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The Preamble to the Constitution of the People's Socialist Republic of Albania is a brief introductory statement of the Constitution's fundamental purposes and guiding principles of the Socialist People's Republic of Albania. [1]
The Albanian people have blazed the trail of history sword in hand. In struggle against their internal and external enemies, they have defended their existence as a people and nation, have fought for national freedom and independence, for their land and mother tongue, for their livelihood and social justice. After centuries of bondage, they achieved a major victory with the creation of the independent Albanian national state in November 28, 1912.
The national democratic and revolutionary movement was given a new impulse and content with the triumph of the great October Socialist Revolution and with the spread of communist ideas, which marked a decisive turning point for the fate of the Albanian people, too.
In the grave conditions of fascist and nazi occupation, and betrayed by the ruling classes, the Albanian people, under the leadership of the Communist Party of Albania (today, the Party of Labour) united in the National Liberation Front, rose to their feet, and arms in hand hurled themselves into the greatest war of their history for national and social liberation. In the fire of the war for freedom, on the ruins of the old state power, the new Albanian state of people's democracy emerged as a form of the dictatorship of the proletariat. On November 29, 1944, Albania won genuine independence and the Albanian people took their fate into their own hands. The people's revolution triumphed and a new epoch, the epoch of socialism, was opened.
In the conditions of the people's state power, under the leadership of the Party of the working class, great social-economic changes were carried out, which were outlined by the first Constitution of the Albanian socialist state. The domination by foreign capital and plunder of the country's riches was ended. The capitalists and big land owners were expropriated and the main means of production passed into the hands of the people. They[ sic ] way was opened for the socialist industrialization of the country. The Land Reform gave the land to those who till it, and the collectivization of agriculture set the countryside on the road of socialism.
Social ownership over the means of production and the single system of socialist economy, which prevails in town and countryside, replaced the private ownership and the multi-form economy. The exploiting classes and the exploitation of man by man were liquidated. The entire social development proceeds consciously, according to plan, and in the interest of the people.
In socialist Albania, the working class is the leading class of the state and the society. New relations of mutual assistance and cooperation have been established between the two friendly classes of our society, the working class and the cooperativist peasantry, as well as the stratum of the people's intelligentsia. The work readily contributed by free people has become the decisive factor in the flourishing of the socialist homeland, in raising the general and individual wellbeing. Albania has overcome its age-old backwardness and has been transformed into a country with advanced industry and agriculture.
The vital forces of the people were freed and their inexhaustible creative energies burst out. In the unceasing process of the revolution the Albanian woman won equality in all fields, became a great social force, and is advancing towards her complete emancipation. Education and culture have become the property of the broad masses of the people, and science and knowledge have been placed at the service of society. The foundations of religious obscurantism were smashed. The moral figure of the working man, his consciousness, and world outlook, are moulded on the basis of the proletarian ideology, which has become the dominant ideology.
Socialism has shown its absolute superiority over the old exploiting order.
Albania has entered the stage of the complete construction of socialist society. The great historic changes have created new conditions for the continuous development of the revolution and socialist construction.
The waging of the class struggle in favour of socialism, the continuous strengthening of the state of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the deepening of socialist democracy, the development of the productive forces and the perfecting of socialist relations of production, the steady raising of the wellbeing of the working masses, the gradual narrowing of distinctions between industry and agriculture, town and country, mental and physical labour, the affirmation of the personality of man within the socialist collectivity, the mastering of contemporary technology and science, the continuous revolutionization of the entire life of the country, are the main ways through which the socialist society is growing stronger and advancing.
The Albanian people are determined to defend their national independence, the people's state power and their socialist victories against any enemy. Socialist Albania is always an active factor in the struggle for national and social liberation, for peace, freedom, and the rights of all the peoples against imperialism, reaction, and revisionism. In its foreign policy it is guided by the great ideals of socialism and communism, and fights for their triumph the world over.
The Albanian people have found constant inspiration in the great doctrine of Marxism-Leninism, under the banner of which, united round the Party of Labour and under its leadership, they are carrying forward the construction of socialist society to pass over, later, gradually to communist society.
