists are never confronted for their own blatant revisionism, the purges, etc...I will not fall into the same trap as them, unable to admit basic facts for the sake of a dogma that barely resembles the revolutionary leftism and Marxism this forum is supposed to promote.

First of all, you've still failed to explain what makes IMF loans and austerity measures so revolutionary, instead choosing to dodge the issue completely.

Secondly, there are plenty of Marxist-Leninist works (and non-Marxist works which we respect) that analyze the nature of revisionism, the purges, and "etc." Hell, Ismail has some right in his own signature. I'm willing to bet you're one of those people that never bother to read these works because you dismiss them as "dogmatic and crazy," and then complain about how Marxist-Leninists can't explain their own history.

Thirdly, I find it ironic that you claim we don't resemble Marxism, yet your own interpretation of Marxism seems to find room for calling austerity measures revolutionary, justifying social-chauvinism, and admitting the possibility of a parliamentary road to socialism.

Every time someone complains about "dogmatism," you can bet whatever they're about to say is going to be shit. It never fails.

[EdvardK]

@ismail and the rest of stalin-worshippers, let me get this straight: the reason that socialism as we knew it in the 20th century, came to an abrupt end was never ever and in no way associated with either stalin or hoxha, but to everyone else who we can collectively call revisionists? am i correct?

[Ismail]

@ismail and the rest of stalin-worshippers, let me get this straight: the reason that socialism as we knew it in the 20th century, came to an abrupt end was never ever and in no way associated with either stalin or hoxha, but to everyone else who we can collectively call revisionists? am i correct?I like how you can't actually debate what we say about Tito and his friends, so you're reduced to comments like this.

The restoration of capitalism in the USSR under Khrushchev and his successors was evidently a fatal blow to the cause of socialism in the 20th century, seconded by the anti-Marxist path of Maoism and the various bourgeois nationalist and lesser revisionist trends such as "Islamic" or "Arab Socialism," "African Socialism," Castroism, Titoism, Eurocommunism, etc. which were all engendered by Soviet revisionism.

If you're going to claim that we blame a great many people for the failure of socialism in the 20th century, then where does that leave you, a man who is apparently blaming a single person?

[TheEmancipator]

The reason this frustrates you is because you don't really understand the content of the word "revisionist" when Marxist-Leninists use it, and you seem to equate it to a common insult with no theoretical meaning. If you continue to not understand the nature of revisionism, it will always frustrate you when dealing with it.

So the word revisionist is reserved for the use of Stalinists only? OK.



The IMF loans were not a mistake on Tito's part, or any other revisionist country that accepted them. It was a natural outcome of their counter-revolutionary, pro-imperialist ideologies.Could you source where in Tito's doctrine he promotes imperialism?


The ironic thing is that if Stalin had encouraged them to accept these loans, we'd be hearing from Anti-Stalinists about how he sold out the Eastern Bloc to imperialists.

The real issue here isn't what happened as much as who was doing it. Because he's Stalin and represents all that is evil to people like TheEmancipator, he will always be wrong, no matter what course of action he takes. It is an inherently illogical and circular viewpoint.No. Just no. You don't know that for a fact. This has nothing to do with anti-stalinism as an ideology. Its about exposing the dogmatically-orientated historical revisionism (please don't send me to the gulag for using your word) promoted by people who quite literally worship Hoxha and Stalin by the book. And are taken seriously because they are 'hardline' on issues that should be condemned to the past.

Only Stalin knows what Stalin's interests were, and he is by no means fully responsible for the fuck up that was Bolshevist USSR and Marxism-Leninism as a dogmatic religious ideology that is now nigh-extinct thanks to the legacy of all the Marxist-Leninists. That being said, I fail to see how Stalin is devoid of any responsibility yet Tito is a bourgeois agent.



Funny how the interests of Tito's people coincided with the interests of Western imperialism.How so? Do you realise the effect of Tito's non-alignment programme for example? Because many developing nations of, say, second world nature (to use Maoist terms) were siding with America's dogma until Tito proposedd a way to avoid bourgeois nationalist dickwaving.




First of all, you've still failed to explain what makes IMF loans and austerity measures so revolutionary, instead choosing to dodge the issue completely.
To play the Devils Advocate for Tito

Learn to read properly before jumping on people's backs. I never excused Tito's loans. Ismail's excuse for Hoxha receiving aid from Mao is that Hoxha later condemned Mao, therefore it is right to receive money from bourgeois nationalists promoting ''social imperialism".



Secondly, there are plenty of Marxist-Leninist works (and non-Marxist works which we respect) that analyze the nature of revisionism, the purges, and "etc." Hell, Ismail has some right in his own signature. I'm willing to bet you're one of those people that never bother to read these works because you dismiss them as "dogmatic and crazy," and then complain about how Marxist-Leninists can't explain their own history.Because the people who wrote them are somewhat batshit mental? Because a massive amount of Marxist scholars have all recognised the purges? Because its on Party record that these things happened?

Ismail's main source is Enver fucking Hoxha. Did they not teach you any kind of critical thought at school? Did you not need to go through the three steps to check if an article is relevent then to cite reasons why or why not it could be dismissed as biased when studying history. I learned this in 3rd year secondary. I think I was 14. I think Marx must've been taught this too around the same age...

I want third party sources detailing the nature of the purges and of Stalin's regime. I reject Western claims that the Holmodor is a genocide but a refuse to believe in this grand conspiracy against Stalin when many of his own have admitted just how disturbed an individual and statesman he was.


Thirdly, I find it ironic that you claim we don't resemble Marxism, yet your own interpretation of Marxism seems to find room for calling austerity measures revolutionary, justifying social-chauvinism, and admitting the possibility of a parliamentary road to socialism.Vintage strawman, try again.


Every time someone complains about "dogmatism," you can bet whatever they're about to say is going to be shit. It never fails.What the fuck are you on about? Seriously!? Have you never used the word dogmatism before? So anybody who complains about dogmatism is a bullshitter? Do you regard Marxism as dogmatic!? It seems perfectly rational and a corollary of critical analysis to me.

[Red_Banner]

How is Tito "revisionist"?


What did he "revise"?

[Ismail]

Learn to read properly before jumping on people's backs. I never excused Tito's loans. Ismail's excuse for Hoxha receiving aid from Mao is that Hoxha later condemned Mao, therefore it is right to receive money from bourgeois nationalists promoting ''social imperialism".This just further shows your ignorance.

Yugoslavia joined a bourgeois financial institution, one infamous across the world for promoting the continuation of neo-colonialism in underdeveloped countries, and accrued billions of dollars in debts which were duly responded to by the Yugoslav state accepting the IMF's very own "restructuring" (i.e. austerity) policies.

Albania entered into equitable economic agreements with China on its own accord, which resulted in Albania obtaining interest-free loans, technicians who were allowed no more privileges (including no more income) than their Albanian counterparts, etc. Of course when the Albanians refused to toe the Chinese line, refused to accept their "Three Worlds Theory" and their pro-US foreign policy, the Chinese exerted pressure and the Albanians reacted accordingly.

The Albanians originally thought that the Chinese were actually constructing socialism and that their attacks on Soviet revisionism were done on the basis of proletarian internationalism. Their knowledge of the country was limited and even during the 60's and 70's the Albanians were withheld information on all sorts of matters, such as the Lin Biao affair. Hoxha recalled after the break with China that the Party of Labour was still correct to have defended the CPC against the attacks of the Soviet revisionists in 1960, and that various Chinese polemics such as Long Live Leninism! (http://marx2mao.com/Other/LLL60.html) were and remained basically correct in their explanation of the Marxist-Leninist and revisionist positions on various theoretical and world issues.

The Albanians never extolled Maoism as a "higher stage" of Marxism-Leninism, and Hoxha explicitly criticized the "Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution" amongst Politburo members as early as the year it was inaugurated. I also already noted that the Albanians sent letters beginning in the early 60's disputing lines which at the time were thought merely erroneous, but which later were judged to have been based on the fact that China never did have a proletarian revolution, and that its foreign policy was dictated not by proletarian internationalism, but by chauvinism and aspirations towards becoming a social-imperialist power.

And in the end, as the Chinese revisionists themselves later pointed out, Mao sympathized with Tito's position in 1948, which confirmed all the suspicions Hoxha had towards him.

Also I don't know if you were aware of it or not, but Albania's greatest trading partner after China (and main trading partner after the break with China) was... Yugoslavia. And yet Hoxha continuously reaffirmed that economic agreements were one thing, the struggle for the defense of Marxism-Leninism was another, and that the Albanians would never cease their polemics against the Titoite leadership.


How is Tito "revisionist"?

What did he "revise"?The Yugoslav revisionists declared after 1956 that what existed in the USSR was "bureaucratic socialism" (before that they were calling it something quite worse), to this they counterpoised so-called "workers' self-management," which was supposedly in line with Marxism but which, in fact, they admitted they delved into the writings of Proudhon and other petty-bourgeois theorists in originating it. They also claimed that life was moving towards the achievement of socialism through "evolutionary" (reformist) rather than revolutionary methods through advances in technology which were supposedly blurring the differences between the two social systems, they concurred with the Soviet revisionists that class struggle no longer exists under socialism, etc.

To give another example of Yugoslav revisionism, from (http://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/archive/tunds.htm) the Cominform's journal in 1948:

By taking an anti-Marxist path [the] Tito-Kardelj-Djilas-Rankovic clique consider the peasantry as the leading force in the country. They have merged the Communist Party in the People’s Front and have completely distorted the role of the trade unions.

The trade unions in the Yugoslavia are artificially separated from the Party; they are regarded as the “conveyor belt” that connects the industrial and office workers with the heterogeneous People’s Front, not with the Party. According to the present bosses of the Yugoslav Party, the trade unions are not the main support of the Party. These traitors to the proletariat have gone so far as to deny the need of trade unions as an independent organisation of the working class. Djilas, for instance, declared in January 1947 that it was senseless and mistaken to hold separate meetings of trade unions and the People’s Front organisations, and that such meetings should be held together, at the same time.

The Yugoslav Communist leaders consider the organs of state power – the People’s Committee – to be the main support of the Party and give them the place of trade unions and working class. This clique of traitors offers as an explanation of the “specific” features of the liberation struggle in Yugoslavia and claims that the trade unions, that is, the working class, played no role in this struggle. This “theory” was propagated for instance, by Moses Pijade in his article on the mechanism of the state power in Yugoslavia (“Borba”, June 12, 1948).

The Tito clique deprives the People’s Committees of the guiding influence of the working class and promotes the peasantry to the role of leading force in the country. Relegating the trade unions, and therefore, the whole working class, to the background in the political life of the country, negating the leading role of the working class, is part of the anti-Marxist line of the Yugoslav party leaders, which is leading to degeneration of Yugoslavia into a bourgeois republic.

[Red_Banner]

Didn't Yugoslavia take money from the IMF because they were in a financial crisis?

[Ismail]

Didn't Yugoslavia take money from the IMF because they were in a financial crisis?Yugoslavia must have been continuously in an economic crisis for decades, then. It is also quite strange for a self-described "communist" to think that IMF loans are a great way for an ostensibly socialist state to overcome an economic crisis.

One other "innovation" of the Yugoslav revisionists was the fact that unemployment in the country was not only high (over 10%), but this was treated as a normal occurrence by the state. In other words, a reserve army of labor existed not in disguised form (as under the Soviet revisionists, who did not admit to this until the policies of Perestroika dramatically increased the ranks of the unemployed) but openly. The book Socialist Unemployment details this.

[Questionable]

So the word revisionist is reserved for the use of Stalinists only? OK.

How did you get that from what I said? I made no such suggestion. Rather, I stated that "revisionist" has a concrete definition, and is not simply a term for people we dislike.


Could you source where in Tito's doctrine he promotes imperialism?Obviously Tito never came out and said "Hey guys Imma buddy up with US imperialism k?" but it was the actual realities of his policies, such as cooperating with the IMF and structuring industries like capitalist entities, actions that furthered the interests of imperialism and robbed power from the proletariat, that made him pro-imperialist.

I thought this was elementary for all Marxists to understand. We do not judge bourgeois regimes by their rhetoric, but by the actual economic relations that exist in their countries. Obama certainly isn't going to admit that invading Syria is about bringing it under economic subjugation to strengthen US imperialism, he's going to say it's for humanitarian reasons; yet, we know that the former is the real reason through proper social analysis.


That being said, I fail to see how Stalin is devoid of any responsibility yet Tito is a bourgeois agent.Because Stalin never sold the international working class out to imperialism for his own opportunistic, social-chauvinist goals, unlike Tito.


How so? Do you realise the effect of Tito's non-alignment programme for example? Because many developing nations of, say, second world nature (to use Maoist terms) were siding with America's dogma until Tito proposedd a way to avoid bourgeois nationalist dickwaving.I don't see how you can claim Tito gave them a way to avoid bourgeois nationalism when all he really did was create a safe haven for them with the NAM. Bourgeois nationalists who cloaked themselves in socialist rhetoric such as Ghaddafi rallied behind it.


Learn to read properly before jumping on people's backs. I never excused Tito's loans.You neither condemned nor approved of them. You said nothing at all, which is why I accused you of dodging the issue. I still believe you were hoping that topic would just be dropped.


Because the people who wrote them are somewhat batshit mental? Because a massive amount of Marxist scholars have all recognised the purges? Because its on Party record that these things happened?Are you suggesting that Marxist-Leninists deny the purges ever happened? If so, you are truly ignorant. We don't deny them at all, we recognize them as a moment of intense class struggle against bourgeois influence in the Party.

Again, it doesn't surprise me that you would say such laughably misinformed things, since you dismiss any Marxist-Leninist analyses as "crazy" and refuse to read them. I'm no Maoist, but he was correct when he said that those who do not study have no right to an opinion. Besides, if you're so correct, you should have no trouble reading Marxist-Leninist works and picking them apart at the seams, rather than giving blanket statements about how they're "crazy" and not worth your time. You're not superior; you're either lazy or afraid.


Ismail's main source is Enver fucking Hoxha. Did they not teach you any kind of critical thought at school? Did you not need to go through the three steps to check if an article is relevent then to cite reasons why or why not it could be dismissed as biased when studying history. I learned this in 3rd year secondary. I think I was 14. I think Marx must've been taught this too around the same age...

I want third party sources detailing the nature of the purges and of Stalin's regime. I reject Western claims that the Holmodor is a genocide but a refuse to believe in this grand conspiracy against Stalin when many of his own have admitted just how disturbed an individual and statesman he was.The world is divided into two classes; bourgeoisie and proletariat. There are no third parties. When you call for "non-biased" sources, what it means in practice is that you'll only trust bourgeois scholars and ignore anything that originates from Marxism-Leninism itself.

In all honesty, I don't understand what your problem with Enver Hoxha is. Are you surprised that a Marxist-Leninist is saying things that a Marxist-Leninist would say? Most of Ismail's quotations come from Hoxha's own personal diaries, so when you get angry that he expresses admiration for Stalin, it makes you look kind of silly. Obviously Marxist-Leninists are going to give their view of events, why should we divorce ourselves from our own politics and take this "non-biased" stance (Which really means just adopting the official bourgeois stance on historical events)?

As far as his credibility goes, there are no instances of Hoxha lying about events in either his personal diary or his official political writings.

On a closing note, it may interest you that scholars like J. Arch Getty and Sheila Fitzpatrick who study the USSR don't identify as any kind of communist, ergo you should have no problem reading them.


Vintage strawman, try again.How is this a strawman? You uphold Yugoslavia, a country that enforced austerity measures to pay back the IMF, as a fine example of socialism. You defend their racist-nationalism and even criticize the Albanians for fighting back. Everything I've said is true.

I noticed you didn't highlight my bit about parliaments. I take it that means you're not in disagreement with it?


What the fuck are you on about? Seriously!? Have you never used the word dogmatism before? So anybody who complains about dogmatism is a bullshitter? Do you regard Marxism as dogmatic!? It seems perfectly rational and a corollary of critical analysis to me.Dogmatism exists and should be fought against, but it's important to note that anti-dogmatism has always been the rallying cry of revisionists. Lenin even wrote about it in "What Is To Be Done?"

[TheEmancipator]

How did you get that from what I said? I made no such suggestion. Rather, I stated that "revisionist" has a concrete definition, and is not simply a term for people we dislike.

Yes, but for you the only time revisionism is correctly defined is when Stalinists use it. Stalin is a major revisionist of Marx, hence why he wrote heaps of ''theory'' justifying his centralised stranglehold of the factors of production when it was totally out of the line Marx used.


Obviously Tito never came out and said "Hey guys Imma buddy up with US imperialism k?" but it was the actual realities of his policies, such as cooperating with the IMF and structuring industries like capitalist entities, actions that furthered the interests of imperialism and robbed power from the proletariat, that made him pro-imperialist.

Yes, but you used the word "ideology". Have a little bit of intellectual rigour if you are going to lecture people from your pedestal. There is nothing imperialist in Tito's ideology.

Tito hardly had imperial plans for a Greater Yugoslavia under his stranglehold. He wanted to unite the Balkans under a confederal system with the objective of liberating them from Moscovite rule.

Accepting loans from the IMF is not an act of imperialism.


Because Stalin never sold the international working class out to imperialism for his own opportunistic, social-chauvinist goals, unlike Tito.

You mean like that time Stalin abandoned the Greek Communist Party's resistance in order to secure most of Eastern Europe and appease bourgeois leaders in the form of Churchill and Roosevelt.


I don't see how you can claim Tito gave them a way to avoid bourgeois nationalism when all he really did was create a safe haven for them with the NAM. Bourgeois nationalists who cloaked themselves in socialist rhetoric such as Ghaddafi rallied behind it.

The non-aligned movement had nothing to do with class warfare. The Cold War had nothing to do with class warfare. This was an era where nation-states took precedence. the USSR, for example, was not in the slightest representing the interests of the worldwide working classes, and never had since the death of Lenin, who expected more countries to follow. The USSR was ultimately representing the USSR's interest as geopolitical entity.

Therefore being non-aligned does not make you a class traitor. It means you reject the fundamental Cold War idea of Capitalism vs Communism as some kind of conflict between nations where the battleground was the third world (Vietnam, Afghanistan).


