Yugoslav "Self-Administration"

Enver Hoxha

Yugoslav "Self-Administration"

Political-Ideological Pluralism, "Democracy" and "Socialist" Construction in Yugoslavia

Kardelj emphasises the "pluralism of the interests of the working masses" with his theory and in this pluralism he especially emphasises the role of the so-called Socialist Alliance of Working People of Yugoslavia, which is, according to him, able to unite all social forces, regardless of the ideological differences. In reality the "Socialist Alliance" is an union which only exists on paper and gets no attention in Yugoslavia. Kardelj also lets this truth slip in one place when he writes: "I do not think I exaggerate if I say that the underestimation of the social role of the Socialist Alliance... is a common attitude in the League of Communists and not only in the ranks of its members." (p.272-273). Kardelj then further illustrates the activities of this "union of all organised forces of society", like they call it in Yugoslavia, and is again forced to mention its formal character. "... The Socialist Alliance", he writes, "often solves problems only seemingly, that is, through resolutions and declarations and less in reality..." (p276). These facts Kardelj admits, which he of course only treats as weak points, are enough to undeniably prove what this lifeless alliance de facto is.

The pluralism of "socialist self-administration" expresses itself, according to Kardelj, within the "Socialist Alliance", which includes all "progressive democratic" tendencies (all tendencies, even the most regressive) in its ranks, whose representatives are enabled to discuss and decided about Yugoslavian policy. In reality nobody else but the Titoite clique decides in this front which is called pluralism of self-administrating" interests by Kardelj in order to show the Yugoslavia is not for the creation of many parties but only for one party, under the condition, that the latter is not the only power which leads society.

"... The League of Communists of Yugoslavia", says Kardelj, "bears a special political responsibility in society, a responsibility which it -- of course -- shares with all other socialist forces in society..." (p.74). And therefore, because responsibility is shared, there is allegedly "democratic pluralism" in Yugoslavia. So according to Kardelj "democratic pluralism", which is not the pluralism of many parties but the pluralism within the "Socialist Alliance", which also subscribes to the one-party system, is more appropriate for Yugoslavia. This idea expresses, in other words, that within the so-called Socialist Alliance the "League of Communists" and other "social and political" organisations are working, organisations which are "independent organisations... in which the League of Communists is a component which participates and works together with them..." (p.267).

Without elaborating further we can say that this "pluralism" or however one likes to call it, "democratic pluralism" or "pluralism of the interests of the working masses" or however, in reality only formally differs from bourgeois pluralism. Same as there are many parties in the capitalist system which participate in parliament and exercise influence by expressing the interests of the most important parts of the bourgeoisie or any other class, in Yugoslavia the League of "Communists" and other alliances, which do not call themselves parties but socio-political organisations exercise influence by doing their best to express the interests of the petty bourgeoisie, the labour aristocracy, etc., etc. and to maintain these interests in the capitalist Yugoslav state. The Yugoslav revisionist's conclusion that "our system is not only no one-party system, it even excludes such a system like it excludes the pluralism of many parties in bourgeois society" is an absurdity, a thesis borrowed from the anarchists and anarcho-syndicalists, which was ardently fought by Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin.

This theory about "political pluralism" promoted by Kardelj would also come to Hua Guofeng and Deng Xiaoping at the right time, additional to their equal rights for the different parties in the socialist state, the mutual control, etc.

As Kardelj brags about institutions for development in the political system of "socialist self-administration" he cannot avoid -- in order not to over-egg the pudding -- to admit there are also exaggerations, mistakes and defects because: " The new conditions are still not yet realised in a satisfying way and still not yet work in a satisfying way in many categories." (p.26) But even if he would not admit that, Yugoslav reality proves on a daily base that "self-administration" has come to a dead-end street and therefore his consolatory explanations which refer to the "self-administration" as "the most qualified socialist system" are not believed by those who know Yugoslavia and its political system from close up.

