1. When the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) seized power on April 27, 1978, Afghanistan was one of the most underdeveloped countries in the world. Its society was largely rural. Out of a population of around 15 million, only 15 percent were urbanized. Outside of Kabul, which has 700,000 inhabitants, there were only two cities with more than 100,000 inhabitants. Some 14 percent of the population was still nomadic.
Afghan society was still burdened by precapitalist socioeconomic structures. Their survival and the weight they retain was directly linked to Afghanistan's isolation and the lack of actual colonization of the country.
Nevertheless, the development of trade and the gradual absorption over recent decades of the Afghan economy into the world capitalist market spurred a process of transforming semifeudal property into semicapitalist property. This led to a growth of social inequality in the country side and hastened the migration of poor peasants toward the towns. Some became absorbed into the emerging working class (about 150,000 workers are employed in manufacturing and construction). But most swelled the semiproletarian layers that proliferated in the urban areas. Tens of thousands of workers emigrated to Iran, Pakistan, or the Persian Gulf states.
In addition to the commercial bourgeoisie and the traditional petty bourgeoisie, a layer of civil servants, army officers, technicians, engineers, doctors, and teachers emerged in the cities, especially Kabul. They ran up against both a lack of professional opportunities and the social, economic, and political stagnation resulting from the monopolization of power by the big landlords and the monarchical clan.
In the countryside, the big landlords held almost absolute power. The wealthiest landlords took over the functions of heads of communities. They maintained control over the peasant masses through sharecropping, tenant farming, and indebted ness, and they bought off government functionaries. The concentration of ownership over irrigated land was very high. The landlords rented out land, leased water rights, and provided seed and rudimentary farming equipment; in return, they demanded up to two-thirds of the annual harvest. A capitalist sector linked to export agriculture had developed in the previous period.
A large part of subsistance agricultural production (wheat) was on unirrigated land (lami). But a substantial percentage of the rural population did not have any land. Even those poor peasants who possessed a few acres of unirrigated land had to borrow to obtain seed and farming implements. In return the peasants had to turn over as much as half their harvest to the rich landowner. Peasants also had to take out loans or mortgage their meager farms to meet other expenses, such as the "bride price," which was more than what a peasant could accumulate through a low-level of subsistence agriculture.
Lami cultivation, moreover, was totally dependent on rainfall. The severely exploited small peasants were thus also vulnerable to famines. Famine provided the big landlords with an additional opportunity to speculate on grain reserves and to acquire new lands, as happened in 1972.
The relations between the Sunni clergy, the big landlords, and the rural community leaders were close. The 250,000 mullahs were paid by the government—that is, by its local representatives tied to the rich peasants—and also received donations from the peasants. Many of them had significant wealth.
In a country isolated from the rest of the world, where the means of communication was sporadic, where the peasants' dependence on their "lords" was very strong, and where rural society was the only point of reference for an immense part of the population, Islam permeated social and cultural life. The mullahs drew considerable authority and prestige from it.
Superimposed over these social structures was an inherited network of tribalism. Tribal organization as such still survived among the nomads and the mountain tribes along the Afghan-Pakistani border. Thus the relations between landlords and tribal and clan chiefs were intertwined.
In addition, ethnic particularism was still alive and molded Afghan society. The Pushtuns represented the largest ethnic group, about 45 percent of the entire population. Pushtuns had acquired the richest lands and established control over the bazaars. A real "Pushtun power" existed.
The main minorities, whose degree of oppression varied, were the Tajiks, Hazaras (of the Shi'ite branch of Islam), the Turkomans, and the Uzbeks.
The maintenance of tribal divisions helped solidify the local power of the notables. Together with ethnic divisions, the tribal divisions presented an obstacle to the political centralization of the country and could become channels for movements virulently opposed to the "government in Kabul," as all of Afghan history has shown.