You neither condemned nor approved of them. You said nothing at all, which is why I accused you of dodging the issue. I still believe you were hoping that topic would just be dropped.

I wrote a paragraph on the subject, in which I specifically said I was playing the Devil's advocate, explaining why Tito might have taken that decision. If I was hoping for the subject to be dropped I would't have quoted you and written a paragraph.


Are you suggesting that Marxist-Leninists deny the purges ever happened? If so, you are truly ignorant. We don't deny them at all, we recognize them as a moment of intense class struggle against bourgeois influence in the Party.

Many M-Ls, who interestingly enough are not solely present on here, call the purges ''bourgeois lies''. I thought Ismail was of that opinion since he has consistently avoided the subject of the purges, instead calling Stalin 'Machiavellian" in glowing terms.

What bourgeois elements and influence would that be? Bukharin was bourgeois? Party members who had been there when Stalin was a Menshevik, they were bourgeois? Random apparatchiks who had just joined the party were bourgeois too? Seems to me they were all dependent on their salaries and labour, therefore not bourgeois, and the evidence shows they were innocent too. Could it be that a Georgian religious poet, who was a former reformist, had bourgeois tendencies too?



Again, it doesn't surprise me that you would say such laughably misinformed things, since you dismiss any Marxist-Leninist analyses as "crazy" and refuse to read them. I'm no Maoist, but he was correct when he said that those who do not study have no right to an opinion. Besides, if you're so correct, you should have no trouble reading Marxist-Leninist works and picking them apart at the seams, rather than giving blanket statements about how they're "crazy" and not worth your time. You're not superior; you're either lazy or afraid.

If they are not worth my time then why am I answering you? You're not making any sense.


The world is divided into two classes; bourgeoisie and proletariat. There are no third parties. When you call for "non-biased" sources, what it means in practice is that you'll only trust bourgeois scholars and ignore anything that originates from Marxism-Leninism itself.

Bourgeois and proletariat are defined purely in economic terms. I reccomend you pick up Zizek's Living in End Times where he describes the Lacanian idea of 1+1+a. There is a possibility of a third party (fascism or nationalism for example is not 100% of bourgeois nature, since it appeals to working class consciousness too) playing an important role.

The reliability of a source throughout history has nothing to do with class warfare. A person of proleterian/oppressed class is just as likely to lie about events that he witnessed as a bourgeois. It can be analysed through a bourgeois/proleterian perspective, if class conscious, and we must take that into account.



In all honesty, I don't understand what your problem with Enver Hoxha is.

He is not a reliable source.


Are you surprised that a Marxist-Leninist is saying things that a Marxist-Leninist would say? Most of Ismail's quotations come from Hoxha's own personal diaries, so when you get angry that he expresses admiration for Stalin, it makes you look kind of silly. Obviously Marxist-Leninists are going to give their view of events, why should we divorce ourselves from our own politics and take this "non-biased" stance (Which really means just adopting the official bourgeois stance on historical events)?

No it doesn't. You want to change (revise, hence the word ''revisionism'') History to suit your workerist ideological goals. You are engaging in the same revisionist take on history nationalists used in the 19th century, this idea that we should look at World History through the Marxist-Leninist ideological scope, and not the Marxist materialist scope, that is as a struggle between classes defined by their control over the factors of production and not some USA vs USSR


As far as his credibility goes, there are no instances of Hoxha lying about events in either his personal diary or his official political writings.

He still looked at Stalin and the world through ML-tinted glasses, much like you.

On a closing note, it may interest you that scholars like J. Arch Getty and Sheila Fitzpatrick who study the USSR don't identify as any kind of communist, ergo you should have no problem reading them.


How is this a strawman? You uphold Yugoslavia, a country that enforced austerity measures to pay back the IMF, as a fine example of socialism.

No, I don't. Quotes or shut the fuck up.


You defend their racist-nationalism and even criticize the Albanians for fighting back.

I criticized both parties (Albania and Yugoslavia) for continuing their ancient national-ethnic grudge match.


I noticed you didn't highlight my bit about parliaments. I take it that means you're not in disagreement with it?

If parties of proleterian nature take hold of parliament and dissolve its constitution, and ensure the factors of production are handed to the proleteriat, then I don't see the problem.

I don't believe the bourgeois class rig elections in their own developed countries.


Dogmatism exists and should be fought against, but it's important to note that anti-dogmatism has always been the rallying cry of revisionists. Lenin even wrote about it in "What Is To Be Done?"

Some wonderful logical fallacy here :

Revisionists accuse people of dogmatism
I accuse someone of dogmatism
ergo I am a revisionist.

:confused:

[Ismail]

I doubt Questionable knows enough to discuss these specific parts of your post, so I'll respond to them.


You mean like that time Stalin abandoned the Greek Communist Party's resistance in order to secure most of Eastern Europe and appease bourgeois leaders in the form of Churchill and Roosevelt.First off, when Tito was sending assistance to the Greek communists, he was doing it simultaneously with Albania and Bulgaria on one hand and praising Stalin to the skies on the other. When the break occurred Tito sought a deal with the Greek bourgeois state and ceased aiding the Greek communists. As for Albania and Bulgaria, however...

"As early as November 1946, when Greek rebel bands began their attacks on the legitimate government of Athens, Albania was accused of giving them assistance. When some months later, General Markos took over command of the guerrillas, that country became one of their chief bases...

Even after the Tito-Cominform break, Albania continued to help the Greek rebels. On September 21, 1949, the United Nations Special Committee on the Balkans advised the General Assembly to declare the government of Albania 'primarily responsible for the threat to peace in the Balkans' and call on Albania (and Bulgaria) to cease aiding the Greek guerrillas."
(Skendi, Stavro (ed). Albania. New York: Frederick A. Praeger. 1956. p. 28.)

"The Bulgarians were also openly supporting the guerrillas... they instituted 'voluntary' wage deductions (as high as 10 percent) that went into the Greek Aid Fund. Every month Bulgarians bought coupons inscribed 'for the aid of the Greek Democratic People.' The Bulgarian Red Cross donated medical and other supplies, and the following month it issued a special stamp 'for the aid of the Greek refugees.' On the day after New Year's, the National Committee of the Fatherland Front sought contributions for 'moral and political aid' as well as 'material assistance to the refugees from Greece.' A 'victory of the Greek people' was 'definitely in the interests of Bulgaria.'

A further complication was that Albania and Bulgaria accused the Greek government of violating their borders. From early January through mid-April 1948, the Albanian government lodged over a hundred complaints with the UN secretary-general...

The Yugoslavs, however, filed no protests against Greece, which suggested that their government was undergoing a change in policy brought by increasing trouble with Moscow."
(Jones, Howard. "A New Kind of War": America's Global Strategy and the Truman Doctrine in Greece. New York: Oxford University Press. 1989. pp. 125-126.)

The American ambassador to Yugoslavia in a secret dispatch on January 3, 1948:

"During call on Foreign Minister yesterday afternoon I was informed Marshal Tito would see me this morning...

Knowing that interview had been arranged for general informal talk and that theme Tito expected me to develop was improved trade relations, I started by brief discussion prewar and present trade (which I shall report in separate telegram) and managed transition to political field by frank statement that many of US products Yugoslav Government needs are in such short supply that exports naturally go to countries friendly to US, and that Yugoslav Government cannot expect credit, whether by US public agencies or commercial banks, so long as American public opinion finds Yugoslav Government invariably opposing US in all efforts for establishing peace and reconstruction.

This brought us to questions of Trieste and Greece....

On Greece Tito said the whole world knows how Yugoslav Government sees situation there. 'We have stated our position repeatedly, but we are not going to do anything dramatic or engage in any adventure.' ... I had noted reports that in Bulgaria and Albania the tone is more interventionist and bellicose and in view of recent series of pacts one could suppose this to be by agreed plan. He replied, 'Yes, I know that you Americans are worried about Communism thrusting out into other areas but do not forget Yugoslavia's chief national task is internal development and we need peace'."
(Foreign Relations of the United States: 1948 Volume IV. Washington: United States Government Printing Office. 1974. pp. 1054-1055.)

Furthermore, Stalin's discussions with the Yugoslavs and Bulgarians not long before the break made it clear, as Erik Van Ree notes, that "he would have favoured a Greek communist victory." As Stalin said to them, "The entire question rests in the balance of forces. We go into battle not when the enemy wants us to, but when it's in our interests." (The Political Thought of Joseph Stalin, p. 251.) Furthermore, as Hoxha noted, Stalin criticized the KKE for making various mistakes in the field, which included signing the Varkiza agreement as a particularly major one. In essence, the KKE taking power was considered impossible for the time-being, owing both to the mistakes it made and to the ability of the British and Americans to increase their armed presence in the country, a presence the KKE was not in a position to adequately counteract against.


Many M-Ls, who interestingly enough are not solely present on here, call the purges ''bourgeois lies''. I thought Ismail was of that opinion since he has consistently avoided the subject of the purges, instead calling Stalin 'Machiavellian" in glowing terms.I've probably never used that term on RevLeft ever. I have no clue what you're talking about here. No one denied the purges, including the Soviets. Of course they denied that the purges were some sort of evil scheme by Stalin to consolidate total power by crushing all who dared oppose him. Ironically in light of you trying to mention him as a counterweight to our views, it is precisely the works by Getty which debunk such a view of the purges as a centrally planned plot.


I criticized both parties (Albania and Yugoslavia) for continuing their ancient national-ethnic grudge match.There was nothing "ancient" about it, in 1913 the Great Powers severed Kosovo from newly-independent Albania. The British Foreign Secretary, Grey (who carried it out), noted that action was dictated by nothing other Great Power politics. The opinion of the Kosovar Albanians and Serbs in Kosovo had no bearing on anything.

Thus the Albanian nation was split into half, an obviously unjust situation. The Comintern as well as Albanian and Yugoslav communists from the beginning saw the return to Kosovo to Albania as a basic right.

After WWII, when Tito betrayed the Kosovar Albanians who fought under the understanding that they'd be reunited with Albania (and were not even given the nominal chance to decide on their future in this regard), the Albanian government did discuss with the Soviets the possibility of establishing a Kosovar Albanian rebellion which would be the first step in the downfall of Tito. Stalin disagreed with the prospects. The Albanian position from at least the 60's onwards was the one which the Kosovar Albanians themselves advocated: the raising of Kosovo to the status of a republic within the federation, thus giving it at least legal equality alongside the likes of Serbia, Montenegro, etc.

There was no "national-ethnic grudge match" on the Albanian side, only in the Yugoslav side which regularly accused the Albanian government of being behind any unrest in Kosovo.

[Red_Banner]

These traitors to the proletariat have gone so far as to deny the need of trade unions as an independent organisation of the working class.

So Stalin's USSR had trade unions seperate from the party & state?

Hah!

[Questionable]

Yes, but for you the only time revisionism is correctly defined is when Stalinists use it. Stalin is a major revisionist of Marx, hence why he wrote heaps of ''theory'' justifying his centralised stranglehold of the factors of production when it was totally out of the line Marx used.

I never said that. My point was that "revisionist" has a concrete definition, and is not just something we don't like.

I'm not sure what you mean by saying centralization is "out of Marx's line."


Have a little bit of intellectual rigour if you are going to lecture people from your pedestal. There is nothing imperialist in Tito's ideology.
Again, Tito obviously never came out and said he was going to align himself with imperialism because that would have ruined his legitimacy, but as Marxists, we do not judge bourgeois regimes by their words, but by their actions. Tito called FDR's New Deal a "great step toward socialism," making deals with the IMF, and structuring industries like capitalist entities all served to bolster the interests of imperialism.

I also like how debating you is apparently "lecturing from my pedestal," as if it's a great crime to question your wisdom.


Tito hardly had imperial plans for a Greater Yugoslavia under his stranglehold. He wanted to unite the Balkans under a confederal system with the objective of liberating them from Moscovite rule.All while oppressing the Albanians.


Accepting loans from the IMF is not an act of imperialism.The IMF is an imperialist organization aimed at subjugating oppressed nations to exploiter nations, so yes, working with them is a pro-imperialist act.


You mean like that time Stalin abandoned the Greek Communist Party's resistance in order to secure most of Eastern Europe and appease bourgeois leaders in the form of Churchill and Roosevelt.Stalin noted that the Greek Communists had made many tactical errors, such as trying to form an alliance with anti-communists, which caused them to compromise the revolution.

But you'll no doubt brush this off and take the liberal analysis that Stalin was fibbing about tactical errors, and the real reason is because he is eeeeevvvvvvviiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiilllll.


The non-aligned movement had nothing to do with class warfare. The Cold War had nothing to do with class warfare.And here, the fact that you're a radical liberal instead of any kind of Marxist revolutionary makes its presence known. To act as events that stem from the antagonisms of a class society are somehow independent of that class society makes no sense from a Marxist standpoint. It is an impossibility, and it is only TheEmancipator buying into the Non-Aligned Movement's rhetoric about how they were free, strong, independent states that were brave enough to stand up to both sides. Because TheEmancipator has an un-Marxist mind, he cannot apply proper social analysis to the objective class relationships existing in these countries, but can only take their rhetoric at face-value, thus leading to his confusing liberal positions.



Many M-Ls, who interestingly enough are not solely present on here, call the purges ''bourgeois lies''. I thought Ismail was of that opinion since he has consistently avoided the subject of the purges, instead calling Stalin 'Machiavellian" in glowing terms.I have never heard of a Marxist-Leninist, online or real life, that has denied the purges. Even Stalin admitted they happened. Ismail has participated in many large threads regarding the purges, such as this one: http://www.revleft.com/vb/moscow-trials-and-t178218/index.html

He has also never in his posting history used the term "Machiavellian" to describe Stalin.


What bourgeois elements and influence would that be? Bukharin was bourgeois? Party members who had been there when Stalin was a Menshevik, they were bourgeois? Random apparatchiks who had just joined the party were bourgeois too? Seems to me they were all dependent on their salaries and labour, therefore not bourgeois, and the evidence shows they were innocent too. Could it be that a Georgian religious poet, who was a former reformist, had bourgeois tendencies too?If you're curious about what kind of people the purge targeted, I strongly suggest "The Origins of the Great Purge" by J. Arch Getty.

Also, Stalin was never a Menshevik. He was a Bolshevik since 1903.


If they are not worth my time then why am I answering you? You're not making any sense.I was not talking about my own posts. I was talking about reading actual works which seriously analyze Soviet society, whether they be written by Marxist-Leninists or no. In this thread you claimed they were not worth reading because the people who wrote them were "batshit mental," thus illustrating your unwillingness to learn about opposing viewpoints.


Bourgeois and proletariat are defined purely in economic terms. I reccomend you pick up Zizek's Living in End Times where he describes the Lacanian idea of 1+1+a.No. Zizek is a reactionary. He called the London Rioters "beasts," and condemned Occupy Wall Street as the spoiled children of the bourgeoisie trying to maintain their privilege.


There is a possibility of a third party (fascism or nationalism for example is not 100% of bourgeois nature, since it appeals to working class consciousness too) playing an important role. Fascism is not a third option. If workers become fascist, it means they are taking on bourgeois consciousness. Fascism has also historically mislead the workers by using socialist rhetoric and imagery, similar to Yugoslavia.


The reliability of a source throughout history has nothing to do with class warfare.Again, in practice this just means you'll condemn Marxist-Leninist accounts as biased and only accept works by bourgeois scholars that coincidentally confirm what you already believe.


He is not a reliable source.In what way? As I said before, Hoxha is obviously giving the Marxist-Leninist account of things, but he never lied or gave misinformation.


You are engaging in the same revisionist take on history nationalists used in the 19th century, this idea that we should look at World History through the Marxist-Leninist ideological scope, and not the Marxist materialist scope, that is as a struggle between classes defined by their control over the factors of production and not some USA vs USSRFirst of all, that is the Marxist-Leninist view of world history. If you read the Great Soviet Encyclopedia or any other academic text published by them, you'd see they're all about interpreting history through class struggle even in the days of revisionism. I challenge you to find any work published by the USSR that goes against this trend. You may find a few from the Gorby era, but even that is unlikely.

Second, to hear all of this from a person who claims that the Non-Aligned Movement was totally uninfluenced by class struggle is laughable.


He still looked at Stalin and the world through ML-tinted glasses, much like you.Again, show me where Hoxha was dishonest.

You should know that having a certain viewpoint on a matter is not the same as being biased.


No, I don't. Quotes or shut the fuck up.You have praised Yugoslavia and the NAM multiple times in this thread...it is the whole reason we're having this discussion...


I criticized both parties (Albania and Yugoslavia) for continuing their ancient national-ethnic grudge match.The Albanians were the oppressed group in this instance.


If parties of proleterian nature take hold of parliament and dissolve its constitution, and ensure the factors of production are handed to the proleteriat, then I don't see the problem.This theory has been proven wrong by history. The experiences of Social-Democracy on the eve of WWI, and Allende's overthrow in Chile, show that the proletariat cannot take power through parliamentary measures.

I find it funny that you accuse Stalin of ruining 20th century communism, yet you apparently uphold Berstein's line on reform, which lead to the selling-out of the working class in the period of revolutionary upheaval in the early 1900s.


Revisionists accuse people of dogmatism
I accuse someone of dogmatism
ergo I am a revisionist.You are a revisionist because you negate the revolutionary fundamentals of Marxism. Like a revisionist, you accuse those who defend these fundamentals of being overly dogmatic.

[Ismail]

So Stalin's USSR had trade unions seperate from the party & state?

Hah!The purpose of trade unions under the dictatorship of the proletariat, as Lenin noted, is for them to serve as schools of communism. They are under the leadership of the vanguard, as are all social organizations. The Yugoslavs at the time were pretty much denying the continued need for trade unions, and were trying to merge everything (including the CPY) into their People's Front. They imposed this on Albania with its Democratic Front as well.

[Red_Banner]

Any comments, please?

Yes, how did the trade unions work and relate to the proletariat, party, and state?

[Red_Banner]

http://www.revleft.com/vb/album.php?albumid=1343&pictureid=11048

The Yugoslavs at the time were pretty much denying the continued need for trade unions, and were trying to merge everything (including the CPY) into their People's Front.
Funny, then how do I have this trade union flag?

