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Enver Hoxha, born on this day in 1908, was the communist leader of Albania from 1946 to 1985, leaving behind a complex legacy of feminism and greatly improved access to healthcare and education. Hoxha is also known for having sharp ideological and political disagreements with the Soviet Union and communist Yugoslavia, siding most strongly with and receiving aid from Maoist China.

He was First Secretary of the Party of Labour of Albania from 1941 until his death in 1985, a member of its Politburo, chairman of the Democratic Front of Albania, and commander-in-chief of the Albanian People's Army. He was the twenty-second prime minister of Albania from 1944 to 1954 and at various times was both foreign minister and defence minister of the country.

Hoxha was born in Ergiri in 1908 and became a grammar school teacher in 1936. Following the Italian invasion of Albania, he joined the Party of Labour of Albania at its creation in 1941 in the Soviet Union.

Before coming into power, Hoxha was a French school teacher and librarian, becoming a communist partisan after fascist Italy invaded Albania in 1939. In March 1943, the first National Conference of the Communist Party elected Hoxha formally as First Secretary.

It was in this position as First Secretary that Hoxha became head of state after the Albanian monarchy was abolished in 1946.

Hoxha declared himself a Marxist–Leninist and strongly admired Soviet Leader Joseph Stalin. The Agrarian Reform Law was passed in August 1945. It confiscated land from beys and large landowners, giving it without compensation to peasants. 52% of all land was owned by large landowners before the law was passed; this declined to 16% after the law's passage.

The State University of Tirana was established in 1957, which was the first of its kind in Albania. The medieval Gjakmarrja (blood feud) was banned. Malaria, the most widespread disease, was successfully fought through advances in health care, the use of DDT, and through the draining of swampland. In 1938 the number of physicians was 1.1 per 10,000 and there was only one hospital bed per 1,000 people. In 1950, while the number of physicians had not increased, there were four times as many hospital beds per head, and health expenditures had risen to 5% of the budget, up from 1% before the war.

Under Hoxha's leadership, the Albanian literacy rate improved from 5-10% in rural areas to more 90%. Hoxha was also a proponent of women's rights, stating "the entire party and country should hurl into the fire and break the neck of anyone who dared trample underfoot the sacred edict of the party on the defense of women's rights". Accordingly, more than 175 times as many women attended secondary schools in 1978 than had done so in 1938.

Relations with Yugoslavia

At this point, relations with Yugoslavia had begun to change. The roots of the change began on 20 October 1944 at the Second Plenary Session of the Communist Party of Albania. The Session considered the problems that the post-independence Albanian government would face. However, the Yugoslav delegation which was led by Velimir Stoinić accused the party of "sectarianism and opportunism" and blamed Hoxha for these errors. He also stressed the view that the Yugoslav Communist partisans spearheaded the Albanian partisan movement.

Tito's position on Albania was that it was too weak to stand on its own and that it would do better as a part of Yugoslavia. Hoxha alleged that Tito had made it his goal to get Albania into Yugoslavia, firstly by creating the Treaty of Friendship, Co-operation and Mutual Aid in 1946. In time, Albania began to feel that the treaty was heavily slanted towards Yugoslav interests, much like the Italian agreements with Albania under Zog that made the nation dependent upon Italy

When Yugoslavia publicly broke with the Soviet Union, Hoxha's support base grew stronger. Then, on 1 July 1948, Tirana called on all Yugoslav technical advisors to leave the country and unilaterally declared all treaties and agreements between the two countries null and void

Relations with the Soviet Union

From 1948 to 1960, $200 million in Soviet aid was given to Albania for technical and infrastructural expansion. Albania was admitted to the Comecon on 22 February 1949 and served as a pro-Soviet force on the Adriatic.

