Lynn Walsh: Afghanistan

[Militant No. 490, 15th February 1980, p. 10]

Marxists could not support the Russian bureaucracy’s invasion because of its reactionary consequences internationally. But once Russian forces had gone in, it would have been wrong to call for their withdrawal.

Dear Comrade,

I have just read Ted Grant’s article on Afghanistan [Militant 486, 18 January]. The article provides useful material on the background to the invasion and the reasons why the Russian bureaucracy intervened. I found that I agreed with the points being made but one sentence I found rather confusing.

Ted says that the demand by the imperialist powers supported by the Communist Party and the Tribune group for the withdrawal of the Russian troops in Afghanistan is ‘utopian’. Utopian it may be in the sense that Russia is not going to withdraw the troops because of grain sanctions, calls for the boycott of the Olympics or the movement of British and American ships. However, does that mean that ‘Militant’ is against the withdrawal of the troops, having quite rightly condemned the invasion?

I can see that if the Russian troops were withdrawn the Afghanistan regime of Karmal would soon collapse and there would be an almost inevitable bloodbath and return to feudal landowning and backwardness that has characterised Afghanistan until the April 1978 coup. This would justify support for the troops being there now they have invaded. Is this the position that Militant is putting forward?

This is an important question as there is considerable debate within the labour movement about the intervention of Russian troops.

Yours fraternally

Roy Bentley

Banbury CLP

The first of a two-part reply by Lynn Walsh explaining ‘Militant’s’ position on Afghanistan

Roy Bentley’s letter raises valuable points of clarification, and ‘Militant’ welcomes letters like this.

The invasion created a new situation. To call for the withdrawal of Russian forces, which would open up the risk of Afghanistan’s proletarian Bonapartist regime being overthrown, would be to side with the forces of the counter revolution.

Roy has indeed drawn the right conclusion from Ted’s article. Marxists could not support the Russian bureaucracy’s invasion of Afghanistan, especially because of its reactionary consequences internationally. Once Russian forces had occupied the country, however, it would have been entirely wrong for Marxists to call for the withdrawal of Russian troops.

From the point of view of abstract logic, this position may appear to be “inconsistent”. But it is the only position that takes into account of the real situation from the point of view of the international working class.

As Ted Grant’s article pointed out, taken in isolation, the Russian intervention in Afghanistan was a progressive move. In spite of the bureaucratic, military character of the intervention, the soviet bureaucracy prevented the downfall of a proletarian Bonapartist regime that had presided over the abolition of landlordism and capitalism, and had begun to implement radical social and economic reforms.

In itself this was another blow to world imperialism, and established the development of historically progressive social relations in this small country.

But developments in a single country, especially such a small under-developed country with a tiny working class, cannot be viewed in isolation. If it were a question of a healthy workers’ state sending political and even military support to a revolution led by a Marxist party with overwhelming mass support, it would be an entirely different matter.

But the social transformation in Afghanistan has taken place under the direction of a bureaucratic elite. In fact, the reason that Amin’s regime faced difficulties, and was in danger of being brought down by rebel and counter-revolutionary forces, was precisely because of the arbitrary, undemocratic manner in which it attempted to implement social changes.

In fact, the Russian bureaucracy intervened to try to moderate the regime, to slow down the social changes, to make a compromise with the mullahs, thereby establishing a wider basis for the regime.

A Bonapartist regime such as that headed by Amin and now by Karmal, despite its socially progressive features, can have little appeal to the workers of the advanced capitalist countries, or even to the workers and peasants of the under-developed countries of the ex-colonial world.

On the other hand, it is clear that the main reason for the intervention of Russian forces was not at all socialist internationalism. The soviet bureaucracy acted to preserve its own power and prestige. The Moscow leadership was also frightened of the effect of a protracted civil war in Afghanistan on the Soviet Union’s own Muslim population.

