Afghanistan and the Fourth International

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We reprint on this page the text of a leaflet distributed at a 2,000-strong public meeting on Afghanistan recently held in Paris by the Parity Commission. The Parity Commission is a grouping comprising the Organising Committee for the Reconstruction of the Fourth International (led by the French OCI), the Bolshevik Faction and the Leninist Trotskyist Tendency. It declares its aim as convening an open conference of Trotskyists with a view to the reconstruction of the split and divided Fourth International.

The leaflet which was well received by those attending the meeting, was co-signed by the Workers Socialist League (Britain), the Bolshevik Workers League (Chile) and the Bolshevik Leninist Group (Italy), and argued the politics of the The Counter-revolutionary Politics of the Bureaucracy.

1 he 1 Kremlin bureaucracy and the Communist Party of France seek to present the intervention of Soviet troops in Afghanistan as an act •of proletarian internationalism which assists the struggle of the Asian masses against imperialism: It is nothing of the kind.

What the bureaucracy defends before anything else are its own interests, which are fundamentally opposed to those of the international proletariat.

In Afghanistan, in Central Asia, the bureaucracy has acted in just the same way it has operated throughout the rest of the world.

It has never fought for the proletariat to take the leadership of the struggle of the oppressed masses by its political independence and a programme of. struggle. directed against imperialism as much as against the national bourgeoisie.

On the contrary, the politics of the bureaucracy subordinate the proletariat to the national bourgeoisie and the petty bourgeoisie, and so form a barrier to consistent struggle against imperialism and for the genuine full! realisation of democratic tasks.

In Iran, the Kremlin bureaucracy and. the Tudeh Party entrust Khomeini with the leadership of the mass movement against imperialism-a leadership which in practice represses the working class and its organisations-and condemns the struggle of the oppressed nations (Azerbaijanis, Kurds) in the name of the 'national anti-imperialist unity'.

In India, Moscow , is seeking to make the corrupt regime of Indira: Gandhi an ally of its international policies. To that end, the Stalinists are diverting the struggles of the massses away from confrontation with the Indian bourgeoisie.

These are the same policies which led to. terrible catastrophes for the workers and peasants. of China in 1927 and Indonesia in 1965.

in Afghanistan, Amin's regime puts itself forward as the embodiment of an 'anti-feudal' stage. Above all else, it feared the independent mobilisation of the massses and the struggle by the proletariat (however weak in numbers) to take control of foreign trade, credit, key industries. Yet it is only such policies which can enable the success of a democratic agrarian revolution to break the resistance of the major landowners.

By refusing to put these policies into practice, Amin's regime became more and more isolated, and lost the support of the masses against the reactionary guerrillas organised by the major landowners, the religious léaders, the moneylenders and the opium dealers who all benefitted from the increasing imperialist aid..

The overthrow of Amin's regime threatened to open the way to the division of Afghanistan, and a deepening of the movement of oppressed nationalities which could put at risk the stability of the Soviet bureaucracy itself.

Imperialism would inevitably have sought to exploit this situation-as much against the Iranian revolution as to increase its pressure on the Soviet Union. (It is worth remembering that imperialism tried to exploit the national feelings of the masses to make the 'independent' republic /of Georgia a base for aggression against the young Russian workers' state).

It is this situation which led the bureaucracy to rid itself of Stalinist tank in 'Amin and send in its troops. At the same time it hastened to reaffirm its devotion to the politics of 'detente' and 'peaceful coexistence' ‹armal has spoken more than once of how he does not intend to establish socialism, and has called for a 'holy war in the name of Allah against the enemies of Afghanistan' affirming the necessity of 'respecting the sacred principles of Islam' (see Socialist Press 181).

But today the Soviet Union is not just the prop and main influence on the local state power. The Red Army has virtually established. itself as the state power.

\The bureaucracy will have enormous difficulties in stabilising, an "'independent' regime. In these conditions, unless the bureaucracy retreats before the pressure from imperialism, it will not be able to establish itself securely in Afghanistan except by the expropriation of capital and the major landowners.

Defence of the Soviet Union.

The perspective of a social overturn in Afghanistan, a fresh attack on private property, 'unleashed the hysteria of the bourgeoisie across the world.

