#socialist albania

[lord-bajromi]

[katchwreck]

“With its private property, exploitation of man by man, economic and spiritual enslavement of man, the capitalist system has imposed a heavy burden on everyone, but especially and more barbarously on women. Women were the first slaves in human history, even before slavery. Throughout this history, not to mention prehistory, whether during the Hellenic civilization, Roman times, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, or in modern times, whether in the contemporary bourgeois era of the so-called “refined civilization,” women have been and are becoming the most enslaved, oppressed, exploited and humiliated people in every respect. Laws, traditions, religion, masculine mentality oppressed them and allowed them to be oppressed. Ecclesiastes says; “I find woman more harmful than death,” while St. John Chrysostom has another opinion about women. He says; “Among the wildest animals, you will not find anyone more decadent than a woman”. The theologian and philosopher Saint Thomas Aquinas, one of the most prominent philosophers of medieval reaction, defended the view that “woman's destiny is to live under the heel of men”. To complete these barbaric quotes, Napoleon said; “nature has made women our slaves”. Such were the views of the church and the bourgeoisie about women. Among the bourgeoisie, these views remain valid today. There are countless of philosophers and writers in Europe and all over the world who have made the superiority of men over women a mythological aspiration, norm and even demand. According to them, a man is strong, a warrior, brave and therefore smarter, therefore he is predetermined to rule, to lead, whereas a woman is by nature weak, vulnerable and timid, therefore she must be ruled and handled. Bourgeois theorists such as Nietzsche and Freud also defend the theory that man is active and woman is passive in the same way. This reactionary, anti-scientific theory has led to nazism in politics and sadism in sexology. Our mothers, grandmothers and great-grandmothers suffered under this terrible slavery, they carried these physical and spiritual cruelties on their own backs. Now, when the revolution has triumphed, when socialism has been successfully built in our country, the Party sets before us as a great task, as one of the greatest tasks, the complete and final liberation of women from all the shackles of the painful past, the complete liberation of Albanian women. Marxism teaches us that the participation of women in production and their liberation from capitalist exploitation are the two stages of women's liberation. Our Party, which follows the principles of Marxism-Leninism and applies them faithfully, has liberated the people and especially women from capitalist exploitation through war and revolution and has included them in production.”

— Enver Hoxha, Selected Works, 4, p. 268

[21stcenturysovietsherlockian]

it's me a marxism lover and some sorts of gacha games lover too

[socialismforall]

Palestine Belongs to Palestinians (1970-1983) Part 1/2 by Enver Hoxha. #Marxist/#Communist Audiobook.

[nando161mando]

"Albania's opposition tries to disrupt a parliament session in protest against ruling Socialists" using smoke bombs and chair barricades.

Associated Press:

[autonomistan]

Fotinika Serjani: Aviatori, 1976

[mapsontheweb]

Elections to watch in 2025 in Europe

2025 sees critical elections across Europe. Germany's snap election on February 23 follows Olaf Scholz's no-confidence vote, with the CDU/CSU leading and Friedrich Merz a likely chancellor. The possible rise of the far-right AfD will also be closely watched. Romania prepares for a re-run of its annulled presidential election amid Russian meddling fears, while Poland’s May elections pit Donald Tusk’s government against PiS opposition. Further east, Belarus heads into another tightly controlled election under Alexander Lukashenko, while Moldova’s parliamentary elections will decide its EU path amid Russian interference. 

The Czech parliamentary elections next year are likely to be won by Andrej Babiš, who recently made alliances with the Kremlin's right-wing friends in Hungary and Austria. Norway’s September polls may bring a far-right surge against the centrist government. Liechtenstein’s election might feel secondary, but it could elect its first female head of state. The Balkans also faces political tensions. Albania's May elections show a polarised socialist-democratic contest, while Croatia's Zoran Milanović is seeking re-election in the second round with populist policies. 

