The PLA Has Always Pursued a Single Marxist-Leninist Line

By Ndreçi Plasari

– professor, member of the CC of the PLA, vice-director of the Institute of Marxist-Leninist Studies under the CC of the Party.

Albania Today, 1977, 2

The 7th Congress of the Party of Labour of Albania emphasized that “one of the main factors which has enabled our party to ensure its leading role, the hegemony of the working class in such a complete, monolithic and effective way, throughout its whole existence is its steel-like ideological and organisational unity”.

The congress itself was a brilliant manifestation of this unity; from beginning to end it was characterized by unity of opinions, and a single line was developed, the consistent Marxist-Leninist line of the party, which was further enriched and supplemented on the basis of the summing up of the revolutionary experience accumulated in the struggle for the socialist construction and the defence of the homeland.

The classics of Marxism-Leninism teach that for every revolutionary party of the working class, unity is the most powerful weapon to cope with the attacks of class enemies, to overcome difficulties and to carry out the programmatic tasks in the revolution and the construction of socialist and communist society. Lack of ideological and organisational unity in the revolutionary party, the crystallisation of factional currents and opposing anti-Marxist lines in its ranks turn it into a bourgeois-revisionist, social-democratic party, or destroy it completely. “A Marxist-Leninist party which is respected as such”, says comrade Enver Hoxha, “cannot allow the existence of two lines in the party; thus it cannot permit the existence of one or more factions. And if such a thing does occur, the party cannot and must not allow their existence even for a short time”.

All the Marxist-Leninist parties destroyed or transformed into revisionist parties up till now have been destroyed or become revisionist because they have deviated from the Marxist-Leninist principles and allowed opposing lines and factional anti-Marxist trends to be formed and operate within their ranks, thus being unable to combat and liquidate them. The Khrushchevite revisionist trend which finally crystallized after the death of Stalin, managed to triumph over the Marxist-Leninist line and liquidate the Bolshevik Communist Party when this party became bogged down in routine, bureaucratic and lost its vigilance, and consequently, was not capable of using the revolutionary methods of struggle which it had once used to destroy the Mensheviks, the Trotskyites, the Bukharinites, the Zinovievites and other enemies, to eliminate the Khrushchevite revisionists.

Revisionism has been unable to strike root or triumph in the Party of Labour of Albania, as it has done in many former communist and workers' parties, because the Party has not allowed inimical things to develop and get worse, has not allowed the views and activity of traitors and anti-party groups and elements in its ranks to turn into lines opposed to the Marxist-Leninist political line of the Party.

As is known, throughout the history of the PLA, a number of enemies and traitors have emerged from its ranks, and dangerous factional groups have managed to be created. But in our Party, the enemy groups have been destroyed before they have been able to assume the form of a factional trend and an opposing line. Once exposed and attacked by the Central Committee, they have been attacked and smashed by the whole Party and thepeople. Thus the traitorous groups and elements have remained without open followers and disciples and have been liquidated.

One of the groups which carried out extremely dangerous hostile activity was the Trotskyite group of Koçi Xoxe. This activity extended to many fields, especially in the internal life of the Party and the State Security Force. However, the anti-Marxist views which lay on the basis of this activity, did not reach the point of crystallising into .a separate line. The 11th Plenum of the Central Committee (September 1948) and the 1st Congress of the Party (November 1948) which made an assessment of the political line of the Party for the period from 1945 to 1948, came to the conclusion that there were not two lines in the Party, but only one line, which was correct in general, although there were a number of distortions of it. These distortions were some mistaken anti-Marxist theses and practices smuggled into the line and activity of the PLA by the enemy group. They represented theses and practices of the Yugoslav Trotskyite-revisionist policy.

The latest traitor groups of Fadil Paçrami and Todi Lubonja, Beqir Balluku, Petrit Dume and Hito Çako, Abdyl Këllezi, Koço Theodhosi and Kiço Ngjela were exposed and destroyed before the point of the crystallising of opposing lines and trends in the Party was reached.

Faced with the monolithic unity of the Party, none of the enemy elements and groups have dared to oppose the line of the Party openly, to come out with another, opposing, political line because the great authority and steel-like unity of the Party has suppressed them and its sound links with the people have terrified them. Therefore, they have worked under the lap, have tried to distort the line of the Party in one field or the other, on this or that question, in its practical application to cause trouble, disorganisation, to avoid carrying out decisions and directives and political, economic, cultural, military and other tasks, in order to create the impression that the line of the Party is not correct, while awaiting the opportune moment to burst out, to attack with all their force. But this moment has never arrived, because they have been discovered and combated in time, have been smashed ideologically and organisationally, and their views and activity have been liquidated. All the communists and the entire people, to a man, have supported the decisions of the Plenums of the Central Committee and the Congresses of the Party, and comrade Enver Hoxha in condemning these enemies and have risen to their feet against any hostile thesis or work, against any traitor element.

