File spoon-archives/marxism-general.archive/marxism-general_1997/97-03-17.093, message 46


From: dr.bedggood-AT-auckland.ac.nz
Date: Sun, 16 Mar 1997 21:10:10 +0000
Subject: Re: M-G: The lesson of Albania


> Date:          Sun, 16 Mar 1997 01:34:55 -0500
> From:          Vladimir Bilenkin <achekhov-AT-unity.ncsu.edu>
> Organization:  North Carolina State University
> To:            marxism-general-AT-jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU
> Subject:       M-G: The lesson of Albania
> Reply-to:      marxism-general-AT-jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU


Vladimir wrote:

> david .bedggood wrote:
> 
> > >
> > Thanks for the very interesting information Vladimir,  though it
> > doesnt tell us much new and is not evidence of all the currents
> > or even the dominant current in the uprising.  
> 
> Nothing new, indeed.  This info and that from Tirana I've posted today tells
> us only what I suggested in the beginning of the thread.  That is:
> there is no reason to believe that the uprising has produced any 
> organization of the working class. 

[Who claimed it was more than a "spontaneous uprising of the working 
class"? ]]

 On the contrary, there is every reason to believe that the first attempts to establish public order
> in a number of cities during the last two days --and somewhat earlier
> in Vlore--have been undertaken by local polical establishment, bourgeois
> and petty-bourgeois elements. 

[yes there has been news of mayors and other local boss-types trying 
to recall the arms, but so far as I know without success. The 
implicatiion is therefore that we have an "armed people" uprising 
against a regime backed by Western finance capital (IMF) which is by 
all accounts without an effective state (armed body of men). The 
question is: which class will rule?  In such a situation it is 
indispensible for Trotskyists, revolutionaries,  to take whatever 
actiion they can to ensure that it is the working class that rules. 
These measures are spelt out in the PO reply.]
  
If this is indeed so, and if the picture
> of anarchy and devastation drawn by Western media and Albanian sources
> is generally correct--then we'll have to conclude that the uprising is nothing
> else but an act of the masses' utter desperation, barbarous in form and 
> petty-bourgeois in content, a week-long "festival of the oppressed", with 
> nothing else but a hangover on Monday morning.

of course this is your assessment. I don't agree that the news you 
posted or that which has been in the establishment media justifies 
the view that "an act of the masses' utter desperation, [ yes, 
spontaneous uprising] is  barbarous in form [what form?  arming of the 
masses is barbarous?  There have been no reports of widespread mafia 
wars, acts of barbarity that I have read.]  Also  petty-bourgeois 
in content [yes illusiions in bourgeois democracy]. But that is not 
new and not fixed in concrete.

 It's not over yet, and let us
> hope--against every evidence--that it *will* produce something positive in
> a way of revolutionary organization. But if not, the insurrection may have 
> a lasting negative impact both for Albanian masses and internationally. 
> 
>
That is the whole point of the lesson surely. No matter what means of 
communication are established they have to have an organisational 
base at both ends.  How to influence the formation of revolutionary 
organisation  - are you suggesting that there can be revolutionary 
organisations other than "workers councils"? Are you also suggesting 
that either the Albanians must have a successful revolution or they 
should not try because of the "negative impact"?  If so, that is a 
very telling position which if adopted as a strategy would mean that 
there would be no way of trying and succeeding because trying might 
mean failing. I would advocate every method of developing the 
spontaneous uprising into a workers struggle for power.  The reason 
is that, as the LCMRCI statement says,  the market cannot solve 
the problems of the people. The PO reply yesterday puts this point 
very well.  I would add further that any level of organised working class 
struggle will call forth interverntion from outside. The EU bosses 
fear that "anarchy" in Albania could set an example in the rest of 
Eastern Europe, the former SU and even if NATO intervened in the 
Western European working class.  Even a failure to carry through the 
struggle to a seizure of power will necessarily shift the balance of 
class forces in favour of workers internationally. Why, because it 
will show workers that the armed struggle for power is on the agenda 
and that the New World Order can be challenged.  And because the 
lessons of the struggle will be learned by workers everywhere ]

> 
> But the hardware and the know-how are not enough.  Channels of communication
> include someone outside the country to communicate with. There are entire towns
> and even cities in Russia now which are under the control of industrial workers 
> (the so-called "salvation committees"). One can assume that at least some of
> them have access to fax lines, and definitely to telegraph and mail.  Yet, we
> know a few scattered facts about them and even about their very existence only
> thanks to the bourgeois media.  So these local class struggles of immense
> importance remain in oblivion and virtual international isolation.  But this
> also means that the people in London who imagine to be "international" center
> are no less isolated *internationally* than the workers committees in Nizny Tagil
> or Vorkuta. That's how I understand dialectics. 
>
Yes but a dialectic of form, what of the class content?  Isolation is 
not just a question of the ability to communicate for the sake of 
providing information, but isolation from an international programme 
which links the struggles in each country to every country. You show 
that there is a class struggle going on for control of the uprising in Albania, 
but you don't connect it with the international class struggle via specific political actions. 
  