The political system of "self-administration" in Yugoslavia is an impertinent disguise of the revisionist betrayal of Marxism-Leninism, of scientific socialism and of communism. As anti-Marxists the Yugoslav Titoites have never been and are not in favour of the construction of socialism but for the immortalisation of capitalism in various forms. Unable to stop the process of the decay of capitalist social order, they try to invent many various "theories" in order to at least slow it down. According to the Yugoslav revisionists every people, every state is able to construct socialism without having to rely on universal laws and principles, without Marxist-Leninist ideology. They do not admit that socialism is one single economic and social system but claim that allegedly there can be various forms of socialism. They misuse and twist the Marxist-Leninist thesis about the creative application of the ideology of the working class under the specific conditions of each country if they insist that no universal laws for all countries for the construction of socialism are existing and moreover that every country is able and allowed to construct a "socialism" different from other countries according to its own wishes and in its own way.

Now, with regard to socialist construction, we have to take the concrete conditions of every country into consideration but in every single country socialism can only be constructed on the basis of Marxism-Leninism, on the basis of the universal laws and principles in all countries, which cannot be passed over if one does not want to end at capitalism again, like Yugoslavia.

To "substantiate" the thesis that every country has to construct its specific socialism the Yugoslav revisionists, which Kardelj represents, say that "socialist self-administration cannot be forced upon the bourgeois democracies of Western Europe or upon American democracy, for example" because they allegedly have not achieved the same conditions as Yugoslavia. According to them socialism is achievable as well through the political pluralism of the Western parliamentarian system as without the latter. So every country is able to construct its specific socialism, without any experience, yes even without the theory of scientific socialism by Marx and Engels. And still, they think, praising "self-administration" as the best system of the whole world, that this system, regardless of the specific path every country chooses for the construction of socialism, can be adopted and realised on a worldwide level .

Lead by his subjectivism and his rampant passion which aims against the experience of the socialist construction in the Soviet Union at the time of Lenin and Stalin, Kardelj raves so badly against this experience and completely loses his ability to judge that he labels this experience as a reactionary process and puts it on the same level as the political pluralism of European kind. He expresses it this way: "Therefore the attempts to force, for example, the political pluralism of European kind upon nations where neither the conditions nor the need for such a system exists, in fact play the same reactionary role in the current social processes as the attempts to force this or that 'model' of socialism upon those countries who do neither have the conditions nor the need for such a model." (p.49)

This whole tirade is nothing but a play on words with the single goal to degrade Marxism-Leninism and the universal laws of the construction of the socialist society, to fool the masses and to eternalise the capitalist system by giving it various "socialist" appearances. This is the reason that Kardelj talks not even once about the actual destruction of the power of the capital in his book titled "Directions of the Development of the Political System of Socialist Self-Administration".

According to this Yugoslavian "great ideologist" the political pluralism of bourgeois parliamentarianism is a system which transforms the individual into an "abstract-political citizen", which makes them passive and keeps them from being an exponent of certain concrete human or social interests. In Yugoslavia, in contrast, the citizen allegedly does not run the risk to be transformed into an "abstract-political citizen" because "self-administration" allegedly teaches him to defend his won interests in the first instance! This thesis, too, is as far away from the truth as Kardelj's other theses. His "politicized" citizen in the capitalist countries is not twiddling his thumbs. In those countries they are denied their rights and the laws of capital have cut off the way for the defense of the interests of the working masses but still the workers try and struggle to break the chains of capitalist slavery. To deny this struggle the working class leads in capitalism stands in opposition to the facts.

In the capitalist social order not all people conform to the bourgeois policy and the norms of bourgeois morals. On the contrary, not only that the predominant majority of the members of capitalist society -- the proletariat and the other exploited and oppressed working masses -- do not conform to the bourgeois policy and morals, they even oppose themselves to them and and fight them in various forms and by many means. This surely didn't escape Kardelj but he twists the facts in order to get an affirmation that the individual, the human, the citizen allegedly takes the main part in his "specific socialism" and is not "politicized" by the party, that this concrete individual is able to defend its concrete interests easily in the political system of "self-administration", and only in this system! If one consequently follows Kardelj's train of thought till the end and according to his own logic than one has to accept the absurdity that more than a million of unemployed people, who exist and starve in Yugoslavia, are not suffering this fate due to the system of "self-administration" but due to their own carelessness because they just did not want to defend their concrete interests! In "socialist self-administration" Yugoslavia the working masses have been that much politically disarmed that they are no longer in the position to even defend their most general interests. In their overwhelming majority they have become people who only worry about keeping their job or, if they have none, to find a job in order to earn a living in and outside the country. In reality only few workers are interested what this "system of self-administration", this "united work", this "democratic pluralism" etc. are. This is one of the goals the Titoites were aiming for since the invention of "self-administrative socialism", precisely that the working masses will care about defending their rights as little as possible, that they are interested as little as possible in politics, that they only see their narrow self-interests and disregard the collective class interest.

