Brad’s Reviews > A Coming of Age > Status Update

As a matter of blueprint logic it is undeniable that the Socialist blueprint is drawn at a higher level of rationality.

Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy

It's trite to say that 'practice complicates the blueprint'. One would think, however, that the rational response would be to complicate, not abandon, the blueprint!

A centrally planned economy when installed in a situation of limited prior development, as in Albania, is probably the best method to insulate an economy from undesirable external influences, as well as manipulating high priority domestic resource allocation to achieve a desired end.

As ever with such case studies, the challenges are technological lag and iterative flexibility.

While this book is balanced overall, it highlights the utility of a comparative perspective!

For example, overt ideology in education is implicitly contrasted with a more "neutral" content. Yet in a bourgeois ideological state apparatus, ideology is present but *naturalized*.

Similar on balancing of rights/duties (i.e. Canada's "reasonable limits clause" is *ideological*, just couched in technical legal phrasing).

No country whatsoever, big or small, can build socialism by taking credits and aid from the bourgeoisie and the revisionists or by integrating its economy into the world system of capitalist economy. Any such linking of the economy of a socialist country with the economy of bourgeois or revisionist countries opens the doors to the action of the economic laws of capitalism.

- Enver Hoxha

"Generous Soviet aid was responsible for the majority of the large-scale industrialization projects which took place within Albania in this period. In fact, without Soviet help, the economic base may never have been fully constructed in Albania.
Additionally, the alliance with the Soviet Union gave Albania much needed help in terms of maintaining its national sovereignty.

"The Yugoslav position was that Albania was too small and too weak to stand on its own after the war. It could only be a 'tempting morsel' for the imperialist powers. Therefore, it was necessary for Albania to agree to join the Yugoslav federation."

Political-economic pressure on this pretext to incorporate Albania as a 'Seventh Republic', trying to override pro-sovereignty sentiments, has tragic historical lessons.