Can the Chinese Revolution be Called a Proletarian Revolution?

by Enver Hoxha

Reflections on China, vol. 2, Tirana 1979, pp. 760-798

Genres: Politics

67 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1979

About the author

Enver Halil Hoxha was an Albanian Communist revolutionary, statesman and political theorist who was the leader of Albania from 1944 until his death in 1985.

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

Hoxha was born in Gjirokastër in 1908. He was a grammar school teacher in 1936. After the Italian invasion of Albania, he joined the Party of Labour of Albania at its creation in 1941 in the Soviet Union. He was elected First Secretary in March 1943 at the age of 34. Less than two years after the liberation of the country, the monarchy of King Zog I was formally abolished, and Hoxha became the country's de facto head of state.

Adopting Stalinism, Hoxha converted Albania into a one-party communist state. As a Stalinist, he implemented state atheism and ordered the anti-religious persecution of Muslims and Christians. Implementing his radical program, Hoxha used totalitarian methods of governance. His government outlawed traveling abroad and private proprietorship. The government imprisoned, executed, or exiled thousands of landowners, rural clan leaders, peasants who resisted collectivization, and allegedly disloyal party officials. Hoxha was succeeded by Ramiz Alia, who was in charge during the fall of communism in Albania.

Hoxha's government was characterised by his proclaimed firm adherence to anti-revisionist Marxism–Leninism from the mid/late-1960s onwards. After his break with Maoism in the 1976–1978 period, numerous Maoist parties around the world declared themselves Hoxhaist. The International Conference of Marxist–Leninist Parties and Organisations (Unity & Struggle) is the best-known association of these parties.

Reviews

[Leo46 · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5-4. In this concise piece, Hoxha lays out the ground work for answering this half-serious, half-rhetorical question. I say this because for the first half, Hoxha answers this question in a fair way of both being charitable and critical of the Maoist revolution. In the second half, he shows his hard-lined Leninism in rejecting both Maoist theory and practice during the socialist revolution stages of the Chinese revolution. To give credit where credit is due, Hoxha seems to have a great understanding of the historical contradictions in China (aspects of the bourgeois-democratic revolution, socialist revolution, Japanese Imperialism, KMT, etc.) that led to the Chinese Revolution led by Mao. He rightfully paints Mao as an anti-imperialist hero that liberated the masses; however, his gripes with him are vast, but the critiques come from a place of solemn introspection during the years of Dengist revisionism to trace back to what Hoxha thought was the root cause of such a revisionist trajectory (combined with perhaps a very defensive attitude within Albania watching both China and the Soviet Union bow to capitalism and social-imperialism respectively). I can narrow down his critiques to these four:
1. The organization of the Communist Party of China, from the outset, was not guided by a disciplined Marxism-Leninism, allowing all types of Trotskyites, anarchists, and other revisionists to not only be in the party but keep those ideological fallacies (16).
2. After achieving the bourgeois-democratic revolution, the establishment of New Democracy allowed rich peasants to flourish economically (37).
3. The actual practice of revolution by having the countryside encircle the city put the peasantry as the primary leaders of the revolution, not the proletariat (51).
4. Mao Zedong Thought's equivalence to Marxism-Leninism was incorrect and used by the Communist Party to pose as socialism to creep towards gaining world hegemony (57).

These 4 central critiques include a lot of context provided by Hoxha and are productive to ponder. He believes these four things paved the way to the Dengist revisionism; he also essentially tosses out the GPCR as failed coup attempts (I see this as his worst critique as he dedicated one sentence as to completely discredit the GPCR when he himself followed suit by initiating his own cultural revolution one year later, which he doesn't mention in this book). The other Maoist mistakes he points out are truly detailed to every page and thus, I encourage reading the work in its entirety. In short, his argument is that a truly Marxist-Leninist line in the party could have made for a true proletarian revolution.
For me, Hoxha goes a little overboard by positing Mao as not a Marxist-Leninist or Marxist at all, which could easily be refuted, at least theoretically, by Mao's writings. However, I think Hoxha does this because he wants to evaluate if Mao is a Marxist-Leninist in his PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS of revolution. I may return and change the rating depending on more research into the material occurrences of the Maoist era, but I generally appreciate this work for giving a mostly productive critique, summary, and guide to what to look for in studying the Chinese Revolution and Mao.

[Potemkin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting remarks on how the CPC didn’t ideologically grow completely out of the bourgeois-democratic aspects of the Chinese revolution. It also gives an overview of its history. There are interesting critical comments on the period of the “new-democratic republic” and the alliance with the national-bourgeoisie.

I don’t find the argument that were was no growing / turning into socialist revolution very strong. Despite all vacilitations, there was a building of socialist industry and collectivization of agriculture. A deeper analysis of the Cultural Revolution is also lacking.

Describing Deng Xiaoping as a petty-Napoleon is very funny though.