Afghan invasion splits Communist Parties

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...and Trotskyist forces Concluding a pacifist denunci- to the complete overthrow of ation of the US war-drive, the capitalism in Afghanistan, The The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan has acted as a tremor which has widened some of the fissures and chasms which exist between Stalinist states and partiesand even produced a few cracks which were not visible before.

The most predictable reaction of all came from the Beijing (Peking) Stalinists who maintain that the Soviet invasion proves their view of the emperialist aims oesshe UsSR aggressive The Chinese bureaucracy has appealed to the "Community of nations" to combine against Soviet aggression.

• The Afghanistan invasion has in fact become the pretext for a significant shift in the relations between China and imperialism.

The United States has moved rapidly not only to end its restriction on arms supplies to the anti-communist governments of Turkey and Pakistan but it has also for the first time begun openly to discuss the supply of military technology to Senior officials of the Carter administration have stepped up their talk of "strategic convergence" between China and the *From their different standpoints Albania and Yugoslavia The British International Marxist group responded swiftly to the Afghan invasion in an article by editor Tariq Ali on the back page of Socialist Challenge No. 128: but the line of this immediate response was to be abruptly and shamefacedly switched in an editorial article in Socialist Challenge No. 130!

Ali's article called for immediate withdrawal. of •the Soviet troops:

•The decision of the Soviet Union to send troops to remove Hafizullah Amin, General Secretary of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA), replace him with Babrak Karmal, and occupy parts of the country must be condemned on every count. (...)

intervention will enable the right wing rebels to win more support internally and externally. Afghanistan will become the frontline for the cold war, where Russian soldiers (carefully chosen from Central Asia) can be killed by proxy.

Genuine revolutions can only succeed with mass support. Any attempt to substitute Russian soldiers for the people of Afghanistan can end only in disaster. Either the Russians will have to withdraw in any event and accept a government of a different complexion, or they will get bogged down in a long war. There is no third option.

That is why we have no hesitation in calling for the immediate withdrawal of Russian troops. Far from aiding the struggle against pro-imperialist forces in Afghanistan, they can only hinder it. (...I'' The "troops out" call was repeated in an unsigned article in Socialist Challenae No 129: have both, equally predictably, sharply condemned the intervention.

What was less predictable were the fissures which appeared in the Soviet dominated Warsaw Pact itself.

True to form, Romanian Stalinist dictator Ceaucescu uttered an only slightly veiled attack on the Soviet intervention though he posed his oppos ition not in relation to national self-determination or any other principled question but rather from a pacifist opposition to the author declares:

"Soviat tranne chauld . ho immediately withdrawn from Afghanstan. But perhaps when the US withdraws from the 64 countries throughout the world where it has military bases; perhaps then the danger of world war will really begin to recede."

But despite these unambiguous statements there was no attempt to answer for or withdraw them when • Socialist Chailenge No. 130 implemented its switch of policy:

"If the Soviet rulers represented the interests of the workers of the world (which they do not) they would have opposed these methods of Amin by aiding the development of an opposition in Afghanistan which based itself on the masses. Such an opposition would have strongly detended the reforms that were initiated by the Taraki regime in 1978, extending them settlement of conflicts by force.

Less true to form were the significant lack of enthusiasm of the statements in support of the Soviet invasion made by the Stalinist bureaucracies Hungary and Poland (as opposed to the usual ecstatic enthusiasm from East Berlin, Sofia and Prague).

In both cases the lukewarm character of the support points to the pressure which the Polish and Hungarian bureaucracies are under from the working class which instinctively will equate Soviet missiles in Kabul Imperialist backed Afghan rebels opposite policy was chosen. The invasion ala not ala ine revolutionary process in the country. Sócialists cannot welcome it.

"However the very fact of the invasion has changed the political conditions in the country. It has probably boosted the popularity of the counter-revolution, created the conditions tor massively increased aid to the rebels through a politically and materially strengthened General Zia. The possibility of a full scale civil war has now opened up. Socialists will be forced to say which side they support in such a military conflict.

"We dissociate ourselves utterly from the bureaucratic and reactionary motivation behind the Soviet invasion, but in the present situation a call for the immediate withdrawal of troops would be tantamount to being in favour of the victory of the riahtist forces and the the intervention of the USSR in Kabul with the rolling of Soviet tanks over workers' rights in Eastern Europe.

But there is another reason for this reserve.

Poland and Hungary are farther than the other Eastern European bureaucracies alóng the road of economic "reform which takes the form of closer involvement with the imperialist capitalist economies.

In those two countries (more than most others of the Warsaw Pact) capitalists have set up "joint venture" investments in liaison with the Stalinist states.

But in Poland in particular there is another problem. The Polish state is in deep and growing debt to capitalist banks.

Borrowing

Borrowing on a vast scale has been the only way in which the Polish bureaucracy has been able to manage to hold the economy precariously together without imposing more reductions in workers' consumption.

This it does not dare to do because of the certain reaction of the Polish working class.

So, with the economy in a WOISE state than ever the Polish bureaucracy is predicted to be hoping to borrow a further five billion pounds from capitalist banks this year just to make ends meet. reversar ot any gains by the Afghan workers and peasants in the last decades.

"Imperialism is the main enemy."

The IMG's political allies in the American Socialist Workers Party, however, make no bones about their enthusiasm for the Soviet invasion. They uncritically support it.