[ВАЛТЕР]

Tito did nothing to promote internationalism and revolutionary thought. His and Kardelj's market-socialism allowed for the growth of the petite-bourgeoisie and created the economic inequality and instability which led to the unfortunate and tragic collapse of Yugoslavia.

That being said, given the way in which the people in the former Yugoslav countries live now and the horrible economic conditions that can be seen throughout the former SFRY I can see why many people may look back nostalgically at the Tito era. I think it can be compared to the way many American liberals look back and say 'Oh Clinton as the best president, the economy was doing so well. etc. etc.'


We have to acknowledge that Tito's Yugoslavia existed in a divided world and that Tito walked the fence between east and west. It was inevitable that once the world ceased to exist in a way in which it was divided into two poles, Yugoslavia would become irrelevant and be tossed to the side. Tito's Yugoslavia could only exist in the world as it was during the Cold War.

Titoism has absolutely nothing revolutionary to bring to the table. Where are the revolutionary Titoist groups? Here in Serbia, the 'New Communist Party of Yugoslavia' (NKPJ) headed by Titos grandson (who all sing the praise of Tito and sing his songs, etc etc.) openly collaborates with bourgeois politicians, businesses, and parties. Throwing their support behind the "Serbian Progressive Party" headed by the current president Tomislav Nikolic, who is an outright neo-Chetnik.

I understand the nostalgia for 'a better time' however it is entirely unrealistic. Titoism is something that is holding the revolutionary movement back in the former Yugoslav states. Too many self-proclaimed communists have pictures of Tito and sing the praises of communism yet haven't read a chapter of Marx and have a poor (if any) understanding of revolutionary thought, but rather think in the sense that they want Tito and Yugoslavia back, and everything would be fine again. Not to mention the amount of ridiculous conspiracy theories these people tend to subscribe to. (Illuminati, NWO, Vatican, etc all got together one day and forced the Yugoslav people to murder each other.)

I'm not saying that capital didn't benefit from the mass privatization and nationalism that was spawned during the Yugoslav wars, but rather that they acted on already existing conditions and simply 'played the cards they were dealt'.

[Ismail]

Funny, then how do I have this trade union flag?Because obviously the idea of merging everything into the People's Front proved impracticable.

[Red_Banner]

Because obviously the idea of merging everything into the People's Front proved impracticable.
Well then it isn't the fault of the SFRJ then, because it wasn't an offical policy.

Just an idea of some politicians.

[TheEmancipator]

I never said that. My point was that "revisionist" has a concrete definition, and is not just something we don't like.

Revisionist has many definitions, if you could quote where I used revisionist t odescribe something I don't like. I call Stalin a revisionist because, as you put it, he :


negate[s] the revolutionary fundamentals of Marxism.Didn't Stalin also accuse Trotskyites of dogmatism? Serious question. Answer with honesty.


I'm not sure what you mean by saying centralization is "out of Marx's line."Marx wanted the factors of production in the hands of the proleteriat. Could you explain in what way that was ever put into effect under Stalin. The flow of capital was controlled by an illegitimate vanguard of bourgeois nationalists.


Again, Tito obviously never came out and said he was going to align himself with imperialism because that would have ruined his legitimacy, but as Marxists, we do not judge bourgeois regimes by their words, but by their actions. Tito called FDR's New Deal a "great step toward socialism," making deals with the IMF, and structuring industries like capitalist entities all served to bolster the interests of imperialism.This has nothing to do with the fact that you proclaimed Titoism an imperialist ideology. Tito's preachings, like Stalin's, like Mao's, were anti-imperialist. All three have aspects of their actions that were imperialist. Now of the three, which one is the less imperialist? Stalin, who subjugated Finland and the Baltic States to Mother Russia, created satellite states in Eastern Europe that reported straight to Moscow? Mao, who invaded Tibet under the Chinese flag and tried to invade Vietnam. Or Tito, who accepted IMF loans after WW2?


I also like how debating you is apparently "lecturing from my pedestal," as if it's a great crime to question your wisdom.You have been nothing but insulting and have put words into my mouth and called me a Titoist without any foundations.


All while oppressing the Albanians.
The Albanians were the oppressed group in this instance.OK, I understand you are probably Albanian, maybe a fustrated Bosnian or Turk, and you think your 'people' get the shit end of the stick all the time, if you are Albanian I can understand this patriotic bias. If you are seriously saying that Albanians have been constantly oppressed by Serbs throughout time in order to uphold Hoxha, then its a rather disgusting deformation of history, almost totally ignoring what the Ottoman Empire did to Orthodox Christians, all to suit your ideological stance.

I will not enter a debate about the Balkans and their History though.


The IMF is an imperialist organization aimed at subjugating oppressed nations to exploiter nations, so yes, working with them is a pro-imperialist act.No, if you honestly think the IMF is this grand conspiracy aimed at enslaving third-world countries by first world nations, you should try the David Icke forums or Maoist Rebel News. The IMF is a product of global capitalism, a trick to ensure more bourgeois investors make more profit out of others' misfortunes.


Stalin noted that the Greek Communists had made many tactical errors, such as trying to form an alliance with anti-communists, which caused them to compromise the revolution.An alliance with anti-communists is bad, says the poet, who authorised and even promoted ''Popular Frontism'' in the 30s.

And making tactical mistakes means you should withdraw any support?


But you'll no doubt brush this off and take the liberal analysis that Stalin was fibbing about tactical errors, and the real reason is because he is eeeeevvvvvvviiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiilllll.Quote me saying Stalin is evil and I'll answer this argument seriously.


And here, the fact that you're a radical liberal instead of any kind of Marxist revolutionary makes its presence known. To act as events that stem from the antagonisms of a class society are somehow independent of that class society makes no sense from a Marxist standpoint. It is an impossibility, and it is only TheEmancipator buying into the Non-Aligned Movement's rhetoric about how they were free, strong, independent states that were brave enough to stand up to both sides. Because TheEmancipator has an un-Marxist mind, he cannot apply proper social analysis to the objective class relationships existing in these countries, but can only take their rhetoric at face-value, thus leading to his confusing liberal positions.And now you've fallen off your pedestal.



I have never heard of a Marxist-Leninist, online or real life, that has denied the purges. Even Stalin admitted they happened. Ismail has participated in many large threads regarding the purges, such as this one: http://www.revleft.com/vb/moscow-trials-and-t178218/index.html

He has also never in his posting history used the term "Machiavellian" to describe Stalin.Well I have, and they also downplay the scale of them and insist people like Bukharin and other party members are guilty.

Also, Stalin was never a Menshevik. He was a Bolshevik since 1903.


I was not talking about my own posts. I was talking about reading actual works which seriously analyze Soviet society, whether they be written by Marxist-Leninists or no. In this thread you claimed they were not worth reading because the people who wrote them were "batshit mental," thus illustrating your unwillingness to learn about opposing viewpoints.
No. Zizek is a reactionary. He called the London Rioters "beasts," and condemned Occupy Wall Street as the spoiled children of the bourgeoisie trying to maintain their privilege.So let me get this straight : You attack me for refusing to read Marxist-Leninist propaganda, and refusing to let Enver Hoxha be considered a reliable source, with the considerably good point that I am being too close minded and unwilling to read other people's sources...

Then you refuse to read Zizek because he's apparently a reactionary. Last time I checked he was a respected Hegelian Marxist.

Do you not understand what rank hypocrisy that is? Seriously, to have those two statements one after the other, and you cannot see the double standards you employ.

Zizek is right, the London Rioters were not politically motivated. I was there in London. It was, as Zizek says, a sort of animal rage and sheer opportunism. If it had happened in your Stalinist Utopia, he'd have had them shot!

OWS was a left-liberal movement by nature. They wanted 'democracy is the workplace' and some kind of Market Socialism. Who knows, they might have been Titoist.


Fascism is not a third option. If workers become fascist, it means they are taking on bourgeois consciousness. Fascism has also historically mislead the workers by using socialist rhetoric and imagery, similar to Yugoslavia.Just read Zizek's work. I believe its on page 155. I'll admit he explains it far better than me, but fascism is not bourgeois, hence why bourgeois liberal parties and countries have somewhat opposed fascism too.


Again, in practice this just means you'll condemn Marxist-Leninist accounts as biased and only accept works by bourgeois scholars that coincidentally confirm what you already believe.

In what way? As I said before, Hoxha is obviously giving the Marxist-Leninist account of things, but he never lied or gave misinformation.But the man is openly trying to uphold Stalinism and his own Albanian interests, therefore cannot possibly be considered as unbiased.


First of all, that is the Marxist-Leninist view of world history. If you read the Great Soviet Encyclopedia or any other academic text published by them, you'd see they're all about interpreting history through class struggle even in the days of revisionism. I challenge you to find any work published by the USSR that goes against this trend. You may find a few from the Gorby era, but even that is unlikely.Yes, but for them class warfare gradually became a distortion of what Marx intended it to be. The proleteriat was apparently represented by the USSR and its sattelites, who were to eventually triumph over the bourgeois states by aiding working class movements across the world.

It, as an ideology, became a tool for Russian expansionism, who with the Hammer and Sickle in their flag, were de facto proleterian-based right?


Second, to hear all of this from a person who claims that the Non-Aligned Movement was totally uninfluenced by class struggle is laughable.OK, you think NAMs are class collaborationists. Good for you.


Again, show me where Hoxha was dishonest.Its not a question of dishonesty, its a question of ''should I trust this guy to be honest or not?''


You should know that having a certain viewpoint on a matter is not the same as being biased.Being biased leads to revising history. For example, would Hoxha ever admit his ''friend'' Stalin did anything wrong when he had comitted his entire political ideology to upholding Stalinism as true socialism.


You have praised Yugoslavia and the NAM multiple times in this thread...it is the whole reason we're having this discussion...1. I want quotes.
2. Even so, I never called Yugoslavia a good example of socialism.

Quotes or stop slandering and putting words in my mouth.


This theory has been proven wrong by history. The experiences of Social-Democracy on the eve of WWI, and Allende's overthrow in Chile, show that the proletariat cannot take power through parliamentary measures.And Marxist-Leninism hasn't been proven wrong with history?:lol:


I find it funny that you accuse Stalin of ruining 20th century communism, yet you apparently uphold Berstein's line on reform, which lead to the selling-out of the working class in the period of revolutionary upheaval in the early 1900s.How do I uphold Bernstein when I am a Hegelian and a Marxist-Humanist:lol: When did I even mention Bernstein?


You are a revisionist because you negate the revolutionary fundamentals of Marxism. Like a revisionist, you accuse those who defend these fundamentals of being overly dogmatic.''Revisionism'' is to upholders of Stalin what ''Judeo-Bolshevism'' is to Nazism.

Basically, a massive imaginary strawman. And boring too.

[Ismail]

OK, I understand you are probably Albanian, maybe a fustrated Bosnian or Turk, and you think your 'people' get the shit end of the stick all the time, if you are Albanian I can understand this patriotic bias. If you are seriously saying that Albanians have been constantly oppressed by Serbs throughout time in order to uphold Hoxha, then its a rather disgusting deformation of history, almost totally ignoring what the Ottoman Empire did to Orthodox Christians, all to suit your ideological stance.I love how both EdvardK and TheEmacipator seem to think that we must actually be Albanians if we point out national oppression against them in Yugoslavia. That alone indicates a racist attitude.

And why are you bringing up religion? Albanians and Serbs alike suffered national oppression under the Ottoman Empire. The Albanians were denied their own language and were relegated to being the most backward part of the Empire. Many of the figures of the Albanian National Renaissance period were Christians, and despite the efforts of the Porte to promote Pan-Islamism, the Frashëri brothers and various other national figures who were Muslims opposed such efforts and fought under the banner of the Albanian nation, not Islam.


It, as an ideology, became a tool for Russian expansionism, who with the Hammer and Sickle in their flag, were de facto proleterian-based right?I also like how you make this comment when you're talking to us, as if Enver Hoxha didn't expose the "socialist" and "internationalist" demagogy of the Soviet, Chinese, Cuban, Yugoslav, and other modern revisionists, and as if he didn't point out that the revisionists in the USSR had restored capitalism and turned the country's foreign policy into one of social-imperialism while keeping the external trappings of Marxism-Leninism. You also forget that Hoxha once said that "we shall not allow ourselves to be impressed by those who say: 'How can one attack the glorious Soviet Union or the great Communist Party of Lenin for the faults of a few rascals?' We say: Precisely to defend the Soviet Union and the Party of Lenin, these 'rascals' must be exposed, and there must be no toning down of criticism or covering up of the deviationists." (Albania Challenges Khrushchev Revisionism, p. 152.)

[Questionable]

Revisionist has many definitions, if you could quote where I used revisionist t odescribe something I don't like. I call Stalin a revisionist because, as you put it, he

Except it's pretty dumb of you to accuse him of negating Marxism, because he actually upheld its revolutionary content, whereas people like you and Tito tell us we can seize the means of production through bourgeois elections and taking loans from imperialist nations is okay.



Marx wanted the factors of production in the hands of the proleteriat. Could you explain in what way that was ever put into effect under Stalin. The flow of capital was controlled by an illegitimate vanguard of bourgeois nationalists.

I obviously disagree with this because it creates an artificial division between the proletariat and the Party, thus confusing their social ownership of the means of production.

Once again, it is nothing short of hilarity that Stalin is a bourgeois nationalist, yet the members of the Non-Aligned Movements somehow aren't.



This has nothing to do with the fact that you proclaimed Titoism an imperialist ideology. Tito's preachings, like Stalin's, like Mao's, were anti-imperialist.

Yes, it does. By making deals with the imperialists and encouraging the parliamentary road to socialism, Tito set an example for other nations that was objectively pro-imperialist.


All three have aspects of their actions that were imperialist. Now of the three, which one is the less imperialist? Stalin, who subjugated Finland and the Baltic States to Mother Russia, created satellite states in Eastern Europe that reported straight to Moscow? Mao, who invaded Tibet under the Chinese flag and tried to invade Vietnam. Or Tito, who accepted IMF loans after WW2?

Stalin did not subjugate Finland in any way. Finland was a state ruled by reactionaries who had threatened to invade Leningrad during the Bolshevik Revolution. To prevent this from happening, it was decided they should invade and capture the region around Leningrad. The Soviets actually pointed out that after this was done they didn't force Finland into any kind of economic arrangement as an imperialist nation might have done, nor did they indefinitely occupy it with troops.

As for the Eastern European states, Stalin maintained their independence during his time, whereas the Soviet revisionists came up with concepts such as the "international socialist division of labor" which in practice meant these countries had to serve the economic needs of Russia, the same revisionists that Tito cuddled up with.


You have been nothing but insulting and have put words into my mouth and called me a Titoist without any foundations.

I have done no such thing, and I think anyone reading this exchange will confirm this.

I don't understand your defensiveness over being called a Titoist. You have, and still are, been defending Titoism this whole time. If you're not a Titoist, admit he sucks and move on.



OK, I understand you are probably Albanian, maybe a fustrated Bosnian or Turk, and you think your 'people' get the shit end of the stick all the time, if you are Albanian I can understand this patriotic bias. If you are seriously saying that Albanians have been constantly oppressed by Serbs throughout time in order to uphold Hoxha, then its a rather disgusting deformation of history, almost totally ignoring what the Ottoman Empire did to Orthodox Christians, all to suit your ideological stance.

If you're going to talk about this, you're better off responding to Ismail's critique of your post, as he's much more more knowledgeable about the dispute than I am.

Regardless, I am not Albanian, and the suggestion that I can only care about this because I'm a "frustrated Albanian" is nothing short of racist. It's like saying I can't care about black rights because I'm white.



No, if you honestly think the IMF is this grand conspiracy aimed at enslaving third-world countries by first world nations, you should try the David Icke forums or Maoist Rebel News. The IMF is a product of global capitalism, a trick to ensure more bourgeois investors make more profit out of others' misfortunes.

The IMF is a device aimed at neo-colonialism, as well as a way for bourgeois investors to secure more profit. I don't see what is so ludicrous about my claim, I think it's manifest.



An alliance with anti-communists is bad, says the poet, who authorised and even promoted ''Popular Frontism'' in the 30s.

The situation in Greece differs from a global war against fascism.


And making tactical mistakes means you should withdraw any support?

When these mistakes have caused the Greeks to lose their position at the head of the revolution, yes, it does.

But like the Albanian thing, you should really just respond to Ismail's post if you want to debunk what I'm saying.



Well I have, and they also downplay the scale of them and insist people like Bukharin and other party members are guilty.

So once again, you're choosing to ignore sources that don't disagree with your preconceived notions.



So let me get this straight : You attack me for refusing to read Marxist-Leninist propaganda, and refusing to let Enver Hoxha be considered a reliable source, with the considerably good point that I am being too close minded and unwilling to read other people's sources...

Then you refuse to read Zizek because he's apparently a reactionary. Last time I checked he was a respected Hegelian Marxist.

I own and have read Zizek's book "The Year of Dreaming Dangerously," and I have read multiple articles written by him. Reading his works is what has led to my conclusion that he sucks.

I still don't understand why Marxist-Leninists speaking for themselves has to be called "propaganda" and dismissed. The same logic could be applied to anyone who has an opinion on anything. Using this definition, we're all "biased."


Zizek is right, the London Rioters were not politically motivated. I was there in London. It was, as Zizek says, a sort of animal rage and sheer opportunism. If it had happened in your Stalinist Utopia, he'd have had them shot!

Wow, you're a defender of all sorts of bad political views! Good thing your type only seems to exist on the internet and exercises no meaningful influence in real-world politics.


OWS was a left-liberal movement by nature. They wanted 'democracy is the workplace' and some kind of Market Socialism. Who knows, they might have been Titoist.

The OWS movement never achieved more than trade-union consciousness due to its lack of a proper vanguard party, but to call it a bourgeois movement is incorrect.



But the man is openly trying to uphold Stalinism and his own Albanian interests, therefore cannot possibly be considered as unbiased.

Again, having a certain viewpoint and being untrustworthy are two different things.

