was hoxha a good leader?

[Raul Castro]

Open to all oponions

[Ismail]

In terms of his role during the Anti-Fascist National Liberation War, I'd say he displayed competent leadership.

As the leader of Albania, his record is mixed. On one hand Albania made great strides economically and culturally, much of this thanks to Soviet and Chinese assistance. However, he was wrong in characterizing the USSR and China as "state-capitalist" and "social-imperialist." His sectarian attitude toward them impeded the country's development and living standards. As his successor Ramiz Alia pointed out in 1991, "The results did no harm to the world. On the contrary, it was our country that suffered and whose difficulties worsened." His domestic policies also had much to criticize, such as the extreme measures taken against religion.

For all the Albanian condemnations of "Soviet revisionism," socialism in Albania was reliant on the continued existence of socialism in the rest of Eastern and Central Europe.

Hoxha is to be commended, at least, for condemning Mao's "Three Worlds Theory" which advocated siding with US imperialism against the USSR. But his alternative of "I hate everyone" wasn't much better. He still took absurd positions identical to the Maoists like condemning Cuban troops sent to Angola to fight the forces of Apartheid, and praising the Mujahideen for opposing the "Soviet occupiers."

[L.A.P.]

In terms of his role during the Anti-Fascist National Liberation War, I'd say he displayed competent leadership.

As the leader of Albania, his record is mixed. On one hand Albania made great strides economically and culturally, much of this thanks to Soviet and Chinese assistance. However, he was wrong in characterizing the USSR and China as "state-capitalist" and "social-imperialist." His sectarian attitude toward them impeded the country's development and living standards. As his successor Ramiz Alia pointed out in 1991, "The results did no harm to the world. On the contrary, it was our country that suffered and whose difficulties worsened." His domestic policies also had much to criticize, such as the extreme measures taken against religion.

For all the Albanian condemnations of "Soviet revisionism," socialism in Albania was reliant on the continued existence of socialism in the rest of Eastern and Central Europe.

Hoxha is to be commended, at least, for condemning Mao's "Three Worlds Theory" which advocated siding with US imperialism against the USSR. But his alternative of "I hate everyone" wasn't much better. He still took absurd positions identical to the Maoists like condemning Cuban troops sent to Angola to fight the forces of Apartheid, and praising the Mujahideen for opposing the "Soviet occupiers."

It's been a while since I've seen you post, Ismail. If I remember correctly, you supported Hoxha's policy against the USSR, so what made you change this position?


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[Ismail]

It's been a while since I've seen you post, Ismail. If I remember correctly, you supported Hoxha's policy against the USSR, so what made you change this position?

I simply read up on the USSR, China, and other socialist countries from sources that weren't Enver Hoxha or Maoist polemics. Is the Red Flag Flying? by Albert Szymanski is particularly useful. In this way I was able to see that Albanian and Maoist "analyses" were generally full of distortions and played on the prejudices of newbie communists in the West.

Thus, to quote Harry Haywood, a veteran Marxist-Leninist and himself a former believer the Maoist claim that the USSR was "state-capitalist" and "social-imperialist":

History demonstrates that, overall, Soviet foreign policy has been basically defensive and non-aggressive. This fact does not mean that everything the Soviet Union does is correct or that it cannot make serious mistakes or pursue wrong lines. For example, its relations with China and other socialist countries have been marked at times by chauvinism and hegemonism. But these problems do not make the Soviet Union a social imperialist power.

Without a monopoly capitalist class and without capitalist relations of production there is no fundamental and compelling logic in the Soviet economy that creates a need to export capital and exploit other countries through trade. As a result it also has no colonies and no empire to sustain.

And Szymanski, writing elsewhere:

The new left movement of the 1960’s grew up independently of the Marxist-Leninist tradition. Its roots were in the pacifist and social democratic tradition. It moved to Marxism-Leninism because of identification with the struggles of the Cubans, Vietnamese and Chinese (during their Cultural Revolution). The characteristics of these three revolutions did not seem to us to have anything in common with the image of Communism/Soviet Union that we had been conditioned to accept, and thus we became strongly predisposed to a Maoist type argument that the Soviet Union’s brand of “Communism” really was a capitalism of the Nazi type, i.e., what we had believed all along, while the “Communism” of China, Cuba and Vietnam was a qualitatively different phenomenon – people’s power, or the realization of the true; socialist ideas of equalitarianism, democracy and control of production by the common people. The Maoist alternative allowed formerly strongly anti-communist youth to easily make the transition to Marxism without having to question the fabricated stereotype of Soviet communism they had grown up with, while romanticizing Cuban, Vietnamese and Chinese Communism, portraying the two types as having nothing in common. At no point were the great majority of U.S. Marxists ever sympathetic to the Soviet Union, This appeal to petty bourgeois youth is identical to the appeal of Trotskyism, for Trotskyism too, offers the possibility of having your cake and eating it to. Maoism in the advanced capitalist countries, as does Trotskyism, idealizes and romanticizes the revolutionary process and revolutionary societies, both fail to appreciate the twists and turns, compromises/strategic retreats, mistakes, and patience inherent in the revolutionary process in the real world. Both thus tend to condemn processes and regimes which are unable to live up to unrealistic ideals, and both then tend to become objectively anti-revolutionary forces opposing rather than supporting progressive and revolutionary process which are doing the best they are able in a complex world.

[L.A.P.]

I simply read up on the USSR, China, and other socialist countries from sources that weren't Enver Hoxha or Maoist polemics. Is the Red Flag Flying? by Albert Szymanski is particularly useful. In this way I was able to see that Albanian and Maoist "analyses" were generally full of distortions and played on the prejudices of newbie communists in the West.

Thus, to quote Harry Haywood, a veteran Marxist-Leninist and himself a former believer the Maoist claim that the USSR was "state-capitalist" and "social-imperialist":
And Szymanski, writing elsewhere:

So if the USSR wasn't state-capitalist or imperialist, how would you characterize it post-Stalin?


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[Ismail]

So if the USSR wasn't state-capitalist or imperialist, how would you characterize it post-Stalin?

Socialist, just as it was under Stalin, and just as Yugoslavia, China, Cuba, Albania, etc. were/are likewise socialist states.

Like Haywood said, a socialist state can pursue wrong lines, but that doesn't suddenly make it capitalist. The Soviets after 1955 acknowledged that Yugoslavia was a socialist country and Tito was a revolutionary despite criticizing some of his domestic and foreign policies. The Chinese in the early 80s dropped the claim of "capitalist restoration" in the USSR while continuing to criticize Soviet practice, such as Deng saying, "The Socialist system is one thing, and the specific way of building socialism is another. Counting from the October Revolution, the Soviet Union has been engaged in building socialism for 63 years, but it is still in no position to boast about how to do it."