Kosovo’s February vote tests PM Albin Kurti’s Self-Determination Movement amid Serbian minority issues. The Irish presidential election in November marks the end of the 14-year term of office of Michael D. Higgins, who has reached the maximum permitted number of two terms. The times they are a-changin’. From populism to EU alignment, Europe’s 2025 elections promise to shape its political landscape. Stay tuned for updates!

by europe.magazine/instagram

[fuckyeahmarxismleninism]

“The people’s power was born out of the barrel of a gun”

Sign in the People’s Socialist Republic of Albania, circa 1970

Via Lone Wolf

[strawhatsufi]

hollywood will never release a movie about racism that criticises it as a form of national oppression intrinsic to imperialism.

elphaba is black-coded in a way that is stripped of all the history that being black carries with it. whereas real black people became black hundreds to thousands of years ago for social reasons, reasons which implicate even earlier history as well, elphaba is green and she became green the exact number of years ago that she was born, and this has no historical context to it. it's an accident. it's a contrivance very specific to elphaba which is explained in the movie. elphaba's racial coding isn't familial, it's not ancestral, it's a personal eccentricity unique to her.

elphaba's problem is basically the personal biases of individuals acting in a disorganised manner. which is deeply standard fare for imperialist portrayals of racism. anything that could be described as a system, literally everything that's socially organised in the movie, is literally on her side for almost the entire runtime. the higher ranking the official the more they favour her. it's the classic fantasy of the reactionary aspiring petty bourgeoisie, being sold here once again.

and it's elphaba who decides to break that alliance. she decides when and how it happens. elphaba is black-coded in a way where her oppression is not intrinsic to the system -- the system literally wants her to achieve a high position within it in order to increase its own power.

elphaba very much constitutes a member of the privileged class of the movie and not a member of an oppressed national minority.

but oz exists in a bubble. elphaba didn't come from somewhere. her labour wasn't necessary to do anything. nobody's was. neither glinda nor elphaba nor, crucially, the audience, have any reason to believe that anything in oz is more important than glinda's socialite bullshit. nothing in wicked arises from labour or nature or really at all. it all just exists independent of anything. nobody lays the yellow brick road or builds emerald city.

oz does not impoverish other countries, it has no other countries to impoverish, to rob of goods and labour and people, in a senseless drive for profit by which to increase the power of its bourgeoisie. because oz's portrayal has to conform to america's portrayal of its enemies -- countries like socialist albania and DPRK which do not form exploitative colonial relations. to hollywood, as to the bourgeoisie in general, this lack of exploitative colonial relations is a marker of an evil dystopia that has to be overthrown.

you can't really even tell me oz has a bourgeoisie or classes of economic exploiters and labourers. hollywood can't show that either really. the wizard just has power for power's sake. and so not only are there no national minorities (which is to say, black people among others -- there are human characters with brown skin, but nothing to suggest that they constitute a national minority let alone an exploited one) there is also nobody to exploit them. and in that context, elphaba is black coded -- a context where nothing resembling african americans exists or can exist. racial oppression, and even racial differences, cannot exist within the world of this movie. even the oppression of the talking animals is explicitly stated to have purely propaganda purposes because there is no labour in this movie and thus no basis for material oppression.

glinda, on the other hand, is way more racially coded than elphaba. because glinda actually does exist in the world where (a decreasing number of) white americans think they exist and which they craft their worldview around the assumptions of. and her actions in that context are contemptible, but they're contemptible as a personal betrayal of elphaba. as for glinda's role in a system of material oppression, it can generously be described as unclear, but really is all but stated to not exist. it's true that she's complicit in the oppression of the talking animals, but that's a policy, not intrinsic to the system, and its achievement through reform has not been narratively ruled out, giving glinda a lot of plausible deniability which she doesn't narratively deserve, because she's horrible.