Uncritical

Such a policy marks a considerable extension of the SWP's adaptation to the politics of Stalinism, which has until now taken the form of uncritical praise for the so-called "revolutionary"! Castro leadership in Cuba, and outright support for Vietnamese Stalinist invasion of Kampuchea.

Now this political support has been extended to the Kremlin leaders themselves, who are credited by the SWP with the historic mission of furthering revolutionary struggles internationally.

An article by leading SWP writer Ernest Harsch in the USFI. journal Intercontinental Press/Inprecor declares:

"This move by the Soviet rulers came in reaction to increasing military activity over the past year by rightist guerrilla forces determined to roll back the land reform and other social gains that had been initiated following the April 1978 revolution in Afghanistan. From the outset, this counter-revolution has been organized financed and equipped with the backing of Washington and the capitalist military dictatorship in "The major Soviet and Afghan offensive to defeat the rightist bands is an aid to the oppressed in their battles against imperialist domination, not only in Afghanistan, but also in neighbouring Iran and throughout the entire region and the colonial and semi-colonial Any serious economic sanctions against the USSR and its allies therefore would immediately damage Poland's chances of getting the needed loans.

And given that the economic sanctions already applied by the USA look distinctly more serious than the USSR at first expected, the reserve of some Warsaw Pact countries may in the long run be helpful if it alllows them to • escape economic sanctions and so form a gateway through which the USSR can buy the goods and technology it needs.

Tremors sometimes shake things back to a position they were in at an earlier time. And this is what seems to have happened with the French Communist Party.

The Afghanistan occupation has, in fact, evinced a wide range of reactions among the "Eurocommunist" parties.

The French CP began by almost depicting the invasion as a libel made up by the bourgeois press. But as Moscow itself confessed all, the French Stalinists have taken an increasingly pro-Moscow line, supporting virtually every aspect of the policy.

There is widespread discussion in France of a possible end "Eurocommunists" of the party are visibly disturbed.

Thirty of them signed world. It is a sharp blow to imperialism's efforts to hold. back the wortd revolution."

In opposition to the line taken by Tariq Ali , Harsch goes on to argue that:

"From the very beginning, the American imperialists have opposed the Afghan revolution and have sought to impede its advance.

"The seizure of power on April 27 1978 by the People's Domocratic Party of Afghanistan was not just a "coup", as the imperialist press usually refers to it, but the culmination of a series of mass mobilisations in the streets of Kabul that marked the opening stages of the Afghan revolution."

And, lest there be any doubts as to SWP support for the invasion, Harsch repeats their belief that:

«The size and rapidity of the Soviet move into Afghanistan could do much to help break the back of the rightist insurgancy and further weaken imperialism's position".

Not new This tendency to enthusiastic and utterly opportunist adaptation to the counter-revolutionary Stalinist bureaucracy is not a new phenomenon in the post war Trotskyist movement.

First openly argued as a position by the leader of the Fourth International Michel Pablo from 1949, it led to a major split in the • world movement in 1953, and has brought further splits and confusion since that time. The irony is that in 1953 it was the SWP that led the split from Pablo and the fight against his politics.

One grouping that now claims to stand in opposition to Pabloism is the sectarian International Spartacist Tendency.

But the Afghan invasion has exposed the essentially opportrinind nalitino that las habind Even the most "Eurocommunist" party, the Spanish CP has not openly condemned the Soviet move but has concentrated attention on denouncing the USA which; it says, does not have the moral authority to condemn the invasion.

Even this mild anti-imperialism is something of a departure for a party which not so long ago was justifying US military bases in Spain.

It is part of a more general "left turn" being carried out by the Spanish CP in the last few months.

Former allies

The positions of both French and Spanish Stalinists mark them off rather sharply from their erstwhile allies in Rome.

The Italian CP (like the British) produced an instant and total denunciation of the Soviet intervention which was indis tinguishable from the position of the Christian Democratic The Italian CP was clearly embarassed by the recent visit from George Marchais of the French CP.

There was none of the usual ceremony of such visits and the final communique was a largely formal one which spoke of "frank" discussions and made. not a mention of Afghanistan. the Spartacists' smokescreen of ultraleftism: and name-calling. They follow the American SWP in giving support for the invasion:

"HAIL THE RED ARMY: DEFEND THE •SOVIET UNION! The effective deployment of thousands of Soviet troops in Afghanistan is one more stinging humiliation for American imperialism in the Middle East. The imperialist media responded with a campaign of sympathy for the Muslim freedom fighters' who took on sophisticated tanks and planes with sticks, stones and chants of 'Allah Akbar'. I'god is great'). But in the military confrontation pitting the Soviet troops backing the nationalist PDPA regime in Kabul against feudal and pre-feudal forces aided by imperialism, Marxists side with the Russian tanks. Hail the Red Army!"

Meanwhile a more cautious approach has been adopted by Workers Action. A double-page article in Workers Action 163 by John O'Mahony asks the tantalising question:

"What should our attitude be to the events in Afghanistan?"

Unfortunately, in then proceding to examine 'the political struggles and interactions that led up to the Russian occupation", O'Mahony runs out of space before he answers the question-leaving readers with a frustrating "To be continued" where they might have expected a policy.

So we will all just have to sit on the edges of our seats as Workers Action theorists seize an extra week. , to thrash out a line for the second instalment!

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and answered by political argu- of the right wing The line-up for and against a witch-hunt in the Labour Party will. be revealed more clearly than ever this coming WedneswIt

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to the party's "Eurocommun- ism". And the most vehement