Leon Trotsky’s Writings on Britain
Volume III

National Liberation Struggles


Afghanistan



There is yet another nation in the East which deserves special mention today in connection with the holiday of international brotherhood. This is Afghanistan. [1] Dramatic events are taking place there and the hand of British imperialism is embroiled in these events. Afghanistan is a backward country. Afghanistan is making its first step to Europeanize itself and guarantee its independence on a more cultured basis. The progressive nationalist elements of Afghanistan are in power and so British diplomacy mobilizes and arms everything which is in any way reactionary both in that country and along its borders with India and throws all this against the progressive elements in Kabul. Starting from the decrees by which not only the bourgeois but also the social-democratic authorities in Germany banned May Day demonstrations, passing through events in China and Afghanistan, we can see everywhere the parties of the Second International behind the work of suppression and oppression. For, you know, the onslaught against Kabul organized with British resources, takes place under the government of the pacifist MacDonald. [2]

From May Day in the West and the East
(Speech at the commemorative plenum of the Moscow Soviet, April 25, 1924)

* * *

That is why, comrades, I think that the danger of a national-democratic degeneration which of course exists and which will seize and carry off some people for it cannot be otherwise, that this danger is greatly reduced by the very fact of the existence of the Soviet Union and of the Third International. There is every ground for hoping that the basic nucleus which will emerge from the Communist University for Toilers of the East will occupy its due place as a class leaven, a Marxist leaven and a Leninist leaven to the proletarian movement in the lands of the East. The demand for you, comrades, appears gigantic and it manifests itself, as I have already said, not gradually but all at once, also in its own way “catastrophically”. Read over one of Lenin’s last articles, Better less but better: seemingly it is devoted to a specific organizational question but it at the same time embraces the perspectives for the development of the countries of the East in connection with the development of Europe. What is the main idea behind the article? The fundamental idea is that the development of the revolution in the West may be held up. How can it be held up? By MacDonaldism, for the most conservative force in Europe is in fact MacDonaldism. We can see how Turkey abolished the Caliphate [3] and MacDonald resurrects it. Is this not a striking example which sharply contrasts in deed the counter-revolutionary Menshevism of the West to the progressive national-bourgeois democracy of the East?

Taking place at present in Afghanistan are truly dramatic events: MacDonald’s Britain is toppling the left national-bourgeois wing which is striving to Europeanize independent Afghanistan and is attempting there to restore to power the darkest and most reactionary elements imbued with the worst prejudices of pan-Islamism, the Caliphate and so forth. If you weigh up these two forces in their living conflict, it will at once become clear why the East will more and more gravitate towards us, the Soviet Union and the Third International.

We can see how Europe, which through its past development preserved the monstrous conservatism of the bosses of the working class, is more and more undergoing economic disintegration. There is no way out for her. And this finds an expression in particular in the fact that America does not give her loans, rightly not trusting her economic viability. On the other hand we can see too that the same America and the same Britain are compelled to finance the economic development of the colonial countries thereby driving them along the path of revolution at a frantic rate. And if Europe is to be kept back amid the present state of putrefaction of the numbskulled, parochial, aristocratic, privileged MacDonaldism of the labour bosses then the centre of gravity of the revolutionary movement is being transferred wholly and entirely to the East. And then it will emerge that although a number of decades of Britain’s capitalist development was necessary to act as a revolutionizing factor to raise up our old Russia and our old East on to their feet then it will now be necessary for the revolution in the East to come back to Britain to smash through or, if necessary smash up some thick skulls and give an impulse to the revolution of the European proletariat [applause]. This is one of the historical possibilities. it must be kept in one’s mind’s eye.

From Perspectives and Tasks in the East (Speech on the third anniversary
of the Communist University for the Toilers of the East, 21st April 1924)


Volume 3, Chapter 2 Index


Notes

1. The movement for “modernization” under King Amanullah led to sharp social conflicts. The reforms included the abolition of feudal land tenure, and in April 1923 a “democratic” constitution was promulgated. Pro-feudal elements exploited the discontent of the peasantry at these measures with the covert support of British Imperialism and Amanullah was overthrown in 1929.

2. Ramsay MacDonald (1866-1937), Scottish Labour politician, member of Independent Labour Party (ILP), adopted pacifist position during World War I, prime minister in the first (1924) and second (1929-1931) Labour governments, defected in 1931 with Philip Snowden and Jimmy Thomas to form National Government with the Conservatives after the Labour government split on the question of cutting unemployment benefits, served as prime minister until 1935.

3. The Caliphate was the name of the Empire established after the death of the prophet Muhammed in 632 AD. By the twentieth century the title of “Caliph” originally applying to a religious leader, had been taken over by the Sultans of Turkey. It was abolished on 3rd March 1924 by the bourgeois revolutionary government of Kemal Ataturk.


Volume 3 Index

Trotsky’s Writings on Britain


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Last updated on: 1.7.2007