In such a society, the agrarian question gives a primary role in the democratic revolution to the peasantry. This is the case even though it is necessary for the proletariat to politically gather the peasant masses around it in order for these democratic tasks to be carried through to the end and to ensure that the democratic revolution grows over into a socialist revolution, that is, the development of the permanent revolution.
2. In July 1973, in order to preserve the power of the royal clan, Mohammad Daud transformed the tottering monarchy of Zahir Shah into a republic.
During the late 1960s, student demonstrations erupted. The king closed the university. The working class launched its first, though very limited, wave of struggles (1968). Following two years of drought, famine provoked uprisings in the countryside. The army brutally suppressed the peasants. Within its own ranks, opposition to the regime developed among "nationalist" military officers, often trained in Soviet academies. Daud found the support he needed to organize the July 17, 1973 coup from among these officers and sectors of the intelligentsia, as well as the bourgeoisie of Kabul. A faction of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA), which was founded in 1965, initially collaborated with the new regime: the Parcham (Flag) faction led by Babrak Karmal.
Daud's modernization program—agrarian reform, measures against administrative corruption, development of education, restoration of democratic rights—was not put into practice. The notables refused to give up even a small part of their privileges, in a country where 90 percent of the population was illiterate, where only one out of every eight school children was female, where there were only 350 schools for girls, against 2500 for boys, where few schools existed outside the towns, where infant mortality was one of the highest in the world.
Daud thus lost the support of those layers who had hoped to improve their position through the application of a program of bourgeois reforms. In addition, Daud faced opposition from a sector of the mullahs, who feared that any growth of centralized institutions would reduce their own powers.
Beginning in 1975, Daud imposed a virtual dictatorship. At the same time, his regime moved closer to Iran. In April 1975, Daud signed an agreement with the shah of Iran, who had offered him $2 billion to build a railway line between Herat and the Iranian seaport Bandar Abbas, thus aiming to reduce Afghanistan's dependence on trade with the Soviet Union. SAVAK offered its help in repressing opponents of the Daud regime. A rapprochement was reached with Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Egypt, and even Pakistan. A compromise was worked out with Pakistan regarding Pushtunistan. The regime made plans to train officers in Egypt and Pakistan. In 1977 Daud reached an accord with Iran over division of the waters of the Helmand River, a proposal that had previously brought Zahir Shah stiff opposition from a significant sector of the "nationalist" officers. Daud had planned to visit the United States in September 1978.
American imperialism and its allies in the region were thus seeking to increase their influence in a country, which, since World War II, had been considered by the Soviet bureaucracy as being in a position similar to that of Finland.
Nevertheless, the Daud regime still maintained close relations with the Soviet Union. A twelve-year cooperation treaty was signed in April 1977. The Soviet Union granted a ten-year moratorium on Afghanistan's debt of $100 million and promised between $500 million and $600 million in aid. At the same time it undertook to buy almost all of Afghanistan's production of natural gas. It still continued to train a large percentage of army officers.
Repression against PDPA members and the "nationalist" officers accelerated as the regime's crisis deepened. On April 17, 1978, Mir Akbar Khyber, an intellectual who was a trade-union leader and PDPA member, was assassinated. Two days later, during his funeral, a demonstration of 15,000 persons marched on the American embassy. In reaction to the mobilizations, the regime ordered the arrest of the PDPA leadership.
To protect itself from new blows, the PDPA leadership, in close collaboration with officers who were PDPA members and "nationalist" military officers, organized a coup against the decrepit regime. The "ten-hour revolution" came on April 27, 1978. But Daud's overthrow was more of a coup led by a sector of the officer corps tied to the PDPA than a revolution.
The Soviet bureaucracy certainly did not plan this abrupt change. But the April 27 coup did put an end to the proimperialist course initiated by Daud and guaranteed the Kremlin very close relations with Afghanistan, as reflected in the December 1978 accord (compared to that of April 1977).
