The revolution, then, is the necessity of the times, and it is essential to get prepared now. Many things need to be done, building: propaganda organs, the People’s Front, revolutionary caucuses, Organizations of Women and of Youth, and so on. But our scientific theory and the practice of the centuries, shows that first we need a party. Without a party, none of these other things can last nor have a clear and consistent activity. We need a party of all those who see the need to overthrow the present tyranny and set up a workers’ democracy, a dictatorship of the proletariat on the model of Lenin, Stalin and Hoxha, the model founded on the scientific vision and theories of Marx and Engels. Thus, all those who see the need to organize a violent revolution according to the Marxist-Leninist theory and practice MUST: unite in a single party; take council among themselves in a sure and organized manner with the freedom and responsibility of everyone to use the science to find the way forwards; and then come to a common decision and carry it out. We need people who see the correctness of the law that “the Party is the most precious thing” and that “the collective is above everyone”.
At the moment, some people claim that we can not build the party yet, that we must build up the mass movement first, or carry out study separated from practice and build up our “theoretical capital” first, and only then will we be in a condition to build the party. Other people absolutize unity, and think we should unite everyone who says they are Marxist-Leninists and that they support Enver Hoxha, and then, voila!, we have the party, or, at least, the basis from which we can consolidate one. None of these views is correct.
What is needed is a revolutionary party based on the most modern revolutionary theory. Can those who don’t understand that the State we live under is a tyranny, really see need to overthrow it thru violence? How can they see the need for a secret revolutionary and disciplined party? And, if revolutionary ideas are not spread among the masses systematically in opposition to the omnipresent bourgeois reformist ideology, then how can the heroic spontaneous struggles of the masses ever become revolutionary thru and thru? As Lenin says in What Is To Be Done?, “Without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement” and that “the role of the vanguard fighter can be fulfilled only by party that is guided by the most advanced theory.” (LCW, Vol.4, p.380)
And this theory can not be developed in a vacuum by studying certain historical works. No, for as J.V. Stalin tells us in The Foundations of Leninism,
Theory is the experience of the working-class movement in all countries taken in its general aspect. Of course, theory becomes purposeless if it is not connected with revolutionary practice, just as practice gropes in the dark if its path is not illuminated by revolutionary theory. But theory can become a tremendous force in the working-class movement if it is built up in indissoluble connection with revolutionary practice; for theory, and theory alone, can give the movement confidence; the power of orientation, and an understanding of the inner relation of surrounding events; for it, and it alone, can help practice to realize not only how and in which direction classes are moving at the present time, but also how and in which direction they will move in the near future. (PRC edition,1970, p. 22)
Thus, it is on the basis of the theory that has developed to this day, from the experience of the working-class movement world-wide, and that is tested constantly in the practical movement, that we must found our party. Only this can give Our Party the necessary coherence, unity, discipline, and revolutionary vision to lead in the overthrow of all existing institutions. Our only weapons are our numbers and our unity; and real unity can only be founded on the most advanced, scientific truth of the time. Good wishes and “optimism” about the bourgeoisie and its system will never work. All of the “parties” that exist in the US are consolidated around bourgeois ideology in opposition to proletarian science, around either “optimism” about bourgeois “democracy” or “socialism”, or pessimism about the dictatorship of the proletariat as it really existed and exists, not in the minds of unscientific dreamers who are looking for a peaceful capitalism, but as the workers have built it. Nothing will have changed if some of these people, or others like them, now come forwards and call for a party uniting all who can be united to say they support Albania, while they stay consolidated around these or similar views. Nonsense remains nonsense. What is needed is the partisan scientific truth. And only those who have taken up Marxism-Leninism will be of any use in forming a party that will work.
It is the duty and the right of every person, who has taken up Marxism-Leninism to use to overthrow exploitation and reaction, to find everyone else who has taken up the same task or is ready to, and to unite with them into one party, the party of the working class, separate from, and in opposition to, all other parties, in order to carry out tireless work to unite the class and the masses around it, in conscious struggle against capitalism.
The bourgeoisie, thru their Maoist spokesmen & others, have repeated over and over that everyone has heard all this before until it “makes them sick”, that Marxism-Leninism has been tried before (by them) and that it didn’t work. The bourgeoisie invite us to turn away from this “extremist dogma” and return to “the pluralistic truths in touch with the conditions and ideas of the masses in the modern world”. But it is not because the scientific ideas do not work that the bourgeoisie want us to get rid of them; quite the opposite, it is exactly because these ideas work that the bourgeoisie are terrified and want us to put down this powerful weapon. When have the bourgeoisie, our mortal enemies, ever wanted anything for our good?!
Many great things were accomplished when the activists took up Marxism-Leninism and heroically led the people in struggle against the imperialists. It was precisely because of our successes that the opportunists, the secret police and the media worked so hard together to split us up and to spread unsound ideas among us and use these as excuses to force bitter fights among those who really all had the same enemy. The enemy of the people is imperialism, a world-wide system of exploitation and plunder which is decaying alive. It is becoming more decadent, violent, and parasitic as it dies. Imperialism is a system that must expand to continue to exist, and which can only expand by destroying all the values and productive forces that man has built up in toiling for eons of centuries.
Imperialism is utterly reactionary, and there is not the faintest touch of democracy or socialism in it, either in the West or in the East. The new society, democratic and socialist for the first time, has already appeared on the scene, first in the Soviet Union, under Lenin’s and Stalin’s leadership, and now in Socialist Albania under the guidance of Comrade Hoxha. The road from the old society to the new one is thru violence, thru the proletarian revolution.
All those who have taken up this great task of the time to transform society and save mankind must obligatorily unite in one party to follow in the footsteps of those who went before us, to use the scientific truth they discovered, to use it in our situation to make the same transition here. THOSE WHO TAKE UP THIS TASK ARE THE REVOLUTIONARIES; those who do not take up this task, no matter what good intentions they may have are not now revolutionaries. It is the objective task that determines the content of action and not one’s subjective desires. In order to unite the masses to fight for their rights with the necessary revolutionary perspective to win, it is necessary to unite the Marxist-Leninists, In order to deepen the theoretical and organizational consolidation of the Marxist-Leninists, it is necessary to unite and form one party. This is the task.