A new imperialist military mission has finally set sail. Destination Albania. Where it has gone to restore the order shaken by a sacrosanct popular revolt.

This order is based on the super-exploitation of labour - 100-dollar wages and zero rights; the theft of natural and financial resources; Mafia-like trafficking of every kind whose termini are invariably in one or other of the wealthy countries; military bases useful for future acts of aggression against the proletariat in the Balkans, who are already subject to strict surveillance on the part of thousands of imperialist soldiers.

This is the order established as a result of the "liberation" of Albania by the West. Any basis of a "national economy" constructed after the (bourgeois) revolution that led to the regime of Hoxha was literally disintegrated by the invasion of the imperialist powers. Instead of the desired and promised advancement of their living conditions toward European levels, the Albanian masses have experienced a leap backward. All of this is further proof that, in this age of imperialism, not only is there no possibility of establishing a national route to socialism, but also no possibility that the countries in which capitalism has arrived late can ever experience full bourgeois development. The capitalist system has by now reached the point at which it can only make further "progress" by ensuring the regression of the proletariat throughout the world - most dramatically in the oppressed countries.

The leader of this latest neo-colonial mission is Italy. Democratic Italy -which thus revives the oppression of Albania (and the Balkans) once bloodily exercised by its liberal and then its fascist predecessors.

The novelty this time is that the "left" represented by the PDS (the cornerstone of the Prodi government) is right there at the forefront of the aggression, hiding itself behind a sickening humanitarian rhetoric; and the falsely "antagonistic" left of Rifondazione (another prop of the same government) limits itself to a verbal dissociation on purely tactical grounds - the excessive risks facing Italian troops! - without lifting a finger to organise street demonstrations against the mission.

This anti-Albanian military expedition is also aimed against the Italian and European working class because, if the combined bourgeoisie of Italy and the other States involved manage to crush the Albanian population under its heel, this desperate and easily blackmailed labour force will be used even more than it is today in order to blackmail and divide our own class army; and because the chauvinism and racism unleashed by the mission serve to keep us nailed to the patriotic front by the side of our exploiters and, as a result, to accept more willingly the new sacrifices and more reactionary political policies that are awaiting us.

The results will be no different from those of previous "peace", "humanitarian" and "anti-Mafia" missions against the exploited masses of Panama, Lebanon, Libya, Iraq, Somalia, Yugoslavia ...

In order to avoid its own enslavement, the proletariat of Italy and the West must avoid becoming even a passive accomplice of this worldwide of imperialist neo-colonialism. It must be called upon to shake itself  from its torpor and oppose all of the forms of imperialist intervention in Albania; to demand the withdrawal of Western troops from the Balkans; to denounce those who are really responsible for the misery and depredation of the Albanian masses; to support and direct the fight against imperialism and the local servants of imperialism, whether their name be Berisha or anything else; to join the Albanian proletariat in creating a common class organisation to fight against the common enemy.

It is to this end that OCI is working with all of the energy at its command along the lines of an authentic proletarian internationalism, which has united in the past and will unite in the future the exploited of all nationalities, races and colours in the battle for the communist revolution.