With the support of the social democracy the Italian CP and nationalists of every stripe, the bourgeoisie has tried .to rouse public opinion internationally in the name of the principle of non-interference and the right of peoples to self-determination. All this, with the aim of imposing measures of retaliation against the Soviet Union.

Its relative weakness after the defeat in Vietnam and the fall of the Shah, has for the moment prevented imperialism from resorting to a direct military intervention. But there can be no doubt that the absence of a revolutionary mobilisation of the international proletariat would assist imperialism in the search for a way out of its crisis by launching an offensive against the Soviet Union and the deformed workers' states.

The policies of the bureaucracy are opposed to such a mobilisation. That is why the struggle to overturn the bureaucracy is an integral part of the the Union.

Trotskyists must reaffirm the necessity of this defence, and declare themselves clearly against the retaliatory measures touted by imperialism.

They: must condemn the intervention. of the Soviet troops in Afghanistan, because it is inseparable from the total political position of the bureaucracy. But they must also be aware that a withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan would not only give no forward impetus to the revolution in Afghanistan, but would also give a major boost to the policies of imperialism.

That must not mean a position of tailending the bureaucracy. Trotskyists must have a programme which defends the independence of the Afghan masses against the bureaucracy, against nationalists and against imperialism; a programme which carries the struggle into the heart of the Red Army itself.

* Immediate expropriation of the banks, key industries, transport and the major landholdings under the control of committees elected by the poor peasants and the workers! For a workers and peasants government!

• *Arm the masses against the landowners and the reactionary gangs!

*For a democratic agrarian revolution! Redistribute all the land among the poor peasants. Credit /Tacilities and equipment for the peasants!

*For internationalist policies! Only the proletariat of the developed countries can help the masses of Afghanistan and Asia to emerge from backward development!

*The Right of self determination for the Tadjiks, Uzbelis, Patchouns, Baluchis, Turkmenis.

*For a socialist federation of central Asia:

*Freedom of worship. For the separation of islam from the state!

*For a programme of agitation amonst the ranks of the Red Army.

*For the soldiers of the Red Army to play their part in the expropriations alongside the Afghan masses. Right of assembly for the soldiers. For the election of officers. Down with bureaucratic privileges!

Many soldiers come - from regions of the Soviet Union bordering on Afghanistan and subjected to national oppression: against the Great-Russian chauvinism of the Stalinist bureaucracy! Against national oppression. For independent soviet republics! For political revolution!

The Organisations claiming to be Trotskyist, and Afghanistan.

1) The SWP and the IST.

• For the US Socialist Workers Party the forward movement of the world revolution "weakens the bureaucracy, increases the pressure upon it and undermines its efforts towards detente with imperialism."

From this situation, the bureaucracy is led (according to the SWP) to adopt quasi-revolutionary politics. So, according to Intercontinental Press:

•The size and rapidity of the Soviet move into Afghanistan could do much to help break the back of the rightist insur. gancy and further weaken imperialism's poșition."

"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 world." (IP, 14/1/80).

The SWP here exposes its lack of understanding of the fundamentally counter-revolutionary character of the Kremlin's politics, and its inability to formulate an independent programme which means a Trotskyist programme.

It tends to turn the military might of the USSR into a substitute for the struggle of the world proletariat, and so takes up again the old Pabloite conception by which 'the revolutionary (fervour) directed by the masses against imperialism joins as a supplementary force the material and technical forces which are fighting this imperialism' and "the overwhelming majority" of these forces 'is led or influenced by the Soviet bureaucracy" IM. Pablo, Quatrime Internationale, Feb/ March 1951).

The position of the International Spartacist Tendency differs from that of the SWP only by showing a still stronger Stalinophile cretinism. The article in Workers Vanguard of 11 January can be summed up in one séntence: "Backward people of the East, the (Kremlin) bureaucracy brings you civilisation"

2) The Parity Committee.

If we are to believe Infor mations Ouvrieres 930 [paper of the French Organisation Communiste .Internationaliste] the USA is leaving the USSR "a free hand to try and re establish order if it can" , in Afghanistan.

• The declaration of the Parity Commission characterises Taraki's agrarian reform which "begins by a partial remission of peasant debt, then goes on to a division of the large estates and middle sized properties into six hectare plots"-as an "attempt at reform of the type which Stolypin tried to effect in the Tsarist empire."

