-Education for Socialists: MARXISM AND FEMINISMSoviet soldiers moved across Russia's southern border into Afghanistan. Afghanistan was thrust to the center of world politics.
Carter claimed that the Soviet intervention threatened peace. The capitalist media poured out stories about mass murders by Soviet troops - accepting the most outlandish assertions of the ultrarightist guerrillas. labeled "Russia's Vietnam"
The Afghan events and the responses of the U.S. government pose many questions for working people. What is happening in Afghanistan? Why are Soviet troops there? What is Soviet foreign policy? Is the Soviet Union or U.S. big business the cause of the war danger?
The Truth About Afghanistan S.95) is a pamphlet that answers these and other questions.
REVOLUTION In April 1978, he explains, a revolution began in Afghanistan. A dictatorship backed by landlords, capitalists, and the neighbouring shah of Iran, was toppled. The new government began to institude desperately needed reforms.
Hundreds of thousands of peasants got land. Women and national minorities were granted more rights. Trade unions were legalized. A literacy drive was launched. care and sanitation began to be extended to the countryside.
The landlords, usurers, and dope peddlers who had profited from the old order organized armed bands What is the relation between marxism and feminism? What role have marxists played - and can they play - in the fight for women's liberation!
These questions have been at Ine ool old maor ceDale n the women's movement over the past decade. Many women, rignt v relecting the downplaying' of women's rights in the labour movement and the 'left', have come to question whether marxism has anything to offer at all.
Beyond the Fragments -written by Hilary Wainwright and Sheila Rowbottom - is a case in point. The authors adopt the sterile position of counterposing the women's movement to the marxist tradition which - they assert - has historically undervalued the struggle for women's libCallull.
BREAK-THROUGH Nothing could be further from the truth.
Dynamics of Women's Liber- a pamphlet written by Socialist Action supporter sabina koberts - nerps rerule such myths. 'Marxism", she the counterrevolutionaries.
world survival.
Afghanistan was came in.
Why? explaines Jenness.
the imperialism.
Health investments from develop? • What have been its achievements?
intervened?
Union?
determination? • Are we moving toward war? and oppression" rise on cass society.
family unit;
Her, socialist, revolution.
TRADITION
Revolutionary ington, which feared the impact of such changes on other countries in the region, helped finance and train In the closing months of 1979, it appeared that the rightists were making some headway. With greatly increased outside help, they hoped to soon threaten the government's That's when the Soviet troops COLLABORATION ?
"It (the Soviet government) feared the victory of the counterrevolution and the establishment of a hostile US backed beachhead along the thousand-mile border between the Soviet Union and Afghanistan, The Soviet Union's aid to Afghanistan stems ultimately from the fact that it is a workers state. But it is governed by a privileged bureaucratic caste that extracts privileges progressive planned economy established as a consequence of the Russian revolution.
The basic goal of the Soviet rulers is to make deals with Washington and the other imperialist powers. They fear revolutions in other countries as a threat to the pros pect of peaceful collaboration with But such collaboration is impossible in the long run because US big business relentlessly pushes for more markets for goods and for more protits.
This drive toward world dominaPathfinder • Han do the A ghan rero ution • Who are the "Muslim rebels"? • How has the U.S. government • What is the role of the Soviet • What about the right of selfexplains, "far from ignoring the oppression of women, has always viewed it as central in the fight against a social system based on injustice The first part of the pamphlet explains the significance of Engels' analysis of women's oppression. Limited it might be, she argues, but it was an historic break-through in that * showed that women's oppression was not natural - or rooted in any inherent inferiority - but grew out of the * explained how the oppression of women has been continued through her role in the * showed that the fight for women's liberation can only come about as part of a widSabina Roberts argues that marxısm has not only provided the women s movement witn its most important theoretical tools but - equally important - a tradition for fighting for women's rights from the First tion means that Washington must seek to undermine and destroy the Soviet workers state.
UNION Jenness compares the Kremlin's response to that of a union bureaucrat forced to oppose a union-busting drive:
"When the Kremlin sent Soviet troops into Afghanistan, it did not do so out of revolutionary motives. but as a detensive measure. It sam the US and Pakistani-backed guerrillas as a threat to the Soviet workers state. which is their base of Butlike the case oi union bureaucrat taking action to defend the union, the Soviet action coincided with the interests of the Afghan workers and peasants in putting down the counterrevolution".
Jenness points out the fallacy of the portrayal of Afghanistan as Russia's Vietnam: "The fact is that the Soviet troops intervened in Afghanistan on the side of the forces fighting for the interests of the workers and peasants, who are International to the present.
As evidence, she cites the mass, independent women's movement created in the preWorld War 1 years by activists in the German Social-Democratic Party.
She goes on to describe the big impetus to women's rights given by the Second International calling, throughout Europe, tor demonstrations in favour of universal female suffrage. It was these demonstrations, she adds, which created the tradition of International Woman's Day.
SOVIET UNION Most important of all, she shows the major step forward in women's rights achieved by the Bolshevik revolution in Russia in 1917: the introduction of equal pay, the right to child-care, abortion, divorce, and socialised laundries and canteens This part of the pamphlet should prove particularly interesting to those feminists who - often through lack of information - see in the marxist tradition something allen to the aspirations of the pres. the big majority, and against the reactionary ruling classes, who represent the interests of a minority In Vietnam, on the other hand, Washington intervened on the side of landlords, capitalists, and other privileged rich, while the bulk of the population supported the fighters of the Front"
THREAT The real threat of war stems trond big business and its government in Washington: "Today, clashes are toiling masses to take conval of iriel innies anü resources anal from the masters.
"In response to these struggles." Jenness explains, ment has intervened time and again in colonial and counties to protect the investments of the American ruling rich. The US. ruling class has used every means at its disposal military intervention to economic pressure to blockades, CIA plots. and arms sales"
"A victory for the counterreent women's movement.
They confuse - the author would stress - marxism with its opposite, turned the clock back on women's rights as it did on those of all other oppressed layers.
was carried on by Trotsky who saw regaining women's rights as a central task of defending the gains of the revolution.
COUNTERPOSED That tradition - the author stresses - continues today.
Socialist Action supporters have advocated the building ol a mass maependent wonens' movement fighting for its rights.
They have been active in the fight for abortion rights, for child-care and equal pay. AS the author points out:
women, we will refuse to put aside, or downplay, our fight for anyone and we are rightly suspicious of anyone who tells us to do so But, she says, being a feminbe a marxist also, as Beyond
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The Truth About —Doug Jenness-