If you could name an instance where Hoxha presented evidence that was factually untrue, I'd like to hear it.



Yes, but for them class warfare gradually became a distortion of what Marx intended it to be. The proleteriat was apparently represented by the USSR and its sattelites, who were to eventually triumph over the bourgeois states by aiding working class movements across the world.

Yes, but this movement was betrayed by revisionists such as Tito and Brezhnev who negated essential aspects of Marxism to suit their own interests.


OK, you think NAMs are class collaborationists. Good for you.

If this is all I'm going to get from you, this discussion is a waste of my time.



Being biased leads to revising history. For example, would Hoxha ever admit his ''friend'' Stalin did anything wrong when he had comitted his entire political ideology to upholding Stalinism as true socialism.

Except Hoxha applied Marxist-Leninist criticism to Stalin in his analysis of him, but he obviously upheld his line as correct.

I can't think of an instance where Hoxha "revised" history, unless your interpretation of the Great Purge, collectivization, etc is that Stalin was power-hungry and trying to oppress his people. If so, you're going to clash with Marxist-Leninists who see these events through the lens of class struggle.



1. I want quotes.

There's no need in me giving quotes when the entire foundation of our discussion is the choice between Stalin and Tito's line!

If you don't approve of Yugoslavia, say so and we'll stop talking.


And Marxist-Leninism hasn't been proven wrong with history?

Revisionist trends such as Titoism that took the place of Marxism-Leninism after the death of Stalin have been proven wrong.

Also, you've chosen to ignore the obvious failure of reformism and instead go for a pot-kettle-black thing. Interesting.



How do I uphold Bernstein when I am a Hegelian and a Marxist-Humanist:lol: When did I even mention Bernstein?

Your line on reformism is the same as Edward Bernstein's, whether you realize it or not.




''Revisionism'' is to upholders of Stalin what ''Judeo-Bolshevism'' is to Nazism.

Basically, a massive imaginary strawman. And boring too.

This is asinine.

Talking to TheEmancipator is growing increasingly tiring. His debate style is marked by a refusal to confront evidence, changing the subject whenever he has been proven wrong, and dismissing the opposing viewpoint in its entirety as "crazy" rather than doing a critical analysis.

If his response continues this trend, I will most likely not answer him. However, I would like to see his response to Ismail and Bantep's posts, both which provide very good insight into the discussion.

[Art Vandelay]

I love how both EdvardK and TheEmacipator seem to think that we must actually be Albanians if we point out national oppression against them in Yugoslavia. That alone indicates a racist attitude.

I'm so sick of Ismail (king of sleazy debate tactics), slandering other users. They are racists, I'm a chauvinist (remember when you called me that for saying 'Albania was a shit hole'), Ohh a 'Castro shill' for saying he's my favorite bourgeois politician and rafiq is juche supporter for saying that the ideological birth of juche was necessitated by the north Korean material conditions. Seriously put down the whatever volume of the Xha's diaries you are on and learn to debate in a principled manner.

[Ismail]

I'm so sick of Ismail (king of sleazy debate tactics), slandering other users. They are racists, I'm a chauvinist (remember when you called me that for saying 'Albania was a shit hole'), Ohh a 'Castro shill' for saying he's my favorite bourgeois politician and rafiq is juche supporter for saying that the ideological birth of juche was necessitated by the north Korean material conditions. Seriously put down the whatever volume of the Xha's diaries you are on and learn to debate in a principled manner.I stand by every single one of those claims. Nothing "necessitated" Juche, Castro being your favorite bourgeois politician would account for why you apologize for his regime so much, calling Albania a "shit hole" is indeed chauvinistic and automatically assuming that someone is an Albanian by pointing out Albanians suffer national oppression is pretty racist.

Not to mention that TheEmancipator claimed we could be Bosnians as well, which, to be quite honest, is even more troubling to anyone with the most basic knowledge of the Balkans, since it means that he sees the issue as one of Muslims versus Christians.

[Art Vandelay]

I stand by every single one of those claims. Nothing "necessitated" Juche, Castro being your favorite bourgeois politician would account for why you apologize for his regime so much, calling Albania a "shit hole" is indeed chauvinistic and automatically assuming that someone is an Albanian by pointing out Albanians suffer national oppression is pretty racist.

All you standing by those claims does is showcase to the board how utterly delusional you are. But outside a couple Stalin fanboys, everyone already knows that. Then again I'm not sure why I'd expect anything less from the former history mod who had to be kicked for editing out commets he disagreed with. Let alone the person pulling the strings behind the whole forum games fiasco, which incidentally lead to my first ban. It's quite on par with your history on the board; slander, misrepresentations, falsification, etc.

I just don't understand why you are allowed to run around with impunity, outright lying about people and stretching claims to fit your narrative.

[Ismail]

Then again I'm not sure why I'd expect anything less then the former history mod who had to be kicked for editing out commets he disagreed with.I'm not quite sure what you're talking about here, considering I was never kicked out of being a history mod.

So, how about this topic? Are you going to actually contribute to it or just continue to randomly insert yourself into it for no other reason than to go on about how horrible I am?

[Art Vandelay]

I'm not quite sure what you're talking about here, considering I was never kicked out of being a history mod.

So, how about this topic? Are you going to actually contribute to it or just randomly come in and go on about how horrible I am?

I'd love to have an actual conversation about this topic, that's what I came to the thread for, but when I did (per usual) I see Ismail typical behavior (which impedes constructive discussion) so I'm not going to sit quietly as I watch you lie about another user, the way you have me and others in the past.

[Ismail]

I'd love to have an actual conversation about this topic, that's what I came to the thread for, but when I did (per usual) I see Ismail typical behavior (which impedes constructive discussion) so I'm not going to sit quietly as I watch you lie about another user, the way you have me and others in the past.Your comment about Albania being a "shit hole" is just ignorant and chauvinistic, I can honestly say that I think TheEmancipator's comment is tinged with racism. It is little different with EdvardK, who on Soviet Empire referred to Kosovar Albanians as "shiptars" (a well-known derogatory term in this context.)

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

I'm so sick of Ismail (king of sleazy debate tactics), slandering other users. They are racists, I'm a chauvinist (remember when you called me that for saying 'Albania was a shit hole'), Ohh a 'Castro shill' for saying he's my favorite bourgeois politician and rafiq is juche supporter for saying that the ideological birth of juche was necessitated by the north Korean material conditions. Seriously put down the whatever volume of the Xha's diaries you are on and learn to debate in a principled manner.

I don't know anything about these previous events, but claiming that the only people who would oppose Titoist politics are "frustrated Albanians, Bosniaks or Turks" is deeply chauvinistic, reminiscent of the worst sort of Gazimestan "Christian South Slav" nationalism that the moribund Yugoslav regime resorted to as it started to unravel.

The fact is that the boundaries of the Yugoslav republics did not follow the national demarcations (indeed, it mostly followed the administrative boundaries of the early Kingdom of Yugoslavia). Croatia and Bosnia included large Serbian areas (Srijem, Krajina, Drina district), Serbia included Albanian (Kosovo) and Sandžak Muslim (well, Sandžak) areas in addition to the ethnically complex Vojvodina province, and so on.

But to the Emancipator, I am probably a frustrated Bosniak. Well, he is right, to an extent, I am partly Bosniak, and living with the legacy of "socialist" Yugoslavia can get rather frustrating.

[ВАЛТЕР]

The 'frustrated Bosnian' remark is astoundingly offensive. This smells of chauvinism as you are assuming that Ismail is just saying these things because of his nationality (which you have no way of knowing). Also, by stating that he must be either a Bosnian if he isn't an Albanian is implying that his defense of Albanian minorities comes from a position of hatred against Serbs. (It is difficult to understand if you aren't very informed on Balkan cultural and political issues.)


Basically he is suggesting that he must be a Bosnian muslim if he is defending Kosovar Albanians since often time Bosniak nationalists will throw their support behind the Kosovar Albanians (who a large portion of is muslim) simply to spite the Serbs, rather than out of any other positions.

It is similar to suggesting that I must be gay if I am defending gay rights. It is a preposterous position and reveals his very own chauvinist attitudes.

[G4b3n]

If you'd rather live a in country where CEOs and international capital dictated to workers rather than the vanguard of the working-class guiding the construction of a socialist society, then Yugoslavia is indeed a great country by such a criteria.


"guiding", right, we all know exactly what you mean.

If workers were to actually go about establishing socialism themselves, God, that would just be the end of the world wouldn't it? Perhaps that is why Uncle Joe worked directly against the genuine worker's revolution in Spain.

Worker's control? I think not, time to knock it down and put it under the control of the all knowing vanguard!

[bcbm]

moved to history

[TheEmancipator]

I don't like Yugoslavia's Titoist regime and never had. Hence why Questionable (an apt name) still refuses to quote me saying I believe Tito was an upholder of Marx and socialism. And he has called me a racist. And he called me an upholder of Bernstein reformism even though Bernstein actually rejected outright Hegel and early Marx, which demonstrates Questionable's complete lack of knowledge of actual Marxist thought while he criticises others.

The main reason why I am apparently defending Tito's socialism (even though he is another M-L dictator) is because for Hoxhaists to condemn him as an evil man and bourgeois nationalist is so fucking hypocritical its unreal.

I will now address Ismail's posts, since this was Questionable's last wish before his attempt to close the debate between us, visibly hoping I wouldn't answer again.



I love how both EdvardK and TheEmacipator seem to think that we must actually be Albanians if we point out national oppression against them in Yugoslavia. That alone indicates a racist attitude.

My comments have absolutely fuck all to do with racism, let's read them carefully again :


OK, I understand you are probably Albanian, maybe a fustrated Bosnian or Turk, and you think your 'people' get the shit end of the stick all the time, if you are Albanian I can understand this patriotic bias.This is the first part of my ''racist comment". Because of the genuine inferiority complex that we regularly see with Albanian (and all sorts of) nationalists was being displayed by Questionable through his two remarks quoted in my post. Because calling Albanians an oppressed people implying that Yugoslavia was an oppressor is very common in Albania, and vice versa. I understand it, as a Marxist I'm against it, but its a historical grudge match that is part of their history. How is that racist?


If you are seriously saying that Albanians have been constantly oppressed by Serbs throughout time in order to uphold Hoxha, then its a rather disgusting deformation of history, almost totally ignoring what the Ottoman Empire did to Orthodox Christians, all to suit your ideological stance.Now, here I'm saying that if he isn't Albanian, then he's simply painting Albanians as some kind of oppressed people (even though he said there is only proletariat and bourgeoisie earlier on) in order to suit his tendency and politics, that is Anti-titoism, which is a disgusting.

The only ultra-nationalist/racist possibly present here is therefore Questionable who called Albanians oppressed by Yugoslavia, an absolutely laughable claim considering Yugoslavia, even when it was once under the tyranny of Serbian ultra-nationalists in its final hours, didn't care what Albania got up to, with the exception of the Kosovar question, which has yet to be resolved.

So, how Ismail, am I a racist?

[Questionable]

I don't like Yugoslavia's Titoist regime and never had.

If you're defending him as a champion against Stalinism, it means you support him. It's not my fault that your own position is contradictory and confused. You either support Titoism as an alternative to "Stalinism," or you don't, in which case you're only interested in stirring up the pot and wasting our time.


And he called me an upholder of Bernstein reformism even though Bernstein actually rejected outright Hegel and early Marx, which demonstrates Questionable's complete lack of knowledge of actual Marxist thought while he criticises others.

I call you this because you subscribe to the theory of evolutionary socialism, that a proletariat-based party can win parliament and revise the constitution to give the means of production to the working class. I'm not sure what there is to argue about here. Just because Berstein didn't like Hegel does not mean that your approach to reformism is any less identical to his.


visibly hoping I wouldn't answer again.

I have no issue responding to you if you say something worth a response, but if you're going to give childish answers like "Good for you" which are aimed at ignoring what I've said rather than addressing it, then the exchange is pointless because you refuse to confront opposing views.

you're trying to imply that I'm intimidated by your intellect, which is laughable seeing as not only are your opinions on Marxism faulty, but you've been factually wrong multiple times, such as calling Stalin a Menshevik. You are both ignorant and stupid.

If you have something intelligent to say, I'll always respond to it. But like I said, someone who thinks "Good for you" is a proper response in a reasonable debate will not have very much intelligent to say at all.

[Ismail]

This is the first part of my ''racist comment". Because of the genuine inferiority complex that we regularly see with Albanian (and all sorts of) nationalists was being displayed by Questionable through his two remarks quoted in my post. Because calling Albanians an oppressed people implying that Yugoslavia was an oppressor is very common in Albania, and vice versa. I understand it, as a Marxist I'm against it, but its a historical grudge match that is part of their history. How is that racist?What "inferiority complex" do you see? Are you denying that Albanians were an oppressed nation? Why were they denied the status of a republic then? Why did the Yugoslav state have to send out the army to suppress Kosovar Albanian workers and students in 1981?

And it has already been pointed out by the two actual Slav posters on this forum why your comment is racist.


Now, here I'm saying that if he isn't Albanian, then he's simply painting Albanians as some kind of oppressed people (even though he said there is only proletariat and bourgeoisie earlier on) in order to suit his tendency and politics, that is Anti-titoism, which is a disgusting.Or, you know, he's pointing out that Albanians in Kosovo were an oppressed nation, which was the opinion of the Comintern as well as Albanian and Yugoslav Communists, the latter up until Tito's time.

Also your comment, "even though he said there is only proletariat and bourgeoisie earlier on," displays yet another aspect of Marxism you are ignorant about. As Lenin noted (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1905/tactics/ep-s3.htm), "In using the word 'people,' Marx did not thereby gloss over class distinctions, but combined definite elements that were capable of carrying the revolution to completion." The oppression of the Albanian people in Kosovo affected just about every Albanian regardless of class, though doubtlessly there were collaborators among the ranks of tribal leaders and feudal landowners, etc. who sought accommodation with the Great-Serbian bourgeoisie.


The only ultra-nationalist/racist possibly present here is therefore Questionable who called Albanians oppressed by Yugoslavia, an absolutely laughable claim considering Yugoslavia, even when it was once under the tyranny of Serbian ultra-nationalists in its final hours, didn't care what Albania got up to, with the exception of the Kosovar question, which has yet to be resolved.It's "ultra-nationalist/racist" to claim a nation is being oppressed? What?

The rest of your paragraph is incomprehensibly stupid. Obviously we are talking about Kosovo, where half of the Albanian nation lives.

[TheEmancipator]

If you're defending him as a champion against Stalinism, it means you support him. It's not my fault that your own position is contradictory and confused. You either support Titoism as an alternative to "Stalinism," or you don't, in which case you're only interested in stirring up the pot and wasting our time.

So I am not allowed to expose the rank hypocrisy of the Hoxhaists who criticise Tito?


I call you this because you subscribe to the theory of evolutionary socialism, that a proletariat-based party can win parliament and revise the constitution to give the means of production to the working class. I'm not sure what there is to argue about here. Just because Berstein didn't like Hegel does not mean that your approach to reformism is any less identical to his.This is such an oversimplification of political theory its almost surreal.


I have no issue responding to you if you say something worth a response, but if you're going to give childish answers like "Good for you" which are aimed at ignoring what I've said rather than addressing it, then the exchange is pointless because you refuse to confront opposing views.

If you have something intelligent to say, I'll always respond to it. But like I said, someone who thinks "Good for you" is a proper response in a reasonable debate will not have very much intelligent to say at all.You didn't understand why I said "good for you". I explained just above that that I do not think nation-states represent a class character (ie : Yugoslavia = bourgeois; USSR = Proleteriat) I am not a Marcyist or MTW. So you calling NAM members bourgeois doesn't interest me in the slightest. Within the context of the Cold War, it is IMO the only sane thing to do though.


you're trying to imply that I'm intimidated by your intellect,No, I honestly don't know where you dreamt that up. Maybe the same dream in which I am in any way a Titoist.


which is laughable seeing as not only are your opinions on Marxism faulty, but you've been factually wrong multiple times,

So have you, saying Stalin has defended every working class movement. SPanish Civil War? Greek Civil War?


such as calling Stalin a Menshevik.

No, but he was kicked out of higher education for forming a Social Democratic movement, according to Wiki at least.


You are both ignorant and stupid.Orsm debatin skilz lol.

[Ismail]

No, but he was kicked out of higher education for forming a Social Democratic movement, according to Wiki at least.Yes, the... Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party. The party of Russian Marxists. When the split between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks occurred in 1903 Stalin sided with the Bolsheviks. It became the Communist Party in 1918 after Lenin pointed out the term "social-democratic" had been taken over by renegades and reformists.

You obviously have a severely deficient knowledge of history.

[Questionable]

No, but he was kicked out of higher education for forming a Social Democratic movement, according to Wiki at least.

I hope you recognize that social-democracy was genuine communism before the wave of Bernstein-led reformism I mentioned earlier gave it a bad name, thus inspiring the Bolsheviks to drop the label.

The Communist Party of Soviet Russia got its start as the Russian Social-Democratic Workers' Party.

Ergo, Stalin was never a Menshevik, or any kind of reformist.

[TheEmancipator]

What "inferiority complex" do you see? Are you denying that Albanians were an oppressed nation? Why were they denied the status of a republic then? Why did the Yugoslav state have to send out the army to suppress Kosovar Albanian workers and students in 1981?

If Yugoslavia did not want a Kosovar state Tito would not have created the concept of Kosovo in the first place, that is an autonomous region in Yugoslavia.

The Kosovar movements were the result of Albanian nationalism being promoted not only by Hoxha to suit his expansionist designs, but later on after the Balkan War by Western imperialism, hence why NATO has a base there and the Albanian terrorists are funded by the USA.

Congratulations Ismail, you are prepared to support imperialist interests and nationalist bias, because your prophet is from Albania, and therefore Albania's interests should always come first.


And it has already been pointed out by the two actual Slav posters on this forum why your comment is racist.If they are offended by "frustrated Bosnian or Turk" then I doubt they are from the Balkans. It does not imply anything racist, just the suggestion that Questionable could be a) Bosnian or Turk then b) frustrated, because it takes a lot of frustration to paint Albanians as being oppressed by (what they would call Serbian, because of their ethnicity) Yugoslavia.