In the system of bourgeois parliamentarianism the working class is inevitably "politicized", according to Kardelj, because syndicalism and trade union struggle alone does not secure the way to political power. Further he writes that such "politicizing" separates the working class into parties and therefore, according to his opinion, the new danger arises that the "party bureaucracy" will be active in the name of the class.

It is true that the struggle within the limits of trade unions will not secure political power for the working class in the capitalist countries, therefore the workers organize themselves in political parties in order to defend the interests of their class. But Kardelj's foremost care is not the exposure of syndicalism and not of the different "workers'" parties either which are created in the West and with which the Yugoslav revisionists are allied. Instead he wants to show that from bourgeois parliamentarianism and the bourgeois parties up to the others, the communist and revisionist parties and the trade unions, all separate the workers in an equal way, which is why those parties, according to him, have to be liquidated. The bourgeoisie and the revisionist are not angry with their friend because of this position because they understand very well that Kardelj only means the liquidation of the genuine Marxist-Leninist parties by this while the other parties of the bourgeoisie may continue to exist because this parties, both when they are just one or two and when they are numerous, are no obstacle in the transformation of the capitalist order to the "socialist order"!

One must not be surprised about the fact that Kardelj writes "in theory" about a question while in practice everything looks very different. Behind the theorizing he practices the charlatan hides the numerous manipulations which took place in Yugoslavia in order to transform this society, which at the beginning adopted in some respects an allegedly socialist orientation only in order to mask itself, into a capitalist society. Although Kardelj is not consequent because of the positions he represents and therefore cannot be consequent, he is in fact for the bourgeois parliamentarian system which he necessarily has to present as different from the Yugoslavian "specific" system. His inconsistency becomes obvious when he does not completely reject this system but calls it democratic, a system in which "... the working class and all other democratic forces play an important progressive role in struggling for the consolidation of the position of the parliament in society and for the expansion of its competences in comparison to the forces of the non-parliamentarian powers." (p.55)

This "theorizing" by Kardelj aims not at all at the exposure of the tendencies which can be found in the current development of the capitalist state, namely that the executive (the government) expands it competences more and more at the expense of the legislative (the parliament) and thus creates the conditions for the installation of fascism in case the monopoly bourgeoisie considers this as necessary. Kardelj is not at all worried about the danger of increasing fascism which threatens many capitalist states today because his state, too, takes the same path. Therefore he demands that the working class does not achieve its historic mission -- overthrowing the power of the bourgeoisie by the revolution, like Marx and Lenin taught us. When he writes in favour of bourgeois parliamentarianism Kardelj unintentionally reveals that the Titoites are exposed to strong pressure especially from the American and the Western European capital, which invested in Yugoslavia. This pressure is supposed to develop bourgeois democracy in a broader scale in Yugoslavia, so that there are many parties created in this country: social democratic, revisionist, "communist" and others. Now the Yugoslav revisionists are not opposed to the parliamentarian multi-party system but they still don't want to destroy their own one-party system which they propagated as "self-governed", not only because they would be finally exposed but because they are afraid of the danger that this the monopoly of the Titoites might be challenged in all state affairs -- their monopoly in the army, in the UDBA and in their other repressive organs as well as in their traitorous organs for the bourgeois manipulation of the people.

In reality Kardelj does not reject what he calls "political monopoly" in governing the society and about which he claims is a privilege of the bosses of the political parties and the executive organs of bourgeois "democracy". So he does not reject the parliamentarian and the non-parliamentarian system but condemns "the remains of this system" which socialism allegedly inherits in its initial and early phase.