Leninism is a political ideology developed by Russian Marxist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin that proposes the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat led by a revolutionary vanguard party as the political prelude to the establishment of communism. Lenin's ideological contributions to the Marxist ideology relate to his theories on the party, imperialism, the state, and revolution. The function of the Leninist vanguard party is to provide the working classes with the political consciousness and revolutionary leadership necessary to depose capitalism.
Marxism–Leninism is a communist ideology that became the largest faction of the communist movement in the world in the years following the October Revolution. It was the predominant ideology of most communist governments throughout the 20th century. It was developed in Russia by Joseph Stalin and drew on elements of Bolshevism, Leninism, and the works of Karl Kautsky. It was the state ideology of the Soviet Union, Soviet satellite states in the Eastern Bloc, and various countries in the Non-Aligned Movement and Third World during the Cold War, as well as the Communist International after Bolshevization.
Bolshevism is a revolutionary socialist current of Soviet Leninist and later Marxist–Leninist political thought and political regime associated with the formation of a rigidly centralized, cohesive and disciplined party of social revolution, focused on overthrowing the existing capitalist state system, seizing power and establishing the "dictatorship of the proletariat".
A communist state, also known as a Marxist–Leninist state, is a one-party state in which the totality of the power belongs to a party adhering to some form of Marxism–Leninism, a branch of the communist ideology. Marxism–Leninism was the state ideology of the Soviet Union, the Comintern after its Bolshevisation, and the communist states within the Comecon, the Eastern Bloc, and the Warsaw Pact. After the peak of Marxism–Leninism, when many communist states were established, the Revolutions of 1989 brought down most of the communist states; however, Communism remained the official ideology of the ruling parties of China, Cuba, Laos, Vietnam, and to a lesser extent, North Korea. During the later part of the 20th century, before the Revolutions of 1989, around one-third of the world's population lived in communist states.
People's republic is an official title that is mostly used by current and former communist states, as well as other left-wing governments. It is mainly associated with soviet republics, socialist states following the doctrine of people's democracy, sovereign states with a democratic-republican constitution that usually mentions socialism, as well as some countries that do not fit into any of these categories.
The Sino-Albanian split was the gradual worsening of relations between the People's Socialist Republic of Albania and the People's Republic of China in the period 1972–1978.
New Democracy, or the New Democratic Revolution, is a type of democracy in Marxism, based on Mao Zedong's Bloc of Four Social Classes theory in post-revolutionary China which argued originally that democracy in China would take a path that was decisively distinct from that in any other country. He also said every colonial or semi-colonial country would have its own unique path to democracy, given that particular country's own social and material conditions. Mao labeled representative democracy in the Western nations as Old Democracy, characterizing parliamentarianism as just an instrument to promote the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie/land-owning class through manufacturing consent. He also found his concept of New Democracy not in contrast with the Soviet-style dictatorship of the proletariat which he assumed would be the dominant political structure of a post-capitalist world. Mao spoke about how he wanted to create a New China, a country freed from the feudal and semi-feudal aspects of its old culture as well as Japanese imperialism.
In Marxist theory, a new democratic society will arise through the organised actions of an international working class, enfranchising the entire population and freeing up humans to act without being bound by the labour market. There would be little, if any, need for a state, the goal of which was to enforce the alienation of labor; as such, the state would eventually wither away as its conditions of existence disappear. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels stated in The Communist Manifesto and later works that "the first step in the revolution by the working class, is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class, to win the battle of democracy" and universal suffrage, being "one of the first and most important tasks of the militant proletariat". As Marx wrote in his Critique of the Gotha Program, "between capitalist and communist society there lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. Corresponding to this is also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat". He allowed for the possibility of peaceful transition in some countries with strong democratic institutional structures, but suggested that in other countries in which workers can not "attain their goal by peaceful means" the "lever of our revolution must be force", stating that the working people had the right to revolt if they were denied political expression. In response to the question "What will be the course of this revolution?" in Principles of Communism, Friedrich Engels wrote:
Above all, it will establish a democratic constitution, and through this, the direct or indirect dominance of the proletariat.
Communism is a sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology within the socialist movement, whose goal is the creation of a communist society, a socioeconomic order centered around common ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange that allocates products to everyone in the society based on need. A communist society would entail the absence of private property and social classes, and ultimately money and the state.
