[Militant No. 499, 18th April 1980, p. 11]
What should be the attitude of Marxists to Russia’s involvement in Afghanistan? We print right two letters from our readers [first printed in our 21 March edition] which raise two alternatives and a reply below from Lynn Walsh.
The letters on Afghanistan from Chris Evers and Tom Crow (‘Militant’ 495, 21 March) raise important questions.
Chris questions whether victory for the rebels would inevitably lead to reaction. Well, the rebel forces are certainly a motley collection of tribesmen and bandits who, although undoubtedly inspired by fierce nationalistic sentiments, are clearly dominated by mullahs and feudalists whose main aim is to preserve the old property and power relations and who could never establish national independence or autonomy for national minorities.
But the crucial factor is that these forces are being used as a cats-paw for reaction by US imperialism which is arming and funding them with the help of the reactionary dictatorships of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, and also, scandalously, the Chinese leadership. If Afghanistan’s proletarian Bonapartist regime were brought down, imperialism would undoubtedly intervene to restore landlordism and capitalism, and install a pro-imperialist client regime.
Afghanistan is entirely different from Iran where, as Chris says, “a reactionary religious leadership has been forced to carry out nationalisation and land reform.” In the absence of workers’ organisations with Marxist perspectives the Mosque, for special reasons, became a conduit for opposition to the Shah’s dictatorship.
Under enormous mass pressure from both the peasantry and the small but vitally important working class, the Khomeini leadership was pushed into taking progressive, anti-capitalist measures. In Afghanistan, however, the mullahs are the agents of social reaction.
Marxists certainly support “the right of nations to self-determination”, but in a country like Afghanistan, which because of its geography and history has never been completely unified nor genuinely independent, this general formula in itself provides no ready solution.
The problems of national liberation and social emancipation of the Afghan people cannot be separated from the conflict of class forces beyond Afghanistan’s frail borders. That is why the Russian bureaucracy’s intervention to defend a regime based on the abolition of landlordism and capitalism must be given critical support. The alternative would be a pro-imperialist regime even more oppressive than (for example) those in Pakistan and Bangladesh.
Socialist Democracy
Marxists must certainly raise the banner of socialist democracy, demanding control of the centralised, planned economy and the state through organs of workers’ and peasants’ democracy. But in “explaining [as Chris says] that the next step in Afghanistan must be towards a healthy workers’ democracy,” it must be remembered that in this economically backward country, with only a very small embryonic working class, the move to replace the Bonapartist bureaucracy with genuine workers’ democracy cannot be separated from the development of the political revolution in the more developed Stalinist states of Russia and Eastern Europe, or from the success of socialist revolution in the more developed capitalist countries of Asia.
Tom Crow agrees with ‘Militant’s’ stance on the presence of Russian troops in Afghanistan, but disagrees with our opposition to their initial intervention. However, the fact that workers’ hostility to the presence of Russian troops is whipped up or reinforced by the propaganda of the capitalist media doesn’t alter the fact that it was the Bonapartist character of the military intervention which gave the capitalists all they needed to attack the brutal, undemocratic methods of the “socialist” (i.e. Stalinist) states.
Tom says “Russia does play a progressive role in third world countries.” This is true in the limited, relative sense that Russia has supported liberation movements and has given economic and military aid to regimes based on the abolition of landlordism and capitalism. But the Russian leadership supports these regimes, and some reactionary capitalist regimes, for reasons of its own power and prestige. In Afghanistan itself Moscow supported the reactionary landlord-capitalist dictatorship of Daoud right up until its overthrow, when they promptly switched to supporting the proletarian-Bonapartist Amin regime.
Support from the Russian bureaucracy, moreover, inevitably ensures that the “third world” countries concerned begin their anti-capitalist revolution on Bonapartist lines, establishing military-police states which replicate all the essential features of the more developed Stalinist states.
Internationally, the Russian leadership now plays a definitely counter-revolutionary role. It could only play a genuinely “progressive”, socialist role if it supported parties or movements basing themselves on conscious, democratic mobilisation of mass support for an authentic Marxist programme, both in the “third world” and the advanced capitalist countries.
In truth, while the bureaucracy is eager to support social change directed from above and to embrace regimes of its own kind, it fears conscious, mass revolutionary movements of the proletariat more than it fears its imperialist rivals. The bureaucracy instinctively knows that the development of socialist revolution internationally which would break the isolation of the existing Stalinist states, would spell the end of their bureaucratic power and privilege – and the establishment of genuine workers’ democracy.
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