Relations with the Soviet Union remained close until the death of Stalin in March 1953. Under Nikita Khrushchev, Stalin's eventual successor, aid was reduced and Albania was encouraged to adopt Khrushchev's specialisation policy. Under it, Albania would develop its agricultural output in order to supply the Soviet Union and other Warsaw Pact countries while they would be developing products of their own, which would, in theory, strengthen the Warsaw Pact. However, this also meant that Albanian industrial development, which was stressed heavily by Hoxha, would be hindered

In the years after Stalin's death, Hoxha grew increasingly distressed by the policies of the Soviet leadership and of Khrushchev in particular. China was also disillusioned with Soviet behavior at this time, and Hoxha found common ground with Mao Zedong's criticisms of Moscow. By 1961 Hoxha's attacks on the "revisionist" Soviet leadership had so infuriated Khrushchev that he elected first to terminate Moscow's economic aid to Albania and ultimately to sever diplomatic relations entirely.

Relations with China

At the start of Albania's Third Five-year Plan, China offered Albania a loan of $125 million which would be used to build twenty-five chemical, electrical and metallurgical plants in accordance with the Plan. However, the nation discovered that the task of completing these building projects was difficult, because Albania's relations with its neighbors were poor and because matters were also complicated by the long distance between Albania and China.

The financial aid which China provided to Albania was interest-free and it did not have to be repaid until Albania could afford to do so. China never intervened in Albania's economic output, and Chinese technicians and Albanian workers both worked for the same wages.

During the Cultural Revolution, China entered into a four-year period of relative diplomatic isolation, however, its relations with Albania were positive. Albania's relations with China began to deteriorate on 15 July 1971, when United States President Richard Nixon agreed to visit China in order to meet with Zhou Enlai. Hoxha believed that China had betrayed Albania.

The result of this criticism was a message from the Chinese leadership in 1971 in which it stated that Albania could not depend on an indefinite flow of aid from China. Following Mao's death on 9 September 1976, Hoxha remained optimistic about Sino-Albanian relations, but in August 1977, Hua Guofeng, the new leader of China, stated that Mao's Three Worlds Theory would become official foreign policy. Hoxha viewed this as a way for China to justify having the U.S. as the "secondary enemy" while viewing the Soviet Union as the main one, thus allowing China to trade with the U.S.

On 13 July 1978, China announced that it was cutting off all of its aid to Albania. For the first time in modern history, Albania did not have an ally and it also did not have a major trading partner.

During this period, Albania was the most isolated country in Europe. In 1983, Albania imported goods which were worth $280 million but it exported goods which were worth $290 million, producing a trade surplus of $10 million.

In 1973, Hoxha suffered a heart attack from which he never fully recovered. In increasingly precarious health from the late 1970s onward, he turned most state functions over to Ramiz Alia. Hoxha was succeeded by Ramiz Alia, who oversaw the fall of communism in Albania.

Enver Hoxha Page

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On this day in 1966, in the wake of spontaneous riots against police brutality, Bobby Seale and Huey Newton founded the Black Panther Party in Oakland, California. It was a revolutionary organization with an ideology of Black nationalism, socialism, and armed self-defense, particularly against police brutality. It was part of the Black Power movement, which broke from the integrationist goals and nonviolent protest tactics of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The BPP name was inspired by the use of the black panther as a symbol that had recently been used by the Lowndes County Freedom Organization, an independent Black political party in Alabama.

The party was active in the United States between 1966 and 1982, with chapters in many major American cities, including San Francisco, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Seattle, and Philadelphia. They were also active in many prisons and had international chapters in the United Kingdom and Algeria. Upon its inception, the party's core practice was its open carry patrols ("copwatching") designed to challenge the excessive force and misconduct of the Oakland Police Department. From 1969 onward, the party created social programs, including the Free Breakfast for Children Programs, education programs, and community health clinics. The Black Panther Party advocated for class struggle, claiming to represent the proletarian vanguard.

In 1969, J. Edgar Hoover, the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), described the party as "the greatest threat to the internal security of the country." The FBI sabotaged the party with an illegal and covert counterintelligence program (COINTELPRO) of surveillance, infiltration, perjury, police harassment, all designed to undermine and criminalize the party. The FBI was involved in the 1969 assassinations of Fred Hampton, and Mark Clark, who were killed in a raid by the Chicago Police Department.