Or, you know, he's pointing out that Albanians in Kosovo were an oppressed nation, which was the opinion of the Comintern as well as Albanian and Yugoslav Communists, the latter up until Tito's time.Albanians as an ethnic group were not more or less oppressed than say Serbs or Croats. He was implying that they are the victims of some kind of Yugoslav oppression.



Also your comment, "even though he said there is only proletariat and bourgeoisie earlier on," displays yet another aspect of Marxism you are ignorant about. As Lenin noted (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1905/tactics/ep-s3.htm), "In using the word 'people,' Marx did not thereby gloss over class distinctions, but combined definite elements that were capable of carrying the revolution to completion." The oppression of the Albanian people in Kosovo affected just about every Albanian regardless of class, though doubtlessly there were collaborators among the ranks of tribal leaders and feudal landowners, etc. who sought accommodation with the Great-Serbian bourgeoisie.Look at his post again and what he was replying to.


It's "ultra-nationalist/racist" to claim a nation is being oppressed? What?Its offensive to suggest that Albanians are the only victims in this kind of struggle and are the victims of opression from Yugoslavia. It reminds me or FLemish nationalists who blame Walloons for their historical problems even though it was the French-speaking bourgeoisie who oppressed them and the Walloon people. The same with Albanian nationalists.


The rest of your paragraph is incomprehensibly stupid. Obviously we are talking about Kosovo, where half of the Albanian nation lives.This does not make Kosovo Albanian. Kosovar independence was specifically promoted to destabilise Yugoslavia in the eighties. It is a region that has been Serbian for centuries, and where Albanian ethnic groups could live there and speak their language thanks to Yugoslavia's federal reforms.

I thought you were better than swallowing the current lies about Kosovo Ismail.


Yes, the... Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party. The party of Russian Marxists. When the split between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks occurred in 1903 Stalin sided with the Bolsheviks. It became the Communist Party in 1918 after Lenin pointed out the term "social-democratic" had been taken over by renegades and reformists.

You obviously have a severely deficient knowledge of history.

My mistake, although I fail to see the original relevance. Stalin remains a revisionist of revolutionary Marxism. His "permanent revolution" was an excuse for reformism too, an admission that the revolution is only political.

I have no interest in discussing a poetic despot though, he's been discussed enough and even if we were to produce hard evidence you would just deny it, because you are far too dogmatically attached to your hipster tendency, Hoxhaism.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

If Yugoslavia did not want a Kosovar state Tito would not have created the concept of Kosovo in the first place, that is an autonomous region in Yugoslavia.

The Kosovar movements were the result of Albanian nationalism being promoted not only by Hoxha to suit his expansionist designs, but later on after the Balkan War by Western imperialism, hence why NATO has a base there and the Albanian terrorists are funded by the USA.

Congratulations Ismail, you are prepared to support imperialist interests and nationalist bias, because your prophet is from Albania, and therefore Albania's interests should always come first.

The fact that the struggle of Kosovar Albanians for self-determination is currently being used by one of the imperialist blocs does not invalidate the democratic right of self-determination. Of course, this right is not absolute, and I doubt that many people supported the imperialist aggression against Serbia, which was ostensibly intended to support the Kosovo separatists. Yet at the present moment, both Serbia and Kosovo are bourgeois states. What sense does it make to agitate for the "return" of Kosovo to bourgeois Serbia? Yes, the Kosovar state is in a fairly bad shape, and is currently oppressing its Serb and Romani population - which is why the slogan of self-determination for Serbs in Kosovo and democratic integration for the Roma needs to be raised.


If they are offended by "frustrated Bosnian or Turk" then I doubt they are from the Balkans.

Because, really, who from the Balkans would be offended by this sort of Tuđmanite (or Šešeljite, it's all the same really) rhetoric? Keep digging yourself in, this has become entertaining to watch.


It does not imply anything racist, just the suggestion that Questionable could be a) Bosnian or Turk then b) frustrated, because it takes a lot of frustration to paint Albanians as being oppressed by (what they would call Serbian, because of their ethnicity) Yugoslavia.

"[W]hat they would call Serbian, because of their ethnicity"? Oh wow. This really is the Tuđmanite rhetoric of the "genetic animus" of Serbs toward Croats transposed onto Albanians (and Bosniaks and Turks because really all those Muslim people are the same) and Serbs.

And it doesn't take "frustration" to recognise the oppressed status of the Albanian nation in Yugoslavia, but a bloody brain. Ismail has already cited several examples of this oppression, and you have not addressed a single one of them.


Albanians as an ethnic group were not more or less oppressed than say Serbs or Croats.

In Serbia and Macedonia, they were. Of course, the Serbs in Croatia were also oppressed, although not to the extent of Kosovars.


This does not make Kosovo Albanian. Kosovar independence was specifically promoted to destabilise Yugoslavia in the eighties. It is a region that has been Serbian for centuries, and where Albanian ethnic groups could live there and speak their language thanks to Yugoslavia's federal reforms.

Poland was Russian for centuries, and the Poles could even live in the Vistula Kray and speak their language. Should Poland be annexed to Russia, then?


My mistake, although I fail to see the original relevance. Stalin remains a revisionist of revolutionary Marxism. His "permanent revolution" was an excuse for reformism too, an admission that the revolution is only political.

The permanent revolution was Trotsky's theory you... you confused man. Sorry, but it really is obvious that you are out of your depth here.

[TheEmancipator]

The fact that the struggle of Kosovar Albanians for self-determination is currently being used by one of the imperialist blocs does not invalidate the democratic right of self-determination. Of course, this right is not absolute, and I doubt that many people supported the imperialist aggression against Serbia, which was ostensibly intended to support the Kosovo separatists. Yet at the present moment, both Serbia and Kosovo are bourgeois states. What sense does it make to agitate for the "return" of Kosovo to bourgeois Serbia? Yes, the Kosovar state is in a fairly bad shape, and is currently oppressing its Serb and Romani population - which is why the slogan of self-determination for Serbs in Kosovo and democratic integration for the Roma needs to be raised.

I want the return of Yugoslavia, preferably under a socialist regime, with "Kosovar" Albanians having self-determination if they so wish. You seem pretty happy to keep the status quo of rampant nationalism created by the West in the Balkans though, all while condemning Western intervention in Kosovo.


Because, really, who from the Balkans would be offended by this sort of Tuđmanite (or Šešeljite, it's all the same really) rhetoric? Keep digging yourself in, this has become entertaining to watch.

Only liberal Westerners would be offended. What is racist in the words "frustrated Bosnian or Turk"?


"[W]hat they would call Serbian, because of their ethnicity"? Oh wow. This really is the Tuđmanite rhetoric of the "genetic animus" of Serbs toward Croats transposed onto Albanians (and Bosniaks and Turks because really all those Muslim people are the same) and Serbs.

Because the only ethnic divisions I see in the Balkans are religious divides. The difference between an Albanian, a Bosniak, a Serb and a Croat ethnically is hard to tell. This idea that the Albanian people are some kind of "special race" that have never been touched resembles the Basque nationalism on display in Spain.


And it doesn't take "frustration" to recognise the oppressed status of the Albanian nation in Yugoslavia, but a bloody brain. Ismail has already cited several examples of this oppression, and you have not addressed a single one of them.

Again, these protests in Kosovo were always drilled up and then funded by either Albania or Western interventionists intent on destabalising the Titoist regime. Note that some high profile Serbian ultra-nationalists have also been exposed as CIA agents and exempt from war crimes charges.


In Serbia and Macedonia, they were. Of course, the Serbs in Croatia were also oppressed, although not to the extent of Kosovars.

No, don't just paint one people as more oppressed than another. Albanians were oppressed. Serbs were oppressed. Bosnians oppressed. There is no moral high ground here. They were all bourgeois nationalist regimes.


Poland was Russian for centuries, and the Poles could even live in the Vistula Kray and speak their language. Should Poland be annexed to Russia, then?

Completely different. Kosovo is an acitve part of the land that has always been known as Serbia. The only reason Kosovo exists is because Tito responded to Albanian ''Kosovar'' pressures by granting them autonomy.



The permanent revolution was Trotsky's theory you... you confused man. Sorry, but it really is obvious that you are out of your depth here.

Stalin also used the term ''permanent revolution''.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

I want the return of Yugoslavia, preferably under a socialist regime, with "Kosovar" Albanians having self-determination if they so wish.

Preferably under a socialist regime? Bourgeois Yugoslavia would simply be another bourgeois state, and not even a particularly stable one given the real economic differences between the former Yugoslav states. And why Yugoslavia? The programme of revolutionary communists in the Balkans has always called for a socialist union of the Balkan peoples. Why single out the "land of South Slavs" (except Bulgarians of course)?


You seem pretty happy to keep the status quo of rampant nationalism created by the West in the Balkans though, all while condemning Western intervention in Kosovo.

Of course, supporting the democratic right of the Kosovar Albanians and the Serbs of Kosovo and Metohija to self-determination, supporting the integration of the Roma into Kosovar society - all of this is "rampant nationalism", whereas demanding that Kosovo be annexed to Serbia because the area was held by prince Vlastimir in the 10th century, that is not nationalist.


Only liberal Westerners would be offended.

Given that two socialists from the Balkans have noted how idiotically offensive your statement is, you either know that this is not the case, or you are outright delusional.


What is racist in the words "frustrated Bosnian or Turk"?

Not only do you lump all "Muslim" people into one amorphous mass, you imply that the only reason anyone could oppose the Titoist policy is their ethnicity. It's pretty much the same as stating that only "frustrated Chechens" could oppose Putin or "frustrated Copts" the Ikhwan.


Because the only ethnic divisions I see in the Balkans are religious divides. The difference between an Albanian, a Bosniak, a Serb and a Croat ethnically is hard to tell. This idea that the Albanian people are some kind of "special race" that have never been touched resembles the Basque nationalism on display in Spain.

"Special race that have never been touched"? Er, what? I mean, I guess you are referring to the intermarriages between the various ethnic groups in the Balkans, but no one has ever claimed that Albanians are "pure" anything. Nations are not genetic categories. And really, the statement that it's "hard to tell the difference" between an Albanian and a Bosniak just betrays your profound ignorance. Try the fact that they most likely speak completely different languages! As for religion, Islam, Christian Orthodoxy and Catholicism are all prominent among Albanians. And there are obvious differences between Muslim Albanians and the Muslim Turks, Bosniaks and Gorani in Kosovo.


Again, these protests in Kosovo were always drilled up and then funded by either Albania or Western interventionists intent on destabalising the Titoist regime. Note that some high profile Serbian ultra-nationalists have also been exposed as CIA agents and exempt from war crimes charges.

Even if this were the case - these claims are made from time to time, but without any real evidence - how do you think this works? Secret Albanian agents sneak across the border, show some Albanian who was previously perfectly content with their life a few lek and, there you have it, the previously happy Albanian has become miserable and angry. Or are they faking it in order to be lavishly awarded by the ultra-rich Albania?


No, don't just paint one people as more oppressed than another. Albanians were oppressed. Serbs were oppressed. Bosnians oppressed. There is no moral high ground here. They were all bourgeois nationalist regimes.

Who is talking about "moral high ground"? The fact is that the Titoist nationality policy was rotten to the core.


Completely different. Kosovo is an acitve part of the land that has always been known as Serbia. The only reason Kosovo exists is because Tito responded to Albanian ''Kosovar'' pressures by granting them autonomy.

Again, why do historical designations matter more than the current situation on the ground? Prior to the First World War, Transylvania was also part of a region that had "always" been known as Hungary. Slovakia as well.


Stalin also used the term ''permanent revolution''.

Once or twice before explicitly denouncing the theory.

[TheEmancipator]

Preferably under a socialist regime? Bourgeois Yugoslavia would simply be another bourgeois state, and not even a particularly stable one given the real economic differences between the former Yugoslav states.

Because the Balkans had yet to go through their bourgeois revolution. Tito was building Yugoslav nationalism in order to unite the people. Marx actually called the Balkans a "non-historical" entity. They only reached Feudalism in the 14th/15th Century. The idea of Yugoslavia had to be the priority before socialism.


And why Yugoslavia? The programme of revolutionary communists in the Balkans has always called for a socialist union of the Balkan peoples. Why single out the "land of South Slavs" (except Bulgarians of course)?[/QUOTE]

Because Yugoslavia has the aim of uniting the West Balkan people who have more in common culturally than Greeks, Bulgars, Hungarians and Romanians.


Of course, supporting the democratic right of the Kosovar Albanians and the Serbs of Kosovo and Metohija to self-determination, supporting the integration of the Roma into Kosovar society - all of this is "rampant nationalism", whereas demanding that Kosovo be annexed to Serbia because the area was held by prince Vlastimir in the 10th century, that is not nationalist.You support the state of Kosovo and the various other nation states of the Balkans instead of a united Federal Yugoslavia. You must know that all these states (Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia, FYROM, Kosovo) are pseudo-nationalist creations by Western influence, the exception being Kosovo, an invention of Tito's precisely to make sure Albanians there had the right to self-determination, all while making sure Hoxha didn't get his greedy hands on more Yugoslav land.


Given that two socialists from the Balkans have noted how idiotically offensive your statement is, you either know that this is not the case, or you are outright delusional.Why are they offended? Can Bosnians and Turks not be frustrated? It takes political correctness to a whole new absurd level. I have bulgarian, Greek and bosnian friends and acquaintances who discuss the Balkans and each other in less than friendly terms but are not at all "offended". They just take their sides, and I usually perceive that their (previous) religion is what differentiates them, not their skin colour, etc.

If you think "frustrated Bosnian or Turk", referring to the muslim element involved throughout history in the Balkans, is a racial slur, it is you that is delusional.


Not only do you lump all "Muslim" people into one amorphous mass,Bullshit. I would've called him a "frustrated Muslim", wouldn't I?


you imply that the only reason anyone could oppose the Titoist policy is their ethnicity.No, I said that could be a factor. I then went on to describe the only other possible alternative for the unmitigated, biased, historically revisionist slander of Tito and Yugoslavia : Upholding Prophet Hoxha. Which is probably the case. And is still as disgusting, if not more so, than nationalist bias.


It's pretty much the same as stating that only "frustrated Chechens" could oppose Putin or "frustrated Copts" the Ikhwan.No, what the fuck are you talking about? This makes absolutely no sense.



"Special race that have never been touched"? Er, what? I mean, I guess you are referring to the intermarriages between the various ethnic groups in the Balkans, but no one has ever claimed that Albanians are "pure" anything. Nations are not genetic categories. And really, the statement that it's "hard to tell the difference" between an Albanian and a Bosniak just betrays your profound ignorance. Try the fact that they most likely speak completely different languages! As for religion, Islam, Christian Orthodoxy and Catholicism are all prominent among Albanians. And there are obvious differences between Muslim Albanians and the Muslim Turks, Bosniaks and Gorani in Kosovo.The former Yugoslav "nations" and their ethnicities are determined by their previous religious tendency. A "Bosnian" is just a muslim "Serb". A "Serb" is just an Orthodox "Bosnian". You cannot tell the difference apart from dialect, in which case we could divide Europe into a thousand pieces.

Ethnically they have a lot in common, even with the historically detached Albania, and do not really need to be divided up into small nations as the West intended, and as you would have it.

Interestingly, a lot of people speak Serbo-Croat in Former Yugoslavia.


Even if this were the case - these claims are made from time to time, but without any real evidence - how do you think this works? Secret Albanian agents sneak across the border, show some Albanian who was previously perfectly content with their life a few lek and, there you have it, the previously happy Albanian has become miserable and angry. Or are they faking it in order to be lavishly awarded by the ultra-rich Albania?Arming and funding the "Kosovo Liberation Army" as well as trying to convince Muslims living in South Serbia that they are really "Albanian" when they are not. They are Yugoslavs.


Who is talking about "moral high ground"? The fact is that the Titoist nationality policy was rotten to the core.Sounds like the "bourgeois moralistic" judgement to me.


Again, why do historical designations matter more than the current situation on the ground? Prior to the First World War, Transylvania was also part of a region that had "always" been known as Hungary. Slovakia as well. I hear the same thing said about Israel. "Who cares about History and borders, we've settled here now, its ours"


Once or twice before explicitly denouncing the theory.Yes, but he did advocate it and use the term "permanent revolution". Why don't you be a man and admit a mistake as I did?

[Ismail]

If Yugoslavia did not want a Kosovar state Tito would not have created the concept of Kosovo in the first place, that is an autonomous region in Yugoslavia.Tito evidently didn't want a Kosovar Albanian state considering he... didn't actually make one.


The Kosovar movements were the result of Albanian nationalism being promoted not only by Hoxha to suit his expansionist designs, but later on after the Balkan War by Western imperialism, hence why NATO has a base there and the Albanian terrorists are funded by the USA.Alternatively, the Albanian national liberation movement in Kosovo originated in 1913 (i.e. when the region was severed from the newly-independent Albania) and led by such prominent national figures as Isa Boletini and Bajram Curri, the latter later having contact with the Bolsheviks. Since national oppression was never ended in the ensuing decades, the basis for responses to that oppression from among the oppressed likewise never ceased.


Albanians as an ethnic group were not more or less oppressed than say Serbs or Croats. He was implying that they are the victims of some kind of Yugoslav oppression.That's ridiculous. Did Serbs and Croats face mass expulsion from their regions in the 40's-50's on the grounds they were actually of a different nationality? 'Cause Muslim Albanians in Kosovo certainly did, being classified as "Turks" per the prewar policy of the Yugoslav monarchy.


Its offensive to suggest that Albanians are the only victims in this kind of struggle and are the victims of opression from Yugoslavia. It reminds me or FLemish nationalists who blame Walloons for their historical problems even though it was the French-speaking bourgeoisie who oppressed them and the Walloon people. The same with Albanian nationalists.This is an incomprehensible comparison. Any Albanian exploiter of Albanians in Yugoslavia was almost certainly acting in the role of a collaborator of the Serbian bourgeoisie in the interwar period. Using this logic the national movements in Tsarist-era Central Asia were illegitimate because local feudal lords working with the good graces of Great-Russian imperial interests also partook in the exploitation of the peasantry. In reality all this meant was that in Kosovo there was double oppression: national and economic.