This experience shows, on the one hand, that there is permanent danger of the creation of opposing anti-Marxist currents and lines in the ranks of the Party of the working class because of the fierce class struggle going on between socialism and capitalism, because of the uninterrupted and powerful pressure exerted on the Party by the external and internal class enemies. On the other hand, it shows that the birth and crystallisation of such trends and lines is not decreed by fate to be inevitable: the way can be barred to them.

How has the Party of .Labour of Albania managed to prevent the creation of opposing revisionist lines in its ranks?

Proceeding from the Marxist-Leninist principle that it is impermissible to have two lines in the Party, to allow factions to exist and act, the Party of Labour of Albania has unceasingly waged the class struggle with revolutionary methods, within and outside its ranks, against enemies and anti-Marxist views, against violations and distortions of the directives, principles and norms of the Party, against shortcomings and errors. This struggle has not been a struggle between two lines, but a struggle to safeguard, implement and enrich a single, Marxist-Leninist line in the tide of revolutionary actions, to preserve and strengthen the proletarian unity of the Party, leaving no loopholes.

The Party of Labour of Albania has not allowed itself to become intoxicated with its successes, to become swellheaded and overcome with euphoria because of its strong unity, its correct line, its sound ties with the masses and the great victories achieved under its leadership. To combat and not permit self-satisfaction, conceit, euphoria means to destroy the ground for the petty bourgeois and revisionist worm, to prevent its getting into the Party and the dictatorship of the proletariat for the purpose of destroying them from within.

Any loss or weakening of revolutionary vigilance, whatever its causes, contains the same danger. “Thanks to the vigilance of the Party, its great experience, revolutionary perspicacity and cool-headedness”, says comrade Enver Hoxha in connection with the discovery and smashing of the latest groups of conspirators and putschists, “this hostile activity was uncovered in all its danger and extent”. Our revolutionary experience teaches us that the Party must never forget or underestimate the great danger which threatens it from the intentions and activity of the external and internal class enemies and from the imperialist-revisionist encirclement. Only by always remaining vigilant, by having a thorough knowledge of the enemies, the methods, forms and means of their destructive work, while never underestimating the pressure exerted on the Party by the retrogressive reactionary enemy forces from outside and inside the country, can these pressures be destroyed, the dangers averted, and the road be closed to the entry of opposing revisionist currents and lines. It is extremely important for the Party to be consistent in its Marxist-Leninist strategy, tactics and practice. As comrade Enver Hoxha says, “throughout its whole existence, full of revolutionary battles, our Party has upheld a correct Marxist-Leninist theoretical line in principle and applied it in practice”. The victories of the Party are “the work of an heroic people and Party, the inevitable deduction from the consistent implementation of the theory of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin”. This consistency of the Marxist-Leninist course of our Parity of Labour in all the periods of the revolution is one of the basic factors which has made it possible to prevent the creation of any opposing currents and lines in the Party. Vacillation and uncertainty in Its stands, decisions, and the defining of slogans, unprincipled switches of policy on internal and external questions, making this policy subject to circumstances of the moment or changing it for merely pragmatic and utilitarian reasons, cause confusion and disorientation, create the ground for anti-Party currents and lines, and hostile activity in the ranks of the Party.

Whether or not opposing lines are created in the Party, greatly depends on the stand the Party adopts towards its own shortcomings and mistakes. The proletarian Party does not fear to acknowledge its shortcomings or mistakes in its line or practical activity. But however important it is to acknowledge mistakes and shortcomings, it is just as important to be determined to fight to the end to correct them and to know how to do so. Mistakes, weaknesses, deviations, which are not disclosed and combated in time, with revolutionary methods, may become a source for the emergence of revisionist groups, trends and platforms. “Any laxity, any abuse or liberalism”, teaches comrade Enver Hoxha, “causes incalculable damage, creates a situation of decay. No one but the enemies want such a situation to come about. But it may come about if we do not fight as a single body around the Party... against these manifestations”.

Whether or not opposing lines are created also depends on the stand towards anti-party groups, when such groups are formed in the ranks of the party. Revolutionary practice has taught the Party of Labour that it must not in any way permit the existence and activity of any kind of anti-party group, either briefly or over a period. Regardless of the forms and means they use, whether open or secret, all kinds of anti-party groups are equally harmful, therefore they must be fought and thoroughly destroyed, otherwise, they develop into opposing trends and lines.

