[The following article is reprinted from the January 22, 1982, issue of La Gauche, the French-language weekly newspaper of the Revolutionary Workers League (LRT), the Belgian section of the Fourth International. The translation is by Intercontinental Press.
At the time of the invasion by Russian troops in Afghanistan, the Fourth International and the LRT came out strongly against that intervention. This invasion has nothing to do with the struggle for socialism. It was only a maneuver by the bureaucratic clique in power in the Soviet Union to defend its own interests. The goal of the operation: to maintain Afghanistan in their sphere of influence.
We have already explained in La Gauche in the past why the Soviet invasion, far from serving the cause of socialism, instead is a serious blow to workers struggles throughout the world.
The invasion trampled underfoot the democratic and nationalist sentiments of the peoples of Afghanistan, and therefore strengthened anti-Communist sentiments. And not only in Afghanistan, but in the whole region (Iran!). Throughout the world, the idea of socialism is cheapened because socialism is associated with military dictatorship, the destruction of democratic rights, the negation of the right to self-determination.
Result: Western imperialism's militarist offensive is facilitated.
LRT changes its point of view
Nonetheless, in the beginning the LRT was not for the withdrawal of Russian troops, and for the good reason that reactionary forces were in the majority within the Afghan resistance. On this point our organization changed its point of view in May 1981. We developed this at considerable length in our issue number 35 of last year.*
We came to the conclusion that the longer
*The introduction to the document referred to here, which appeared in the September 17, 1981, issue of La Gauche, presents the following explanation for the LRT's change in line:
"The International Executive Committee (IEC — a type of International Central Committee) of the Fourth International met in May 1981. Among the points on its agenda was an evaluation of the situation in Afghanistan since January 1980. At that time, following the invasion of Russian troops in that country, the Fourth International, through its day-today leadership (the United Secretariat), of course condemned that invasion, but was opposed to the slogan of an immediate and unconditional withdrawal of Russian troops. A minority of the United Secretariat leadership, however, supported the opposite point of view.
"Following true democratic centralism, the Fourth International put this majority line into practice, while continuing the political discussion, including public discussion in the journals of the International. This debate has now led to a change in the political the withdrawal of Russian troops was delayed, the more the work of the reactionaries, Afghan and international, was facilitated. The emergence and growth of an anti-imperialist, democratic, and socialist force in the Afghan resistance and among the ethnic minorities would be hindered.
Support progressive forces in resistance
The progressive forces, however, are well represented in the struggle against the Soviet invasion. There is the SAMA, the People's Organization for the Liberation of the Peoples of Afghanistan. This organization does not simply fight against the Russian military occupation, but its program also contains a series of progressive points, such as a radical land reform and measures to fight against the oppression of women (like the possibility for girls to receive an education). There are also many progressive forces that supported the regime before the Soviet intervention, and who have since joined the resistance.
The problem is that the largest segment of the resistance is based on the old social structures: the clans, the tribes.
But we should not view them as identical with the reactionary faction of the resistance, whose headquarters are outside Afghanistan, in Peshawar, Pakistan. These people began their resistance, not against the Russian invasion, but long before December 1979 against all progressive change and all modernization of the old social relations.
Karmal regime no longer has social base
The policy of the Karmal regime, which was put in the saddle by Soviet troops, has nothing to do with a socialist policy. On the contrary, the Karmal regime aims to revive the economy, like a common bourgeois government, by giving advantages to the merchants and small capitalists, by furnishing cheap credit, by lowering tariffs, by returning several dozen import firms to private hands. In the meantime, the perspective of an agrarian reform has disappeared far below the horizon.
The Karmal regime no longer has a social base. The whole population has turned against the Soviet occupation. The only hope for the progressive forces therefore rests in strengthening the socialist and progressive current that exists in the resistance.
That is why the LRT opts for the camp of struggle against the Soviet intervention. The LRT supports the progressive forces in the reline of our organization.
"At the IEC meeting, two reports were presented: one defended the old majority position (it was rejected by a vote of 24 to 9, with 6 abstentions); the other proposed a change in orientation and was adopted by a vote of 20 to 13, with 6 abstentions.
*These two reports had been discussed in all the sections of the Fourth International. The Political Bureau of the LRT adopted the point of view of the IEC majority. In addition it adopted a political statement that tries to be more specific about where, in its opinion, the changes in analysis and line have taken place. This statement is complementary to the IEC resolution, upon which it is based."
400 in torchlight march
The following article appeared in the
January 29, 1982, issue of La Gauche. The translation is by Intercontinental Press.
Last Saturday about 400 people took part in Brussels in a torchlight march for Afghanistan. They demanded the withdrawal of
Soviet troops from Afghanistan, freedom for the Afghan people, and expressed their opposition to any foreign intervention in
Afghanistan. It was not possible to participate with a banner favoring support to the progressive forces resisting the USSR's intervention.
The 400 participants in this torchlight march were primarily members and sympathizers of the Belgian Party of Labor
(PTB), with smaller groups from the MCP.
Pax Christi, For Socialism (PLS), a delegation from the Confederation of Christian
Trade Unions in Uccle, Karel Van Miert
[the head of the Socialist Party in Flanders]
by himself, etc. There was also a group with slogans in support of Solidarity in Poland
The LRT was also represented by two dozen comrades and a banner: "Support to the progressive forces of the resistance."
The LRT had signed the demonstration's platform, but we felt it important to take our distance from the reactionary segment of the resistance in Peshawar (Pakistan) by clearly stressing support to the progressive wing of the resistance.
But this was not to the liking of the organizations that called on the BSR [Special sistance. It flows from this that we continue to oppose any attempt by imperialism to use this gift from the bureaucratic clique as a pretext to remilitarize its own side (think of the missiles!).
We demonstrate . . . with reservations
For this reason, we will participate in the January 23 Afghanistan demonstration, but we regret the presence in this demonstration of forces that have nothing to do with the workers movement and the left. We particularly regret that the platform of the demonstration does not explicitly support the progressive forces in the resistance, and that it does not explicitly take its distance from the reactionary forces in Afghanistan, for whom the struggle against the Russian occupation is only the continuation of a very old reactionary struggle against all progressive reform.
Therefore the LRT supports the demonstration, but with reservations. And we will demonstrate with our own slogans and our own banners. We call on all the progressive forces to support the demonstration in this manner, and only in this manner.
Investigation Bureau — a police unit] to throw us out of the demonstration. Our support to the progressive forces of the resistance was not allowed. This was a very strange attitude, especially since other slogans that were not part of the platform were allowed (which was, moreover, correct, ince otherwise the group supporting so arity would also have been ejected fror the demonstration).
In fact, this was a very instructive incident since it shows where things lead when you do not examine the struggle from the focus of the class struggle but from the predominant focus of the struggle for national independence against "Soviet imperialism."*
The position the PTB takes on the question of Afghanistan is an extension in its attitude toward the question of Poland (attempts to give priority to Polish national independence in place of solidarity with Solidarity), and on the question of Central America (where the PTB only joined the solidarity movement after two and a half years, and then only with hesitations, because this solidarity movement does not limit itself to the question of national independence but is unequivocally on the side of the progressive resistance in Central America).
- Frank Slegers
*According to a report in the February 12 issue of La Gauche, one of the slogans of the demonstration was "Soviet imperialism is the same thing as slavery."
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