Foreign Commentaries on China

Posted on 14/08/2021 by Michael

Celebrating the Constitution of the People’s Republic of China

Foreign Commentaries on China

Various commentaries from outside the country by people who have lived in China or studied Chinese society, stretching across different topics and historical periods – some are more friendly to the revolutionary cause than others.

The Battle For Asia, Edgar Snow, Random House, New York, 1941, 431 pages.

The Birth of New China, a sketch of one hundred years 1842-1942, Arthur Clegg, Lawrence and Wishart, London, 1943, 144 pages.

What we saw in China, by 15 Americans, who participated in the Peace Conference of the Asian and Pacific Regions in October 1952, Weekly Guardian Associates, NY, 1952, 68 pages.

Through People’s China in a Friendship Train, by Fernand Leriche, World Federation of Trade Unions, England, 1953, 68 pages. Report of a WFTU delegation from 21 countries visiting China by train.

The People have Strength, Rewi Alley, Peking, 1954, 281 pages. Sequel to ‘Yo Banfa’.

The Great Road – the Life and Times of Chu Teh, Agnes Smedley, Monthly review Press, New York, 1956, 461 pages.

The Atlantic, a Special Issue on Red China – The first ten years, December 1959, 192 pages.

What’s really happening in China?, by Felix Greene, City Lights Books, San Francisco, 1959, 68 pages.

The world belongs to all, by Liao Hung-ying and Derek Bryan, privately printed, n.d. (but from 1959 or shortly after), 32 pages. The impressions of a husband and wife who re-visited China in 1959.

Mao and the Chinese Revolution, Jerome Ch’en, Oxford University Press, London, 1965, 419 pages. With 37 poems by Mao Tse-tung.

Mao Tse-tung in opposition 1927-1935, John E Rue, Published for the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace, Stanford University Press, California, 1966, 387 pages.

The Taiping Rebellion, history and documents, Volume 1: History, Franz H Michael, University of Washington Press, 1966, 244 pages.

Window on Shanghai, Letters from China, Sophia Knight, Andre Deutsch, London, 1967, 256 pages.

This is Communist China, by the staff of Yomiuri Shimbun, Tokyo, edited by Robert Trumbull, Van Rees Press, New York, 1968, 274 pages.

A curtain of ignorance, Felix Greene, Jonathan Cape, London, 1968, 340 pages.

The Great Power Struggle in China, Asia Research Centre, Hong Kong, 1969, 503 pages.

China and Ourselves – Explorations and revisions by a new generation, edited by Bruce Douglass and Ross Terrill, Beacon Press, Boston, 1969, 249 pages.

Modern Drama from Communist China, edited by Walter and Meserve, New York University Press, New York, 1970, 368 pages.

The Chinese Cultural Revolution and Foreign Policy, Daniel Tretiak, ASG Monograph No. 2, Westinghouse Electric Corporation Advanced Studies Group, Waltham, Massachusetts, 1970, 36 pages.

The Organization and Support of Scientific Research and Development in Mainland China, Yuan-li Wu and Robert B Sheeks, Praeger, New York, 1970, 592 pages.

A divorce trial in China, by Felix Greene, New England Free Press, 1970, 16 pages. Originally published as a chapter in Greene’s book Awakened China: The country Americans don’t know (1961)

The Miracles of Chairman Mao – A compendium of devotional literature 1966-1970, edited by George Urban, Tom Stacey, London, 1971, 182 pages. (Introduction missing.)

The Morning Deluge – Mao Tse-tung and the Chinese Revolution 1983-1954, Han Suyin, Little, Brown and Company, Boston, 1972, 571 pages.

Mao Tse-tung’s Cultural Revolution, Tai Sung An, Pegasus, 1972, 211 pages.

Experiment without precedent: some Quaker observations on China today, report of an American Friends Service Committee Delegation’s visit to China, May 1972, 64 pages.

China: revolution and health, by Mark Selden, Health/PAC Bulletin, No. 47, December 1972, published by the Health Policy Advisory Center, New York, 20 pages.

People’s China in 1973: A Group Report, by Scott Nearing, Helen K. Nearing, Dr. Jerome Davis, Howard Frazier, Hugh B. Hester and Bess Horowitz, Promoting Enduring Peace, Inc., Woodmont, Conn.,1973, 28 pages.

The Chinese Economy, by Jan Deleyne, (1973, orig. French version 1971), 216 pages. Talks about the Chinese economy before, during, and after the initial phase (late 1960s) of the Cultural Revolution.

Chiang Ch’ing – The emergence of a revolutionary political leader, Dwan L Tai, Exposition Press, New York, 1974, 222 pages.

Unite the many, defeat the few: China’s revolutionary line in foreign affairs, by Jack A. Smith, Guardian newspaper (U.S.) pamphlet, 1974, 40 pages. Originally a series of articles in the Guardian in late 1972 and early 1973.

Education in the People’s Republic of China, by Fred L. Pincus, Research Group One Report No. 20, July 1974, 32 pages.

Party, Army and Masses in China, A Marxist interpretation of the Cultural Revolution and its aftermath, Livio Maitan, NLB, London, 1976, 373 pages.

Wind in the tower, Mao Tse-tung and the Chinese Revolution – 1949-1965, Han Suyin, Little, Brown and Company, Boston, 1976, 404 pages.

The People of Taihang – An Anthology of Family Histories, edited by Sidney Greenblatt, International Arts and Science Press, White Plains, New York, 1976, 305 pages.

Economic planning in China, by Geoff Mason, New Zealand-China Society, 1976, 60 pages.

China and the Nuclear Question, by Joan Donley, New Zealand-China Society, 2nd revised ed. 1976, 20 pages.

Why is China not at the Olympiques? [sic] / Pourquoi la Chine n’est pas aux Olympiques?, by the Canada-China Society and the Amitiés Québec-Chine, 1976, 16 pages. In both English and French.

China’s Foreign Policy – an outline, compiled by Clark Kissinger, August 1976, 60 pages.

Women’s Liberation in China, Claudie Broyelle, Humanities Press, New Jersey, 1977, 174 pages.

Workers and Workplaces in Revolutionary China, the China book project, edited by Stephen Andors, ME Sharpe, White Plains, New York, 1977, 403 pages.

Comrade Chiang Ch’ing, Roxanne Witke, Little, Brown and Company, Boston, 1977, 549 pages.

Revolutionary Diplomacy, Chinese Foreign Policy and the United Front Doctrine, JD Armstrong, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1977, 251 pages.

The Politics of Revolutionary China, British and Irish Communist Organisation, Belfast, 1977?, 44 pages.

China since Mao, Neil J Burton and Charles Bettleheim, Monthly review Press, New York, 1978, 130 pages.

Mao Tsetung’s immortal contributions, Bob Avakian, RCP Publications, Chicago, 1979, 342 pages.

Chairman Mao – Education of the Proletariat, Don Chean Chu, Philosophical Library, New York, 1980, 478 pages.

Edgar Snow’s China, a personal account of the Chinese Revolution compiled from the writings of Edgar Snow, Lois Wheeler Snow, Random House, New York, 1981, 284 pages.

Science in Contemporary China, edited by Leo A Orleans, Stanford University Press, California, 1980, 599 pages.

Science and Socialist Construction in China, Xu Liangying and Fan Dainian, The China book project, ME Sharpe, New York, 1982, 225 pages.

Marxism, Maoism, and Utopianism, Eight Essays, Maurice Meisner, University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, 1982, 255 pages.

Shenfan, the continuing revolution in a Chinese village, William Hinton, Random House, New York, 1983, 785 pages.

Red and Expert – A case study of Chinese science in the Cultural revolution, David Wade Chambers, Deakin University Press, Victoria, Australia, 1984, 153 pages.

Ninth Heaven to Ninth Hell – The History of a Noble Chinese Experiment, Qin Huailu, Barricade Books, New York, 1995, 665 pages.

Documents on the Rape of Nanking, edited by Timothy Brook, Ann Arbor Paperbacks, 1999, 301 pages.

Mao – a Life, Phillip Short, Henry Holt and Company, New York, 1999, 782 pages.

The Nanjing Massacre, a Japanese Journalist Confronts Japan’s National Shame, Honda Katsuichi, ME Sharpe, New York, 1999, 367 pages.

The Nanjing Massacre in History and Historiography, edited by Joshua A Fogel, University of California Press, Berkeley, 2000, 248 pages.

Nanking 1937 – Memory and Healing, edited by Fei Fei Li, Robert Sabella and David Liu, ME Sharpe, New York, 2002, 278 pages.

Marxist Philosophy in China – From Qu Qiubai to Mao Zedong, 1923–1945, Nick Knight, Springer, The Netherlands, 2005, 245 pages.

Revolution in the Highlands – China’s Jinggangshan Base Area, Stephen C Averill, Rowman and Littlefield, New York, 2006, 451 pages.

Corruption and Realism in Late Socialist China – The Return of the Political Novel, Jeffrey Kinkley, Stanford University Press, 2007, 305 pages.

Mao Zedong, a political and intellectual portrait, Maurice Meisner, Polity Press, Cambridge, 2007, 222 pages.

Rise of the Red Engineers – The Cultural Revolution and the Origins of China’s New Class, Joel Andreas, Stanford University Press, California, 2009, 344 pages.

Was Mao really a monster? The academic response to Chang and Halliday’s ‘Mao – the unknown story’, edited by Gregor Benton and Lin Chun, Routledge, Abingdon, 2010, 199 pages.

The Wounds, Norman Bethune, speeches given in Canada in the 1930s, Anvil press, Ontario, ND, 35 pages.

The Socialist Cultural Revolution and the People’s National Culture

Posted on 19/01/2021 by Michael

Myrteza Fushekati – Before the demonstration

The Socialist Cultural Revolution and the People’s National Culture

by Professor Zija Xholi

The creation of a new culture, the spreading of it among the broad masses, the revolutionary ideological formation of the working people, is one of the most fundamental tasks of the construction of socialism and, at the same time, one of the greatest achievements following the people’s revolution.

More than three decades have passed since the day when our people, led by the Party of Labour of Albania, embarked on the road of the cultural revolution – sufficient time to draw up some conclusions and to discover some of its distinctive characteristics.

The first characteristic of our cultural revolution, that which immediately strikes the eye from analysis of the factors which have conditioned its success, is that it began and developed as a consequence of the socialist revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat led by the Communist Party.

Second, a characteristic of the cultural revolution, one brilliant result of it, is the free participation, in ever growing proportions of the broad masses of the people in the frontal progress of technology, science, art and culture in general. The creative capacities, the talents of the people, once hampered and stifled, are now able to express themselves and develop freely. Through their efforts and talent, the masses have become the decisive factor of the cultural revolution which is taking place in our country.

The ultimate reason for the unprecedented extension of the decisive role of the masses in the development of culture too, should be sought in the elimination of oppression and the exploitation of man by man, as well as in the place the masses occupy in the system of socialist material production, where they are not only the decisive productive force but also the decisive responsible, organizing and directing force as well. Socialism stripped work of its drudgery once and for all and restored to it all its intrinsic moral and intellectual values. The creative activity in the most varied fields of art, in song, dance, theatre, variety, in which thousands of workers and peasants, young men and young women take part, most of them without training in art schools is evidence of the great art latent in the bosom of the people, of the marvellous artistic talents of our people which were waiting for the moment when they could burst free and pour out in a torrent.

At all times our people have been creative and they continue to create today, but in the conditions of the socialist construction, their creative works are radically different from those of the past. Freed from oppression and exploitation, today, our people enjoy ever increasing well-being, have more free time at their disposal, and this allows them to concern themselves more and more with the problems of culture. The principle that before you can philosophize you must have food and drink, is of special importance in this field. Besides this, the participation of the masses in cultural work enjoys the aid, support and organization of many specialized institutions and of the whole society in general. And finally, our culture is no longer created by masses who had never been inside a school but by masses who have an ever higher educational and cultural’ level. This brings about that, with the transition to socialism, the decisive creative role of the masses in the field of culture increases and manifests itself in broad proportions. This means that in socialism the people’s culture is raised to new, high levels never seen before.

