Branko Merxhani: An Introduction & On Marxism

“When a race forgets sacrifice and clings only to survival, it rushes toward the abyss of historical extinction.” - Branko Merxhani

Who was Branko Merxhani?

Branko Merxhani was born in 1894 to an Albanian father and a German mother in Niš (then part of the Ottoman Empire), and spent his formative years between the intellectual salons of Istanbul and the restless provinces of the Balkans. Much of his upbringing was closely tied to the declining prestige of the Ottoman intelligentsia, being the son of a high-ranking Ottoman judge. Educated in Istanbul, and later in Germany and Austria, he was deeply influenced by Western sociological theory, especially the works of Spengler, Kant, and the German historicists. He was particularly fond of Goethe, whom he regularly quoted in his writings.

Returning to Albania in the early 1930s, Merxhani became one of the chief architects of Neo-Albanianism (Neo-Shqiptarizma), a movement that sought to rebuild Albanian national identity on the basis of civic virtue, cultural modernisation, and ethical individualism. He rejected both imported Marxism and local tribalism, insisting that Albania’s true crisis was not economic or political but moral and spiritual, a deep cultural rot embedded in centuries of fatalism, apathy, and opportunism.

His essays, published in journals such as Përpjekja Shqiptare, are biting, urgent, and unrelentingly polemical. Merxhani demanded not just reform but rebirth, a total transformation of the Albanian psyche from fatalistic subject to responsible citizen. But his ideas found little institutional support. He wrote alongside other right-wing Albanian figures who would all meet fatally tragic ends: Vangjel Nirvana, Ismet Toto, and Lazer Radi. Increasingly isolated, Merxhani spent the rest of his life in Turkey, where he died in 1981. Though largely forgotten during the communist period, his work has seen a modest revival among post-1990 Albanian intellectuals seeking to diagnose the enduring problems of Albanian society. Whether read as prophecy, diagnosis, or lament, Merxhani’s voice remains one of the sharpest ever raised in the name of Albania’s unfinished moral awakening.

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On Marxism

One of my friends, upon reading the brief paragraph I had written in the December issue regarding the surprise Mr Director of the Press Office intended to give us—perhaps without any preconceived notion towards us, but rather, let us say, simply out of an excessive zeal for fulfilling the duty assigned to him—wrote to me in one of his most recent letters:

“…All right, you are not a Marxist in principle — that’s something no one can deny. In fact, it is quite evident. Among those engaged in Sociology, there are few who openly sympathise with the Marxist doctrinal principles as a whole. Especially when it comes to Durkheim, such a notion doesn’t even cross one’s mind. Fine — but where does one stand if one limits oneself to merely marking down that one is not a member of that school, without explaining the reasons for such a stance? Shouldn’t a few lines be written on this topic — especially now? The State, for its own reasons, has declared a terrible war against communism, which is undoubtedly a real danger — but mistakenly (I say mistakenly) it has also entangled people who are entirely innocent and, in my view, highly valuable (if they were simply left to carry on with their work), people who could genuinely contribute something to the healthy development of this country. I fear that a damaging and entirely unproductive confusion is being created — due either to immature motivations in some cases (for good intentions), or too few truly enlightened intellectuals, or due to poor legal interpretations and excessively narrow-minded conservatism (for bad intentions), or because of the legal defects of the state apparatus. Personally, I don’t think it’s a matter of ‘style’ — it’s about valuing an idea that is very much relevant today. Why shouldn’t the country’s intellectuals be guided by public opinion, especially when one sees that the State itself makes mistakes in applying decisions — either for one reason or for another?…”

I have no objection, nor any hesitation in accepting this interesting and well-placed appeal from my friend, who is clearly very concerned. I am not only not a member of the doctrinal principles of the Marxist school, but I am also anti-communist. I am both a thinking person and, even more so, an Albanian. Not only in the field of theoretical societies, but also in political and social perspectives on international development, I am not among those who accept the claim that the modern world and civilised society are divided into two ideological fronts battling one another to the end.

Today’s world, as I see it, is not split into two, but into three ideological fronts. The third front, the largest, the healthiest, and the most dignified part, has remained loyal to the principles of progressive democracy and has withstood, with full strength and will, all the upheavals and nervous disorders caused by the global war of 1914 to 1918 within the social structures of the major nations that took part in the most dreadful conflict in human history. And I am convinced that civilised peoples, nations nurtured and matured within a long tradition of cultural development, cannot sacrifice, for the sake of a catastrophic accident like any militant outburst, their cherished and sacred freedoms, for which they have shed the noblest part of their blood, generation after generation, across all the worlds.