3. The mass movement was evident during the days preceding the coup, but the workers and peasants had not been mobilized or organized with the perspective of struggling to overthrow the regime of the royal Mosahaban clan. That was as much a reflection of the nature of the PDPA's social base as of its political orientation.
Since 1965, and particularly since the early 1970s, the PDPA grew primarily in the urban areas, that is, in Kabul. It had an influence among students, the new "middle classes," teachers (especially from the primary schools), and the 8,000 Pushtun army officers. Its base in the urban working class was still relatively limited. It was very weak among the peasant masses.
Since its formation, the PDPA had developed a political orientation that focused on creating a "national democratic government" and a united front of the peasants, workers, progressive intellectuals, national capitalists, and small property owners in the towns and countryside. It thus favored a "democratic and national revolution," as a stage toward socialism.
The 1967 split between the Parcham faction and the Khalq (Masses) faction led by Noor Mohammad Taraki and Hafizullah Amin resulted from political differences over the character of the front the party wanted to establish and the place that the workers should occupy within it. These differences were reflected in Parcham's participation in the Daud regime and the Khalq's refusal to do so. But in addition to this there were ethnic and personal factors that greatly heightened the factional struggles. Reunited in 1977, the PDPA had a membership of only several thousand.
4. The first decree of the new regime of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan established a thirty-five-member Revolutionary Council with full governmental powers. The second decree installed a twenty-one-member cabinet of ministers composed largely of PDPA leaders, with appropriate military representation. Those of Pushtun origin occupied a majority of posts.
During its first months, the Revolutionary Council decreed a series of reforms, in addition to replacing the traditional flag with the red flag.
In mid-July 1978, Decree No. 6 aimed to abolish usury and to partially wipe out mortgage debts and the "serfdom" that flowed from them. Landless peasants were freed of all their debts. Small landowners could recover land they had lost in lieu of debt payment and had to repay only a certain percentage of loans taken out after 1974. In October, Decree No. 7 aimed to give equal rights to women (nondiscrimination in education, abolition of forced marriage, drastic reduction in the "bride price" and dowries).
On November 28, Decree No. 8 on agrarian reform was promulgated. It placed a ceiling on landownership for each family—much lower for irrigated land (6 hectares) than for unirrigated land. It struck a major blow against the big landlords. Land above the limit was to be distributed to tenant farmers, landless peasants, and seminomads.
This land redistribution affected several hundred thousand families (about 500,000 families did not own any land). Renting out or selling distributed land was forbidden (in 1976, under Daud, the rich landowners profited from a limited reform by buying up land and adding to their estates). This reform was carried out as a distribution of land, but the decree also encouraged the formation of cooperatives.
The industrial and mining sectors—which through majority ownership had already been controlled by the state under the previous regime—was brought under an economic development plan. Foreign trade was placed under state control.
A literacy campaign was planned for the spring of 1979. Officials of the new regime projected educating 2.5 million children and 5.5 million adults over a period of five years, which would have helped considerably in undermining the authority of the mullahs. Limited reforms were introduced in favor of ethnic and cultural minorities. The Revolutionary Council aimed to limit the secular functions carried out by the mullahs.
Trade unions were established. By 1979 they included 100,000 workers and 60,000 service employees. But these union members did not have the right to strike, under the pretext that the "political revolution is over" and that since "the workers control the basic means of production, it is not necessary for them to strike." The union movement was thus more the result of organization "from above" than of a real rise in the mass movement.
Under the backward conditions prevailing in Afghanistan, such reforms—aside from their intrinsic limits—could only be implemented and consolidated through the mobilization and organization of the masses.
The leadership in Afghanistan did not favor the initiation and organization of mass mobilizations, nor did it place a priority on the creation of peasant organizations, which alone would be capable of advancing the agrarian reform and breaking the centuries-old social relationships in the countryside. Such major tasks could not be achieved through government decrees.