This does not make Kosovo Albanian. Kosovar independence was specifically promoted to destabilise Yugoslavia in the eighties. It is a region that has been Serbian for centuries,It was controlled by Serbia. But it has always had a continuous Albanian population, which derived from its ancient Illyrian population, and obviously by the time nations actually developed Albanians were clearly a majority in the area.


because you are far too dogmatically attached to your hipster tendency, Hoxhaism.Hipster tendency?


the exception being Kosovo, an invention of Tito's precisely to make sure Albanians there had the right to self-determination, all while making sure Hoxha didn't get his greedy hands on more Yugoslav land.How did they have the right to self-determination? The 1963 Constitution stated in Article 112 that, "The autonomous rights and duties and the basic principles of organization in the autonomous provinces shall be determined by republican constitution." In other words, Serbs and not Albanians fundamentally decided what went on in Kosovo.

And what do you mean "more Yugoslav land"? That, like so much else in your posts, makes no sense. Also you make Tito out to be really petty, staying up at night going "OH BOY I SURE HOPE MY HEAVY-HANDED TACTICS WILL KEEP THAT DAMN HOXHA AWAY FROM... REUNITING THE ALBANIAN NATION AS WE PROMISED WE WOULD."


Ethnically they have a lot in common, even with the historically detached Albania, and do not really need to be divided up into small nations as the West intended, and as you would have it.Albanians aren't Slavs. That alone is a pretty significant difference from the Serbs, Croats, Bosnians, Macedonians and Montenegrins who made up the Yugoslav Federation, and in reflected in the fact that Albanian obviously isn't a Slavic language.


Arming and funding the "Kosovo Liberation Army" as well as trying to convince Muslims living in South Serbia that they are really "Albanian" when they are not. They are Yugoslavs.This is no less absurd and chauvinist than Turkish reactionaries claiming a few decades back that Kurds are "mountain Turks."

There's a difference between claiming a community of nations (i.e. the Soviet peoples) and claiming that Albanians belonged to the same process of consolidation among Slavs that adherents to the Yugoslav idea promoted. It is doubly absurd considering that, again, Albanians are not Slavs.


I hear the same thing said about Israel. "Who cares about History and borders, we've settled here now, its ours"Actually that has more in common with Serbian claims to Kosovo, inasmuch as Israelis claim on religious grounds that they have a "right" to the land, just as Serbian reaction claims "spiritual" rights to Kosovo. The Serbians even have a myth relating to how they were all expelled by the Turks and their Albanian Muslim collaborators.


Yes, but he did advocate it and use the term "permanent revolution". Why don't you be a man and admit a mistake as I did?The term had a different meaning when used by Trotsky though. This is the Soviet (or "Stalinist") definition: http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/permanent+revolution

[TheEmancipator]

Tito evidently didn't want a Kosovar Albanian state considering he... didn't actually make one.

Then why did he grant Kosovo autonomous power? He created the concept of "Kosovo" as a separate entity.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_Autonomous_Province_of_Kosovo


Alternatively, the Albanian national liberation movement in Kosovo originated in 1913 (i.e. when the region was severed from the newly-independent Albania) and led by such prominent national figures as Isa Boletini and Bajram Curri, the latter later having contact with the Bolsheviks. Since national oppression was never ended in the ensuing decades, the basis for responses to that oppression from among the oppressed likewise never ceased.Except the Kosovo "Albanians" have never been Albanian. They were Yugoslav citizens of Albanian origin. They emigrated to the region now called Kosovo, which was always a geopolitcal part of Serbia.

Even the Kosovar rebels were forced to "admit" they weren't working on behalf of Albanian interests.


That's ridiculous. Did Serbs and Croats face mass expulsion from their regions in the 40's-50's on the grounds they were actually of a different nationality?What exactly are you talking about here?

'Cause Muslim Albanians in Kosovo certainly did, being classified as "Turks" per the prewar policy of the Yugoslav monarchy.[/QUOTE]

The Yugoslav monarchy was of a reactionary, xenophobic sort. Not a representation of Yugoslavia proper.


This is an incomprehensible comparison. Any Albanian exploiter of Albanians in Yugoslavia was almost certainly acting in the role of a collaborator of the Serbian bourgeoisie in the interwar period.You're basing this off speculation. You're actually saying that only Yugoslavs could possibly oppress Albanians.


Using this logic the national movements in Tsarist-era Central Asia were illegitimate because local feudal lords working with the good graces of Great-Russian imperial interests also partook in the exploitation of the peasantry. In reality all this meant was that in Kosovo there was double oppression: national and economic.They were granted autonomy and were actually the most independent state in the Federation. What more do you want?

Of right, you want it to become part of "Greater Albania", like most Albanian nationalists.



It was controlled by Serbia. But it has always had a continuous Albanian population, which derived from its ancient Illyrian population, and obviously by the time nations actually developed Albanians were clearly a majority in the area.Yes, bog-standard nationalism, right here folks. "We descend from the great people of such and such region, we have always existed throughout time, etc...Albanian "ethnicity" is probably as Slavic as the Yugoslav nations, its just Albania has always maintained its "independence" from "evil Yugoslavia".


Hipster tendency?You, like many Stalinists, uphold his doctrine for provocative reasons. You did not live under Stalin and Hoxha, and all your sources are from Hoxha or other M-Ls. I think you're a decent guy, pretty intelligent, but deep down I cannot possibly understand how you are so obseessed with Hoxha and Stalin, and Cold War geopolitics, all subjects which are things that belong aptly in the history forum.

Nobody here is saying Titoism is a valid form of socialism that can/should be used today. If we are defending Tito, we are defending him because of your vicious lies and exaggerations all because of the timeless grudge match between Yugoslavs and Albanians, and the subject of Kosovo, not because one is a better socialist than the other. Sad really.


How did they have the right to self-determination? The 1963 Constitution stated in Article 112 that, "The autonomous rights and duties and the basic principles of organization in the autonomous provinces shall be determined by republican constitution." In other words, Serbs and not Albanians fundamentally decided what went on in Kosovo.This is bullshit and you know it. The Federal government was a meeting between all the entities in Yugoslavia and all had an equal say. It only became Serbian-dominated when the Serbian ultra-nationalists practically proclaimed all Bosnian Orthodox Serbs and decided that Serbia should therefore control Yugoslavia. Hence why the Civil War broke out.

Kosovo was under the jurisdiction of the Federal government, yes, like all entities in the Federal Republic. The protests were actually met with action, not necessarily open force (like Hungary and Prague). The Univeristy of Pristina was created and the Albanian language recognised, something you are keen to not mention Ismail.


And what do you mean "more Yugoslav land"? That, like so much else in your posts, makes no sense. Also you make Tito out to be really petty, staying up at night going "OH BOY I SURE HOPE MY HEAVY-HANDED TACTICS WILL KEEP THAT DAMN HOXHA AWAY FROM... REUNITING THE ALBANIAN NATION AS WE PROMISED WE WOULD."Ok, you believe in Greater Albania yet deny you are a nationalist. Interesting.


Albanians aren't Slavs. That alone is a pretty significant difference from the Serbs, Croats, Bosnians, Macedonians and Montenegrins who made up the Yugoslav Federation, and in reflected in the fact that Albanian obviously isn't a Slavic language.Many Albanians were descended from slavs, many Hellenes too.


This is no less absurd and chauvinist than Turkish reactionaries claiming a few decades back that Kurds are "mountain Turks."

There's a difference between claiming a community of nations (i.e. the Soviet peoples) and claiming that Albanians belonged to the same process of consolidation among Slavs that adherents to the Yugoslav idea promoted. It is doubly absurd considering that, again, Albanians are not Slavs.I am not saying Albanians should have been part of Yugoslavia. I am saying the differences between the two are not as wide as you think.


Actually that has more in common with Serbian claims to Kosovo, inasmuch as Israelis claim on religious grounds that they have a "right" to the land, just as Serbian reaction claims "spiritual" rights to Kosovo. The Serbians even have a myth relating to how they were all expelled by the Turks and their Albanian Muslim collaborators.They were expelled by the Ottoman Empire, yes. As were Palestinians by Zionists. I don't personally want to rekick people out of their homes, and am happy to see former Albanians living on Serbian land, as long as they recognise it is historically a part of Serbia.


The term had a different meaning when used by Trotsky though. This is the Soviet (or "Stalinist") definition: http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/permanent+revolutionSemendyaev was implying that Stalin never had any such doctrine as "permanent revolution", that it was exclusively Trotsky's idea. He got it wrong, it happens. Now let's see him admit it and take his comments that I am "confused" back.

[EdvardK]

We have to acknowledge that Tito's Yugoslavia existed in a divided world and that Tito walked the fence between east and west. It was inevitable that once the world ceased to exist in a way in which it was divided into two poles, Yugoslavia would become irrelevant and be tossed to the side. Tito's Yugoslavia could only exist in the world as it was during the Cold War.

Comrade, SFRY being one of the founding members of the Non-Aligned Movement, it would've been relevant even after the Cold War if SFRY Presidency truly followed Tito's path as they claimed they would. Unfortunately, they focused on grabbing hold of Tito's legacy. What you call walking the fence was actually a 3rd way in the Cold War, not East nor West, but an independent path (the path of the Non-Aligned). SFRY wanted to prevent East or West to grab hold of the poor 3rd world countries. By uniting them under the banner of the Non-Aligned Movement, they were becoming a (economic and political) force which they could otherwise never be.

[EdvardK]

The Yugoslav revisionists declared after 1956 that what existed in the USSR was "bureaucratic socialism" (before that they were calling it something quite worse), to this they counterpoised so-called "workers' self-management," which was supposedly in line with Marxism but which, in fact, they admitted they delved into the writings of Proudhon and other petty-bourgeois theorists in originating it. They also claimed that life was moving towards the achievement of socialism through "evolutionary" (reformist) rather than revolutionary methods through advances in technology which were supposedly blurring the differences between the two social systems, they concurred with the Soviet revisionists that class struggle no longer exists under socialism, etc.
Do you know that the revolution in SFRY happened in 1941 and culminated in expelling the oppressors in May of 1945? After the WW2, PRY (People's Republic of Yugoslavia) started to develop industry (and farmland). So, when you're saying Yugoslavia was "revisionist" and adopted a "evolutionary" (reformist) methods, let me ask you - were the communist party members supposed to shoot and kill people to show their revolutionairy flair?
Isn't it better to develop in steps and go towards the goal of enabling people to live better and achieve higher living standard?

[Ismail]

Then why did he grant Kosovo autonomous power?He didn't, except as a legal fiction that only assumed some powers in the late 60's with the downfall of Ranković (who provided a convenient scapegoat) and the struggle of the Kosovar Albanian workers and students for cultural equality.


Except the Kosovo "Albanians" have never been Albanian. They were Yugoslav citizens of Albanian origin. They emigrated to the region now called Kosovo, which was always a geopolitcal part of Serbia.You're basically talking about "emigrants" who lived in the region for hundreds of years at the very least. They self-identified as Albanians, they spoke the Gheg dialect of Albanian (which is shared throughout northern Albania),


Even the Kosovar rebels were forced to "admit" they weren't working on behalf of Albanian interests.When? Bajram Curri declared King Zog a traitor to Albania for, among other reasons, making a deal with the Yugoslav monarchy to suppress Kosovar Albanian activities within Albania Isa Boletini died during his attempts to reunite Kosovo with Albania, Azem Galica died in battles with Serb forces, etc.


What exactly are you talking about here?The mass expulsion of Kosovar Albanians from the region to Turkey, on the grounds they were "Turks." This policy was carried out by both the Yugoslav monarchy and Titoite Yugoslavia, and is described in various works, notably those by Miranda Vickers and Noel Malcolm.


The Yugoslav monarchy was of a reactionary, xenophobic sort. Not a representation of Yugoslavia proper.
You're basing this off speculation.So the Yugoslav monarchy is reactionary and xenophobic, but it didn't engage in national oppression? And if it did engage in national oppression, no one from the ranks of the oppressed ever collaborated with the oppressor? I'm pretty sure not every tribal leader in Kosovo rebelled against the Serbs.


You're actually saying that only Yugoslavs could possibly oppress Albanians.Nah, the Greek government repressed Albanians too. Not to mention the Turks, of course.


They were granted autonomy and were actually the most independent state in the Federation. What more do you want?They weren't a state, they were an "autonomous province" of Serbia. They were so "independent" that Milošević and Co. invalidated any autonomy they had without much effort, with the Albanian legislators futilely protesting this move.

As Hoxha said at the 8th Congress of the PLA in 1981, on the initiatives of the Kosovar Albanian people,

"If the present Yugoslav leadership proceeds on the course it has chosen and is pursuing, the opposition of the Albanians will continue, will grow and become even more acute. Only a solution of the national question which is well considered by the two sides without passion, a solution which is accepted and approved by the people of Kosova, can eliminate this very complicated situation which has been created not by the people of Kosova, but by Great-Serb chauvinism. The people of Kosova proposed the fairest and most suitable solution in this situation, which is difficult for Yugoslavia and for themselves. The demand to raise Kosova to the status of a Republic within the Federation is a just demand. It does not threaten the existence of the Federation....

Albania has never made territorial claims against Yugoslavia, and no demand for border re-adjustments can be found in its documents."
(Enver Hoxha. Selected Works Vol. VI. Tirana: 8 Nëntori Publishing House. 1987. pp. 413-414.)


Yes, bog-standard nationalism, right here folks. "We descend from the great people of such and such region, we have always existed throughout time, etc...Albanian "ethnicity" is probably as Slavic as the Yugoslav nations, its just Albania has always maintained its "independence" from "evil Yugoslavia".It's standard historiography that Albanians are descended from the Illyrians. I've never heard them considered as Slavs, unless Romanians and Greeks qualify as well.


The protests were actually met with action, not necessarily open force (like Hungary and Prague). The Univeristy of Pristina was created and the Albanian language recognised, something you are keen to not mention Ismail.The only "action" the 1981 protests met with was tanks. As for the late 60's protests, they did indeed result in the creation of a University, which had its origins also in the mutual fears of the Albanians and Yugoslavs over the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia.

The University of Prishtina opened up, then, in exceptional conditions with the initiative being in the hands of the Albanians on both sides of the border. The State University of Tirana donated textbooks and gave other forms of material support to its Prishtina counterpart.


Ok, you believe in Greater Albania yet deny you are a nationalist. Interesting.Again, this means that the Comintern under Lenin and Stalin, as well as the CPY until 1943, were likewise infused with Albanian nationalism.


They were expelled by the Ottoman Empire, yes. As were Palestinians by Zionists.They weren't expelled. Noel Malcolm devotes particular attention to this subject.


Semendyaev was implying that Stalin never had any such doctrine as "permanent revolution", that it was exclusively Trotsky's idea. He got it wrong, it happens. Now let's see him admit it and take his comments that I am "confused" back.Trotsky's and Stalin's views were not the same though. Just like your conception of "socialism" is obviously very different from mine.


Do you know that the revolution in SFRY happened in 1941 and culminated in expelling the oppressors in May of 1945? After the WW2, PRY (People's Republic of Yugoslavia) started to develop industry (and farmland). So, when you're saying Yugoslavia was "revisionist" and adopted a "evolutionary" (reformist) methods, let me ask you - were the communist party members supposed to shoot and kill people to show their revolutionairy flair?
Isn't it better to develop in steps and go towards the goal of enabling people to live better and achieve higher living standard?Again this ignores how industry and agriculture were allowed to develop, which in fact had its origins in the massive debts Tito and Co. accrued from the loans doled out to the country by the West so that it could serve as a prop against the socialist camp in the time of Stalin.

[EdvardK]

Again this ignores how industry and agriculture were allowed to develop, which in fact had its origins in the massive debts Tito and Co. accrued from the loans doled out to the country by the West so that it could serve as a prop against the socialist camp in the time of Stalin.
It is better to let it develop the Albanian way, by building one (1) light-bulb factory in Vlore and the rest of the money invest in revolutionairy bunkers that were facing the inside of the country? By the end of the Cold War, that Albanian way (which is the right way, according to you) successfully put Albania in the top spot of the most backward countries of Europe.
That is truly revolutionairy, my friend.

[Audeamus]

It is better to let it develop the Albanian way, by building one (1) light-bulb factory in Vlore and the rest of the money invest in revolutionairy bunkers that were facing the inside of the country? By the end of the Cold War, that Albanian way (which is the right way, according to you) successfully put Albania in the top spot of the most backward countries of Europe.
That is truly revolutionairy, my friend.

I assume you are attempting to use hyperbole here, as industrial production rose by leaps and bound in Albania, increasing by some 35 times from 1938 to 1960. When one takes into account the destruction wrought by WWII that is certainly nothing to sneeze at. Not to mention what they managed to achieve in electrification. Going from a country in 1938 where per capita output of electricity was a meager 9 kilowatt-hours (compare this with say Yugoslavia in 1938 where per capita electrical output was 75 kilowatt-hours) with entire towns and villages having no electrical power at all, to full electrification by 1970. One light bulb factory indeed.

As for how revolutionary their accomplishments were, they were certainly more revolutionary than making your economy subservient to the interests of capital as was the case in Tito's Yugoslavia though IMF loans.

I think this post is also rather emblematic of the problems of Titoism, its adherents fall into the same intellectual trap that the modern day American Tea Party movement and social-democrats have. Socialism is conflated with material prosperity and government services like welfare and healthcare (one might as well call the United States socialist, they are so prosperous after all!), while ignoring any kind of class analysis completely.


Why don't you be a man and admit a mistake as I did?

Nothing quite like a little casual sexism...

[Thirsty Crow]

I think this post is also rather emblematic of the problems of Titoism, its adherents fall into the same intellectual trap that the modern day American Tea Party movement and social-democrats have. Socialism is conflated with material prosperity and government services like welfare and healthcare (one might as well call the United States socialist, they are so prosperous after all!), while ignoring any kind of class analysis completely.