Because of its military, bureaucratic character, the Russian invasion has provided the capitalist press and television of the world with a golden opportunity to step up propaganda against the so-called “socialism” of Russia and Eastern Europe, using the monstrous bureaucracy and criminal policies of Stalinism in an attempt to discredit the genuine ideas of socialism among workers throughout the world. The reactionary international repercussions of invasion completely outweigh any immediate gains in Afghanistan.

When confronted with comparable events in 1939, Leon Trotsky made is absolutely clear that, while it was necessary for Marxists to defend the gains of the planned economy in Russia, the international repercussions of Moscow’s foreign policies were far more important than any secondary gains in this or that part of the world.

Trotsky accepted, for instance, that the Soviet Union’s invasion of eastern Poland was progressive in that, despite the military-bureaucratic character of the occupation, it brought about the ‘expropriation of the expropriators’. Landlordism and capitalism were abolished, and a nationalised planned economy introduced.

But, as Trotsky said, this was only one side of the question: “In order to gain the possibility of occupying Poland through a military alliance with Hitler, the Kremlin for a long time deceived, and continues to deceive, the masses in the USSR and in the whole world, and has thereby brought about the complete disorganisation of the ranks of its own Communist International.

“The primary political criterion for us is not the transformation of property relations in this or that area, however important these may be in themselves, but rather the change in consciousness and organisation of the world proletariat, the raising of their capacity for defending former conquests and accomplishing new ones. From this side, and the only decisive standpoint, the politics of Moscow, taken as a whole, completely retains its reactionary character and remains the chief obstacle on the road to world revolution…

“The stratification of the means of production is, as we said, a progressive measure. But its progressiveness is relative; its specific weight depends on the sum total of all the other factors…”

(‘The USSR in War’ in Leon Trotsky: ‘In Defence of Marxism’ [Merit 1965] page 23).

The reactionary effects of the Russian bureaucracy’s invasion of Afghanistan are already clearly apparent.

In the first place, the Afghanistan crisis has provided a great diversion from internal problems for Carter and by Thatcher to justify enormous increases in arms expenditure.

The past record of imperialism, particularly US imperialism’s intervention in South East Asia and other regions, has been pushed into the background. For the advanced workers, with a knowledge of recent history, the hypocrisy of imperialism is clearly apparent. But as far as wider layers of workers are concerned, and especially the middle class, the capitalist class has been able to use Afghanistan to whip up hysterical propaganda against the Stalinist states.

After its defeat in Vietnam, with the growth of mass working class opposition to the dirty war, and the demoralisation and disintegration of America’s own armed forces, US imperialism was for a period unable to intervene against revolutionary developments in the colonial and semi-colonial world.

US imperialism was, for instance, powerless to prevent the abolition of capitalism and landlordism in Angola and Mozambique, after the collapse of Portuguese imperialism. America was also unable to intervene directly in Ethiopia, where the Dergue established a proletarian Bonapartist regime with backing from the Russian leadership.

But the Afghanistan crisis has erupted at a new point in international relations. The American ruling class, alarmed by events in Iran and by the threat to its oil supplies in the Middle East, have chosen to take a stand on this issue. This stand has been determined by international considerations for the US, not the position in Afghanistan. The country was economically and politically dominated by the Soviet Union long before the proletarian Bonapartist regime came to power, and the Americans knew very well that the Amin regime relief on Russian aid long before the tanks rolled across the border.

There is no question, at this stage, of war between the United States and Russia over Afghanistan. But the US has chosen this incident, at this point in time, to issue a direct warning to the Russian bureaucracy, particularly to warn them against any intervention in Iran, or Pakistan, or in other areas of the Indian sub-continent or the Middle East.

The fact that this was the first time since the immediate post-war period that Russian forces have intervened directly in a country outside the Stalinist bloc – the armed support for the liberation movement in Angola came via Cuban troops – has provided the United States with the excuse it needed to take a stand. It has taken full advantage of the shock that this armed invasion caused as far as ‘public opinion’ is concerned.

Next week:

Who would gain if Russian troops pulled out? Why Marxists cannot support the chorus of calls for withdrawal of Soviet forces