The leaders of the PDPA feared that once the traditional social relations were destroyed, the process could escape their control. "Their strategy of a "democratic and national revolution" and their political orientation emanating from the school of Stalinism dictated that they follow a policy of reforms introduced under the control of the state apparatus and the army and backed up by repression.
In order to counteract the inertia of the social structures and to reduce the dominance of the notables, it is absolutely necessary to give priority to organizing the peasant masses in order to enable them to participate directly in the land reform and to resist all forms of pressure and blackmail from the big landowners and their allies.
Moreover, measures to divide land and eliminate usury cannot be made fully effective unless the rural masses are given access to a system of credit (through a state bank) and distribution network for seed, fertilizer, equipment, and the means for irrigation. A land reform that stops halfway cannot ward off a brutal reaction from the privileged layers, nor can it win over the masses, who may be obliged to continue looking to their former exploiters for seed, credit, and the like.
The orientation and methods of the PDPA thus only add to the objective difficulties facing the implementation of the reforms decreed by the Revolutionary Council. Those objective difficulties include: the limited number of experienced cadres in the rural areas; the scarcity of land, especially in the eastern provinces; the growing sabotage carried out by big landowners; the continued fear among peasants that a change of regime in Kabul would lead to a wave of repression by the landlords; and so on.
The lack of a sufficiently strong and organized working class—with a tradition of struggle and the ability to attract to its side the peasant masses—did not facilitate the development of a dynamic of permanent revolution. This fact could only further highlight the negative effects of the PDPA's policies.
Finally, several months after it came to power, the PDPA leadership was rocked by extremely brutal factional conflicts. These were exacerbated by the effects of the civil war and the difficulties encountered in the implementation of the reform program. These clashes followed the lines of division between the Khalq and Parcham factions. But they also developed within the Khalq itself. The clashes combined the bureaucracy's own methods of settling internal scores with the methods of traditional conflicts between different clans.
In July 1978, the main leaders of Parcham were pushed aside and relegated to ambassadorial posts abroad. The main Parcham representatives were arrested and then expelled from the party in November 1978, but not before they were compelled to make public confessions.
In August 1978 the "nationalist" officers were dismissed, including Abdul Qader, who had played an important role in the preparation of the coup and had then become the defense minister. More than one had ties with the Parcham.
Hafizullah Amin, the Khalq leader who had formerly been in charge of working with the officers, strengthened his position. By March 1979 he held several important posts.
These conflicts climaxed with the overthrow of Taraki in September 1979 and his replacement by Amin, who took over the presidency of the Revolutionary Council, the main governmental positions, and the office of secretary general of the PDPA. This change went against the Kremlin's calculations, but it nevertheless sent Amin its traditional telegram of congratulations.
These rivalries and purges spread to one of the central pillars of the new regime, the army, exacerbating the crises within its ranks. They weakened the administrative apparatus, already shaken by the abrupt changes of course. They facilitated the attacks of the counterrevolutionaries, as each stage in the crisis led the leadership to strengthen the regime's bureaucratic and authoritarian methods. They aided the counterrevolutionaries' exploitation of the ethnic and religious question, even within the army, a large number of whose troops are of Hazara origin.
5. In a society like that in Afghanistan, the initiation of progressive reforms by the PDPA was bound to arouse armed resistance from those conservative forces who lived off the exploitation and oppression of the toiling masses and who had previously presided unchallenged over the destinies of one of the most deprived people on earth.
Notwithstanding the petty-bourgeois character of the PDPA leadership, its desire to carry through a "national and democratic revolution," and its methods of carrying out its reform program, the existence of two camps confronting each other in a civil war that has spread since the spring of 1979 expresses the sharp confrontation between the exploited and oppressed classes and the ruling classes.
A coalition of reactionary forces whose real social base was composed of big landowners, tribal chiefs, smugglers, the religious hierarchy, and industrial and commercial capitalists rose up against the new regime. The traditional tribal, clan, and semifeudal ties of dependence between the peasants and the notables made it easier for the latter to build a social base. Islam was employed as an ideological glue to cement these various layers. The fragmented character of the conservative groups fighting against the regime in reality reflects their organization around the tribal chiefs and notables of diverse regions.