Which only finds its counterpart in the perspective you espouse, that of "productivism", also devoid of any class analysis in any meaningful sense, which then enables people to dabble in "that's more revolutionary" storytelling.

Isn't this the perspective of the modern petit bourgeois, the specialist, the technician in charge of the organization of capital accumulation, no matter how "backward" and underdeveloped it may be, the technician either as enterprise manager in immediate conflict with workers or as an element in the executive of the planning institution, in social and political conflict with workers?

[Audeamus]

Which only finds its counterpart in the perspective you espouse, that of "productivism", also devoid of any class analysis in any meaningful sense, which then enables people to dabble in "that's more revolutionary" storytelling.

Isn't this the perspective of the modern petit bourgeois, the specialist, the technician in charge of the organization of capital accumulation, no matter how "backward" and underdeveloped it may be, the technician either as enterprise manager in immediate conflict with workers or as an element in the executive of the planning institution, in social and political conflict with workers?

My pointing out that industrial productivity rose in Albania under Hoxha was not meant to prove the socialist character of Albania under Hoxha, it was meant to point out the ridiculous hyperbole EdvardK was engaging in.

[Ismail]

It is better to let it develop the Albanian way, by building one (1) light-bulb factory in Vlore and the rest of the money invest in revolutionairy bunkers that were facing the inside of the country? By the end of the Cold War, that Albanian way (which is the right way, according to you) successfully put Albania in the top spot of the most backward countries of Europe.
That is truly revolutionairy, my friend.Albania was the most backward country in Europe upon independence in 1912, upon liberation in 1944, and upon the restoration of capitalism in 1990-1991.

The bunkers were due to the fact that Albanian military doctrine based itself on the armed populace resisting an external invader. It did not invest heavily in the creation of a privileged army capable of exerting undue influence on the party as the Soviet and Yugoslav revisionists did, but instead sought to train all Albanians for defense. The construction of the bunkers also occurred in the context of the Soviet social-imperialist aggression against Czechoslovakia which, combined with the fact that Greece from 1944 declared itself in a "state of war" with the new Albanian government (a situation which did not end until 1987), made the prospect of extensive defenses not strange at all.

And your chauvinist ranting about Albanian industrialization is absurd. Albania did not become the first European country to achieve complete electrification based on a "light-bulb factory," but through hydroelectric dams. Furthermore, whereas Yugoslav sources pointed out that before 1944 Albania's economy was almost entirely based on meager agricultural exports, four decades later the Albanian state could boast of exporting "chromium ore and concentrate (second place in the world), ferro-chrome, electric power [which it exported to Yugoslavia FYI], iron-nickel, petrol, diesel-oil, bitumen, copper and copper wires, rolled steel, pyrite ore and concentrate, nickel-silicate concentrate, bauxite, dolomite, olivinite, products of the light and foodstuffs industries, chemical products, building materials (cement, marble facings), ready made garments and knitwear, leather and plastic articles, carpets, handicraf[t] articles, tobacco, cigarettes, fruits and vegetables, etc." (People's Socialist Republic of Albania, 1988, p. 18.) By 1961 the value of industrial exports from Albania had surpassed agricultural exports. Bourgeois analyst Elez Biberaj in his 1990 work Albania: A Socialist Maverick wrote that the Party of Labour could be justly proud of its industrial achievements which, while modest by world standards, were gigantic by Albanian standards.

In fact the restoration of capitalism saw various large industrial enterprises established under socialism become abandoned due to being unprofitable under capitalist criteria, most notably the "Steel of the Party" metallurgical combine in Elbasan, built in the 70's.

[EdvardK]

Albania was the most backward country in Europe upon independence in 1912, upon liberation in 1944, and upon the restoration of capitalism in 1990-1991.
What you're saying in other words is that in different periods with different technological breakthroughs in the world, Albania has been THE worst developed all-round?
On the other hand, if you're setting a baseline for Albania's socialist achievements somewhere before the socialist era (which is Ok), you have to be fair and set the same baseline for other countries, ie SFRY, Bulgaria etc.


The bunkers were due to the fact that Albanian military doctrine based itself on the armed populace resisting an external invader.
So was Yugoslavia's, FYI. But we did not build 20 million bunkers and faced them inwards.



And your chauvinist ranting about Albanian industrialization is absurd. Albania did not become the first European country to achieve complete electrification based on a "light-bulb factory," but through hydroelectric dams.
What ranting about industrialization of Albania? I'm sorry, but your source (probably Enver Hoxha's speech) which claims that Albania achieve complete electrification is not absurd, it is another notch up the pole of your lack of credibility.
Please, tell me ONE (1, uno, ein...) world-class achievement of Albania.



Bourgeois analyst Elez Biberaj in his 1990 work Albania: A Socialist Maverick wrote that
That's really funny - whenever a "burgeouis" author is writing something good for your argumentation, you quote him, but when he doesn't, you label him petty burgeouise and make him irrelevant. Has anyone noticed that?! :)

[Ismail]

What you're saying in other words is that in different periods with different technological breakthroughs in the world, Albania has been THE worst developed all-round?Well let's see:

1912-13: bourgeois-democratic government led by Ismail Qemali. Opposed by a feudal rebellion and eventually removed by the dictate of the Great Powers.
1913-14: Prince Wilhelm von Wied, who knew nothing of Albania, is selected to lead country by decision of the Great Powers. His government is comprised of beys and other feudal elements.
1914-20: Wied flees, Albania occupied by multiple countries.
1920-24: Alternating pro-bourgeois and pro-feudal governments, complete with political assassinations, coups, and all that good stuff.
June-December 1924: Bourgeois-democratic revolution, its leader promises land to the peasants but fails to actually carry that out, gets hated by both peasants and landowners as a result. Ahmet Zogu overthrows government with backing from the Yugoslav monarchy and former troops of Wrangel's army.
1925-1939: Gradually becomes a neo-colony of Italy.
1939-44: Foreign occupation, first by Italians and then Nazis, widespread destruction.

Not exactly a history conductive to economic growth. Case in point: Albania was the only European country without a University, which it finally achieved in 1957.


What ranting about industrialization of Albania? I'm sorry, but your source (probably Enver Hoxha's speech) which claims that Albania achieve complete electrification is not absurd, it is another notch up the pole of your lack of credibility.Both bourgeois and socialist works point out that Albania achieved complete electrification. This includes Yugoslav sources.


Please, tell me ONE (1, uno, ein...) world-class achievement of Albania.I've already answered your dumb and irrelevant question at the bottom of an earlier post: http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=2659322&postcount=10


That's really funny - whenever a "burgeouis" author is writing something good for your argumentation, you quote him, but when he doesn't, you label him petty burgeouise and make him irrelevant. Has anyone noticed that?!No because you haven't actually cited any sources whatsoever in this thread, bourgeois or otherwise.

[EdvardK]

1912-13: bourgeois-democratic government ...blahblah...
Case in point: Albania was the only European country without a University, which it finally achieved in 1957.
I did not ask you to strengthen your argument about the developmental issues of Albania, i merely said you need to measure the baseline of any country in the same way. If you eg. measure Albania's success in medicine of 1985 vs. 1912, then you must do the same for any other country, no matter how much you hate it for being revisionist.

Btw, it took them TWELVE YEARS after the WW2 before they manage to build A (one) university? Is that the achievement you like quoting?
Today Albania faces many economic challenges, including dependency on foreign aid, heavy external debt, a shortage of management and technical skills, and unemployment of as high as 30%. Albania relies to a large extent on remittances from 300 000 to 450 000 Albanians working outside the country. You were very critical about remittances when they occured by Yugoslavs in 1970s, 80s, but I guess it is Ok if Albanians do it.
And why did Albania abandon the glorious Hoxhaist movement in 1990s if it was so successful as you adamantly claim?

In 1982, Albania had 70% literacy rate (vs. your claimed 100%), but it was hard to determine it (and the source claims it must've been greatly improved and I believe it), while having major shortages of spare parts, machinery and equipment as well as food (wheat). The source is CIA factbook of 1982 (can't post a link, it doesn't let me). Yes, feel free to deny these facts because they were obviously forged to destabilize Albania, correct?

[EdvardK]

I've already answered your dumb and irrelevant question at the bottom of an earlier post:
I'm sorry but I disagree that citing a world-class accomplishment is dumb and irrelevant. Not citing even one such accomplishment if one is so convinced that there's a number of them is dumb.
Please, spare me with your hoxha quotes and write something that comes out of your intelligence, for a change.

[EdvardK]

@Isma Why don't you simply concede that Albanians were preoccupied with the Yugoslavs more than they were supposed to be? Their "diplomatic" strategy was always something to do with Yugoslavs (or criticizing them), even your hoxha wrote a book "Titoites"... Why? Why, I ask you, if he wasn't obsessed with (ie jealous of) marshall Tito who was well respected in the world community - something that hoxha never achieved.

And obsession, jealousy, is not something you do to someone who you find inferior, but superior to you, and you want to be like him/them...

[Ismail]

I did not ask you to strengthen your argument about the developmental issues of Albania, i merely said you need to measure the baseline of any country in the same way. If you eg. measure Albania's success in medicine of 1985 vs. 1912, then you must do the same for any other country, no matter how much you hate it for being revisionist.Except I wasn't claiming that Yugoslavia didn't make economic gains. Or any country, for that matter. It was you who was belittling Albanian industrial development.


Btw, it took them TWELVE YEARS after the WW2 before they manage to build A (one) university? Is that the achievement you like quoting?It never had any form of higher education before. When a Western visitor to the country was given a tour of the capital, the guide said the following: "'Our new University, our new Opera House, our new Medical School, our new pharmaceutical factory, our new glass factory, our new porcelain factory, our new textile factory,' the words rolled off the Poet's tongue like a poem. 'You must forgive me if I seem so proud of what to you is probably commonplace,' he said, detecting perhaps a glazed look in my eye. 'But to us they are wonderful because they are the first. In 1945 we had nothing. Absolutely nothing!'" (Dymphna Cusack, Illyria Reborn, 1966, p. 14.)


You were very critical about remittances when they occured by Yugoslavs in 1970s, 80s, but I guess it is Ok if Albanians do it.The Albanians didn't do it until the restoration of capitalism destroyed the economy and forced thousands to emigrate abroad.

"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.)

The Yugoslav state did it to reduce high unemployment at home and help prop up the economy.


And why did Albania abandon the glorious Hoxhaist movement in 1990s if it was so successful as you adamantly claim?Why did the parties of all the republics abandon Titoism?


In 1982, Albania had 70% literacy rate (vs. your claimed 100%), but it was hard to determine it (and the source claims it must've been greatly improved and I believe it), while having major shortages of spare parts, machinery and equipment as well as food (wheat). The source is CIA factbook of 1982 (can't post a link, it doesn't let me). Yes, feel free to deny these facts because they were obviously forged to destabilize Albania, correct?The World Factbook has been criticized various times for inaccuracies on all sorts of issues. Case in point it refers to the Party of Labour of Albania as the "Albanian Workers' Party."

The Encyclopedia Britannica notes the following: "Albania’s economy was revolutionized under Hoxha’s long rule. Farmland was confiscated from wealthy landowners and gathered into collective farms that eventually enabled Albania to become almost completely self-sufficient in food crops. Industry, which had previously been almost nonexistent, received huge amounts of investment, so that by the 1980s it had grown to contribute more than half of the gross national product. Electricity was brought to every rural district, epidemics of disease were stamped out, and illiteracy became a thing of the past."

Likewise any specific study on Albania will point out that illiteracy was practically eradicated in the country. In fact, the Yugoslav work notes that whereas in Albania "illiteracy is unknown among the younger generation," in Kosovo the illiteracy rate was 30%, which included "a considerable percentage among the younger generations." (R. Marmullaku, Albania and the Albanians, 1974, p. 78, 148.)

[TheEmancipator]

Why did the parties of all the republics abandon Titoism?


because Serbian ultra-nationalist, funded and aided by the CIA, as well as provoked by Albanian ultra nationalism, decided to make an illegitimate push for power, under the guise of Titoism.

It has nothing to do with Tito. He certainly didn't favour Serbia. If anything he's the one who provoked Serbian ultra-nationalists by :ohmy: allowing Kosovo autonomy.

I can't understand how you put full responsibility on Tito for what happened in Yugoslavia after his death, but Stalin and Hoxha's legacies are squeaky clean and any possible problems after their death were in no way their fault.

[EdvardK]

Except I wasn't claiming that Yugoslavia didn't make economic gains. Or any country, for that matter. It was you who was belittling Albanian industrial development.
Not at all. I merely insist that you use the SAME MEASURE/BASELINE for success - if you compare Albanian development in whatever field of 1985 vs. 1912, you must compare that same field vs. 1912 for any other country. But what you do is project huge leaps of Albanians (measuring eg. 1985 vs. 1912) and terrible mismanagement by Yugoslavs (measuring 1985 vs. 1984 or whatever). That's my criticism!


Why did the parties of all the republics abandon Titoism?
Well, you know this much better than anyone else - Yugoslavs sucked because they were all revisionists, so it was inevitable for them to go down the drain. I am highly surprised that Albanians followed them :)


The World Factbook has been criticized various times for inaccuracies. Case in point it refers to the Party of Labour of Albania as the "Albanian Workers' Party."
As I correctly predicted that you'd trash it. You even used passive to somehow demonstrate that "others" (read: reliable and credible people) criticized the factbook, and not just you. On the other hand, I am sure that whatever good and positivive facts about Albania are in that factbook must surely be true, though, am i correct? :)


The Encyclopedia Britannica notes the following: "Albania’s economy was ... blahblah
Just as i said in my previous post - you only quote a "burgeouise" source if it suits your argument. If i'd (no! WHEN i'll) quote that same source sometime in the future for some unrelated argument we might have here, i am 100% sure you will dismiss it as burgeouise propaganda :)

[Ismail]

On the other hand, I am sure that whatever good and positivive facts about Albania are in that factbook must surely be true, though, am i correct?There's nothing really "positive" about it because it doesn't actually provide comparisons with earlier periods.


I can't understand how you put full responsibility on Tito for what happened in Yugoslavia after his death, but Stalin and Hoxha's legacies are squeaky clean and any possible problems after their death were in no way their fault.Again, I already pointed out that Tito was directly responsible for what occurred after his death due to the economic inequality between the republics, the massive debts he accumulated, etc. Khrushchev slandered Stalin and, by attempting to discredit him, laid the foundations for restoring capitalism and bastardizing every aspect of Marxism-Leninism. Key aspects of socialist construction which Stalin defended were attacked as "dogmatic" or stemming from Stalin's supposedly pernicious influence, thus actually constituting a "distortion" of "Leninism" which the Soviet revisionists were supposedly rectifying.

[EdvardK]

Khrushchev slandered Stalin and, by attempting to discredit him, laid the foundations for restoring capitalism and bastardizing every aspect of Marxism-Leninism.
Please, explain Marxism-Leninsim. If Stalin was the only real marxist leninst, that means that marxism-leninnsim was "gulags all the way, killing millions with famine (holodomor), creating an oppressive state which kills people without a fair trial and having a paranoid schizophrenic for a leader". I'm glad Tito was a dirty revisionist...

[Ismail]

Please, explain Marxism-Leninsim.You could start with the description I wrote for the ML group and the reading materials I provided: http://www.revleft.com/vb/group.php?groupid=46

[EdvardK]

You could start with the description I wrote for the ML group and the reading materials I provided
I'm not fond of re-reading hoxha's rants. Why is ML the ultimate ideology to you and you let no other paradigm to even consider of having something useful to say?

You sound like a Christian orthodox with only one difference - you're Stalin orthodox. You're dogmatic and dogmas are in the religious domain. I have no use discussing with a dogmatic.

[Art Vandelay]

Has anyone else ever thought that the 20th century Yugoslavian experiment of workers self management, may have any relevance or tangible benefit for those who uphold and attempt to articulate that the bolsheviks continued to uphold prolaterian class interests after the disbanding of the soviets and ban on factions? I think this is potentially a line of thought which could be interesting to take to its logical conclusions. This fetishization of federalization and of workers control, is entirely problematic in revolutionary situations, especially since workers self management is merely another way to reorganize capital.

[Ismail]

I'm not fond of re-reading hoxha's rants.I find it incredibly difficult to think that you've read a single work of his. In fact I find it even more difficult to think you've ever read the works of any Marxist. You display such obvious ignorance about basic things.

[Red_Banner]

killing millions with famine (holodomor)Eh, I'm going to have to disagree with you on that.

Alot of the famine had to do with the greedy Kulaks being the capitalists they were charging alot extra for food and eventually withholding and not growing the food.

The government had to collectivize the farms because people were starving.

The Kulaks didn't want to grow the food, but the Kolkhoz were willing to and did.

[EdvardK]

I find it incredibly difficult to think that you've read a single work of his. In fact I find it even more difficult to think you've ever read the works of any Marxist. You display such obvious ignorance about basic things.
Why is that if you're obsessed with this hoxha guy everyone around you HAS TO read his works? I've seen the results of his theories, all the world has, and they're not something to brag about - still the poorest nation in Europe. Thank you oh almighty hoxha you solidified us at the throne of the worst performing nations in the world!

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Because the Balkans had yet to go through their bourgeois revolution.

Actually, the principality of Serbia underwent a bourgeois revolution in the later stages of the national-liberation struggle against the Ottoman state, culminating in the constitution wrested from Milan Obrenović in 1835. The bourgeois movement of 1848 in Croatia and Vojvodina was co-opted by the reactionary Croatian viceroy Jelačić, but both regions experienced intense capitalist development after that. Slovenian lands and Dalmatia also participated in the unrest of 1848. Also note that Slovenia and most of Croatia were outright annexed by revolutionary France, and that extensive capitalist reforms were enacted by the Croatian chancellor (and later viceroy) Mažuranić. The peasant uprising in Hercegovina in 1875 also had a definite bourgeois-democratic character. And so on.

Of course, despite the considerable capitalist development, most of the areas that would form Yugoslavia after the First World War contained a large landowner class - particularly Bosnia and the former vilayet of Kosovo (the present Kosovo, Sandžak and parts of Montenegro), which were still semifeudal regions. But that is the reality of combined and uneven development.