Influences

The BPP’s philosophy was influenced by the speeches of Malcolm X, the teachings of Chairman Mao Tse-Tung of the Communist Party of China, and the anti-colonialist book The Wretched of the Earth (Les Damnés de la Terre, 1961) by the Martiniquan psychiatrist Frantz Fanon. The BPP’s practice of armed self-defense was influenced by African American activist Robert Williams, who advocated this practice against anti-black aggression by the Ku Klux Klan in his book Negroes with Guns (1962). Newton and Seale canvassed their community asking residents about issues of concern. They compiled the responses and created the Ten Point Platform and Program that served as the foundation of the Black Panther Party.

An interview with Huey P. Newton (1968)

(1966) THE BLACK PANTHER PARTY TEN-POINT PROGRAM

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Plz dm me for details

Trying to get people to read about CPUSA from unbiased sources or sources that aren't anti-CPUSA.

Here's a copy-pasta made by several members of CPUSA that was given to me recently:

CPUSA Reading List - 2022

https://cryptpad.fr/pad/#/2/pad/view/VJlD0b3eh4gMJovaypGkuW4m3Au-aksj+6oNDi50UFI/embed/

Communism Reading Guide

https://cryptpad.fr/pad/#/2/pad/view/eAFqVc1JC8v8T5AEEWSPQ9YD4FR8tK6E97XEy+v78KQ/embed/

From The Psychology of Management of Labour Collectives: Guides to the Social Sciences, Chapter 1: The Methodological And Theoretical Foundations of the Psychology of Management of Labour Collectives, pg. 9 out of 386 of the PDF, by Aleksey Mikhailovich Stolyarenko:

Marx, Engels, and Lenin, who developed the science of society, showed that society is governed by objective laws; they discovered these laws and proved that management of the various spheres of society, directions of its activity, and social institutions is effective and progressive insofar as it is based on them. Marxism-Leninism has developed a scientific conception of society as an integral self-governing system. The term “system” is taken to mean an object whose properties are not reducible to a mere sum of the properties of its constituent parts or elements. Not a single property of a single element is manifested as the property of the system.2 The elements function and develop within the framework of the system, so that their properties are subordinated to those of the system as a whole. In the absence of interaction between elements, not a single property of any of them can manifest itself, and it is not manifested in pure form in interaction. System properties always have some traits that are different from the properties of the constituent elements, being a result of integral functioning of the system, a qualitatively specific result of its inner phenomena. The systems approach in science should be distinguished from the “atomistic” of functional approach, which studies system problems in isolation from the conditions and the causes from which they arise. The ‘‘atomistic” approach in the theory and practice of management is manifested in the view of management as a phenomenon independent of all others, as well as in isolated consideration of problems and phenomena that are systemic in nature, one that takes into account only individual cause-and-effect dependences (though they may be correct ones) unconnected with their entire ensemble at a systems level.

Mentions Samir Amin as well.

From the article:

The Communist Party of India (Marxist) has condemned a crackdown on journalists writing for websites considered critical of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The party said Tuesday’s raids were a “brazen assault on the media and the fundamental right to freedom of expression” and called for a mobilization of all democrats against the Modi government’s increasing authoritarianism.

Website Newsclick editor Prabir Purkayastha and human resources chief Amit Chakravarty were arrested on Tuesday after police interrogated hundreds of journalists for the site as well as researchers for Tricontinental Research Services, which works with the Tricontinental Institute for Social Research.

Author Vijay Prashad wrote that police interrogations of hundreds of detained journalists lasted an average of eight hours, and reportedly involved questioning about their coverage of the farmers’ movement of 2020-21, attacks on Muslims in Delhi in 2020, and the Covid-19 pandemic.

Indian authorities say Newsclick is being investigated because of claims in the New York Times that it received money from a U.S. millionaire who funded “Chinese propaganda.” The site denies the accusation.

Clickbait title in response to this dunk tank thread from today

The comments contain snark due to the comm they are in, so I wanted a more serious post on what Hexbears think about the question.

While in specific contexts it may be useful to define socialism one way or another, or to identify empirically how the average person understands the word socialism, it is in general a waste of time, if not entirely misguided for leftists attempt a universal definition of socialism.

Most of us have heard the famous excerpt from German Ideology:

”Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence.”

It is worth taking a moment, even if you have read it before, to reflect on what Marx says here. One may read it as mere emphasis, a shift in focus away from static definitions and toward progress.