There is no doubt that the struggle against anti-party elements, groups, and views is an ideological struggle in the first place. But it is also an organisational struggle, and a political struggle. In the struggle to liquidate the anti-party ideological basis of every group, all the communists have taken part. The masses of the people have taken part, too. In every instance discussions have been held in the Party branches. The masses of the people have been informed through special letters from the Central Committee of the Party, and have been given extensive explanations through meetings and the press, and they have always had their say, bringing to light and condemning the anti-Marxist, anti-socialist, ideological and political views of one group or the other. This has thoroughly convinced the communists and the working people of the anti-Marxist and anti-national character of the views and activity of the traitors. This work, which has continued even after the smashing of the anti-party groups, would never have fully achieved this aim had it not been accompanied by the appropriate organisational measures, on the basis of the Constitution of the Party. The Party of Labour has always closely linked the ideological struggle with organisational measures, considering this as an essential condition for the success of this struggle. After all means of persuasion have been used, it has never allowed anti-party traitor elements to remain in the Party, even less in the Central Committee, when it has been proven that this is what they are. Comrade Enver Hoxha tells us, “our Party has never failed to use patient means atclarification and persuasion towards those who betrayed and set out on the anti-party and anti-people road, but when the cup was full and facts were obvious, it threw them out of its ranks without hesitation, and those who had plotted it handed over to the court, which even sentenced some of them to death. The enemies wept over them, but the people rejoiced that these traitors had been eliminated”. This is a profoundly revolutionary Marxist-Leninist stand. The revolution, the dictatorship of the proletariat, must not fail to use violence against enemies of the proletarian party, the people, and socialism. Antagonistic contradictions cannot be resolved otherwise. To try to resolve antagonistic contradictions as the non-antagonistic contradictions among the people are resolved, means to slip into idealism, religious soft-heartedness, to give up the class struggle.

Opposing currents and lines in the Party can also result from outside interference. The Yugoslav revisionists left no stone unturned to turn the group of Koçi Xoxe in an anti-Marxist trend on a whole Party scale, after this group had become a faction at the head of the Party, and to ensure that that Trotskyist-revisionist trend would triumph over the Marxist-Leninist line of the- Party. The Soviet revisionists, too, made intensive attempts directly, and through Liri Belishova and Koço Tashko, to split the Central Committee of the Party, aiming to make the Khrushchevite revisionist course triumph over the Marxist-Leninist course of the Party. There is not a single anti-Party group which we have destroyed which has not had the encouragement and support of the external enemies of Marxism-Leninism. The 7th Congress of the Party pointed out that the latest groups of conspirators, which were uncovered and destroyed in our Party, acted in coordination with some revisionist foreign powers. But all these efforts of the external enemies of Marxism-Leninism to sow the seed of disruption and bourgeois-revisionist degeneration in the Party of Labour, to create opposing currents and lines in its ranks, have failed in the face of the firm, principled stand of the Party towards foreign interference. The struggle against any interference from outside has protected the Party from the danger of division and degeneration, or tailing behind one or the other current of international revisionism, and has strengthened its vigilance and sharpened its class perspicacity. The experience of this struggle has taught it that there is no more reliable way to always follow a correct revolutionary line than the working out and implementation of this line in an independent way, on the basis of Marxism-Leninism, which is the only compass for any genuine Party of the working class. The unity in the Party is preserved and strengthened, opposing lines in its ranks are avoided, if the political line and the principles and norms of Marxism-Leninism, embodied in the constitution of the Party, are always applied faithfully and in a revolutionary way. In departing from the Marxist-Leninist line the CPSU and other former communist and workers’ parties, which betrayed the cause of Marxism-Leninism, at the same time, rejected the principles and norms of the revolutionary party of the working class, either through abandoning them or through turning them into lifeless formulas.

Therefore, the 7th Congress of the Party stressed once again that “the loyal and revolutionary application of the line of the Party and the Leninist principles and norms in the activity of every leading organ, every Party branch and every communist is of decisive importance” for the preservation and strengthening of the unity of the Party.

The wide experience and firm revolutionary course of the Party of Labour of Albania, which has been further enriched with the ideas and decisions of the 7th Congress, ensure that in the future it will have, as always, a steel-like Marxist-Leninist ideological and organisational unity and a single Marxist-Leninist line, a condition which is indispensable to achieving the undivided leadership of the working class in the complete construction of socialist and communist society.

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