Within the reactionary groups based among the Pushtuns we find tribal chiefs who are involved in lucrative smuggling of opium and other goods across the Afghan-Pakistani border (and who view with alarm the regime's efforts to control foreign trade), as well as landowners who owned the most fertile land and best grazing areas, and the royal clan and a sector of the former administration and army.
Other groups, like those among the Nuristanis or the Hazaras, combine resistance to the policy of reforms with ethnic and cultural opposition to a regime that seems predominantly Pushtun.
The propertied classes organized the counterrevolution, in opposition to a series of measures that threatened their interests. They soon received the backing of Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt, whose governments acted on behalf of imperialism. A sector of the Shi'ite hierarchy in Iran gave their support to the "Islamic resistance."
Since April 1978, Afghanistan has been subjected to threats from American imperialism. Washington was certainly concerned by the consolidation of Soviet influence in Afghanistan, but above all it feared the sociopolitical effects throughout the region of a possible advance of the Afghan revolution, including a revival of the Baluchi movement that could threaten the framework of the Pakistani state and have repercussions in Iran. American imperialism's apprehension grew after the shah of Iran was overthrown in January 1979 by a popular insurrection. In February 1979, Washington cut off all aid to Afghanistan.
American imperialism then moved—with the aid of the European imperialists—to strengthen its position in the region, including Pakistan. Its direct and indirect aid to the reactionary forces in Afghanistan was part of this broader operation and in turn highlighted the class nature of the civil war unfolding within Afghanistan.
6. The Soviet bureaucracy is concerned, above all, with protecting its own power and interests. It therefore places great importance not only on the military defense of the Soviet Union's borders, but also, within the context of its policy of peaceful coexistence, on regional stability.
For the Soviet bureaucrats, the maintenance of control over political and strategic developments in the region and, toward that end, close ties with the existing regimes in Kabul comes before any consideration for the interests of the Afghan masses. Their collaboration with the reactionary governments that preceded Daud, and with Daud himself, is an illustration of this. The Kremlin did not favor any kind of mobilizations to overthrow Daud, who was hitting out at the PDPA and the workers.
The development of anti-imperialist mobilizations and Washington's maneuvers in the region were upsetting the overall balance and compelled the bureaucracy to act to restore its position of influence in this area.
The Soviet bureaucracy did not send its forces into Afghanistan in order to support the mass mobilization, the independent organization of the masses, and the deepening of the revolutionary process. Since April 1978, it has persistently sought "moderate" solutions, pressing for overtures to "national sectors." In June 1979 it proposed slowing down the implementation of the land reform.
Nevertheless, the PDPA's policies inevitably led the Kremlin to step up its direct involvement. The Kremlin's forces intervened to support a regime that was weakened by internal dissension at a time when it had to confront a coalition of conservative forces aided by imperialism, and to enable the regime to impose its reforms from above. The only way the Soviet leadership knows how to respond to social and political problems is through military means, increased state and police control, and liquidation of less malleable factions. This orientation did not provide any solution to the regime's crisis; it did not favor organized action by the masses. Ironically, this orientation paved the way for Amin's policies, to which Moscow could only offer tactical criticisms.
Faced with the danger of a collapse of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan and a possible victory by the reactionary forces linked to imperialism, Moscow decided to become more deeply involved. It was not prepared to accept the installation of a regime beholden to imperialism on its borders and in a country that had traditionally been under its influence, with all the consequences that would follow, especially at a time of heightening tensions throughout the region. Moscow did not look forward to the prospect of a chaotic situation of prolonged and spreading civil war. It feared the establishment of another "Islamic Republic" and its repercussions on those populations in the Soviet Union whose ethnic and cultural identities are similar to those of peoples in Afghanistan and Iran.
