Uprising in Albania
by Lynn Walsh
Western powers in disarray
Before the uprising, the Western powers were opposed to any return to power of ex-Stalinist leaders. But Berisha’s regime has ended in disaster. Now the state sector of the economy has been dismantled and the old Stalinist state apparatus has gone, they may be prepared to turn to leaders like Nano, as the only effective alternative to a totally discredited Berisha. The US government has called for Berisha to go. EU powers, especially German capitalism, are prevaricating. "We do not know who is leading the uprising," said one diplomat: "That is the most critical difficulty: nobody is sure who to talk to about restoring order."
It seems unlikely that Berisha will survive in power. But imperialism would prefer an orderly transition. They are seeking forces to work with. Most probably, they will try to establish a new government based on a coalition of the opposition parties currently involved in the Forum for Democracy. But they have yet to formulate a common policy.
The character of the Albanian uprising
How should we characterise the Albanian events? There has clearly been a spontaneous, elemental, mass uprising in progress. It is an overwhelming popular insurrection against a military-police dictatorship which tried to hide behind the banner of the "transition to democracy", and against government-sponsored swindles and organised crime, operating under the label of "the free market".
In the West capitalist politicians and the media self-righteously denounce "mob rule", the breakdown of law and order, anarchy, gangsterism, crime, and so on. Yet until recently, Western governments were enthusiastically handing out free-market Oscars to Berisha and giving his regime substantial material support. The multinational companies had no moral scruples about plundering Europe’s poorest people for oil, minerals and cheap labour. While it was the collapse of the pyramids which detonated the uprising, the roots of the uprising grew out of the brutal exploitation and oppression of the Albanian workers, farmers, rural labourers, and small traders both under Stalinism and during the painful switch to the market. The primary concern of the EU governments, especially Italy, Germany, and Greece, has been to halt the exodus of desperate, hungry Albanians seeking refuge and sustenance abroad.
Behind the capitalists’ denunciation of the "mob", portrayed as a satanic hoard of rioters and looters, is the profound fear aroused in every ruling class by the energy, initiative and power of the masses once they begin to move especially if they are armed. Albanians hit back against Berisha’s vicious security forces, especially the hated Shik, seized arms, and effectively shattered the power of a heavily armed dictatorship. Berisha’s regime is suspended over an abyss. The emergent capitalists, scrambling to build up their wealth through criminal accumulation, have been given a severe battering. Capitalist rulers everywhere tremble at the thought that a great mass of working people - for so long merely passive, exploited subjects, a mere commodity - can move into action, arm themselves, and defeat the state power. For this reason, the Albanian uprising is a very significant, impressive movement, which will inspire workers internationally.
Contradictory trends
But to view these events as a revolutionary movement on the classical proletarian lines of the revolutionary movements in Russia in October 1917 or Spain in 1936-37 would be completely mistaken. It would be to ignore the real, contradictory, characteristics of the Albanian events.
Workers, young people, and poor farmers have undoubtedly made up the overwhelming majority of the insurgents. In terms of its predominant social composition, it is primarily a workers’ and peasants’ uprising. The proletarian and plebeian strata of the population, however, are completely lacking in organisation and any cohesive working-class consciousness. As in other former Stalinist states, workers know very well what they are against - the Berisha dictatorship which has stolen their life savings. But they do not see any alternative.Under the extremely repressive, autarkic Stalinist regime of Hoxha and Alia, the working class was denied any independent, democratic organisations, including trade unions. They were starved of information and ideas. With the disintegration of Stalinism and the transition to a primitive form of a capitalist economy, there has been a tendency towards the social disintegration of the working class, accompanied by extreme ideological confusion and political disorientation.
The newly formed, independent trade union alliance, UITUA, which played a prominent part in the strike movement of 1990-91, for instance, demanded immediate economic improvements for workers, but supported a transition to the market and liberal-bourgeois parliamentary forms. Politically UITUA was aligned with the bourgeois Democratic Party in the mass movement against Alia’s government during 1991-92. This disorientation of the workers, with an acceptance by the majority of pro-market, bourgeois-democratic ideas as an alternative to Stalinism, has not been countered, even on a small scale, by any organisation, ideas or policies corresponding to the interests of the working class. In other words, the "subjective factor", essential to the advance of a revolutionary movement, is entirely lacking. In the absence of independent class organisation and class ideas, it is not possible for working class forces to develop clear aims of its own or formulate effective strategies, at least in a short span of time. There is no evidence, at the moment, of the emergence of any committees with a democratic form, giving direction to the mobilisation of workers and other strata.
An ideological vacuum
The collapse of Stalinism has opened an enormous ideological vacuum, and not only in the former Stalinist states. The fragmentation and disorientation of the left in the advanced capitalist countries means that, at this stage, there are currently no genuine Marxist forces with sufficient influence to have any real effect on the workers’ movement in the ex-Stalinist states.