Third, another characteristic of the cultural revolution, another of its brilliant results, is the elimination of the cultural monopoly of the feudal-bourgeoisie, the changing of culture from the monopoly of a select minority, a limited elite, into the property of the broad masses. It is a fact that in antagonistic society the working masses have developed themselves intellectually mainly through their work and productive activity, while they have received just as much schooling, theory and science as the exploiting ruling classes have needed to exploit them more thoroughly. The socialist revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat put an end to this situation once and for all. Education, theory and science have been returned to the working masses, to those who, with their efforts and talents, keep socialist society alive and carry it forward in all directions.

The years of our People’s State Power have been years of a real offensive by an entire people, young and old, men and women to master technology, to conquer the bastions of knowledge, of arts and science, to turn our whole life into culture. The stages of the ceaseless march towards culture, expressions of its successes are the total elimination of illiteracy, the compulsory eight-year schooling, the abolition of religious teaching, the creation of higher education, the flowering of art in all its variety, song and dance, painting and sculpture, comedy and drama. The educational and cultural reality of our society is expressed by the following significant figures: whereas in 1938, the total number of pupils and students attending school was 56,000, today that number has risen to 700,000 which means that one-third of the population attend school.

Fourth, the cultural revolution does not aim at the educational and intellectual development or at the rejuvenation and progress of the life of only a minority of the population, of only one social stratum, to the detriment of the broad masses, or of only the cities to the detriment of the countryside. Its task is to ensure that education becomes the property of all, that the cultured life is taken up by everybody and enters every household, not only in the cities but also in the countryside, without creating special positions and privileges for any individual or stratum, a task which it is accomplishing better and better every day.

But the most fundamental characteristic of our cultural revolution, that which sets the tone for our education and culture and which marks a real revolution in them is their socialist content, their frankly Marxist- Leninist socialist tendentiousness.

Our socialist culture, like every other culture closely linked with classes and in the service of their struggle, cannot stand aloof from ideology and not be inspired by ideology. There is not, and never can be, any culture standing aloof from or above ideology. Culture for culture’s sake, pure culture, is simply a fraud which the bourgeoisie and the revisionists perpetrate in order to create that culture which best serves their selfish class interests. Therefore, the whole problem is not that culture should be divorced from ideology, for this is impossible, but that it must be based on the revolutionary ideology of the proletariat in opposition to the reactionary ideology of the bourgeoisie.

The Party of Labour of Albania strives to have no culture which is divorced from the mission of developing and perfecting the revolutionary ideological outlook of the working people and, on the other hand, to have no revolutionary ideological formation which is not based on the broadest and most accurate knowledge. This makes the cultural revolution part and parcel of the ideological revolution, makes them two sides of a single process, the process of the revolutionary education and re-education of the working people, the process of the formation of the new man of socialist society.

Naturally, the creation of the new socialist culture, the revolutionary ideological formation, immediately raised the problem of what to do about classical culture, the world culture heritage and, first and foremost, the culture of our own people, with their customs and traditions.

In the cultural revolution, the Party of Labour of Albania has faithfully followed the teachings of Lenin, who stressed that one can emerge from darkness only by utilizing the whole treasury of world culture, all the valuable achievements which mankind has created under the yoke of capitalist society, of the society of landlords and of bureaucrats. From its very first steps, our culture has striven consistently to take from world culture whatever is revolutionary and scientifically sound, whatever responds best to the requirements of the stage of development of our country. Consistently adhering to this orientation, our culture has maintained and continues to maintain a critical, stand towards world culture, taking from it only its scientific, materialist, democratic and popular ideas, and discarding its clerical, mystical idealist ideas, and any others which implant lack of confidence in life and man, which look down upon work and the working masses, which justify oppression, exploitation and obscurantism.

No matter how valuable the world cultural heritage may be, it is insufficient for the education and formation of the man of our society. In this, the first place is, and should be, occupied by the cultural heritage and traditions of our own people. In culture, too, the communists combine, the most consistent internationalism (they prize the progressive culture created by every people) with the purest of patriotism (they are the most ardent champions of the culture and traditions of their own people).

In place of the nihilist policy of denigration towards the culture and tradition of our people pursued by the reactionary ruling classes of the old, overthrown feudal-bourgeois order, the working class and its Marxist-Leninist Party have worked out a new policy, the policy of defending, preserving, and further enriching the popular culture and the first traditions of our people. At the foundation of this policy and the rich experience of our people in this field, are the Marxist-Leninist ideas of comrade Enver Hoxha, that our people have created a culture and art of a clear national character which constitutes a priceless heritage which must be kept pure and developed further; that the new socialist culture is linked with a thousand threads with the culture of the people; that the revolutionary content of the new socialist culture has not dropped like manna from heaven, nor has it been brought in a suitcase from abroad, but it has been inherited from our forefathers, its foundations are deep in the people; that the study of the cultural traditions of our people is not done simply for the purpose of knowing the past of our people but also for the purpose of learning from the experience of our forefathers in conformity with the new conditions and requirements of our socialist society; and finally, that a critical class attitude should be maintained towards the culture and traditions of our people from the past, on the basis of the idea that every creative work of every epoch has been tendentious, is inspired by the ideas of the time, bears the brand of the class struggle and of the ideology of its own time, therefore, it cannot be taken as a whole and inserted into the new life and culture just as it is.

Socialist culture is not something in itself, created apart from the people and handed to them from outside, but a culture indissolubly linked with them, which responds to their requirements, their spirit, and their traditions. There is no socialist culture in general, no culture created by someone which can be served up ready to any nation which is building socialism, but a socialist culture of a given nation which gives it its richness and this does not consist simply of its form, but enters deep into the content of this culture. Socialist culture, taken in its broadest sense, has emerged and developed in close collaboration with the culture of the people. In its essence it is a socialist and a national culture.

Guided by the teachings of comrade Enver Hoxha, our socialist culture is proving in practice that proletarian partisanship, which requires that every cultural manifestation must be viewed from the angle of the interests of the working class and analyzed from the standpoint of Marxist-Leninist ideology, and the national tradition, which requires that everything good and valuable, everything close to the aspirations of the workers, created by the people in the past, must be preserved, far from opposing each other, are, on the contrary complementary arid dialectically linked with each other. Our socialist culture is enriched by the great artistic, ideo-philosophic values which our people have brought to culture, while through the socialist culture, the rational tradition is cleansed of negative elements which may have penetrated it under the influence of negative economic and social factors of the past, and is further enriched with the new experience which has emerged under socialism.

