Core or meltdown?

 

“The Party of Labor of Albania Came to Canada Under a Stolen Flag” is a publication of the Bolshevik Union, a long-forgotten small group of Stalinists in Canada. Published in 1979, the pamphlet is strictly speaking no 13 of the BU´s journal “Lines of Demarcation”. The BU formed an international current together with the Bolshevik League of the United States (a fusion of Leninist Core and Demarcation) and some West African groups based in France. I assume all these organizations disappeared at some point during the 1980´s.

Originally, the BU and its co-thinkers had supported Enver Hoxha´s Communist regime in Albania, but by 1979 they had decided that Hoxha was just another revisionist, not much different from the Chinese and post-Stalin Soviet versions. Interestingly, the Albanian Communists (known as “Party of Labor of Albania” or PLA) had tried to recruit the BU to their international network. When the PLA subsequently recognized the bizarre and cultish Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) as their fraternal organization, the Bolshevik Union first attempted to convince the Albanians of their mistake and then broke off all contacts. Presumably, this triggered their political reevaluation of Hoxha and the PLA.

What attracted many Marxist-Leninists to Hoxha was his attacks on the Maoist “three worlds theory” used by China to justify both a strategic alliance with bourgeois or semi-feudal regimes in the Third World, and its tilt towards the United States in the Cold War. However, the BU believes that the Albanian leader really has a similar perspective (minus the outrightly pro-American geopolitical positioning). Hoxha´s positive view of “non-aligned” nations is said to be similar to the Chinese, Soviet or Yugoslav takes. Hoxha´s regime had relatively good relations with Greece, Turkey and Romania (all broadly “pro-Western” at the time) and hoped to trade with Western Europe and Canada. Hoxha also expressed strong support for Egyptian leader Sadat´s break with the Soviet Union, since this removed a potential military threat to Albania at its southern flank. 

The BU believes that the PLA stopped referring to Canada as imperialist shortly after recognizing the CPC (M-L), a group which denied Canada´s imperialist character. While being cozy with Western nations, Albania had also established friendly relations with Vietnam, a pro-Soviet country, no doubt because of shared hostility towards China. Albanian support for Khomeini is also up for criticism. The deeper point is that the PLA calls for unity with the “national” bourgeoisie in the Third World and the imperialist nations of the “second world” (here Western Europe and Canada) just as the Maoist “three worlds theory”. The break between Albania and China has nothing to do with Marxism-Leninism but is simply a conflict between competing national interests. 

Even the seemingly radical sloganeering against “both superpowers” (the US and the Soviet Union), rather than the Chinese line of de facto uniting with one against the other one, is really a form of “three worlds theory” and revisionism, since opposition to “superpowers” can come from lesser imperialist powers or nationalist bourgeois regimes.  

The decision of the Albanian Communists to give the CPC (M-L) their Canadian franchise looms large in the pamphlet. To most people, CPC (M-L) is the small and crazy cult led by one Hardial Bains. Originally Maoist, they eventually sided with Albania instead. The Bolshevik Union couldn´t stand them. In the pamphlet, the CPC (M-L) are accused of being middle class, lumpen and agent provocateurs. Above all, they are revisionists and outright reformists. The CPC (M-L) denies that Canada is imperialist and instead tries to recast it as a nation oppressed by the United States. From this follows that the Canadian working class must unite with all the people, including “the middle bourgeoisie”, in a fight against the “rich”. The BU is opposed to this broad popular front, pointing out that what the CPC (M-L) calls “the middle bourgeoisie” really encompasses a sizable fraction of the capitalist class! The BU also complains about Albania not really giving a damn about who gets their franchise, since the PLA didn´t see it as necessary to have a single Marxist-Leninist party in each country in the first place. The important thing is that various Marxist-Leninist groups collaborate to aid Albania…

By most standards, the BU and the Bolshevik League would count as Stalinists. Yet, they seem to repudiate the popular front, a strategy associated with the very same Stalin. It´s not clear to me after reading some other material from this current whether the BU/BL rejects popular frontism en toto, or see it as a purely temporary tactic best avoided in 1979. Nor is it clear whether these groups are Third Period. In some curious way, these groups sound extremely sectarian and dogmatic, yet not really Third Period. 

The BU/BL current believed that a third world war was imminent, a war between the US and Soviet blocs, both being equally imperialist. In this war, all other nations would become proxies for one side or the other, indeed many already were so. This explains why no national bourgeoisie is progressive, the global situation being similar to the European theatre during World War I. Given this background, Albania´s diplomatic maneuvers could be seen as Enver Hoxha probing both sides in the future war to see which one he should join! 

BU and their co-thinkers thus had a very bleak view of the general world situation: the Soviet Union became “capitalist” after the death of Stalin, China had always been “capitalist”, and no national liberation struggles are possible except under Communist leadership, but of course, no such leaderships exist anywhere in the world. Apparently, this current disappeared during the mid-1980´s, no doubt because their entire political perspective turned out to be dead wrong. 

Bizarrely, the CPC (M-L) still exists, now led by the widow of Hardial Bains, but that´s another story!