Was Hoxha a dogmatist?

[Comrade Jacob]

I may be very wrong but I heard that Hoxha believed that the Marxism-Leninism under Stalin was the only thing that could be. That if it is different from it it is revisionism.

I know I may be sounding very ignorant, so please help me with this conundrum.

[Homo Songun]

"To dogmatism, the spirit of inquiry is the same as the spirit of evil" (or something like that)

--Ambrose Bierce

Hoxha may have been wrong, but I do believe he had an inquiring mind...

[Aslan]

Waiting for Ismail to come in 3...2...1...

[Trap Queen Voxxy]

I think Hoxha was the very definition of 'dogmatist.'

[Ismail]

No, Hoxha was not a "dogmatist." Albania did not, and in a number of cases could not, copy the Soviet Union in everything, and in fact the struggle against revisionism necessitated doing some things differently than in the USSR so that Albania would not suffer the same fate.

Hoxha noted at the 8th Congress of the Party of Labour in 1981 that: "There is nothing unknown about what socialism is, what it represents and what it brings about, how it is achieved and how socialist society is built. A theory and practice of scientific socialism exists. Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin teach us this theory. We find the practice of it in that rich experience of the construction of socialism in the Soviet Union in the time of Lenin and Stalin, and we find it today in Albania, where the new society is being built according to the teachings of Marxism-Leninism.

Of course, as Lenin said, socialism will look different and will have its own special features in different countries as a result of the differing socio-economic conditions, the way in which the revolution is carried out, the traditions, the international circumstances, etc. But the basic principles and the universal laws of socialism remain unshakeable and are essential for all countries." (Selected Works Vol. VI, 1987, p. 447.)

It is worth noting Stalin's speech (http://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/rdv16n1/china.htm) to a CPC delegation in 1949, where he made a similar point: "You speak of Sinified socialism. There is nothing of the sort in nature. There is no Russian, English, French, German, Italian socialism, as much as there is no Chinese socialism. There is only one Marxist-Leninist socialism. It is another thing, that in the building of socialism it is necessary to take into consideration the specific features of a particular country. Socialism is a science, necessarily having, like all science, certain general laws, and one just needs to ignore them and the building of socialism is destined to failure."

When Kim Il Sung proclaimed his "Juche idea," when Tito proclaimed "workers' self-management," when Mao proclaimed his "Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution" (and the "Great Leap Forward" and "New Democracy" beforehand), when Gomułka proclaimed the "Polish road to socialism" by disbanding collectives so that over 80% of Poland's countryside was in private hands by the end of the 1950s, etc., these were not examples of the creative application of Marxism-Leninism to different conditions, but were in fact the negation of Marxism-Leninism in favor of nationalism and revisionism.

[Trap Queen Voxxy]

You will notice according to dogma that Hoxha isn't a dogmatist

Cici n'est pas une Hoxha

[Ismail]

You will notice according to dogma that Hoxha isn't a dogmatist

Cici n'est pas une HoxhaExactly what was "dogmatic" about Hoxha's polemics against the revisionists?

If by your statement "according to dogma" you mean that Marxism-Leninism is itself inherently dogmatic, then you singling out Hoxha doesn't make much sense unless you think that Khrushchev's declaration that India was building socialism, or that a state can be ruled by no class in particular (to give just two examples from him, let alone from all the other revisionists of the 1950s-80s), were brave steps in overcoming dogma and not absurd statements for a supposed "Marxist" to make.