Our concern to discover, uphold and evaluate the best traditions of one’s own people’s culture also stems from a political demand, from the demand to ensure the free development of the people, which is the first premise of any genuine socialist construction. The attempts, which the two super-powers are making today in one way or another, to impose their own language, as allegedly the best language, their own culture, as allegedly the richest culture, their pretensions that culture today is moving towards its ‘internationalization’, towards the disappearance of specific cultures, implying the Americanization or Russification of the cultures of the other peoples, are in essence, expressions of the national egotism and great state chauvinism of the two super-powers, their favorite means for the conquest of the peoples and establishing their hegemony. Therefore, under these circumstances, faced with the imperialist designs of the two superpowers, the revolutionary Leninist principle must be stressed and applied that for the life and existence of each nation, political vigilance and ensuring its defence from any armed aggression and the preservation of its cultural identity and mother tongue are equally important. If a people loses its cultural physiognomy, if it does not hold on to its traditions, if it allows its mother tongue to be forgotten, it has ceased to be a nation in itself.

If we oppose the ideological and cultural aggression of the bourgeois-revisionist world, we do this in the name of freedom and independence, in the name of the correct and rapid development of our socialist culture, but by no means in the name of national exclusiveness. National narrowness and xenophobia are alien to our revolutionary ideology and our new culture. Our socialist culture has utilized and continues to utilize the progressive culture of all peoples, but not by sacrificing our mother tongue, the best traditions, and the cultural heritage of our own people, but while emphasizing and prizing them. With this heritage our people will take their place in world culture. Any other assimilation of the culture of one people by another, made to the detriment of the national language and finest national traditions, under whatever name it is called, is, in reality, a chauvinist design to impose the domination and hegemony of one nation over other nations, whether they live within a multi-national state or are separated by national boundaries.

What does the traditional culture of the people, with which the new socialist culture is linked, represent? What has our nation contributed in the field of culture?

Our people came to power and to real freedom with a rich material, social and spiritual cultural heritage. In it are expressed the people’s capacity to live on, indomitable in any circumstances, no matter how difficult, their talent and inextinguishable desire for a free and independent life without oppression and exploitation. But the extremely difficult historical circumstances under which they had to fight for their very existence, the anti-national and anti-popular ideological pressure and influence of the invaders and the reactionary classes, on the background of the great backwardness and poverty, are also expressed in it. These circumstances make the culture we have inherited from the past a mixture of progressive and reactionary elements, with light and darkness. However, the progressive values exceed the non-progressive ones in force and breadth, the elements of light greatly predominate over those of darkness. It is the progressive values which give the culture of our people its characteristic tone. This distinctive characteristic of the culture of our people has its own explanation which is, as comrade Enver Hoxha stresses, ‘through the centuries, the people of our small country have always been guided by the progressive ideas of liberty and the defence of liberty, by the ideas of just wars against oppressors, against the rapacious imperialist ideologies of foreigners’.

Our people have been obliged to lead an intensive life in their struggle for existence and self-defense, have had to face up all sorts of events. Naturally they have had to act and think, to create a definite concept about many phenomena of nature and life, about griefs and joys. For well-known reasons they have not done this in writing, have not fixed it in books or treatises, but have formulated it by word of mouth, transmitting and enriching it from one district to another, from one generation to another for centuries on end. This has made up our wealth of folklore, which is our unwritten encyclopedia, a living testimony of the talent and wisdom of our people. The historian and philosopher, the anonymous writer and artist, speak collectively through hundreds of legends and songs of heroes, through thousands of aphorisms and proverbs, through thousands upon thousands of songs of valour and love, of work and exile, of weddings and deaths. This remains an immortal monument of the culture of our people, a source of learning and inspiration for the artist and the writer, for the philosopher and thinker of our own days, for the new socialist culture as a whole.

At the present time, when anti-communist ideology has swamped the book market and audiences in the bourgeois-revisionist world, when hideous fashions and decadent trends in art and literature are assailing the tastes of the youth and the masses from all sides, the reality of the new culture of our people assumes a special value and significance. By its existence and flowering it is showing that the present decadent and degenerate culture is not an inevitable evil from which no one can escape. Meanwhile, in its practice, our culture shows how the bourgeois revisionist ideological aggression can be coped with, how a culture in the service of the liberation of the working people from oppression and exploitation, a culture which will preserve the real values of the people and raise them to a higher level and oppose everything which degrades man morally, aesthetically and philosophically, can be created.

The national features, the national background of socialist culture, the appreciation of the cultural heritage created by our people, are that force which in culture facilitates and accelerates the cultural revolution, while in politics it helps the people get a better appreciation of their own value and strength, to cope better with any aggression from whatever direction it may come. Indeed, this is the most important function and the most profound meaning of every genuine culture – to help the people to recognise their own worth, to multiply their efforts in their struggle for a better and more just life, in their struggle for socialism and communism.

This article is reproduced from New Albania, No 3, 1977.

All emphasis is from the original.

Zija Xholi, Albanian philosopher. Member Academy of Science, Albanian Trade Union (member General Council 1967-1972, member Presidium 1972-1976, Chairman Culture Department 1977-1990), Albanian Philosophical Association (Chairman 1991).

Enver Hoxha – The need for a Cultural Revolution in Albania

Posted on 29/12/2020 by Michael

Enver Hoxha

Enver Hoxha – The need for a Cultural Revolution in Albania

Introduction

The section below entitled ‘The further deepening of the ideological and cultural revolution’ comes from the Report of the Central Committee of the Party of Labour of Albania presented by Enver Hoxha at the Fifth Congress of the Party, held at the beginning of November 1966.

It’s presented here to remind people that the concept of an ‘ideological and cultural revolution’ had existed since (and even before) the October Revolution in Russia in 1917. The works of both VI Lenin and JV Stalin make reference to the need to change the way people think and act as an integral component in the construction of Socialism. The development of the economy to suit the needs of the vast majority of the population, the taking of the means of production by the people from private owners with the collectivisation (and nationalisation when collectives were further developed to the situation of State owned farms) of agriculture and the building of a modern industry would not automatically lead to Socialism. What needed to change were people’s ideas.

This was the role of the development of the Socialist Realist movement in the arts and was demonstrated in an Albanian context with the construction of the lapidars (which commemorated the past victories and sacrifices of the working people of the country against foreign invaders for national liberation as well as the achievements in the construction of Socialism).