The declaration goes assert that:

'the movement which allows the rebellion to develop against the contral authority ... is part of the wider mobilisation of the masses throughout the region":

How do the actions of the imperialists allow the USSR a free hand?

Where has the Parity Com mittee seen that Stolypin had in mind the expropriation and redistribution of the Yand?

Does the Parity Committee mean that the guerrillas organised by the landowners are part of the revolutionary movement of the masses?

In fact the Parity Committee is forced to distort reality in order not to call into question this schema by which imperialism and the bureaucracy are cooperating in a 'holy alliance" to maintain bourgeois order throughout the world. And so the intervention in Afghanistan must be an expression of that 'cooperation'.

What is counter-revolution. ary in the politics of the bureaucracy is its struggle against every form of genuine independence of the working class.

That does not mean that its politics and its interests can be identified with those of imper¡alism if only because of the basic fact that the domination of the bureaucracy rests on the workers' state, and that "The contradiction which exists between world imperialism and the Soviet Union is infinitely more profound than the antagonisms which pit the various imperialists one • against another". . (L. Trotsky).

The leaflet for the Parity Committee's meeting declares:

"There are those who claim that the Soviet Union intervened in Afghanistan to support and aid the movement of the Afghan workers and peasants against imperialism and reaction.

"If that is so, let the Kremlin leaders order their troops to hand over their arms to the workers and peasants of Afghanistan: they will know what to do with them.

'In those places where imperialism has been chased Cuba, Iran, Nicaragua-there has been no intervention by the troops of the Soviet Union.".

There you Have what takes the place of a programme for Afghanistan for the Parity Committee.

That the soldiers of the Red Army should hand over their arms. And then what? Should they stand back and fold their arms? The Parity Committee does not tell us this in its declaration, any more than it calls clearly for troops out.

In fact, the logic of the Parity Committee's position is to make this call (as i the Morenist LSR in Italy actually does), but the OCI leadership does not dare to put it in this form, given thé campaign of the On the other hand, it implies that the absence of a military intervention by the Soviet Union contributed to the victory of the masses in Vietnam, China, Cuba, etc.!

For Trotsky, however, "it would have been a betrayal not to help the workers and peasants of Georgia by armed force" • ('Between Imperialism and Revolution').

3) The United Secretariat.

"*. The United Secretariat finds itself once again the victim of confusion, torn between diametrically-opposed positions, ranging from the tail-ending of the bureaucracy. (SWP) to positions which express an adaptation to 'democratic public opinion.

After Nicaragua, the current situation arising from the events in Afghanistan has cruelly exposed the absence of unified democratic-centralist International, based on Trotskyist principles.

The TILC "The principal organisations . which clạim to be Trotskyist are resting on seriously mistaken positions:

To resolve this crisis (opened . up in 1951 by the predominance of Pabloism within the Fourth International), It : necessary to regroup the consistently Trotskyist organisatione and militants lin a democraticcentralist international fraction, fighting to drive out all forms of revisionism from within the Fourth International and the organisations which adhere to it. It is with this perspective that the Trotskyist International Liaison Committee (For the Reconstruction of the Fourth International) has been formed, grouping together the following organisations: Workers Socialist League (WL) of Britain; Bolshevik Workers League (LOB) of Chile; Bolshevik Leninist Group (GBL) " of Italy,. Trotskyist Workers * League (TAF) of Denmark; «Socialist League (Democratic : Centralist) (SL (DC)) of the United States of America.

At its first conference, the Liaison Committee adopted a declaration of intent, a document on The Transitional Programme in Today's Class Struggle' , and a programmatic document of nine points.

After political agreement has been reached on strategic principles and fundamental attacks, the Liaison Committee intends to form itself into a democratic-centralist International Fraction, • The Trotskyist International Liaison Committeè has asked the organisers of this evening's meeting for the opportunity to speak. The Parity Committee has replied in the negative, using the pretext of the smail size of the • groups and organisátions which form the Liaison Committee.

The LCR, on the other hahd has been invited to speak.

It is true that the LCR is a consistent organisation, • but then its revisionism is also very consistent. Is this an example of how the Parity Committee puts into practice its orientation towards an 'Open Conference'_ open to all the organisations claiming to be Trotskyist, without bans or organisational preconditions'?

*For a genuinely open conference!

*For the reconstruction the Fourth International!

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DESIREEL REWIS Wednesday 13 February 1980 424: