Hey Ismail. Just asnwared to your reply in the Albania thread in the Enver Hoxha group =) Just letting you know.
Hoxha wasn't a "dictator" and one person cannot unilaterally change relations to the means of production.
But wouldn't many say that with a dictator there is no dictatorship of the proletariat?
State-capitalism doesn't have to do with state ownership, it has to do with relations to the means of production and the character of the state. Albania, as with the USSR of the 1920's-40's, was a state of the dictatorship of the proletariat, building socialism.
How was Albania under Hoxha. Did the workers control all the means of production or did the state controll it? So it was state capitalist?
Yes, collectively through the workers' state.
But would you say that workers controlled the means of production before the 50's?
After the 1950's that would be correct, but not before that. The economy did not operate like a capitalist economy before the 50's, and there were periods of fairly democratic initiatives (ironically, the largest being during the Great Purges, as noted by J. Arch Getty, Robert Thurston and others.)
Q: Was USSR socialist? A: No, there is absolutely no evidence that they did. Marx stated that the dictatorship of the proletariat(power by the workers) would be a historic extension of democracy; yet in the fSU, there were no meaningful organs for democracy. The means of production were controlled by bureaucrats who according to some played the same exact role as the bourgeoisie in a normal capitalist state. I have also heard that Stalin supporters don't agree with this. Can I have your opinion on this?
Albania pre-1945 was a mixture of feudal, tribal and only some capitalist elements. Still, unemployment was a big problem during the reign of King Zog (1928-1939.) I don't think there's a percentage anywhere.