Although the thinking in the People’s Socialist Republic of Albania was the same as that in the People’s Republic of China the way the cultural revolution manifested itself in the late 1960s was not the same – due to the different experiences in both countries.

Many people will be aware of The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (under the leadership of Chairman Mao) and the mass demonstrations and movements that took place in China from 1966 but that doesn’t mean to say the struggle didn’t exist in Albania. The same enemies, both internal and external, had to be confronted in both countries. Those countries, and parties worldwide, that aligned themselves with the Communist Party of the Soviet Union – after the success of Revisionism following the death of Comrade Stalin in 1953 – had failed to initiate this ‘cultural revolution’ and therefore started to follow the capitalist road. They had failed to learn from what Lenin and Stalin had taught.

All Marxist-Leninists who are seeking to established a Socialist state (under the dictatorship of the proletariat) need to study the writings of all the great Marxist theoreticians to ensure that any gains they might make in the future don’t get squandered amongst the euphoria that accompanies the success of the revolution. Capitalism never will rest to regain what it might have lost.

You might also be intested in The Socialist Cultural Revolution and the People’s National Culture.

Report to the Fifth Congress – 1st November 1966

THE FURTHER DEEPENING OF THE IDEOLOGICAL AND CULTURAL REVOLUTION

The further revolutionisation of life in our country is inconceivable without the further development and deepening of the ideological and cultural revolution. It is accomplished precisely on the basis of this revolution, the fundamental aim of which is to instil and ensure the complete triumph of the proletarian socialist ideology in the consciousness of all the working people, while thoroughly eradicating the bourgeois ideology, to ensure the all-round revolutionary, communist education and tempering of the new man – the decisive factor in solving all the big, complicated problems of the construction of socialism and the defence of the Homeland.

Throughout its whole existence, our Party has devoted special care and attention to the all-round revolutionary education of the communists and all the working people. Especially since the 4th Congress [Report delivered on 13th February 1961, Enver Hoxha, Selected Works, Volume 3, pp192-283] and on the basis of its directives, our Party has done more persistent work in this direction.

1 – THE STRUGGLE FOR THE TRIUMPH OF THE SOCIALIST IDEOLOGY IS A STRUGGLE FOR THE TRIUMPH OF SOCIALISM AND COMMUNISM

In our country the proletarian socialist ideology is the ideology in power which sets the general tone for all the life and activity of our working people. Despite the successes achieved, however, we are conscious that the struggle in this field is protracted and difficult. V.I. Lenin said;

‘Our task is to overcome all the resistance of the capitalists, not only their military and political resistance but also their ideological resistance, which is the strongest and most deeply entrenched.’ VI Lenin, Collected Works, Volume 29.

The old idealist ideology of the exploiting society still has deep roots and exerts a powerful and continuous influence. When we speak of this influence, it is not just a matter of ‘a few remnants and alien manifestations that appear here and there’, as it is often wrongly described in our propaganda, but the influence of a whole alien ideology which is expressed in all sorts of alien concepts, customs and attitudes, which are retained for a long time as a heritage from the past, have social support in the former exploiting classes and their remnants, in the tendencies to petty-bourgeois spontaneity, and are nurtured in various forms by the capitalist and revisionist world which surrounds us.

As long as the complete victory of the socialist revolution in the field of ideology and culture has not been ensured, the achievements of the socialist revolution in the political and economic fields cannot be secure and guaranteed, either. Therefore, in the final analysis, the struggle on the ideological front for the complete defeat of bourgeois and revisionist ideology has to do with the question: will socialism and communism be built and the restoration of capitalism be avoided, or will the door be opened to the spread of bourgeois and revisionist ideology and the return to capitalism be permitted.

The ideological and cultural revolution is a part of the general class struggle to carry the socialist revolution through to the end in all fields. Contrary to the views of the modem revisionists, who have declared the class struggle in socialism outdated and a thing of the past, our Party holds that class struggle remains one of the main motive forces of society, even after the exploiting classes have been eliminated. This struggle includes all fields of life. It has its ebbs and flows and zigzags, sometimes it surges up, sometimes it falls back, sometimes becomes fierce, at other times more ‘mild’, but it never ceases and dies right away.

As the experience of our country shows, this struggle is an objective and inevitable phenomenon in socialism. It is waged against the remnants of the exploiting classes, overthrown and expropriated, but who continue to resist and exert pressure by every means, first and foremost, through their reactionary ideology, as well as against new bourgeois elements, degenerate revisionist and anti-Party elements, who inevitably emerge within our society. It is also waged against bourgeois and revisionist ideology which is retained and expressed in various forms and degrees of intensity, as well as against the external pressure of imperialism. Thus the internal and external fronts of class struggle are interconnected, now merging into one single front, now operating separately, but always linked by the same objective: to overthrow the dictatorship of the proletariat and restore capitalism.

Acceptance or non-acceptance of the class struggle in socialism is a question of principle, it is a line of demarcation between Marxist-Leninists and revisionists, between revolutionaries and betrayers of the revolution. Any deviation from the class struggle has fatal consequences for the future of socialism. Therefore, along with the struggle to increase production, to develop education and culture, along with the struggle against foreign enemies – the imperialists and revisionists, we must not neglect, must never overlook the class struggle within the country, for otherwise history will punish us severely.

The duty of the Party is not to shut its eyes to this necessity, not to benumb the revolutionary vigilance of the communists and masses, but to wage this class struggle vigorously and unwaveringly until final victory. The progress of our society and the revolutionary education of the working people are inconceivable and cannot be achieved outside the class struggle.

In practice we often come across a narrow concept on the class struggle and class enemy, which regards only the kulaks and other elements of the former exploiting classes, or the imperialists and Titoite and Khrushchevite revisionists abroad as class enemies, and only the struggle against their anti-socialist activities as class struggle. The struggle against these enemies remains, as always, a primary task for our Party, our state and our working people. But we should take a broader view of the class struggle. It is a many-sided struggle which is, first and foremost, an ideological struggle today, a struggle for the minds and hearts of people, a struggle against bourgeois and revisionist degeneration, against all alien remnants and phenomena which still exist and manifest themselves in various degrees among all our people – it is a struggle for the triumph of our communist ideology and morality.