glinda is exactly the kind of person who would materially exploit elphaba and her entire family. like, by name. with a smile on her face. if there were any material basis to do that. but within the movie there's no basis for her to do so. she has the personality of an overprivileged exploitative fascist. many of the characters in the movie do. but there is nothing for them to exploit. this "racism", so to speak, arises from nothing and affords no material privilege. the conflict between glinda and elphaba isn't a matter of exploiter and exploited. it's purely ideological. the consequences of the decision are basically the same for both elphaba and glinda, except that glinda is a powerful sorcerer. and thus, in this conflict, actually in a much stronger position than glinda. who sucks.

so its very possible i think to give the movie way too much credit on this. because as an imperialist american product, it necessarily lacks the self-awareness to tell the story it very obviously wants credit for having told.

and the movie to its credit takes itself seriously as telling this story, even though it hasn't. the emotional beats hit how they're supposed to hit, as if it had told it. which ultimately allows it to sell the above lies about its own imperialism and its own role as imperialist propaganda about one of the most obvious imperialist contradictions in the country that it and all hollywood movies is whitewashing

[last-tarrasque]

The Marxist-Leninist-Maoist claim that the Limits of Leninism where reached with the cultural revolution really makes a lot of sense when you realise how few (eventually zero) theoretical advancements have been put out by movements calling themselves Marxist-Leninist since the founding of Maoism, had how for decades before (essentially since the death of stalin) that the only Marxist-Leninists who where making worthwhile advancements where those upholding Mao Zedong Thought. Meanwhile Leninism is constantly being pushed forward and built upon by Maoists, princely at hotspots of struggle like Peru, India, Turkey and the Philippines, mostly at the particular national level, but also at the general global level as well.

While Leninism as Marxism-Leninism alone has crystalized, at best rehashing old socialist experiments and making no forward progress (like Albania under Hoxha) and at worst containing no actual Marxism or Leninism (such as the reavionsit era of the USSR) and being pure revisionism, Leninism under Maoism has proven itself to be rich, vital and dynamic when applied correctly as a key component of modern revolutionary science.

[flagwars]

Flag Wars Bonus Round

[lord-bajromi]

Shqiptarja e re, 1956

[autolenaphilia]

I think a lot of the uproar whenever socialists suggest abolishing family and religion of the kind that is best expressed in this sentence: “how can you abolish religion and family, how would we then preserve traditional culture, it would mean cultural genocide and imperialism” stems from a fundamentally idealist understanding of the world. One that misunderstands Marx’s materialist view of history.

I mean idealism in the sense that ideas and culture drive history and societal change. Basically the course of history is decided by a struggle of ideas. This conflict is either peaceful in the liberal sense that people use reason to convince other people of their views, or it is waged by military means, and these military conflicts are seen as motivated by ideology, with the winner imposing their views on the conquered.

This idea is also driven by essentialist ideas literally coming from nationalism and religious “family values” conservatism, that religion, the family and ethnic identity are fundamental to human existence. And the only way for them to go away is for some authoritarian state to force people to give them up.

This creates a fantasy that abolition of family and religion will mean a totalitarian “communist state” using violence to force religious people to give up religion and breaking up families. And I presume said state waging war to force the rest of the world to give up religion and family. Literal cultural genocide with death squads. This fantasy seems to be inspired in part by Hoxhaist Albania’s “state atheism” and European colonialism forcing christianity on Africa and the Americas.

This fantasy however badly misunderstands the Marxian materialist perspective on culture, including family, ethnicity and religion, which is the basis for our predictions about the end of family and religion.

The short version is that we believe that the mode of production determines culture. Cultural institutions like family and religion and all of culture is dependent on certain modes of production, whether that will be feudal, capitalist or socialist. “The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. “ as Marx said. And that by removing the capitalist economic foundation on which family and religion as we now know it stands, a socialist revolution will lead to those institutions naturally being destroyed. People will want to abandon religion and the family because in the socialist system, it will no longer make any sense to them.