It shall be understood that Kardelj, without attacking the form of the bourgeois parliament, makes the attempt to compare the former with the state organs of a genuine socialist society. These ideas are revealed even more clearly when he writes that basically the bourgeois parliament is the same without "self-government" as the political one-party system of socialism which lacks the "etatist form of social property". By political system "in the etatist form of social property" Kardelj refers to our people's councils as well as the Soviet power which was constructed by Lenin in the Soviet Union in order to build the new socialist society under the leadership of the Bolshevik Party.

By rejecting the aims of the October Revolution and the enormous work, which was done in the Soviet Union for many years under the leadership of Lenin and later Stalin in order to build socialism, the revisionist Kardelj wants to prove that Yugoslavia, which liquidated the "etatist" social property and transformed it to "socialised property", did not betray socialism, as he is accused of, but allegedly invented a "socialist" state, a "self-administrative socialism" which in theory Kardelj does not recommend to everybody but hopes with all his hearts that everybody will follow it in practice.

At present the "one-party system" in Yugoslavia does, according to Kardelj, confirms no more to the model of "specific socialism". While the latter was originally introduced to the development of the socialist revolution as an element of the initial structure of the dictatorship of the proletariat, now it must be called "... incompatible with the socio-economic and democratic relations of socialist self-administration and the democratic pluralism of the interests of self-government". (p.63)

The Yugoslav revisionists act as if they did not agree with the rule of multiple parties in the bourgeois society but also do not want to accept the leadership of the state and the society by a single party of the working class. Therefore they pretend as if they had discovered the "golden mean" in form of the so-called "democratic pluralism". It is true that the Yugoslav system of "self-government" contains both, elements of the "one-party system" as well as elements of the "multi-party system". But this obscure system is nothing else than a capitalist system, an evil spawn of the Yugoslavian bourgeoisie in order to rule over the working masses and to disguise themselves behind a "Marxist" facade.

In order to throw dirt at Lenin and Stalin the Titoite author tries to contrast these great leaders of the world proletariat with each other to "demonstrate" that they allegedly had not the same conception of the political system of the socialist state. And his is the way he slanders them: "Between Lenin's and Stalin's conception of the political system of the socialist state there is a massive irreconcilability. Basis and nature of Lenin's conception of the Soviet power is direct democracy..." (p.67)

It is common knowledge that Stalin was an eager pupil, a loyal comrade and a very close assistant of Lenin. To this day nobody but the enemies have dared to to oppose Stalin to Lenin. By these hints a hostile goal is pursued nut the international communist and workers movement is accustomed to such maneuvers by the revisionists who declared once that they are Marxist-Leninists but "Anti-Stalinists" and now try to oppose Lenin to Marx and argue whether they should call themselves only "Marxists" or maybe still "Leninists" after all. And tomorrow they will drop their masks of revisionists and renegades and will firmly declare that they are also opposed to Marx. They will invent suitable "theories" for this step, too, which will be anything but communist and proletarian.

As true Marxist Lenin talked about socialist democracy, about the direct participation of the working masses in the state affairs of the country and realised these revolutionary ideas for several years, when he lead the Soviet state. After him Stalin followed the same way. But Lenin had in no way the weakening of the state of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the leading role of the Bolshevik Party in mind when he talked about socialist democracy and direct participation of the working masses in the state affairs. He never contrasted the dictatorship of the proletariat to true democracy, which he defined as the state which

"... is democratic in a new way (for the proletariat and the propertyless in general) and dictatorial in a new way (for the bourgeoisie)." (V.I. Lenin, Collected Woks, vol. 25, p. 488, Alb. ed.)

This illustrates very clearly that Lenin was never in favour and could have never been in favour of replacing the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie by this or that system of "self-administration", invented by the Yugoslav revisionists in order to return to capitalism.

