Also, as Nicholas C. Pano pointed out, “the Albanian leadership does appear to have been genuinely disturbed by Chinas seeming loss of interest in the anti-Soviet Marxist-Leninist movement, its rapprochement with the United States and Western Europe, and its growing support of non-Marxist Third World nationalist rulers and leaders. Tirana viewed these latter developments as a ‘betrayal’ of the cause of world revolution.”[64]
However, the Albanian leadership quickly moved beyond expressing unhappiness with Mao’s successors to an attack on Mao Tse-tung himself. Enver Hoxha particularly took aim at the “theory of three worlds,” which was the last important ideological statement of Mao Tse-tung. According to this theory, the globe was divided into three segments: the “First World,” consisting of the two “superpowers,” the United States and the USSR; the “Second World,” made up of the countries of Western Europe and Japan; and the “Third World” consisting of the “developing countries,” among which Mao placed China.[65]
In April 1978, Enver Hoxha published a book, Imperialism and the Revolution, “for distribution within the Party.” However, “in accord with the wishes of the communists who have read this book,” it was made available to the public later that year. An English-language version was published in the United States in April 1979.[66] This volume, which paid some attention to Soviet “social imperialism” and “Titoist revisionism,” concentrated particularly on Chinese “social imperialism.”
Hoxha first chastised the post-Mao Chinese leadership for allegedly returning to capitalism. He wrote, “On a national level, Chinese social-imperialism has set itself the task of abolishing any measure of a socialist character which may have been taken after liberation, and building in the country, a capitalist system in the base and the superstructure, of making China a great capitalist power by the end of this century through the implementation of the so-called ‘four modernizations,’ of industry, agriculture, the army and science.”[67]
However, the largest part of Hoxha’s book was taken up with attacking Mao’s three worlds theory. He called the theory “a negation of Marxism-Leninism,” and said, “The notion of the existence of three worlds, or of the division of the world in three, is based on a racist metaphysical outlook, which is an offspring of world capitalism and reaction.”[68]
There were, said Hoxha, only two worlds. He wrote, “After the triumph of the October Revolution, Lenin and Stalin said that in our time there are two worlds: the socialist world and the capitalist world. … This class criterion of the division of the world is still valid today. … The fact that socialism has been betrayed in the Soviet Union and other former socialist countries does not in any way alter the Leninist criterion of the division of the world.”[69]
He added, “The Chinese revisionists… ignore the fact that the immortal ideas of Marxism-Leninism exist, are developing and triumphing, that the Marxist-Leninist parties exist, socialist Albania exists, the people fighting for freedom, independence and national sovereignty exist, and that the world proletariat exists and is fighting.”[70]
Hoxha objected particularly to Mao’s argument “that the ‘third world’ should unite in alliance with the ‘second world’ to fight half of the ‘first world,’ when such a division of the world confuses the individuality, aspirations and development of the peoples who are opposed to and in struggle against the oligarchy that opposes them.”[71]
Hoxha continued, “In regard to the states of the so-called third world, the Chinese leadership does not make any class differentiation, according to the principles of proletarian internationalism and the interests of the world revolution. … In these states there are deep internal contradictions between the proletariat and the poor and oppressed peasantry, on the one hand, and the bourgeoisie and all enslavers, on the other.”[72]
Hoxha concluded, “The Chinese ‘theoreticians’ try to reconcile classes that can never be reconciled, and this means that they are revisionist, opportunist positions.”[73] He added, “The Chinese leadership has now thrown off its disguise and has come out openly against the revolution.”[74]
The split between the Albanian and Chinese parties on ideological issues soon led to a deterioration in relations between the two governments. On July 7, 1978, the Chinese announced the termination of their economic aid program in Albania, With that, the Albanians accused the Chinese of “hampering their country’s economic development by delays of one to six years in shipping equipment and materials.” They also claimed that the Chinese were “attempting to dictate the priorities for Albania’s economic development, overestimating the value of their aid, betraying Albanian military secrets, and removing or destroying the blueprints for all projects being built with their aid when they withdrew their specialists from Albania.”[75]
Nicholas Pano noted, “The most important consequences for Tirana of the Sino-Albanian economic break were the loss of the unexpended balance of the $250 million Chinese credit for the 1976-80 period, the services of 513 technicians and specialists, and the unspecified military aid Peking had been furnishing. As a result of the dramatic dropoff in Chinese-Albanian trade, the Albanians renounced the 1961 agreement establishing the Joint Stock Company.”[76]
As a result of the break between the Chinese and Albanian leaderships, there was a split in the ranks of International Maoism. Individual national parties had to decide between the Chinese and the Albanians. Among those that sided with Albania were the Maoist parties of Brazil and New Zealand, as well as several in Europe. However, there was no effort by the Albanians to group the parties that joined their side in the controversy into a new Communist International.
Chinese Abandonment of International Communism
Meanwhile, with the emergence of Deng Tsiao-ping as the “principal leader” of the Chinese party and government soon after Mao’s death, there was a fundamental alteration of internal policy, with a consequent change in foreign affairs. Major emphasis came to be on Chinese economic development, with a wide degree of acceptance of private ownership (including foreign investment) of the means of production and distribution, and the acceptance of the market rather than central planning as the ruling force in much of the economy. This change was formalized in a 1978 revision of the Constitution, which in its preamble pledged to support the “four modernizations” proclaimed by Deng Tsiao-ping, so as to “make China a great and powerful socialist country with modern agriculture, industry, national defense, and science and technology by the end of the century.”[77]
Little or nothing more was heard about the “violent road to power,” for which Mao and his colleagues had argued so strongly in their disputes with the Soviets in the 1960s and early 1970s.Indeed, the long ideological quarrel with the CPSU was muted if not abandoned altogether.
By 1980, it was clear that the Chinese Communist leaders had little further interest in trying to build their own version of an International Communist Movement. The “political tourism of Pro-Chinese Communist leaders to China, which had so long been favored, virtually came to an end. The honored guests of the Chinese regime were no longer leaders of the foreign Communist parties that were allies, but rather were businessmen from “capitalist” countries who might be interested in investing in China, and “capitalist” political leaders whose countries might be interested in helping the Chinese economic development effort.
64
Nicholas Pano,
65
Manfred Flemming analyzes the origin and nature of the Three World Theory in
66
Enver Hoxha,
75
Nicholas C. Pano, in
77
Stephen Uhalley Jr. in