Tito was building Yugoslav nationalism in order to unite the people. Marx actually called the Balkans a "non-historical" entity. They only reached Feudalism in the 14th/15th Century. The idea of Yugoslavia had to be the priority before socialism.

Marx said a lot of things which we recognise as horribly stupid today, from his attitude to sexual minorities to his comments to Vera Zasulich. The rest of the quoted text is based on, amusingly enough, precisely the sort of stagism that we Trotskyists criticise Stalin (and Hoxha) for. History is not a checklist that you tick items off of - bourgeois revolution, check, nation-building, check, dictatorship of the proletariat, check. Even assuming that the Yugoslavs are a nation (which is a horribly stupid assumption, given that of the six populations that are usually labeled as Yugoslav, only four even share a language, let alone a common economic life etc.), the example of Turkestan demonstrates that socialism does not need to wait for nation-building.

Your position is simply a "socialist" cover for outright bourgeois romantic nationalism.


Because Yugoslavia has the aim of uniting the West Balkan people who have more in common culturally than Greeks, Bulgars, Hungarians and Romanians.

That is complete nonsense. Cultural affinities in the Balkan region are more complex than you insinuate. Macedonians speak the same language as Bulgarians, and the Torlaks in eastern Serbia are influenced by both Serbian and Bulgarian culture. A Serb or Croat from Vojvodina has more in common with Hungary, given the significant Magyar presence in the region, with Serbian Srijem or Mačva and with Croatian Slavonia, than they have with Serbian Sandžak or Croatian Istria.


You support the state of Kosovo and the various other nation states of the Balkans instead of a united Federal Yugoslavia. You must know that all these states (Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia, FYROM, Kosovo) are pseudo-nationalist creations by Western influence, the exception being Kosovo, an invention of Tito's precisely to make sure Albanians there had the right to self-determination, all while making sure Hoxha didn't get his greedy hands on more Yugoslav land.

And pray tell, what Yugoslav land did Hoxha already hold? Perhaps you think Albania should have been annexed to the great Yugoslav nation. As for Kosovo being an "invention" of Tito, how do you explain the eponymous vilayet, the Albanian national movement in Prishtina etc. etc.?

As for "Western influence", how do you think Yugoslavia was formed? Certainly, the western areas joined freely, but when the Albianians of Kosovo, the Macedonians and Macedonian Muslims etc. objected to inclusion, who do you think backed the king of the Yugoslavs?

The present situation is far from perfect. Don't even get me started on that. But amalgamating the various bourgeois states in the region would simply produce - another bourgeois state, which would inherit the structural problems of all of its predecessors, and lead to additional problems, bureaucratic skullduggery on an epic scale, etc.

Of course, you seem to view history in terms of "historic rights" of nations, which you seem to equate with ethnicities, so that the actual situation of the proletariat and oppressed groups of the former Yugoslav states matters little to you. And that is why you are not a socialist but a romantic nationalist in the manner of Danilevsky.


Why are they offended?

Because you reply to political criticism of your romantic idol Tito with speculations about someone's nationality you frustrated Yakut.


Can Bosnians and Turks not be frustrated? It takes political correctness to a whole new absurd level. I have bulgarian, Greek and bosnian friends and acquaintances who discuss the Balkans and each other in less than friendly terms but are not at all "offended". They just take their sides, and I usually perceive that their (previous) religion is what differentiates them, not their skin colour, etc.

Oh, so because you have bonehead acquaintances it's perfectly alright to act like they do.


If you think "frustrated Bosnian or Turk", referring to the muslim element involved throughout history in the Balkans, is a racial slur, it is you that is delusional.

I wonder if the Muslim Element is related to the Jewish Bolsheviks. Maybe they are, maybe they're closer to Popish Plots or Masonic Conspiracies.


Bullshit. I would've called him a "frustrated Muslim", wouldn't I?

Just one paragraph above, you explicitly called Bosniaks and Albanians a "Muslim element", even though, hey, a lot of Albanians aren't Muslim but whatever.


No, I said that could be a factor. I then went on to describe the only other possible alternative for the unmitigated, biased, historically revisionist slander of Tito and Yugoslavia : Upholding Prophet Hoxha. Which is probably the case. And is still as disgusting, if not more so, than nationalist bias.

Or, you know, perhaps they oppose Tito because his politics was shit. As do most socialists (i.e. not miserable, conservative social-democratic dinosaurs like the SRP and the Serbian KP) in former Yugoslavia.


No, what the fuck are you talking about? This makes absolutely no sense.

How is it any different from your comment about frustrated Muslim elements?


The former Yugoslav "nations" and their ethnicities are determined by their previous religious tendency. A "Bosnian" is just a muslim "Serb". A "Serb" is just an Orthodox "Bosnian". You cannot tell the difference apart from dialect, in which case we could divide Europe into a thousand pieces.

Again, this simply demonstrates your profound ignorance of the subject. There are Catholic, Uniate and Muslim Serbs. Of course, most Serbs are at least nominally Orthodox, and clero-nationalists insist on the identification of religion and nationality. But what really separates the nations is economic life and culture.


Ethnically they have a lot in common, even with the historically detached Albania, and do not really need to be divided up into small nations as the West intended, and as you would have it.

Ethnically, the entire Balkans have a lot in common. Again, nationality is not ethnicity.


Interestingly, a lot of people speak Serbo-Croat in Former Yugoslavia.

So? The Albanians (except the Croatian Arbanasi) generally do not, except as a sort of lingua franca, nor do the Slovenes, Macedonians, Magyars, Rumanians, etc. etc.


Arming and funding the "Kosovo Liberation Army" as well as trying to convince Muslims living in South Serbia that they are really "Albanian" when they are not. They are Yugoslavs.

Except that they don't speak the same language as the rest of "the Yugoslavs", don't have the same culture, barely have an economic connection to them and so on.


Sounds like the "bourgeois moralistic" judgement to me.

Nah, it's an assessment of the success of the Titoist nationality policy from a communist standpoint. A communist nationality policy is supposed to neutralise nationalism - the bourgeois-idealist notion that the bourgeoisie and the proletariat of certain nations have the same interest - and lead to an intensification of the class struggle. The Titoist policy accomplished pretty much the opposite of that.


I hear the same thing said about Israel. "Who cares about History and borders, we've settled here now, its ours"

Well, who does care about historical borders? Communists oppose Zionism because it is a colonial project that harms the Arab proletariat of the region, not because it impinges on some imagined "historic" rights of Palestine (actually Syria, I guess, given that most of the Levant was considered to be part of Syria in the past). Conversely, it is precisely the Zionists who insist on "historical borders" of the kingdom of Israel and ignore the actual ethnic composition of the region.


Yes, but he did advocate it and use the term "permanent revolution". Why don't you be a man and admit a mistake as I did?

You claimed that "his [Stalin's] theory of permanent revolution" was an example of revisionism. Not only did Stalin only use the term once or twice, he did not originate the term. So it can't be his theory, in plain English.

To sum up, again, all of this simply demonstrates that you are not a socialist but a particularly virulent sort of bourgeois romantic nationalist of the greater-Yugoslav variety who would happily oppress national minorities because of "historic borders" - in principle you differ little from the OrJuNa scum that would kill communists in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia because they dared to advocate the right of Albanians and other national minorities to separate from their beloved kingdom.

[Ismail]

As a note I just want to address this bit:

@Isma Why don't you simply concede that Albanians were preoccupied with the Yugoslavs more than they were supposed to be? Their "diplomatic" strategy was always something to do with Yugoslavs (or criticizing them), even your hoxha wrote a book "Titoites"... Why? Why, I ask you, if he wasn't obsessed with (ie jealous of) marshall Tito who was well respected in the world community - something that hoxha never achieved."Yugoslav revisionism was the forerunner of the 20th Congress and the first to establish its rule in its own country. For all this, Tito has the full right to boast of being the father of modern revisionism. Therefore all the revisionists, wherever they happen to be, render great honours to, and pompously welcome, him, consider him as their Saviour and God. But the stand towards Yugoslav revisionism has been and remains a touchstone which distinguishes the genuine Marxist-Leninists from the revisionists."
(Mehmet Shehu. Socialist Albania Will Never Budge from its Revolutionary Positions. Tirana: 8 Nëntori Publishing House. 1977. p. 18.)

Thus Khrushchev rehabilitated Tito and later invited him to speak at the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. Brezhnev visited Belgrade and upheld him as the builder of "socialist" Yugoslavia, and the Chinese revisionists likewise upheld him.

"We firmly believe that the heroic Yugoslav peoples will carry out Comrade Tito's behests, unite closely and forge victoriously ahead along the road of socialism, self-management and non-alignment, and that the friendship between our parties, countries and people will grow in strength and develop steadily."
(Hua Guofeng, quoted in Beijing Review No. 19 Vol. 21, p. 11.)

That same issue had as the banner of Hua's speech "Eternal Glory to Comrade Tito, a Great Marxist And an Outstanding Proletarian Revolutionary!"

"I met with Comrade Tito just as an old soldier. We had a cordial talk and agreed to forget the past and look to the future. This is the attitude we adopted when we resumed relations with other East European parties and countries; we take the present as a fresh starting point from which to develop friendly, cooperative relations. Of course, it's still worthwhile to analyse events of the past. But I think the most important thing is that each party, whether it is big, small or medium, should respect the experience of the others and the choices they have made and refrain from criticizing the way the other parties and countries conduct their affairs. This should be our attitude not only towards parties in power but also towards those that are not in power. When we had talks with representatives of the Communist parties of France and Italy, we expressed this view that we should respect their experience and their choices. If they have made mistakes, it is up to them to correct them. Likewise, they should take the same attitude towards us, allowing us to make mistakes and correct them. Every country and every party has its own experience, which differs from that of the others in a thousand and one ways."
(Deng Xiaoping. Fundamental Issues in Present-Day China. Beijing: Foreign Languages Press. 1987. p. 186.)

And as Tito himself said in 1978, "I was invited to China when Mao Tsetung was alive... that in 1948, too, Yugoslavia was in the right, a thing which he (Mao Tsetung) had declared even then, to a narrow circle." (quoted by Hoxha in Imperialism and the Revolution, 1979, pp. 446-447.)

That every bourgeois statesman, revisionist and renegade could extol Tito is certainly not something a communist should be proud of.

Besides the ideological factor, there was also the fact that from its founding in 1941 the Communist Party of Albania had large-scale Yugoslav interference in its internal affairs, and that from 1944 to 1948 the Yugoslavs treated the country like a neo-colony. These two periods are what Hoxha's book The Titoites (http://marx2mao.com/Other/TT82NB.html) deals with.

[EdvardK]

These two periods are what Hoxha's book deals with.
As I have said earlier and you just proved me correct - when it suits YOU and your arguments, you use burgeouise authors. And, btw, you did not reply to my question WHY your hoxha was obsessed with Tito and Yugoslavia.
Interfere with Albania? Was Yugoslavia obsessed with rich and developed Albania and wanted its know-how (moon-landing technology)?

[Ismail]

As I have said earlier and you just proved me correct - when it suits YOU and your arguments, you use burgeouise authors.What you just said makes no sense whatsoever in relation to the post I just made. I quoted Hua and Deng praising Tito, and Tito noting how Mao wanted to side with him in 1948.


And, btw, you did not reply to my question WHY your hoxha was obsessed with Tito and Yugoslavia.Yes I did, both because Tito was the sweetheart of every revisionist and because of the attempts of the Yugoslav revisionists to submit Albania to their dictates.


Interfere with Albania? Was Yugoslavia obsessed with rich and developed Albania and wanted its know-how (moon-landing technology)?Albania has plenty of minerals which the Yugoslav revisionists tried to obtain from the country at unequal rates of exchange. Koçi Xoxe, the Interior Minister backed by the Yugoslavs, forced the suicide of Nako Spiru (in charge of economic affairs) after branding him as hostile to Albanian-Yugoslav "friendship" because the latter pointed out the unequal relationship between the two countries. Hoxha, who shared Spiru's views on the subject, was next in line to be denounced. Pretty much every single bourgeois source notes that Yugoslavia treated Albania as a neo-colony during this period, and Milovan Đilas likewise calls Yugoslav behavior towards Albania during this period shameful.

[EdvardK]

blah blah
You always quote your favourite Hoxha on this, Hoxha on that. I don't understand why is Hoxha so important and why you think everyone should read Hoxha? Why?
I don't have enough energy to discuss Hoxha with you any more. Just answer why Hoxha?

[Ismail]

Just answer why Hoxha?Because he defended the line of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin, and because Albania was the only country genuinely constructing socialism after the restoration of capitalism in the USSR. Why else do you think parties such as the PCMLE, PCdoB, CPC-ML, MAP-ML, PMT, PCB, and so on upheld him?

Ernst Aust of the KPD/ML said on the occasion of the 7th Congress of the PLA in 1976 that "Albania is not only the great beacon light of socialism for Europe, but for all the world." (quoted by Peter R. Prifti in Socialist Albania since 1944, p. 252.) This is because of the two reasons I just mentioned.

[EdvardK]

Because he defended the line of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin, and because Albania was the only country genuinely constructing socialism after the restoration of capitalism in the USSR. Why else do you think parties such as the KPD/ML PCMLE, PCdoB, CPC-ML, MAP-ML, PMT, PCB, and so on upheld him?
Thank you. I'm done in this thread. No use discussing with a dogmatic delusionist.

[Ismail]

You haven't actually discussed just about anything in this thread. You've made plenty of random comments, but no sustained discussion, no doubt because of how profoundly ignorant you are not only in regards to Albanian history, but also in regards to the most basic aspects of Marxism.

[EdvardK]

Likewise - you did nothing but 3 things and to 2 i had to respond:
1. trashed Tito and Yugoslavia from the ML point of view (which is the only one allowable, reasonable, intelligent, and correct - according to you), and
2. tried to find every reason to extoll hoxha and
3. tried to kill us by quoting hoxha

[Yet_Another_Boring_Marxist]

Likewise - you did nothing but 3 things and to 2 i had to respond:
1. trashed Tito and Yugoslavia from the ML point of view (which is the only one allowable, reasonable, intelligent, and correct - according to you), and
2. tried to find every reason to extoll hoxha
You haven't done anything to convince us that the Marxist-Leninist perspective is incorrect, hence there's no reason why he shouldn't utalize it. Likewi se since most people were comparing Albania to Yugoslavia, then I'd say that "extolling hoxha" is simply a part of the debate in comparing the actual results of both perspectives in practice







3. tried to kill us by quoting hoxha

If he wanted to kill you with Hoxha, obviously he'd do it with Hoxha's dashing charm and good looks:

http://xa.yimg.com/kq/groups/14296975/homepage/name/homepage.jpg?type=sn

Oh yea, look out revisionists, Hoxha's bringing the sexy back

[EdvardK]

You haven't done anything to convince us that the Marxist-Leninist perspective is incorrect, hence there's no reason why he shouldn't utalize it.
I was more referring to the fact that he's been trashing the so-called "revisionism" by calling it with negative adjectives (like bastardizing etc.).
I don't mind the ml line as long as they (you?) concede that there is possible to have a different opinion on the development of socialism. Since i couldn't get that small concession, i had no option but to declare ml a dogma.



If he wanted to kill you with Hoxha, obviously he'd do it with Hoxha's dashing charm and good looks:
Oh yea, look out revisionists, Hoxha's bringing the sexy back
hahahha good one, i love it :)
i don't mind pics as long as you spare me with endless hoxha quotes. no one will convince me that he's been an expert in all fields in this world - i'm afraid of reading a quote by him on the communist viewpoint on the talcum powder.

[Red_Banner]

Because he defended the line of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin, and because Albania was the only country genuinely constructing socialism after the restoration of capitalism in the USSR..

And PR China wasn't genuinely constructing socialism in Mao's time?

You are full of crap.

[Ismail]

And PR China wasn't genuinely constructing socialism in Mao's time?The Chinese revolution was bourgeois-democratic rather than proletarian in character. The Albanians wrote a number of works on this subject. The second half of Hoxha's work Imperialism and the Revolution deals specifically with Maoism as an anti-Marxist theory.

On the Chinese economy under Mao see:
* http://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/archive/chinecon.htm
* http://www.scribd.com/doc/152137008/Socialism-Cannot-Be-Built-in-Alliance-With-the-Bourgeoisie

On Mao's anti-Marxist views see:
* http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hoxha/works/imp_rev/imp_ch6.htm
* http://www.marxists.org/history/erol/ncm-5/cousml-neo/part4.htm

[Red_Banner]

The Chinese revolution was bourgeois-democratic rather than proletarian in character. The Albanians wrote a number of works on this subject. The second half of Hoxha's work Imperialism and the Revolution deals specifically with Maoism as an anti-Marxist theory.

On the Chinese economy under Mao see:
* http://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/archive/chinecon.htm
* http://www.scribd.com/doc/152137008/Socialism-Cannot-Be-Built-in-Alliance-With-the-Bourgeoisie

On Mao's anti-Marxist views see:
* http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hoxha/works/imp_rev/imp_ch6.htm
* http://www.marxists.org/history/erol/ncm-5/cousml-neo/part4.htm


What "bourgeois"?

There were hardly any Bourgeoisie in China.

China didn't achieve that stage.

The country was mostly peasantry, which is why Mao implemented New Democracy.

[Ismail]

And Russia was mostly comprised of peasants as well. As was Albania. What's your point? "New Democracy" in theory and practice was class collaboration with the Chinese bourgeoisie (who certainly did exist, otherwise Mao wouldn't have mentioned them.) The second link I provided in-re the Chinese economy makes it abundantly clear that the Chinese revisionists throughout the 50's sided with the bourgeoisie against the working-class, with Mao declaring that relations between the bourgeoisie and proletariat in the conditions of "New Democracy" were non-antagonistic and thus reconcilable.

[baronci]

What "bourgeois"?

There were hardly any Bourgeoisie in China.

China didn't achieve that stage.

The country was mostly peasantry, which is why Mao implemented New Democracy.

There was most definitely a bourgeoisie in China, and it grew considerably before and during Mao's reign. It obviously took on a new shape with the Deng reforms, but it was certainly present in the cities and towns before him.