This is my firm and unwavering conviction!

So let me attempt to satisfy the wish and curiosity of my sharp-minded friend, whose letters often amuse my spirit and give me cause to reflect on certain things that the dryness of thought in our intellectual circles tends to conceal from view, leading us to overlook them entirely. Yet in reality, they are near at hand, living and unfolding right under the shadow of our own nose.

As is well known, from the latter part of the last century to the present day, countless volumes have been written on the critique of Marxism. These could fill the entire shelves of both official and private libraries we have in Albania today. Here, I will confine myself to explaining my own views by comparing Marxist doctrines with the practical events of social life.

One of the claims of Marxism, perhaps not one of its foundational tenets but certainly among the most persuasive for recruiting members, is this:

“Two-thirds of the people’s wealth ends up in the hands of one-fifth of a country’s population.”

Economic science and statistics have long since disproved the core error of this claim. The most refined statistical methods of recent times have revealed that if the wealth of the rich were to be redistributed among the general population, the increase in wealth for the poor would be negligible. This is not a simple matter to calculate. Yet the conclusion is so clear and categorical that even the few counterarguments one might raise have not been sufficient to alter our final judgement.

For example, the German sociologist Reiners¹ demonstrated long ago that if annual incomes exceeding 8,000 marks were redistributed among those who struggle daily to earn their bread, the individual daily gain from this redistribution would increase by only a negligible margin of 0.19 marks. With that amount, one could not even buy four cigarettes in Germany. So then, Marxism has by no means discovered the “cure for eliminating poverty”.

On the other hand, statistics once again teach us, in a way that leaves not even the slightest doubt, that when it comes to ensuring the welfare of a population, one of the key factors is the use of and advancement in technology. For example, in the United States of America, where technological progress has reached its peak, national production since 1919 has increased by 42 percent. The significant and categorical influence that technical organisation has on increasing and regulating a nation’s wealth can be seen even from a few small comparisons. According to German statistics from the Hitler era, the annual mechanical output per person in America is 99 RM². In China, a primitive country with virtually no technical development, it is only 0.20 RM. In Albania, it is virtually zero.

Another Marxist argument, one that has misled many people and left a great number confused, is this:

“Capitalism destroys small industry.”

The strongest supporter of this theory was the famous Kautsky³. But statistics have proven the opposite. Small industry has always been able to defend itself everywhere and at all times, and often even thrive. In general terms, we can say that large-scale industry is always established alongside small industry, wherever such an industry exists. Large industry is a product of the new age; it is a new source of national wealth.

Nowhere have small businesses been wiped out. And in any case, what does it matter for a nation’s economy whether industry is large or small? The point lies elsewhere. For the national economy, the most important element is the production of machinery, and this does not depend on the formal framework of industrial activity, but on certain specific conditions, such as the type and causes of commercial and technical organisation. These conditions vary according to the category of industry.

Meanwhile, Marxist philosophy allows no room for exceptions within its generalised framework. It demands that a formula drawn from one international context be applied uniformly to all events and issues. Comparative economic studies and the results of tests conducted on the application of the Theory of Analogies have overturned all of these so-called rescue solutions of Marxism, which are like weak fungi feeding on gaps in human ideological reasoning. The figures that follow in the next paragraph will continue to clarify the picture.

Here is yet another Marxist claim, and indeed one of the most fundamental:

Capitalist profits always increase, while workers’ wages decline.

Statistics have also disproved this refrain. Wytinski⁴, one of the most prominent scientists of our time, calculates and confirms the following annual wages of ordinary industrial workers in the United States⁵:

Year: 1879 | 1889 | 1900 | 1919

Wages: 651 | 831 | 1,112 | 2,302

Here is how the situation in 1932 is summarised by Herkner⁶, again one of the most authoritative scientists:

“The claim that the accumulation of capital on one side supposedly causes an increase in misery on the other side is entirely absurd and stands in direct contradiction with the actual course of events. The truth is this: the more capital is concentrated, the more the condition of the worker improves.”

Theorists who defend the Marxist thesis say:

“A worker has no right to believe that only the capitalist becomes wealthy from his labour, and that if his own wage does not increase proportionally with the capitalist’s profit, then exploitation is taking place,”

But all this revolutionary literature had virtually no effect on the spirit of the worker. The American and European worker today is more capable than anyone of recognising his own condition and rights. When a worker feels that his situation is improving, he pays no attention to the social contrasts that the Marxist theorist describes in such terrifying colours, and feels no urge to follow his revolutionary calls.