The struggle against theft and misuse of socialist property, against parasitic and speculative tendencies to take as much as possible from society and to contribute to it as little as possible, against putting personal ease, the personal interest and glory above the general interest, against bureaucratic manifestations and distortions, religious ideology, prejudices, superstitions and backward customs, against underestimation of women and failure to respect their equal rights in society, against fashion and the bourgeois way of life, against idealism and metaphysics, against various ‘isms’ of the decadent bourgeois and revisionist art and culture, against the political and ideological influence of external enemies, etc., etc., all these things are parts of the class struggle.

Thus, the class struggle is not only directed against external and internal enemies, but is also waged within the ranks of the working people, against any alien manifestation observed in the consciousness, the thinking, the behaviour and the attitude of each individual. No one should think that he is proof against any evil and has nothing to fight against within himself. A stern struggle between socialist ideology and bourgeois ideology takes place in the consciousness of each person. Everybody ought to look at himself as though in a mirror and clean his consciousness every day, just as he washes his face every day, by taking a communist attitude towards himself.

Class struggle is reflected within the Party, too, because, on the one hand, people from different social strata come into the Party, bringing with them all kinds of alien remnants and manifestations, and on the other hand, the party members, like all the working people, encounter the pressure of the class enemy, especially of the enemy ideology, from inside and outside the country. Consequently, in the party ranks as well as in the ranks of the working people there may and do emerge people who degenerate and go over to alien anti-Party and anti-socialist positions. Moreover, in all their activities our enemies give particular importance to the degeneration of party members in order to bring about the degeneration of the Party as a whole, because only thus can the way be opened to the restoration of capitalism. It should be clear that without contradictions of various kinds and without a struggle to overcome them, the life and development of the Party would not be possible. This struggle should not he covered up under the pretext of preserving unity, but should be waged and carried through to the end, thus strengthening the true unity of the Party, its revolutionary spirit, its militancy and the dictatorship of the proletariat.

It is a primary task of all the ideological work of the Party to form a correct concept about class struggle in our country in all the communists and working people, to educate them in the spirit of irreconcilable class struggle, to instil in them the method of class analysis which is the only method by which to know and correctly solve all the problems, to teach them not only to accept the need for class struggle in words, but to wage it in all fields of life every day. This is not something new. Our Party has always stressed the need to wage the class struggle and carry out class education and has done a great deal of work in this direction.

We must fight indifference and formalism in our political work for the education of the Party and the masses and always link it properly with the active class struggle. We must resolutely combat alien concepts and manifestations opposed to the line of the Party and the interests of people and socialism, combat the tendency to avoid calling things by their true names, but to soften them and smooth them over, concealing their class essence and their social danger.

These shortcomings in the work of party organizations account for the fact that some cadres and party members do not always give priority to the common interests represented by the party policy, but often look at things from the angle of personal, local or departmental interest, look at various problems with the eye of a technocrat and bureaucrat, with the eye of a narrow-minded specialist and neglect the political and ideological aspects. They do not understand that there is politics everywhere, in every work and sector, because there are no cadres or economic, administrative, cultural or military work divorced from politics or outside the policy of the dictatorship of the proletariat. All things are interconnected and interdependent and in this unity politics occupies the main place, and likewise all our cadres, in every sector where they work, should be, first and foremost, political people, should put the policy of the Party first and always guide themselves by it.

Our Party has always been characterized by its stern irreconcilability with the enemies of the people, socialism and Marxism-Leninism and its love for and boundless loyalty to the working people and their revolutionary cause, its wisdom and patience with all those who commit mistakes but can be corrected. Narrow, sectarian attitudes have always been alien to it. Therefore, the party organizations must resolutely combat any manifestation of sectarianism in their work because this damages the links of the Party with the masses, confuses the dividing line between us and our enemies and leads to the use of wrong methods in resolving contradictions among the people, which affect the working people themselves.

The ideological work of the Party must make the nature of the contradictions in socialist society thoroughly clear, as well as the ways to resolve them correctly … Any mixing up of the two kinds of contradictions leads to opportunist and sectarian errors.

It must always be borne in mind that the carriers and spreaders of the bourgeois ideology are not only elements from former exploiting classes but also our own people who are working for the cause of socialism. In these cases, while fighting mercilessly against the disease, the alien ideology, we must strive with all our might to cure the patient, the carrier of that ideology. Only in the case when the carrier and spreader of the alien ideology is or becomes our conscious enemy, only then is the contradiction handled and resolved as an antagonistic contradiction and the method of persuasion replaced by that of compulsion. The Party must do a great prophylactic, educational and political work, patiently and systematically, to prevent anyone from falling into grave blunders, going from blunders to culpable faults and then to anti-state and anti-socialist crimes subject to severe punishment by the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Another very important direction of the ideological work of the Party is the inculcation of the new socialist attitude towards work, so that our people will work as revolutionaries and fight resolutely to put the revolutionary ideals into practice. Only in work and through work is the new man educated and tempered, because work is the greatest school of communist education.

In the atmosphere of great creative work full of selfless revolutionary enthusiasm, which is transforming nature and the consciousness of man, it becomes even more evident how alien and intolerable are the attitudes of those people who dodge work, who are afraid of difficulties and sacrifices, who do not want to disturb their personal ease and comfort, who try to occupy or hang on to some ‘soft spot’, who do their work carelessly and try to grab the maximum from society, who proceed in everything from their own personal interest and material benefit and, with a thousand pretexts and excuses, shirk the duty of working where the people and the country need them. All these are bourgeois attitudes.

The party organizations must carry on a resolute fight against such alien manifestations, incompatible with our communist morality. They must regard the struggle against such manifestations as an aspect of the class struggle, as a struggle against the seed of the bourgeois and revisionist degeneration of people. They must implant the revolutionary socialist concept and attitude towards work among all the working people of town and country, so that everybody regards work as a matter of honour and pride, as a lofty patriotic duty, without which life could not exist. Our people and, first and foremost, the cadres and party members must work with high consciousness and discipline, with military drive and tempo, boldly overcome every obstacle and difficulty, march steadily forward, place the interests of the people, the country and socialism above everything, spare nothing to promote these interests, and be ready even to lay down their lives for these interests. A modest son of our people, son of a family formerly oppressed and exploited by beys and landlords was Hekuran Zenuni, a soldier from the village of Tozhar in the Berat district. He made light of difficulties and sacrifices and went ahead to perform the duty with which he had been charged and, without hesitation, laid down his life in the flower of his youth, just as the 28,000 martyrs did to accomplish their tasks during the National Liberation War. Such are the new men which our Party has educated and tempered.