Religion acts as both moral justification of and consolation for the sufferings of a class society. A socialist society would not be “a condition that requires illusions” as Marx put it. And as Engels explained all the way back in 1847, communism will end the family “since it does away with private property and educates children on a communal basis, and in this way removes the two bases of traditional marriage – the dependence rooted in private property, of the women on the man, and of the children on the parents.“

One might object that the institutions of the family and religion have survived previous such revolutions, like the transition from feudalism to capitalism. Doesn’t that prove that they are permanent fixtures of human nature? But communism will be something radically different, as the The Communist manifesto explains:

“The history of all past society has consisted in the development of class antagonisms, antagonisms that assumed different forms at different epochs.

But whatever form they may have taken, one fact is common to all past ages, viz., the exploitation of one part of society by the other. No wonder, then, that the social consciousness of past ages, despite all the multiplicity and variety it displays, moves within certain common forms, or general ideas, which cannot completely vanish except with the total disappearance of class antagonisms.

The Communist revolution is the most radical rupture with traditional property relations; no wonder that its development involved the most radical rupture with traditional ideas. “

It’s a contradiction in terms to want to “preserve culture” and also want to radically change the economic foundation on which culture stands, any type of “left-wing” position that claims to do both is ridiculous. A wish to “preserve traditional culture” can only lead to a reactionary position, one in which society is kept in stasis, or somehow returned to an earlier state, a stasis which preserves both the economic foundation and with it the culture.

And of course no such stasis has ever actually existed. No economic system and its cultural superstructure is truly static, as history proves. Every culture has gone through multiple cycles of death and rebirth, the most serious are periods of social revolution that transition from one mode of production to another. But between those periods there is usually a constant process of cultural evolution. In the end all cultures have gone though a ship-of-theseus-like total transformation multiple times.

As the manifesto puts it: “What else does the history of ideas prove, than that intellectual production changes its character in proportion as material production is changed? The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class. “

In fact, because capitalism is not a static system, we can see changes already happening in existing societies. The widespread secularization in the most advanced capitalist countries in western Europe, for example, shows how the decline of religion can happen peacefully and naturally. It wasn’t violent repression that has caused Swedes to abandon the Lutherean Christanity that once heavily defined Swedish culture, it was because it no longer made any sense in an advanced capitalist society.

In a socialist revolution, there will probably be violence, but it would largely be the reactionaries who would cause it. There was revolutionary violence against the Orthodox Church in the Russian revolution and against the Catholic Church in the Spanish revolution, but that was because the churches sided with the forces of reaction. And the men who benefit from the family, actual patriarchs, will probably react with violence towards any attempt to lessen their power. Even as we speak, men often react to women divorcing them by stepping up their abusive violence.

As for the accusation of imperialism, it’s true that this revolution will be global, because there is no other way to defeat global capitalism. “It is a universal revolution and will, accordingly, have a universal range.” as Engels put it. But it will have to be the work of the working class themselves, which precludes a state, local or foreign/imperialist, doing it for them.

As the manifesto puts it: “In proportion as the exploitation of one individual by another will also be put an end to, the exploitation of one nation by another will also be put an end to. In proportion as the antagonism between classes within the nation vanishes, the hostility of one nation to another will come to an end.”

For more information on Marx’s material conception of history, just read Marx and Engels. This is basically all based on Marx’s works specifically. It’s why I don’t use terms like “dialectical materialism” or “historical materialism” or even “marxism”, because he didn’t use those terms, those descriptions came from later interpreters of his work, but that’s outside the scope of this text.

The works I quoted above are a good starting point. The preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy has a great introduction to his views, Marx himself summarizes them in a single paragraph and the whole book is worth reading. Regarding religion, another preface that states Marx’s view very clearly is the often-quoted introduction to A Contribution to the critique of Hegel’s philosophy of right, the source of the “religion is the opium of the people” quote. The Communist Manifesto is of course worth reading and quoted at length above. Engels wrote a FAQ-style draft of the manifesto called The Principles of Communism in 1847 that quite literally answers common questions about communism, particularly relevant to this post are the answers to questions 19-23.

