The basic difficulty derived from the fact that the local Communist leaders entertained patriarchal notions about the Party; they considered the Party organization as one in which they found a reincarnation of the clan. There was a tendency therefore for the Communists to admit to the Party organization people from their own bajrak, or clan, in order to have a dominant position in, and exercise command over, such socialist organizations as agricultural collectives. In a Party organization the head of one bajrak was put in command so that he could rule over the other, just as if he were the head of the clan. As in the old clan society, quarrels often occurred in basic Party Organizations when one bajraktar attempted to wrest control of the organization from another.
Entrance into the Party was considered by the patriarchal-minded highlanders as penetration into places where they could enjoy privileges and prestige. A similar situation prevailed in the agricultural collectives, in which the presidents of the collectives, imbued with the traditional idea of chieftainship, behaved toward the property of the collectives as if it were their own. The problems of the collectives were not submitted to either the basic Party organizations or to the general assembly of the collective. According to official criticism, everything was settled in the "clan style, in the spirit of family interest, of the clan, of the entity, precisely because they formed a family within which defense and support of their interests, right or wrong, had become the rule."
Enver Hoxha stated in a speech in 1968 that the position of the secretary of the Party organization or of an agricultural collective was considered in many areas as inheritable, just as the chieftainship in the tribal society has been inherited. The difficulties faced by the regime's attempts to eradicate the persistent patriarchal notions were succinctly phrased by Hoxha in his address to the Democratic Front Congress in September 1967. Declaring that the social problems in the country were complex in the towns and more so in the countryside, he lamented the fact that the rural areas:
have their own written and especially unwritten laws, which are often expressed in various regressive and harmful customs, in norms that are alien to our Communist morals. These are very dangerous and obstinate; they insistently resist the new and are liquidated with difficulty. These customs and norms have their own economic, ideological, religious, and ethical basis; they have their own class roots from capitalism to feudalism, indeed from the bajrak and the tribe.
In an obvious effort to root out some of the old prevailing customs and traditions, the Party inaugurated in 1967 a movement aimed at revolutionizing the family and, in Party jargon, liberating it from the remnants of bourgeois and petty bourgeois ideology. The targets have been directed toward the youth, both boys and girls. In resolutions adopted by the Party's Central Committee it was charged that in some families, because of the conservative and patriarchal mentality of the parents, the children were still not allowed to participate in parental conversations, especially the girls, on the pretext that they were too young and immature.
Discussions on morals, such as relations between boys and girls, love, and the creation of a socialist family, were particularly limited. It was the parents' view that they should not discuss such things with their children since this would undermine the traditional respect and authority of the parents. As stated in the January 30, 1970, issue of Zeri i Popullit, the need to strengthen the struggle against alien concepts that still plagued families became clearer when one considered some negative concepts that were evident in young people. Families of intellectuals were particularly singled out for criticism because, according to the Party journal, they manifested liberal attitudes in their attempts to satisfy every petty bourgeois craving and desire of their children; they instilled in them their own intellectual tendencies and fed and dressed them beyond their means.
Evidence of the Party's failure to detach the people completely from their traditional habits and customs was forcefully presented by the Party in a book published in 1968 under the title Party Basic Organizations for Further Revolutionizing the Life of the Country. It was freely admitted that much remained to be done in the struggle to emancipate the women and to draw boys and girls from the tutelage of their parents.
When the wife of a Party member decided to join the Party, for example, her husband addressed a note to the secretary of the basic Party organization saying that should the secretary enroll his wife in the Party, he would be destroying a family because he could not possibly live with his wife on an equal basis. Similarly, when a woman in a village was proposed as a member of the council of the agricultural collective, her brother-in-law objected strenuously, saying that her candidacy should be rejected since it was advanced without obtaining his permission as the head of the family and that in any case the "men of that family were not yet dead."
In a village in Kruje the first woman to become a Party candidate was asked to leave the Party because she did not belong to the same clan to which the Party secretary belonged. In another case, when a candidate was proposed for Party membership, someone reportedly stated that "we must enlist one from our clan also" in order to maintain the clan equilibrium in the Party.
The problem of social and family relations was still a major concern for the regime at the end of 1969. For example, in a major speech on family and social relations in November 1969, Hysni Kapo, the third-ranking man in the Party hierarchy, blamed the class enemy for the slow progress the Party had registered in creating a new social structure. The class enemy, Kapo admitted, was found everywhere, in and outside the Party, and it was striving hard to obstruct the path of socializing the family and emancipating the women.