When we speak about the socialist attitude towards work, the correct understanding of physical work, work in production has first-rate importance. This is a great question of principle to which the organizations of the Party must give special attention in their educational work. The aristocratic concepts about work in production are completely alien to socialism and fraught with dangerous consequences. Any underestimation or deriding of physical work should be condemned as underestimation and deriding of the workers and peasants and the broad masses of the people – a thing that leads to isolation from the people and their work and life, and this isolation is the source of many evils. This should be taken into account especially by those engaged in mental work, the cadres, officials, the technical and artistic intelligentsia, the pupils and students. The overwhelming majority of them have been educated since the liberation of the country and have emerged from the ranks of the working masses, are closely linked with the people and the Party and have displayed and are demonstrating a high level of patriotic and socialist consciousness. Nevertheless, these features should not lead us to underestimate the danger of their becoming infected by bourgeois ideology and, especially, by revisionist views. This is not an imaginary danger, it has a real basis. It is connected with the very nature and conditions of the work and life of people engaged in mental work, and especially the creative, artistic and scientific intelligentsia, who are still very out of touch with physical work and, in many instances, with the working masses and their lives. Among the intelligentsia more favourable ground can be and is found for the spread of individualism and careerism, conceit and haughtiness, unjustified pretensions and an easy life, intellectualism and disdain for the masses.

Our people’s intelligentsia must link itself as closely as possible with the people, must work and live with the workers and peasants and blend themselves inseparably with them. They must reject the bourgeois idea inherited from the past which still has deep roots, that the intellectual knows everything and he alone is able to lead, to guide, to teach and instruct others – an idea which in fact expresses the negation of the role of the masses. It must be clear that the decisive role in all fields of life, including spiritual life, does not belong to particular individuals, no matter how outstanding they are, but to the broad masses of the people. Knowledge does not fall from heaven. All knowledge derives from life and practice and is a product of the struggle of the masses to transform nature and society. Therefore, the men of science, art and culture must listen with attention and deep respect to the opinions of the masses, sum up their experience, always be modest and humble pupils of the great and unmistakable teacher, the people, and make the judgement of the people the fundamental criterion in all their creative work. Some cadres in our scientific institutions are conceited and think that what they say is the last word of science, that any opinion opposed to theirs is worthless; incorrect, and must be rejected, No! Such concepts among the ranks of our scientists must be stigmatized. There is no advance in science or anywhere else without struggle, without clashes of opinions, without class struggle, without debate guided by the Marxist-Leninist principles, by the proletarian ideology, to discover the truth. The idea of the development and progress of science, and not personal glory, must guide each of our scientists in his own work.

The people of the intelligentsia must link their mental work as closely as possible with the physical work of workers and peasants and take part continually, in the proportions laid down, in work directly in production. This duty which has been put into practice widely for all the cadres, intelligentsia, pupils and students, has great theoretical and practical importance. It will help them to become better acquainted with life, to rid themselves of many alien remnants and manifestations and to temper themselves as genuine revolutionaries. This is an important step towards reducing the distinctions between mental and physical work, which, together with the reduction of distinctions between town and country and between the working class and the peasantry, constitutes a major problem which is closely linked with the prospects of our development towards communism. If we do not take measures now to narrow these differences and, willingly or not, allow them to deepen, then our country will not develop towards our final objective and these differences will also become the cause of many evils, of unfair relations between people of mental and physical work, between town and country and between the working class and the peasantry.

Our Party has big tasks to perform also in connection with the inculcation of correct concepts about life so that the moral figure of the communists and all the working people will be the same, not only at work and in society, but also in personal and family life. The cadres, the communists and every worker should live like revolutionaries, lead a modest life of real struggle, they should be the first in sacrifices and the last in pretensions. As the Open Letter reads:

‘… not empty idleness and concern only for oneself, but the ideal of socialism, the struggle to build our socialist Homeland and make it flower with our own hands, the joy of creative work for the good of the people and in their service and the continuous raising of the standard of living of the working masses must be the main objective of their life and struggle, their main preoccupation.’ Principal Documents of the Party of Labour of Albania, Volume 5, p. 38 (Albanian Edition).

The bourgeois and revisionist concept of life, putting money, pleasure, luxury, comfort, personal ease and well being above everything, is alien to our people. The consequences of such a concept have become catastrophic in the countries ruled by the revisionists. Political degeneration, moral corruption, running after money and material gain, selfishness and frenzied individualism, the bourgeois way of life and fashion, and hooliganism are what characterize the life of these countries today, a life which is almost indistinguishable from that of western capitalist countries.

Such alien views on life may and, in fact, do take root in some of our people who are exposed to the strong influence of bourgeois ideology and morality. The party organizations must always be vigilant and carry out a great educational work and struggle to create in the Party, in the collective, in the family and everywhere such an atmosphere as to stifle decadent concepts about the way and purpose of life, sternly condemning all liberal attitudes and laxity in this direction. Through its work the Party must inculcate, especially in the younger generation, our new revolutionary concept of life that is inspired by the lofty ideals of socialism and communism.

All the ideological work of the Party its propaganda and agitation, must be directed first and foremost at ideological and political education, the formation and tempering of people as genuine revolutionaries and communists so that they understand and put into practice the great slogan of the Party: ‘Think, work and live like revolutionaries’ – which constitutes the essence of communist education, the fundamental content of the educational work of the Party.

2 – WE MUST RADICALLY IMPROVE THE METHOD AND STYLE OF THE EDUCATIONAL WORK

Our great objectives in the realm of the cultural and ideological revolution for the education of communists and all the working people in a high revolutionary spirit can not be achieved without further improving the entire content of our educational work and especially the method and style of this work.