In Lenin's and Stalin's times the working class was in power in the Soviet Union and successfully led, planned and realised the task of the socialist construction through the Bolshevik Party. In Yugoslavia the big role of the socialist state has been disregarded and it has been identified with the so-called "system of delegates", which, as Kardelj admits, "... features sever weak points in all directions of its functioning." (p.213)

Kardelj himself understands that the reference to Lenin regarding the question of democracy cannot help him to justify the "system of self-government" in the least. Therefore he tries to make people believe by sophisms that Lenin's conception "... is not worked out to its factual consequences... but it is obvious that its nature is direct democracy, that is, the system of self-government." (p.67) Kardelj "philosophises" and due to a lack of arguments he tries to compensate by arbitrary and fantastic interpretations. He intends to make people believe that Lenin initially correctly represented the idea of "self-government" but later he lacked the opportunity to develop it further in such a way which would be convenient for Tito and Kardelj. The view expressed by Lenin, that the proletariat will lead and organise the Soviet power and rule the country through its party, was and still remains the basis of the Marxist-Leninist theory. Exactly this crucial question of theoretical and practical importance is avoided by the Titoites and they seek to cover up this deviance by twisting Lenin's correct theses.

In the opinion of the Titoites Stalin had "... a concept of indirect democracy, i.e., in core he adopted the classical political system of the bourgeois state and its political pluralism, only that he intended the role of the multi-party system in the bourgeois parliamentarian state for one single party." (p.68) The Titoites argue that Stalin allegedly deviated from the Leninist conception because he implemented an "indirect democracy" by leading the state through a party very similar to the bourgeois parties and by other elements of the parliamentarian system. This is this pseudo-Marxist's devastating criticism of the activities and the work of Joseph Stalin! Stalin sees, like Lenin, democracy from the angle of class, as a form of the political organisation of society, as a political precondition for the involvement of the masses in the government of the country, to defend and consolidate the dictatorship of the proletariat and to block the way for revisionist degeneracy and the restoration of capitalism. As the Marxist-Leninist he was, Stalin was vehemently against any one-sided, liberal and anarchist grasp of democracy and took a firm stand against the petty bourgeois signs of disintegration and speculations with the rights and liberties the proletarian democracy guarantees. And he was very well advised to do so. The revisionists in contrast want to turn the proletarian democracy into a bourgeois democracy in theory, too, like they already did in practice. And that is exactly why they are opposed to Stalin.

The excuse the Yugoslav pseudo-Marxists use to justify their criticism of the genuine socialist system is that allegedly the meaning of the terms "worker" and "working class" has changed today that the conception of the term "citizen" has changed, too. According to them "the working class has become an abstract political subject which does not exercise any power but in whose name power can be exercised". So this means that in a true socialist system not the working class exercises power but somebody else who rules over the class in their name. This is a big fraud, a shameless distortion of reality. This means being based on the philosophical positions of idealism and to see the truth not in objective facts but in what goes around in your mind.

The revisionist Kardelj derives from this the idea that the worker is concretely worth nothing in the relations of production of the socialist social order, in his relations to the other workers, in his social position and so on! And in his opinion this is allegedly how "... the dogmatism of social property as state property and therefore the necessity for a centralist state as well as the leading role of the state and party apparatus arises... while the class interests and the efforts of the concrete worker... are discredited, respectively called as acts outside of the common legality..." (p.70)

So this is how Kardelj twists the true socialist system and the socialist relations of production at the time of Lenin and Stalin and thus the whole construction of socialism on our country. By militating against democratic centralism, the leading role of the party, the state form of socialist property etc., Kardelj wants to illustrate "the superiority" of "the system of self-administration" but in reality he unmasks himself by placing himself openly above the eternal ideas of the classics of Marxism-Leninism, above these basic question. In fact his "accusations" against us transform into confessions which turn against the Yugoslav political "self-administrative system". Today Yugoslav reality proves on a daily basis and will prove this even better tomorrow where Tito's clique and Kardelj's Yugoslavia is leading its peoples and its working class.

The Titoites claim their system was "self-administrative". But who are those, who govern themselves in Yugoslavia? The workers or the peasants? Neither the workers nor the peasants. They are just as oppressed as their comrades in the capitalist countries. In the "system of self-administration" those rule who are at the top of pyramid, the new bourgeoisie, who, while labelling themselves "communists", oppress the people and are in reality nothing else but bourgeois technocrats who lead the bureaucratic, etatist and fascist power. The "delegates' assemblies", the executive state organs in the system of delegates, etc., consist of such elements.

In the system of the dictatorship of the proletariat the mass organisation take up a special position, as is widely known and play an important role. They are levers of the party to connect itself with the masses and to realise the political rule of the working class and socialist democracy. The social organisation in socialism makes the line of the proletarian party accessible to the people, they are an enormous weapon of the revolution and of socialist construction, they are fighting tribunes where the public opinion asserts itself. They have the task to educate the masses and and to make them conscious and able to actively participate in the socialist construction and the government business.

