I’m not very advanced on theory so didn’t read much what socialists leaderships wrote throughout mostly 20th century, so I’m not familiar about what albanian line is all about, all i know is they call themselves anti-revisionists and love to trashtalk post deng china, sometimes even mao (which is odd to me) and tito’s yugoslavia.
this was brought to my attention because some subs here apparently don’t like them very much at the same time that the fastest growing communist movement in brazil follow the anti-revisionism line.
so, what are your thoughts about it?
I occasionally call it ‘counterrevisionist stagism’ because of how conservative it is in terms of theory. I haven’t had many encounters with ‘Hoxhaists’, but I used to read Red Phoenix News regularly and it has been a useful source in my research.
I can’t say too much about the tendency itself, but I shall say that any tendency that treats the people’s republics simply as more dictatorships of the bourgeoisie is, at best, useless to my class. I can agree that republics such as the PRC, the Republic of Cuba, the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, and so on are effectively presocialist since presocialist elements such as capital and wage labor continue to linger on to some extent or another, but I don’t find the conclusion that they’re just more capitalist states (with a little extra state ownership) compelling. The working masses in those republics have an influence that I have never seen in a Western régime like Imperial America, so as flawed as they are, outright hostility is excessive and only alienates me.
Without speaking specifically about Hoxhaism, I’d beware of any leftist tendency that premises itself on “anti-revisionism” (an especially vague term that doesn’t specify who or what is being “revised”, and why that’s a negative thing).
Marxism is not an ossified dogma: it’s a scientific discipline that must always question its previous assumptions, learn from them through experience and practice.
Anti-revisionist tendencies treat the words of any of socialism’s founders as holy gospel, quote-mining them almost always in the services of demonizing current socialist projects. Imperialist propagandists do not care where the shallow criticism of AES comes from: it could be from orthodox Marxists, “reformed” marxists, anti-revisionists, ultraleftists of any stripe, anarchists, demsocs, socdems, etc. Their goal is to draw a line in the sand, get people on team euroamerikkka, and opposing AES countries.
Marxism’s founders were not gods, and in a way its disrespectful to treat them that way. They were people just like you and me, they were not 100% correct about everything. We should view them in the same way we view Isaac Newton: they made profound insights, many of which have stood the test of time and shaped the discipline, but its not the final word.
We should follow Mao’s example and oppose book-worship, ultra-leftism, and anti-revisionism. Marxism / scientific socialism should be under constant examination and revision if it is to acheive its goal, worker-empowerment and the destructions of capitalism.