Beginning on December 24, 1979, the Soviet Union qualitatively increased its military presence in Afghanistan, after having prepared the liquidation of Amin and his replacement by Babrak Karmal.
7. The Soviet bureaucracy decided to intervene (which was only part of its broader policy) the same way it decides all questions—without any regard for the democratic and national sentiments of the oppressed classes and peoples or for whether the working class on a world scale will understand it.
In the case of Afghanistan, this conservative caste was led into a confrontation with a reactionary social bloc supported by imperialism. But in doing so it could not explain to the toiling masses on a world scale that they needed to have their own independent organizations to lead a fight against the landlords, the capitalists, and the imperialists.
Moreover, the Soviet bureaucracy's denial of the rights of national minorities—and democratic rights in general—meant that Moscow could not provide an example that could rally oppressed masses and thus help break the influence of the "lords" and the mullahs over the poor peasants.
The bureaucracy again had to resort to cynical lies to justify its actions. Today it must claim that Amin—whom it previously supported both while he played a key role under Taraki and while he ruled by himself—had been manipulated by the CIA. It must pretend that it was invited in by a government whose principal figures it then immediatey eliminated and replaced with those who had been exiled by its former great friends!
Through all these methods, the bureaucracy threw the world proletariat into great confusion. It was far from aiding the development of the consciousness and organization of the proletariat on an international level. In this respect, the bureaucracy's entire orientation is an obstacle to the advance of the revolution. Objectively, its policy toward the Afghan masses aids those who are trying to use Islam as an ideological weapon to weaken the anti-imperialist dynamic unleashed throughout the region by the Iranian revolution.
Independently of its specific aims, however, the Soviet bureaucracy's intervention places it in a position where it must fight against a reactionary social bloc, a bloc that has no resemblance to a "national liberation movement," but which is struggling to retain its privileges and turn back all the gains of the masses.
Whatever our political opposition to the bureaucracy's overall approach, we must not lose sight of the concrete and important fact that today the bureaucracy is striking—with its own methods—against the counterrevolution. It is dealing a military setback to reaction and imperialism within the country.
Given Afghanistan's position on the Soviet Union's borders and the Soviet intervention in the civil war, the class struggle unfolding in that country immediately takes on an international dimension and is reflected in the current conflict between imperialism and the Soviet Union.
Imperialism, under the guise of preserving "national sovereignty," has acted to defend the landlords and the privileged classes, to break the rise of a liberation movement of the workers and peasants, and to change the strategic situation to the detriment of the Soviet Union.
The new leadership installed by the Soviets includes elements of both the Khalq and Parcham factions, who have a certain amount of credibility among the masses. The regime now includes, side by side, both Babrak Karmal and Aslam Watanjar, an officer who had jailed the ministers of defense and the interior under Taraki.
Will this hasty remodeling allow the leadership to regain enough popular support to both reorganize its army for the struggle against reaction and implement progressive reforms? It is caught in a basic contradiction. On one hand, it wants to appear open to a dialogue with sectors of the opposition and ready to ease up on the social level and reduce its repressive measures. On the other hand, it is based on the massive backing of the Soviet army. That support will certainly make it easier for the government to regain control over whole regions, but it can also be used to create greater unity among the reactionary forces, who are seeking to utilize Afghanistan's long tradition of struggle for independence.
8. Since entering the White House, Carter has been constantly seeking to extract imperialism from the crisis that it was thrown into by the success of the Vietnamese revolution in 1975, a crisis that has been further aggravated by the victory of the Iranian masses and the outbreak of the Nicaraguan revolution.
Recently, the imperialist counteroffensive has focused on two fronts. First of all, using the campaign against the presence of a "Soviet brigade" in Cuba, Washington deployed its troops in the Caribbean as a clear warning to the Nicaraguan revolution. Secondly, it redoubled its propaganda campaign against the rising Iranian revolution at the time the "hostages were seized" at the American embassy, followed by economic pressures and military threats.