But it is more than emphasis. The point is that communism — which Marx tended to use synonymously with socialism although Lenin later drew a harder line — does not need defining, because it is not an abstract thing but a concrete process.

Socialism is defined by what it negates (productively, as in Hegelian sublation). Socialism has no universal definition because a socialist movement does not negate capitalism in the abstract, but a real historical capitalist society, in a real time and place. It is a dialectical process in which the contradictions within a determined and concrete present state give rise to a new, as yet indeterminate state, whose determination depends on the historical events yet to unfold.

It is true that socialists generally fight for worker ownership of the means of production. Marxists, however, are not deluded into believing they can make this happen through force of will alone. It must happen through this dialectical process. Humans may be determined by their material conditions, but humans also possess the ability to change their material conditions, through revolution:

”The materialist doctrine that men are products of circumstances and upbringing, and that, therefore, changed men are products of changed circumstances and changed upbringing, forgets that it is men who change circumstances and that the educator must himself be educated. Hence this doctrine is bound to divide society into two parts, one of which is superior to society. The coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human activity or self-change [Selbstveränderung] can be conceived and rationally understood only as revolutionary practice.”

If socialism were to have a universal definition, it would be the productive negation of a particular capitalist reality, peculiar to the time and place in which it occurs.

Avoid dogma, avoid definitions. It is what Marx would have wanted. He told me.

There's a video within the article right here.

I subscribed to the channel as well; glad I found it.

The video itself is 46 minutes and 21 seconds.

From the footnotes:

This article is a revised version of a keynote address to the Engels in Eastbourne conference on June 2, 2023.

In other words? Pretty recent, if you want something from her more "up-to-date" and relevant.

The person that wrote this article is now dead.

He was messaging one of the editors of Science & Society (an underrated Marxist academic journal like Monthly Review) days before he died sometime in April.

Enjoy.

Degrowth, mfs

From the article at the end:

This was an excerpt from a speech at a study session for new members and alternate members of the CPC Central Committee and principal officials at the provincial and ministerial level on studying and implementing Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era and the guiding principles of the 20th CPC National Congress, February 7, 2023.

(Originally appeared in Qiushi Journal, Chinese edition, No. 11, 2023)

Glad that the party has improved on this. It wasn't always so. During the 60s, 70s, and 80s, it either said little of LGBTQ struggle or allowed homophobic opinions; this was due to a misunderstanding that communist parties had about Marxism and gay and trans folks. Also, during the tail end of the 1980s, just things started to go away but it was too late...

Sadly, some communist parties are lax on this question (I won't name names though).

The great frop debate continues.

I still find Villarreal's essay the best on responding to Ackerman https://nicolasdvillarreal.substack.com/p/the-tendency-for-the-rate-of-profit

Michael Parenti, born on this day in 1933, is a Marxist American political scientist and cultural critic. He has taught at American and international universities and has been a guest lecturer before campus and community audiences.

Michael Parenti was raised by an Italian-American working-class family in the East Harlem neighborhood of New York City. After graduating from high school, Parenti worked for several years. Upon returning to school, he received a BA from the City College of New York, an MA from Brown University and a PhD in political science from Yale University.

For many years Parenti taught political and social science at various institutions of higher learning. Eventually he devoted himself full-time to writing, public speaking, and political activism. He is the author of 20 books and over 300 articles.

Parenti's writings cover a wide range of subjects: U.S. politics, culture, ideology, political economy, imperialism, fascism, communism, democratic socialism, free-market orthodoxies, conservative judicial activism, religion, ancient history, modern history, historiography, repression in academia, news and entertainment media, technology, environmentalism, sexism, racism, Venezuela, the wars in Iraq and Yugoslavia, ethnicity, and his own early life.

His book Democracy for the Few, now in its ninth edition, is a critical analysis of U.S. society, economy, and political institutions and a college-level political science textbook published by Wadsworth Publishing. His book Blackshirts and Reds defended the Soviet Union and socialist states of the 20th century from criticism, arguing that they were morally superior compared to capitalist states, that the problems of the Soviet Union were caused by the Russian Civil War and capitalist interference, and that "Left anti-Communist" and "pure socialist" critics have failed to offer any alternatives to the Soviet Union's "siege socialism"

In 1974, Parenti ran for the U.S. House of Representatives in Vermont as the candidate of the democratic socialist Liberty Union Party; he came in third place, with 7.1% of the vote. Parenti was once a friend of Bernie Sanders, but he later split with Sanders over Sanders's support for the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia.

