In Marx’s footsteps

Albanian Free Press columnist, Frrok Çupi analyzes the recent protests which have swept the country. In today’s opinion, Çupi stops on the protest being held in Tirana’s Ring Road and says that this is an attempt not to free occupied lands.

Çupi says that those who protest today “two decades ago came up with a slogan which seemed ‘anti-communist’ at the time and occupied someone else’s land”. Meanwhile, he points out that “there are millions of cases where lands have been unjustly occupied in a country with only 3 million people. According to statistics supplied by courts, each individual in the country is involved in three judicial cases, mainly relating to property”.

The analyst also says that “the anti-communist movement of three decades ago divided properties in a communist way”, while pointing out that “today, residents of the Ring Road are not willing to leave their properties because they’re accustomed to the idea that ‘your property is my property’.

In his article, Çupi also stops on the protest being held by students. He says that “students do not pay for knowledge”, adding that “knowledge is the most invaluable good for students”, stressing that: “It’s been several days that they protest against school fees, in a Marxist sort of way, meaning that they don’t want their parents to have to work more in order to pay for their fees”.

“Students are looking to obtain knowledge either by exploiting taxpayers’ money or the earnings of the capitalist state, but based on the Marxist concept”.

Another issue that Çupi points out is the attempt being made by MPs to carry out reforms and stops at the opposition’s request for vetting in politics.

According to him, “this demand has bewildered the Venice Commission” and cites the commission as saying that such vetting violates human rights conventions.

Going back to the first argument on properties, Çupi comments the opposition’s stand, which, according to him consists of expropriation of all the rich people. “Politicians have prepared a list of all Albanian entrepreneurs. It would be the same thing if authorities in America decided to strip all the Rockefellers, Morgans, Bill Gateses or Mark Zuckerbergs of their wealth”.

According to the analyst, this is the “Marxist concept of expropriation which ruined Albania, especially during the years of communism, by creating equality in poverty, the state of the proletariat and poverty as a moral virtue”.

In conclusion, Çupi also criticizes the government’s lack of consistency for scrapping those fees for which yesterday it declared that it was not going to scrap.

At this point the analyst concludes:

In front of these uncontrollable moves: “The opponents that the government has gathered around itself with informal residents who have been expropriated and not compensated, students, property owners who do not leave their properties… all of them could set up a conglomerate to attack the government without being able to build anything better. Usually, anarchy comes when the system is threatened from the top. Even Marx was not in favour of the anarchy of values, but post Marxists applied it, especially in our country… Under these circumstances, we may need a Marxist opposition”.