Washington, which remains at the head of the greatest military power on earth, is taking advantage of the form the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan took to push its counterattack into a higher gear.
Imperialism's first goal is to turn around public opinion in the United States in order to create a climate making it easier to unleash a military response to preserve existing imperialist positions, to stem the rising tide of revolutionary advances, or even to score some points against certain gains made by the Soviet bureaucracy.
In addition, using a massive propaganda campaign about a Soviet "military danger" and the Kremlin's supposed efforts to obtain "warm water ports," the imperialist governments are seeking to convince the workers of the need for a renewed arms drive, which they have already been pursuing for some time. At the same time that they are launching drastic austerity measures against living standards, the arms build-ups will greatly inflate military budgets, which serve as subsidies for the imperialist monopolies.
The Carter administration is feverishly reorganizing its international military presence, from Europe to the Far East.
Confronted with the developments in Iran and now Afghanistan, it is putting special emphasis on strengthening its naval presence in the Indian Ocean, acquiring new air and naval bases throughout the region, and consolidating a series of regional surrogates, the main ones being Israel, Egypt, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Pakistan, and Turkey. It aims to take maximum advantage of the formation of an alliance of conservative governments in the "Islamic conference," which was precipitated by the Soviet action in Afghanistan. Carter is even trying to regain a foothold in Iran.
This counterattack is still in its initial stages and it is not certain that it will be successful; the development of the class struggle could yet endanger the position of Sadat, Zia, and the rest.
Washington has also redoubled its efforts to provide new coherence to imperialism's political leadership and to reassert its leading role, which has been battered by the defeats in Indochina and Iran and by the effects of the relative decline of the American economy.
The imperialist governments have likewise carried out reprisals against the Soviet Union, running the gamut from cutting off grain deliveries and the sale of advanced technology to taking steps to boycott the Olympic Games. These initiatives, whatever the obstacles flowing from the differing interests of the various imperialist powers, are basically aimed at compelling the Soviet bureaucracy to alter its course in Afghanistan and to accept a new accord for the maintenance of stability in that region.
Finally, by exploiting Peking's denunciations of "Soviet expansionism," American imperialism has obtained new concessions from the Chinese bureaucracy, which is providing support to the Pakistani dictatorship.
9. a. Revolutionary Marxists support the anti-imperialist demands of the Afghan workers and peasants and the progressive measures taken in their interests by the PDPA. In the civil war under way in Afghanistan—regardless of their criticisms of the policies of the PDPA leadership and the Kremlin—they are in the camp of the toiling masses and fight for their victory over the conservative forces and their imperialist allies.
b. Revolutionists base themselves on the international class struggle and on the independent organization of the workers and peasants, which is totally different from the entire approach of the Kremlin bureaucracy.
They do not take any responsibility for the Kremlin's military intervention. They do not give the slightest political support to this intervention, which flows from the overall policy of the bureaucratic caste. Although the intervention deals blows to the reactionary forces, it does not in the least aim to improve the opportunities for independent action by the masses.
Revolutionary Marxists reject any neutralist attitude in this war. In so far as the Soviet army actually is opposing the enemies of the workers and peasants, they favor its victory over them. To achieve that, the gains of the workers must be consolidated, radical social and democratic steps must be taken, and the Afghan masses must be organized and armed to defend them.
c. The process of permanent revolution can only succeed in Afghanistan through the independent mobilization, action, and organization of the masses. The tanks of the bureaucracy cannot substitute for them. The activity of the masses is absolutely necessary if there is to be a lasting victory against reaction and the creation of conditions for the withdrawal of the Soviet troops.
At the moment, there is no sign that the intervention by the "Red Army" is encouraging such a mobilization of the workers against the landlords and capitalists. The Soviets and the PDPA leadership might decide to make compromises, based on considerations related to either the internal situation in Afghanistan or the international situation. Only the independent action and organization of the toiling masses can put a stop to such maneuvers. These compromises would involve renunciation of the implementation and consolidation of the progressive measures, as well as renunciation of the perspective of deepening them in order to fight for a workers and peasants government.