> >But how do you propose to intervene?  
> > I am not saying that more channels are not needed I am asking you,
> > for whom and for why. Whom would you communicate with and what would
> > you say?  This is an invitation to you to say specifically what channels and
> > for what purpose.  You have not done so, nor have you reply about what
> >  organisational forms [soviets?] propaganda [workers militia?] or leaflets
> > [down with Berisha?] you would propose.
> 
> If you're asking me for *specific* proposals re the ongoing events in Albania--
> you are asking me for something impossible.  Moreover, the essence of my criticism
> of those trotskyist organizations in London was precisely that: It is impossible
> *and* harmful to make those grand, imposing and absolutely unrealizable appeals
> to the masses with whom you do not have any link whatsoever and no or very
> little understanding of the *concrete* situation
> of class struggle in Albania.  To call the Albanian masses for a socialist
> revolution "based on workers councils" and for a "voluntary socialist federation 
> of the Balkan nations" is like to advise a drowning man to spend his next year
> vocations in Brighton. "Workers councils," "soviets", "socialist federation"--
> these are big words that mark great and rare historical moments.  If used 
> indiscriminately again and again, these words grow smaller and mean less to
> social imagination of the masses. We need to preserve their great meaning,
> instead of helping our enemies by trivializing them.
> 
I'm sorry but this is the problem.  The "knowledge" that you have 
provided does nothing to detract from the LCMRCI slogans for Albania. 
The analysis which underpins these slogans it is clear - collapse of Stalinist 
state into poverty-striken capitalist semi-colony, massses rise up in 
desperation, arm themselves, state power collapses, no leadership! What 
demands would you raise in that situation that cannot 
be devalued or trivialised [in abstract]?  Disarm for democracy? Don't you see that 
the masses have no choice but to go forward to take power, or to be 
smashed by a vicious class reaction? There is not moderate path which 
does not run the risk of failure.  Moderation in a revolutionary 
situation is Menshevism. It says workers hand back your arms. Go with 
the bourgeois promise of democracy, law and order. It says the workers are 
not ready for power, because the "big moment" is not here. We the 
socialist intelligentsia have decreed that the pre-conditions for 
revolution are not present. We cannot supply you with the necessary 
leadership, therefore you must accept a compromise with the bourgeoisie 
in the name of what?  Not devaluing slogans for later [when, where?]; 
not risking failure which could be negative [what, when, for whom?]. 

> To make specific proposals is also too late and irrelevant: since there is no
> way you can help to implement them or even get them through to 
.>Albania.

I disagree. How do you know that for sure?  Do you think history goes in straight 
lines?  Without leaps and ups and downs?  You have not put any 
slogans over the last weeks. Was there any time when you might have 
said it was not too late or futile?  How do you know what will 
develop? This situation is unprecedented in history.  Lenin used to 
say in such situations that the most advanced workers left the party 
behind. And we can't claim to be anything like the Bolshevik party in 
1917. 

 Instead,
> the only thing I could do was to use this case as a reminder that something is
> very wrong in the Trotskyist Kingdom.  I have also made a *concrete* suggestion
> that *prior* to the creation of another International, and even *prior* to solving
> once and for all the "problem of leadership" --one has to go to "Albania" and
> to do some very basic work there.  I have also suggested that that could and
> should be done without any unified world-wide party which, as every one knows
> well, will never be unified and world-wide.  In short, to go to "Albania" is
> the only way for "revolutionary marxist" to break out from their own isolation
> and to build revolutionary class organizations around the world.
> And I mean going physically, in their revolutionary-marxist bodies. 
> And why not? If a nationalist Greek lawer can go into the "cold" to do his bit of 
> political swindling, is it too much to expect from Italian and Greek revmarxists 
> to get there asses there as well?
> 
Yes Trotskyists should go to Albania. We don't need that advice. But that is 
not going to put things right in the Trotskyist Kingdom.  Trotskyists are already in 
many countries. Their isolation is due to a lack of a healthy international, not 
lack of geographical spread.  Internationalism is more than the sum of the national 
parts since  nations are made of of classes which are internationalised by world capitalism.   
But what do these Trotskyists on the ground say and do in Abania, 
[or the former SU or anywhere]? Without a programme of demands 
to put into practice they will be ineffective against the bosses agents 
who have a very specific set of demands and means to implement them - 
 disarm or else [ except for the mafia and the state forces] and accept 
a new regime which will promise to meet peoples financial losses and 
protect them from further rip-offs. You have concentrated your posts 
on trying to prove that we cannot influence events in Albania.  This 
may prove to be true. But you have not even tried. Bosses 1 workers 0. 


Dave
For Permanent Revolution everywhere.



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