If the worker truly finds himself in a miserable condition, then this situation can only produce one result: misery becomes an ideology, revolutionary and proletarian currents gain momentum. But how can a miserable proletarian be in any position to fulfil the lofty duties assigned to him by Marx? From misery comes only one thing: more misery.

Now let us speak briefly on the example of Soviet Russia. Tsarist Russia was a country that stood outside the European framework. It still roamed in a feudal and despotic era from which European Europe had already emerged and moved beyond at least two centuries earlier. That is why any comparison between Tsarist Russia and Bolshevik Russia is of no value in a critique of the doctrinal principles of Marxism. Marxism was born in Europe, alongside other systems of theory, and its fate will be determined again within its original context.

A French writer, Charles Louis-Philippe⁷, once awaited the coming of the Barbarians. The roads that cross between Tsarist Petersburg and Bolshevik Moscow, and the endless steppes stretching to either side of the Urals, are the mountain passes from which troop after troop of adventurers once descended to plunder whatever lay before them. Travellers who pass along these roads today think of their old companions no more. Times have changed. Those who once waited in Europe for the arrival of the Barbarians are now left speechless. From nowhere and without warning, the Barbarians arrived. But in contrast, along the Russian steppes roads have been built, railways laid down, and from there they extended deep into Asia. Across that vast space, mechanical inventions, factory smoke, and with them all the ideological discards of overproduction now flow — everything Europe could no longer carry, all of it now traveling eastward.

The direction of movement is now from West to East. It is not Asia or the lands of the East that now shape the type of global civilisation. Perhaps that is how it once was, in the very distant past. But no longer. It seems now that things have reached their final stage: Asia is being Westernised, or more precisely, is being Europeanised, according to the specific temperaments of its peoples — Turkey, Persia, China, and even Russia itself.

In any case, Bolshevism is a Russian product and can only be seen as a stage in Russia’s own development. Over there, who knows, perhaps many things have changed. But despotism remains. And until this nation is freed from that deep-rooted enemy of all progress and of all truth, it will not be possible for us to learn anything certain about that country’s condition.

Over there, everything is still an experiment, and every experiment is a problem for the future. The future! “Ah, the Bolshevik Gogol,” some say, “The Bolshevik government sacrifices the lives of the present generations for the happiness of future generations.”

But those people forget that Marxists have often harshly criticised the early capitalists who emerged during the industrial revolution in England. What fault did those people have? Was it because they could not yet secure workers’ rights in their favour? Were they to blame that it was only later capitalists who managed to do so?

Did they not sacrifice entire generations of workers to secure the future of the working class in England today?

“The officials of a despotic government,” say the Marxists, “possess higher technical abilities and are therefore better able to plan for the happiness and well-being of workers.”

Nonsense. European civilisation, with 2,000 years of experience, has demonstrated through facts and arguments that competence cannot be dismissed as an unchanging value. It is a very particular and highly relative value. Since the time of Socrates, human reason has recognised that the skills and aptitudes of a ship captain, a doctor, or a machinist are distinct and separate.

Government officials are just government officials, nothing more. To be a brilliant reformer, beyond possessing great technical abilities, one must also have a highly vigorous imagination. But there is something else too: the ability not to be easily swept away by fantasies or carried off by sentimental dreams.

The Bolshevik regime supposedly has as its main aim the destruction of the capitalist system in Europe. What a fantasy. Russian Bolshevism is nothing more than a Russian method of implementation which has the goal of introducing capitalist means into Russia, just as they exist in Europe. The difference lies in the manner in which each process develops, and that manner must align with the temperament of the country in question.

Bolshevism, in order to employ the tools of production used by European capitalism, has already turned into a monstrous system that terrorised millions of human beings. In reality, Marxism does not deny the value of the capitalist regime. It merely claims that its methods produce unemployment. Why? Has the capitalist regime really been incapable of maintaining balance between production and need? Is Marxism truly the only system capable of achieving this?

If Russia has not yet achieved that balance, it will surely do so in 4, 5 or 30 years. There are those who will one day expose the fable of these so-called prophets: History.

Would you like me to tell you something else? Listen. I do not claim that all the blame and responsibility for the turmoil that the world is currently going through, with all its economic crises both great and small, should be laid entirely at the feet of the capitalist system. Such upheavals resemble those that arise even in the cradle of free Nature and are often far more serious. Life itself is a constant struggle against the forces of Nature. The shocks, the upheavals, the suffering caused by crises in European history did not begin only when the name “capitalism” first appeared.