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Indian revolutionary and a major figure in the Indian independence movement of the early Twentieth Century. Singh was active in revolutionary struggle from an early age and he was briefly affiliated with the Mohandas Ghandi’s “Non-Cooperation” movement, although Singh would break with Ghandi’s philosophy of non-violent resistance later in life.

Singh embraced atheism and Marxism-Leninism and integrated these key components into his philosophy of revolutionary struggle. Under his leadership, the Kirti Kissan Party was renamed the Hindustan Socialist Republican Organization. As Singh and his organization rose to new prominence in the Indian independence movement, they became the focus of public criticism from Ghandi himself, who disagreed with their belief that violence was a necessary and vital component of revolutionary struggle.

Singh’s secularism was perhaps his most important contribution to the socialist and independence struggles. During those turbulent times, British Imperialism used every tactic to create antagonism among the different religions of India, especially between Hindus and Muslims. The Sanghatan and Shuddi Movements among Hindus; and tableegh and many sectarian movements in Muslims bear witness to the effects of this tactic. Bhagat Singh removed his beard which was a violation of Sikh religion, because he did not want to create before the public the image of a ‘Sikh’ freedom fighter. Nor did he want to be held up as a hero by the followers of this religion. He wanted to teach the people that British Imperialism was their common enemy and they must be united against it to win freedom.

On April 8, 1924, Baghat Singh and his compatriot B. K. Dutt hurled two bombs on to the floor of the Central Delhi Hall in New Delhi. The bombs were tossed away from individuals so as not to harm anyone and, in fact, no one was harmed in the ensuing explosions. Following the explosions, Singh and Dutt showered the hall with copies of a leaflet that later was to be known as “The Red Pamphlet.” The pamphlet began with a passage which was to become legendary in the Indian revolutionary struggle:

“It takes a loud voice to make the deaf hear, with these immortal words uttered on a similar occasion by Vaillant, a French anarchist martyr, do we strongly justify this action of ours.”

Singh and Dutt concluded the pamphlet with the phrase “Long Live the Revolution!” This phrase (translated from “Inquilab Zindabad!” became one of the most enduring slogans of the Indian Independence Movement.

Singh and Dutt turned themselves in following the bombing incident. Following the trial, they were sentenced to “transportation for life” and while imprisoned, Singh and Dutt became outspoken critics of the Indian penal system, embarking on hunger strikes and engaging in agitation and propaganda from within the confines of the prison. Shortly after the commencement of his prison sentence, Singh was implicated in the 1928 death of a Deputy Police Superintendent. Singh acknowledged involvement in the death and he was executed by hanging on 23 March 1931.

Bhagat Singh is widely hailed as a martyr as a result of his execution at the hands of oppressors and, as such, he is often referred to as “Shaheed (Martyr) Bhagat Singh.”

Bhagat Singh - marxist.org

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Speech is short but sweet.

74% of my home costs go to non-home based expenses.

Also, please note that property taxes in my home state of Texas are some of the highest in the nation. Even then, I'm shelling out a good $300/mo on insurance.

Which means the monthly cost of home ownership in an ostensibly low-cost-of-living state is:

• $609 - The Bank

• $504 - The House amortized over 30 years

• $470 - The state of Texas / city of Houston

• $307 - Insurance Company

And please note that this is fucking cheap for my area. $1900/mo was a steal when I nailed it down back in 2018. But the $500/mo that actually goes to the actual house would have been even better. One might even argue it is the real material cost of living. Maybe add in another $400 or so if you squint and don't ask how much is just going to Cops, Cops, and More Cops or inquire too hard about the state of our streets or schools.

But every time I pay my note, I'm forced to reconcile with this and think about all the people who are told they've been "priced out".

A criticism of this essay published in Jacobin https://jacobin.com/2023/09/robert-brenner-marxist-economics-falling-rate-of-profit-stagnation-overcapacity-industrial-policy

Some of this goes a bit over my head tbh