[socialismforall]

Palestine Belongs to Palestinians (1970-1983) Part 2/2 by Enver Hoxha. #Marxist/#Communist Audiobook.

[definitely-not-the-kgb]

I had to log in to my computer for this. Let's go.

I. Hate. Nationalists.

I. Hate. Conservatives.

I hate self-proclaimed "Marxists" who are both Conservative and Nationalistic.

Marxism, Socialism, Communism, and all Leftist ideologies are incompatible with Conservatism and Nationalism. There is no compatibility between them, and the adoption of Conservatism and Nationalism by economically Socialist people and parties is not only revisionist, it is a total and complete betrayal of Marxism in all its forms, including Leninism and Stalinism, ideologies behind which many of these bastards hide behind.

The LGBT community benefitted thoroughly from Socialism in Eastern Europe, that is undeniable. Countries like the German Democratic Republic, the Polish People's Republic, the Republic of Cuba, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, and the Lao People's Democratic Republic have brought freedom, in large part, to LGBT people, within the frameset of their times. The Czechoslovak Socialist Republic and the People's Republic of Bulgaria made enormous scientific steps to understand LGBT people. Lenin had liberated LGBT people in the early Soviet Union before Stalin undid that in one of the worst mistakes of his premiership.

For self-proclaimed "Socialists" and "Marxists" to deny this is to deny historical fact and give into the lies of Liberal propaganda, based mainly on a purposeful misunderstanding of history and on survivorship bias. Am I saying that LGBT people were entirely free? Of course not. Persecution was still common in Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia, Macedonia, Romania, Albania, and -of course- the Post-Stalinist USSR, and even in countries where it was wholly legalised, often the governments didn't go further to ensure protection, but this happened at a time where in the Capitalist Bloc tens of thousands of LGBT people were executed and imprisoned compared to a few thousand in all of the Eastern Bloc in the same time.

The liberation of LGBT people is inherent to Marxism, and anybody who claims that not to be the case is not only a revisionist and a reactionary but a traitor to the revolution and the cause: Do not let their pitiful attempts at Identity Politics get to you. No war other than the class war means no war based on gender, no war based on ethnicity, race, nation, or anything. The only fight that Socialism must embark upon is that of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie war whose intrinsic goal is overthrowing the established order and liberating the proletariat, be they a woman, a man, neither, both, in between, or someone else entirely. Regardless of who they do or do not love.

Nationalism is against all the values of Marx and Engels, Lenin and even Stalin. Do not let them hide behind their excuses from Kim Il Sung and Stalin. Stalin never supported Nationalism. He explained in Marxism and the National Question that each nation has different material conditions, and thus they each have varying procedures to be taken to achieve the revolution. This is one of the few beliefs he shared with the Left Opposition of Trotsky.

The belief that the primary division of humanity is the nation is revisionist, not just revisionist but one of the main rhetorics of fascists and nazis, according to which the superiority of one nation over every other separates "Good" from "Bad". There is no "National Communism"; there is a "National Way to Communism", no Socialist Nationalism, no Left-Wing Nationalism. Any ideology that puts the nation before the people and culture before the workers, that ideology is not leftist, socialist, or Marxist, but rather some type of Falangism more or less moderate.

Be warned of these reactionaries and fascists pretending to be Socialists: do not fall for their rhetoric and stand your ground. The liberation of the proletariat includes everyone, all people of all nations, everywhere on Earth. No tolerance for the intolerants, no war but the class war, no enemy but the bourgeoisie. Remember, comrades, the revolution is red, rainbow, black, pink, blue, and every colour because the only struggle that unites us is against the oppression of Capitalism. The only things we have to lose from this liberation are our chains.