The tasks which these organisations hold as a component of the system of the dictatorship of the proletariat are performed under the leadership of the party of the working class within the limits of their own characteristics and specifics.

The social organisations cannot be effective if they are isolated from the proletarian party, from the other organisations and from the socialist state. If one would assume the opposite then it would be theoretically senseless that they are elements of a single system, they would be transformed into dead organisms in practice, without any function and without fulfilling any tasks for the benefit of the socialist order of society.

Just like the party and the state, the mass organisations in Yugoslavia have been treated and judged from an outright anarchist position. In contrast to Lenin's idea that the mass organisations

"... are the closest and most essential assistants of the state power..." (V.I. Lenin, Collected Woks, vol. 33, p. 202, Alb. ed.)

the idea has been promoted in Yugoslavia that the cooperation of these organisations with the socialist state was a form of "bureaucratic etatsim". The Yugoslav revisionists imagine that all of these these organisations are able to act independently from the party. "We", Kardelj says, "have departed from the world view according to which these organisations have been so-called transmission belts of the League of Communists for a long time." (p.267) Here there is no talk at all about the only party in Yugoslavia and the Yugoslavian state, which are both in the hands of the bourgeoisie, exercising no power on these organisations. On the contrary, the Titoites never went without the manipulation of the masses by the social organisations but Kardelj is getting at something else by this statement. He just wants to destroy he connection of the Marxist-Leninist parties with the masses while the whole revolutionary experience shows that these parties need those organisations, lead by the proletarian party in order to create and hold up genuine connections with the organised masses.

It is a well known fact that the idea of the leading role of the Marxist-Leninist party is closely connected to the idea of its revolutionary ideology. To detach the mass organisation from the party therefore means to detach them from the Marxist-Leninist ideology and and to close the thus created gap by the bourgeois revisionist ideology. This intention is revealed clearly when Kardelj writes about the human as a member of the "Socialist Alliance": "... it cannot be said that his view will always and in all regards be according to the ideology of Marxism." (p.280) This means that the Yugoslav worker is also allowed to follow bourgeois, feudal, fascist and other ideas and ideologies and will further be supported by the Titoite regime in his ideological confusion.

The fact that mass organisations are an inherent part of the system of the dictatorship of the proletariat does not mean that they will become to "partners" or "appendices" of the state apparatus under the mask of democracy and by giving them some "state" competences, like it was the case in the revisionist Soviet Union. The genuine party of the working class which loyally keeps to Marxism-Leninism has to take care that the role of the social organisations does not fade but is always strengthened further. In Yugoslavia, Kardelj writes, the phenomenon can be detected that the basic organisations of the trade unions "... have become the tail of those organs which govern work." (p.295) This happened because the role of the social organisations, their place in society and the relations they have to maintain towards the party and the state have been defined from twisted positions.

Kardelj's book puts especial emphasis on the "Socialist Alliance of Working People", on the trade unions, on the "Socialist Youth League", etc., about which one could write a good many and polemicize for a long time. But we did not go into the full particulars here because we think it is better to outline only the principle deviances of the Yugoslav revisionists in regard to organisation, the aims and actions of mass organisations.

The Yugoslav revisionists also take a reactionary stance on the role of religion and its ideology. It is a well known fact that the religious ideology always serves and helps the exploiting classes to rob and oppress the working masses. It is a tool to breed the feeling of helplessness in humans in the face of the suffering, the misfortune and the misery. The religious ideology clouds the human mind and paralyses their will for the transformation of nature and society. This is why Marx, as is well-known, compared religion to opium. He wrote: "Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people."

Precisely because of the reactionary role religion plays it enjoyed and enjoys the support of the ruling classes. The language of the capitalist the revisionist and the reactionary clergyman is essentially the same. The Marxist-Leninist party cannot arrange itself with the religious ideology and its influence. The theoretical basis of the policy and of the programme of the true party of the working class is the Marxist-Leninist philosophy and not idealism and religion. The class struggle for the construction of socialism cannot be separated from the struggle against religion.