Within this context, if conflicts break out between the "Red Army" and the workers and peasants mobilized to defend their class interests, we will take the side of the latter and explain to the Soviet troops that they should support this struggle.
In the medium and long term, there is one possibility that cannot be excluded beforehand: In a situation where the semifeudal and bourgeois forces are extremely weak and the presence of Soviet troops becomes prolonged, the fact that the Soviet bureaucracy is rooted in the workers state created by the October revolution could lead it to structurally transform property relations in Afghanistan.
Even if this should take place, our anti-imperialist stance, which would focus on defense of the new property relations, would not involve any support to the Kremlin's political orientation in Afghanistan. We would remain opposed to the annexation of new territory by the Kremlin, to whom we do not entrust any historical mission.
We would struggle for the right of the Afghan workers state to freely choose the forms of its relationship with the other workers states in the region.
d. In the conflict between the reactionary coalition and imperialism on one side and the Soviet troops and the PDPA government on the other, the demand for Afghan national sovereignty in the name of the right of peoples to self-determination would be nothing but a democratic guise for the aims of reaction and imperialism. The withdrawal of the Soviet troops would in no way assure any freedom for the Afghan nationalities to decide their own course. It would only open the way for the installation of a reactionary regime oppressing workers and peasants, a regime beholden to Washington, which would consolidate Washington's position in the region.
The road toward real self-determination for the nationalities requires both the defeat of imperialism and the overthrow of the feudal and capitalist exploiters.
That is why we think that those European Communist parties like the Italian and Spanish CPs, which have joined in chorus with the bourgeois governments and the Social Democrats to demand the withdrawal of Soviet troops, are only contributing to the bourgeoisie's international campaign. By doing so, they are showing that good relations with their own bourgeoisies come before any real concern for the lot of the Afghan masses and all the exploited and oppressed people in that part of the world.
e. To choose the camp opposed to imperialism and the reactionary forces does not imply any truce or holy alliance with the Soviet bureaucracy, whose counterrevolutionary orientation discredits socialism, places a major obstacle before the development of the world revolution, and thus weakens the defense of the material basis of the Soviet workers state.
At the same time that we fight against imperialism's intiatives and threats, we continue to call on the workers movement to mobilize against repression in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. We call on the workers to mobilize in defense of civil liberties and of the rights of the nationalities, and for the right of workers to organize on the political and trade-union levels. independent of the state apparatus. We pursue our struggle for a political revolution and the overthrow of the bureaucracy. We denounce those Communist parties, like in France and Portugal, that support the political methods of the Soviet bureaucracy and the PDPA above the interests of the Afghan workers and peasants and the world proletariat. Their stance logically flows from their bureaucratic policy of dividing the ranks of the workers and collaborating with their own bourgeoisies in their own countries.
f. The prime task of revolutionary Marxists is to:
• oppose the imperialist sanctions, such as the suspension of grain deliveries to the Soviet Union or the cut-off of food aid to Afghanistan by the European Common Market. Denying food to Afghanistan reveals the real contempt of the bourgeois leaders for the fate of the Afghan peoples,
• denounce the numerous attempts at diplomatic blackmail,
• call for mobilizations against the arms drive of Washington and the European, Australian, and Japanese governments,
• demand the withdrawal of all imperialist forces from the region and the dismantling of all their bases,
• condemn the hypocritical propaganda campaign designed to cover up the political and military schemes of Washington and its allies in the Middle East, Central Asia, Southeast Asia, southern Africa, and Central America, which hold the danger of a new war,
• expose the aid given by the imperialist powers to the Afghan counterrevolutionaries and the Pakistani dictatorship,
• oppose the call for a boycott of the Moscow Olympics proposed by Carter, Thatcher, and others.
January 26, 1980