It is inevitable, in this situation, that various other forces will tend to come to the fore. In the rebel committees of the southern towns high-ranking military officers (either retired or defecting from Berisha’s forces) play a prominent role. During this phase, they are with the people against the dictatorship. Later, many of them will undoubtedly be prepared, on the right political terms, to collaborate with or join a recomposed national government, probably involving some of the leaders of the Democratic Forum parties, possibly including the Socialist Party, and backed by the Western powers. Commenting on the current lawlessness, Colonel Kocin, leader of Sarande’s committee, said: "Every country has its thieves. Ours happen to be armed, but they will face the law tomorrow." Even now, Kocin looks forward to the time when order will be restored, and it is not only the thieves that the currently disaffected officers will try to curb. The military leaders will try to reign in popular power and recover arms from the people, though this will probably prove very difficult.
These officers are rebels against Berisha, not revolutionaries. Some of the former regime’s military caste may harbour illusion of a return to a Stalinist-type state, but in reality this is ruled out by the legacy of the collapse of the Stalinist economies and the new international relationship of forces. More likely, most of them accept the transition to the market but seek a bourgeois regime more ‘acceptable’ to them. In the future, most of them will work to restore a stable regime based on the market economy. Some of the officers may have personal bonapartist ambitions, particularly on a regional basis.
At the same time, a mass uprising lacking conscious, organised working-class leadership inevitably provides plenty of scope for a host of gangsters, swindlers, and black-marketeers. In Albania, there is no shortage of gangster-entrepreneurs, who have flourished since 1990. There are also brutalised, de-classed lumpen elements, thrown up by the social turmoil, who have indulged in an orgy of wanton destruction and violent criminal attacks on innocent people. There are no class-conscious, disciplined militias to keep them in check. As in Russia, the other CIS republics, Bosnia, Serbia, Croatia, and so on, armed mafia gangs are likely to flourish. Some of the ex-military officers may also be drawn into this, with the emergence of local war-lords, each attempting to establish their own local fiefdom.
However hostile they may be to a central government, these rebel ‘leaders’ do not have progressive aims. On the contrary, the lesson of recent years in Eastern Europe is that many of them will strive to whip up and manipulate every kind of local, ethnic, religious, or national grievance and prejudice for their own ends. When the country is awash with arms, this creates horrifying potential for conflict.
The ‘Mad Max’ phase of turmoil
This is not classical proletarian revolution, it is the ‘Mad Max’ phase of post-Stalinist turmoil. Albania’s mass uprising, like some of the movements in other ex-Stalinist states, has many of the features of a proletarian revolution. But given the ideological vacuum, the Albanian movement too will be exploited by counter-revolutionary forces for bourgeois ends. Moreover, the Albanian insurgency also has features of pre-capitalist Jacqueries, peasant-plebeian uprisings and guerrilla wars against absolutist monarchic states which often combined social protest against feudal exploitation with blind revenge and banditry. True, they ultimately played an historically progressive role in speeding the destruction of the feudal order. But it was only when forces with much clearer political aims gave direction to mass movements that social and political transformation could be carried through.
In the Balkans today, the flood of arms from Albania’s arsenals raises the horrifying prospect of intensified national and ethnic conflict across the borders of Albania, Macedonia and Greece. Events in Albania could also trigger an uprising in Kosovo demanding independence from the rump, Serbia-dominated Yugoslav Federation. Refusal by Milosevic’s regime to concede the right of self-determination to the Kusovars could result in a bloody conflict. Chauvinistic gangsters will undoubtedly channel weapons to right-wing nationalist organisations amongst the Albanian minorities, with predictable counter moves by Greeks, Macedonians, Serbs, and so on. Tensions are already boiling in these areas. The eruption of another armed conflict on the scale of Bosnia would be a serious set-back for the workers of the Southern Balkans. Only a movement of the working class, with a programme of socialist opposition to capitalist consolidation and support for internationalist unity across existing borders, could cut across the present nationalistic conflicts. Unfortunately, it is wishful thinking to believe that there is such a movement under way at the moment.
Re-emergence of the working class
In time, the workers in the former Stalinist states will begin to will begin to reconstitute themselves as a social class. Through the struggles which will develop, the workers will build independent, class-struggle trade unions, new political parties, and begin to develop a consciousness of their own class interests and their potential power as a social force. This process is already developing in some of the former Stalinist states, like the Czech Republic, Poland and some of the CIS states. But it is in its early stages. There is no evidence, at the moment, that the process has begun to develop in Albania, and unfortunately it is unlikely to crystallise during the current uprising, given the absence of class-conscious socialist organisations. At this stage, the working class in Albania does not have the social coherence or independent political capacity to play a leading role in the uprising. It would require an organisation, or at least a leading layer, with clear aims and bold tactics to give the extremely diverse, spontaneous movement clear anti-capitalist, socialist aims. That is the music of the future, to which some of the more politically conscious workers and youth who are now fighting on the streets will begin to turn.
An uprising cannot be sustained indefinitely, especially without leaders and organisations that can provide clear political objectives. If Berisha attempts to use force to hold on to power, there may be another wave of insurgency. In any case, resistance to state authority, episodes of armed rebellion, and social banditry may continue for some time, especially given the abundance of arms. But with such an anarchic movement, with many different social and political strands as well as regional differences, there is bound to be a reflux at a certain stage. Forces offering a return to stability and social peace will gain support, or at least acceptance, from layers who are devastated by the conflict.