In Yugoslavia religion was judged and treated in just the same way as in the other capitalist states, there is absolutely no difference here. The poisoning of the masses by the ideology of religion is seen as nothing but a personal matter and the party and the state placidly watch this happening because for them religion is: "... never an obstacle for the equal integration of the religious citizen in the socialist life of society." (p.178) One sees what a fine kind of socialism this is: the religious idea in no way stands in opposition to this socialism and, as Kardelj writes: "For the overwhelming majority of religious workers socialism has become a matter of their deepest conviction..." (p.179-180) Now we hear this "great philosopher" claim that the clerics with their deep idealistic and religious beliefs have suddenly fallen in love with socialism, with the social order which is based on the Marxist-Leninist philosophy, on dialectical and historical materialism. Not only the workers, the communists and every honest person on this planet will wonder while reading these phrases of the Titoite renegade but also the clerics themselves will laugh because till this day they have not even dreamed about claiming that the like socialism, this socialism which they cursed and still wholeheartedly curse. By their reconciliation with the religious ideology the Yugoslav revisionists prove even further how "Marxist" they are, how "materialist" their ideology and this how socialist the political system of "self-administration" is, which is based upon their ideology.

The Party of Labour of Albania has consequently applied the Marxist-Leninist teaching on the state of the dictatorship of the proletariat and on socialist democracy, on the leading and undivided role of the party of the working class and on the necessity of unfolding class struggle. Our historical reality confirms in an impressing way that, if the universal laws of Marxism-Leninism are applied while taking the specific conditions of the country into consideration, revolution is victorious and the process of the construction of the socialist society cannot be stopped. The example of Albania refutes all "theorising" of the capitalist and revisionist philosophers against the dictatorship of the proletariat, against the leading role of the party and against the unfolding of the class struggle.

We mainly owe our great victories at the front of the socialist construction to the loyalty to Marxism-Leninism. If we always triumphed over our enemies that is because we have remained true to our principles because we have been honest and brave revolutionaries.

It is because the Marxist-Leninist theory is realised in the practice of socialist construction in Albania that this practice has become a target for the attacks from this theory's opponents.

When it is a matter of defending Marxist-Leninist principles, we will bravely deal with the enemies of our ideology, because we cannot stop halfway or make foul compromises like those the capitalists and revisionists want to force upon us.

The struggle between the Marxist-Leninists and the traitors against the ideology of the proletariat carries on and will be carrying on for so long until revisionism, which arises and develops as an agency of the bourgeoisie and of imperialism, has been done away with. It is our duty as Marxist-Leninists to defend the revolutionary ideology of the working class. Under the current circumstances that duty has become even more obligatory, now that Chinese revisionism has been added to the old revisionism. The successful achievement of this task demands that we recognise, analyse and unveil the anti-Marxist counter-revolutionary theories and practices of the enemies who have been attacking especially the Marxist teaching on the dictatorship of the proletariat and the party of the new type under the slogans of the "creative development of Marxism" and the "struggle against dogmatism".

The socialist society is strengthened by the struggle against its enemies, that is why we communists have to lead this struggle frontally until we have gained victory. We are revolutionaries and defend the socialist economic and social order which is the new and most progressive order on the whole world whereas the revisionists are reactionary because they kneel to the old bourgeois order and capitulate to it. The future looks dark for our enemies and blissful for us. But this future does not arrive on its own, one has to prepare its way continuously and diligently by struggling on in the fields of politics, ideology, economy, in the field of the defence, etc.

Like many other books published by the international bourgeoisie and by international revisionism, in order to propagate their reactionary, anti-Marxist and anti-Leninist ideas, Kardelj's book has to be exposed for what it is so that the communists, the workers and the progressive persons who either do not know revisionist reality or who know it only from afar, are not misled by the "leftist" slogans. In order to sharpen our watchfulness, to stand at the summit of our mission as communists, we must remember Lenin's important statement:

"People always ... (will be) the foolish victims of deception and self-deception in politics... until they have learnt to seek out the interests of some class or other behind all moral, religious, political and social phrases, declarations and promises." (V.I. Lenin, Collected Woks, vol. 19, p. 9, Alb. ed.)