Capitalism reached its highest peak within the last 150 years. But in earlier periods, for example the whole medieval era, who can say those times passed without turmoil? History is wide open and just comparing events is enough. In the Middle Ages, the peoples of Europe endured a succession of collapses and sufferings far more terrible than those of today. Likewise, the history of the peoples of Asia is full of dramatic turns, whether destructive or transformative, caused by a series of natural or civilisational conditions.

European civilisation, compared with the ancient civilisations, managed to develop more refined means for achieving progress, to the point where even the tools used to wage struggle were more advanced and precise in confronting the destructive forces that pushed history towards its darkest outcomes. This is the central point of the issue: Between the European worldview and the Marxist worldview lies a fundamental difference. These worldviews do not diverge only in how they interpret history or how they comment on the outcomes of different civilisations. They diverge at a much deeper point — in the principles they use as the foundation for studying the essential problems of human life and the fate of the world.

If Marxists claim that they have solved the problem of internal social equilibrium or preach that they have discovered the strange key to the paradise of the future, to me it seems these trumpeted warnings are nothing more than the outpouring of their ignorance. Or at best, they make the unforgivable error of completely ignoring the major factors that drive and ultimately shape the development of human events.

The European ideal and the working methods of Europe are inspired by the principles of liberty, personality, and diversity, and above all by the principle of the division of social labour. And because of this, all the problems posed by social life in Europe or in Europeanised states — including the problem of equilibrium within the state — are complex issues that cannot be resolved instantly.

An English philosopher wrote not long ago:

“If times are hard, if people remain unemployed, if young men cannot find anything to satisfy their hunger, then humanity is ill. The true name of this illness is ignorance.”

Social changes cannot be predicted as inevitable. The same goes for illnesses. This is one of the oldest truths known to the world. At the very least, Europe has had several centuries to experience, in its own body, the reality of this suffering.

Russia tried instead to rapidly spread its revolutionary-nationalist fervour from its western borders all the way to the shores of the Atlantic. It achieved nothing. Or rather, it only managed this: it deepened the misunderstandings between peoples, glorified the wave of misery, and in some Western countries even triggered a regression—albeit temporary—to medieval conditions.

But would these peoples not have recognised each other better and come to an understanding more easily if they had followed the path of Europe’s democratic currents, without importing disruptions foreign to their own soil?

At least we now have before us a sufficiently important example that gives us confidence that peoples can understand one another much more clearly when Europe is freed from foreign dogmas. Asia today has come to understand that the working methods of Europe can be applied in every corner of the world and used for the benefit of all peoples. Wherever they have been adopted, these methods have brought positive results and remarkable outcomes.

This is enough for the present. It is a step forward. No step can remain frozen in the place it stopped. It will move forward. A day will come when the entire world will better understand the principles of the Religion of Liberty, the same thing that Kant once called “The Religion of Truth.” And among our fellow countrymen, there are many whose veins carry a few drops of blood from ancestors who once raised the torch of reason and who, in our own time, are stuck in the quagmire of material and spiritual misery. Let them strive to learn.

May those with reason and strength who dig deep into their hearts with a steady hand, unshaken by the terrible labour that awaits them, remember this immortal verse from Goethe⁸:

“Wer immer strebend sich bemüht,

Den können wir erlösen!”

Without such an effort, there will be no Albania. Otherwise, let us prepare our bags from now. The soil of Europe has become too narrow. For parasites, only one fate is written: After primitive historical collapse comes modern historical catastrophe. And then the looters will return at our flanks — farewell, O Fatherland!

1. Likely refers to Ludwig Reiners (1896-1957), a German economist from the interwar period, mentioned to support the statistical critique of Marxist redistribution models

2. Reichsmark: The currency of Germany from 1924 until 1948. Used here as a statistical benchmark in industrial comparisons

3. Karl Kautsky (1854-1938), Czech-Austrian Marxist theorist, member of the German SDP & Second International, and advocate of Orthodox Marxism.

4. Wladimir S. Woytinsky (1893–1960), a Russian-born economist and statistician who later worked for the US government. He compiled labour statistics used to argue against Marxist wage decline claims.

5. There is no source for where these statistics were taken from in the original piece, nor in what currency they were being measured in

6. Heinrich Herkner (1863-1932), a former Marxist turned Realist economist, a professor at the University of Zurich, Karlsruhe, Freiburg, Frederick William, and Berlin Technical

7. Charles-Louis Philippe (1874-1909), French novelist

8. Goethe’s Faust II, final scene. Translation: “Whoever strives with all his might, him we can redeem.”