It must be said that up to now this work has suffered and is still suffering from dogmatism and stereotypeism, from being out of touch with life, from verbosity, unexplained formulas and a heavy, boring style. Our workers of Marxist social sciences and propaganda have been trying to present our experience in the known terms of theory, reducing it, in the best instances, to examples for illustration, and not enough work has been done to make theoretical generalizations from the Albanian practice, to raise the wealth of factual material that the life of our country during all these years has provided, to the level of science. Therefore, the Party must make every effort to combat this serious shortcoming, and to enliven creative thinking in the field of Marxist social sciences, in our propaganda, and in all our ideological and cultural work.

In addition there are some other weaknesses that have been noticed in the organization and conduct of political and cultural educational activities. In many cases the forms of educational work are standardized and rigid, without spirit or life, little effort is made to adapt them to new conditions and circumstances and frequently nothing is altered until instructions come from above. The fact is that the revolutionary spirit of the Party and masses has far outstripped the propaganda and agitation of the Party. Communists and non-party workers, co-operativists, youth and women are making thousands of innovations and rationalizations which revolutionize their minds and production. However, the same cannot be said about the party workers engaged in propaganda and agitation, or about the workers of the ideological and cultural front, who should advance not alongside, but in the vanguard of all the other working people, to light the way for them, to organize and mobilize them for great deeds. What is the reason for this? Is it that the comrades of the ideological front are incapable, have no ideas and opinions? No. They are some of the best comrades, with a high ideological and political level and tireless workers. The trouble is that they find it difficult to break away from the old stereotyped forms of work and are not closely linked with the work and struggle of the masses.

In the field of ideology and propaganda the Party must struggle also against another serious shortcoming which is seen especially in the daily life of party organizations, as well as of state and economic organs. Here I am referring to the manifestations of empiricism and narrow practicism, the separation of practice from theory, becoming totally immersed in the swirl of daily life, facts and events, the failure to draw general conclusions from the experience of the masses, and the underestimation of theory, which leads to the loss of perspective and deviation from principles. It is regrettable, but a fact, that there are communists in the ranks of the Party who toil day and night but never open a book, that some leading cadres who have neglected their studies, have lagged behind and cannot respond to the great tasks with which life faces them. Some believe that since they have graduated from the University or the Party School they know everything and have nothing more to learn. Others are content with little and think that the study of theory is not necessary for the work they do. All these views must be condemned and sternly combated. The cadres, the communists and all the working people must learn all the time, must learn from life and from school, from practice and theory, from work and from books. This is a never-ending, unlimited job.

The Party has taken and will take measures to improve the work in this field of such importance, combating both dogmatism and empiricism, both lifeless theorizing and narrow practicism. However, these measures will never be sufficient and complete unless the organizations and committees of the Party and the workers on the ideological front use their brains, think and create with initiative, unless they elaborate and enrich the directives of the Party and apply them in a revolutionary way in conformity with the tasks and circumstances. The work of the Party and its ideological work, in particular, is a living and profoundly creative work, which does not tolerate ready-made schemes and stereotypes. The enlivenment of this work is one of the most important tasks of the Party today.

The revolutionizing of all the ideological work, of its content and style, linking it closely with life, must assist, first of all, the more profound and conscious assimilation of Marxism-Leninism by the communists and all the working people of our country. Such an assimilation of Marxist-Leninist ideas and their transformation into a weapon for our working people in their daily struggle is the fundamental distinguishing feature that marks the process of the further deepening of our ideological and cultural revolution. The Marxist-Leninist ideas are the red flag of our Party, its invincible and triumphant banner. They are the foundation of the general line of our Party, they are our guide to action, they light the way for our ideological and cultural revolution, of which they are the basis. Therefore, they must become, and are becoming more and more each day, the property and weapon of the working people.

In this connection we must strengthen and radically improve the study of Marxist-Leninist theory in the Party School, in all categories of our schools and especially in the University and other higher institutes, with the aim that the younger generation and our cadres are formed and tempered as genuine revolutionaries, with broad political and theoretical horizons, closely linked with life and practice. Our schools must give the youth and the cadres profound Marxist-Leninist theoretical knowledge, and give it to them not in a dogmatic way, but creatively, not as an ornament, but as a compass to guide them correctly in life and as a weapon for the revolutionary transformation of the world. The works of the classics of Marxism-Leninism and especially the documents, materials and experience of our Party, which are Marxism-Leninism in action in today’s national and international conditions, must be the basis for the study of our triumphant doctrine. At the same time, we must intensify and improve the propagation of Marxist-Leninist ideas through the press and publications, by printing and publishing more articles, books and pamphlets, works of the classics of Marxism-Leninism, not only complete works but also selections on specific themes, dealing with particular problems on which the cadres and workers need direct help.

Our struggle for the assimilation of Marxist-Leninist ideas, for the deepening of the ideological and cultural revolution, cannot be waged successfully unless the whole Party, the communists and all working masses are drawn into it, unless the line of the masses, the line of thorough socialist democratization, is implemented boldly and in a revolutionary way here, as everywhere else. To put such a line into practice, a stern struggle must be waged against the reactionary bourgeois intellectualist concept that theory, philosophy, science and art are too difficult to be grasped by the masses, that they can be understood only by the cadres and intelligentsia, because the masses have not reached the level necessary to understand them! This means to make theory and science a bugbear for the masses. This means to make Marxism-Leninism a bugbear for the masses, too, because Marxism-Leninism is a theory and science. We must declare relentless war on this concept. Marxism-Leninism is not a monopoly of a privileged few who ‘have the brains to understand it’. It is the scientific ideology of the working class and the working masses, and only when its ideas are grasped by the broad working masses does it cease to be something abstract and is turned into a great material force for the revolutionary transformation of the world. The historic task of our Party is to continually deepen the ideological and cultural revolution and carry it through to the end by relying on the masses of workers, peasants, soldiers, cadres and the intelligentsia and drawing them actively into creative revolutionary activity.

Enver Hoxha, Selected Works, Volume 4, pp 163-180

Left side of the road

observations, reviews, comments

Tag Archives: cultural revolution

Foreign Commentaries on China

Foreign Commentaries on China

The Socialist Cultural Revolution and the People’s National Culture

The Socialist Cultural Revolution and the People’s National Culture

Enver Hoxha – The need for a Cultural Revolution in Albania

Enver Hoxha – The need for a Cultural Revolution in Albania

Introduction

Report to the Fifth Congress – 1st November 1966