Before the perestroika Soviet era reforms of Gorbachev that promoted a more liberal form of socialism, the formal ideology of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) was Marxism–Leninism, a form of socialism consisting of a centralised command economy with a vanguardist one-party state that aimed to realize the dictatorship of the proletariat. The Soviet Union's ideological commitment to achieving communism included the national communist development of socialism in one country and peaceful coexistence with capitalist countries while engaging in anti-imperialism to defend the international proletariat, combat the predominant prevailing global system of capitalism and promote the goals of Russian Communism. The state ideology of the Soviet Union—and thus Marxism–Leninism—derived and developed from the theories, policies, and political praxis of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin.
The Democratic Front of Albania was the largest mass organization of the Party of Labour of Albania, which united all other mass organizations of the Party within it. The party was responsible for carrying out the Party's cultural and social programs to the masses, and was in charge of nominating candidates in elections.
Marxism is a method of socioeconomic analysis that originates in the works of 19th century German philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Marxism analyzes and critiques the development of class society and especially of capitalism as well as the role of class struggles in systemic, economic, social and political change. It frames capitalism through a paradigm of exploitation and analyzes class relations and social conflict using a materialist interpretation of historical development – materialist in the sense that the politics and ideas of an epoch are determined by the way in which material production is carried on.
In Marxist philosophy, the dictatorship of the proletariat is a condition in which the proletariat, or working class, holds control over state power. The dictatorship of the proletariat is the transitional phase from a capitalist to a communist economy, whereby the post-revolutionary state seizes the means of production, mandates the implementation of direct elections on behalf of and within the confines of the ruling proletarian state party, and institutes elected delegates into representative workers' councils that nationalise ownership of the means of production from private to collective ownership. During this phase, the organizational structure of the party is to be largely determined by the need for it to govern firmly and wield state power to prevent counterrevolution, and to facilitate the transition to a lasting communist society.
Vanguardism, in the context of Leninist revolutionary struggle, relates to a strategy whereby the most class-conscious and politically "advanced" sections of the proletariat or working class, described as the revolutionary vanguard, form organizations to advance the objectives of communism. They take actions to draw larger sections of the working class toward revolutionary politics and to serve as manifestations of proletarian political power opposed to the bourgeoisie. This theory serves as the underpinning of the leading role of the Communist party, usually enshrined in the constitution, after the seizure of power in the state by Communists.
The proletariat is the social class of wage-earners, those members of a society whose possession of significant economic value is their labour power. A member of such a class is a proletarian or a proletaire. Marxist philosophy regards the proletariat under conditions of capitalism as an exploited class forced to accept meager wages in return for operating the means of production, which belong to the class of business owners, the bourgeoisie.
A socialist state, socialist republic, or socialist country, sometimes referred to as a workers' state or workers' republic, is a sovereign state constitutionally dedicated to the establishment of socialism. The term communist state is often used synonymously in the West, specifically when referring to one-party socialist states governed by Marxist–Leninist communist parties, despite these countries being officially socialist states in the process of building socialism and progressing toward a communist society. These countries never describe themselves as communist nor as having implemented a communist society. Additionally, a number of countries that are multi-party capitalist states make references to socialism in their constitutions, in most cases alluding to the building of a socialist society, naming socialism, claiming to be a socialist state, or including the term people's republic or socialist republic in their country's full name, although this does not necessarily reflect the structure and development paths of these countries' political and economic systems. Currently, these countries include Algeria, Bangladesh, Guyana, India, Nepal, Nicaragua, Sri Lanka and Tanzania.
Permanent revolution is the strategy of a revolutionary class pursuing its own interests independently and without compromise or alliance with opposing sections of society. As a term within Marxist theory, it was first coined by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels as early as 1850. Since then different theorists, most notably Leon Trotsky (1879–1940), have used the phrase to refer to different concepts.
World communism, also known as global communism or international communism, is a form of communism placing emphasis on an international scope rather than being individual communist states. The long-term goal of world communism is an unlimited worldwide communist society that is classless, moneyless, stateless, and nonviolent, which may be achieved through an intermediate-term goal of either a voluntary association of sovereign states as a global alliance, or a world government as a single worldwide state.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to Marxism: