We Get Good Press!

 

 My book has been (favorably!) reviewed in the independent leftwing website Counterpunch!

Historian Doug Enaa Greene concludes in the article published this week, 

This review can only scratch the surface of this book. There are many debates that gripped the Ethiopian left crossing its pages such as the relation of national liberation to socialism, the role of imperialism, and the nature of fascism. All the questions discussed in this book make this more than a work of history, but a work informing revolutionary struggles of today. As the example of the EPRP reminds us, courage and dedication are not enough to realize socialism, but a revolutionary strategy is needed.

Like Ho Chi Minh! Like Che Guevara! is a book that deserves a wide audience for its rigorous research and fierce partisanship. It is a worthy tribute to the martyred revolutionaries of Ethiopia.

He also had kind things to say about my publisher, the Foreign Languages Press, despite not himself being any kind of Maoist. Thanks, Doug! After a decent interval I will copy this review in full over here, but for now check it out at the source here.

Foreign Languages Press Book Launch Video

My book officially launched on Sunday, August 30, with a virtual global event. It features presentations by me, another author releasing a book the same day, Comrade Ajith of the Indian Maoist movement, plus Christophe Kistler of Foreign Languages Press and comrade Joshua Moufawad-Paul, one of today's most exciting communist theoreticians based out of Canada, whose work is also featured by FLP.

Anyway, here's the video from the event. Mine is the first book presentation, following a little promo video they did of me, and then after Comrade Ajith speaks, we answer some audience questions.

Direct link for Like Ho Chi Minh! Like Che Guevara! is here.

 

Socialism and Democracy in Africa

 

In the course of writing my book, I found a wonderful article in the only issue of Ethiopian Marxist Review that the EPRP published in Rome in 1980. Entitled "The Struggle for Democracy in Africa," it was bylined "F. Gitwen." Well it turns out that was a pseudonym for Iyasou Alemayehu, one of the few longtime surviving leaders of the EPRP who features prominently in my just-published book.

The good comrades at Cosmonaut have consented to republish the entire article, previously only available in the super rare original journal or more recently on a PDF buried in the depths of the Marxist Internet Archive's Encyclopedia of Anti-Revisionism Online.

Here is the first paragraph of this article. Visit Cosmonaut to read the whole thing including an introduction by yours truly, or check out my new book to see how this point of view is contextualized in terms of the Ethiopian struggle.

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In many parts of Africa where the word “socialism” has more or less become a shibboleth, Lenin’s affirmation that “proletarian democracy is a million times more democratic than any bourgeois democracy” seems to have a bizarre ring to it. In fact, it is precisely in those African countries where the regimes claim adherence to “Marxism-Leninism” that one notices the virtual absence of democracy and the existence of rule by terror. In countries ruled by such regimes and actually in greater parts of Africa, the ruling classes consider “democracy” as a tainted word, “un-African and western” and, at best, as “the unrealistic demand of hyphenated or De-Africanized intellectuals.”
continued here

My Book Is Out!

 

 

 

Presenting... Like Ho Chi Minh! Like Che Guevara! The Revolutionary Left in Ethiopia, 1969-1979, by Ian Scott Horst. The book is now fully orderable at a very reasonable cover price with reasonable shipping costs. Here's a direct link. Last night I shared a virtual transcontinental platform with another author and the publisher of Foreign Languages Press to launch the book. It is not available at Amazon.

As a tease, the table of contents are reproduced below. Almost 500 pages, almost 1,000 source notes. Chock full of information. I hope you will consider ordering a copy. 

I will continue to update this blog; the research (and the struggle!) always continues.

Books, Books, Books

I have been alerted to a relevant new memoir by Tadelech Hailemikael, the wife and partner of the late Berhane Meskel Redda, a founder of the EPRP murdered by the Derg during the so-called Red Terror. She was imprisoned by the Derg in her own right, and in the post-Derg regime served as Minister of Women's Affairs. It seems to be published only in Amharic right now, which frustrates an illiterate like me to no end, but it looks fascinating and informative. See news about this book at Tadelech’s website, which is maintained by her daughter. I wish the book well!

 **

 

coming soon from Palgrave

The second edition of the Palgrave Encyclopedia of Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism, edited by Immanuel Ness and Zak Cope, is currently available for pre-order. While it’s a pricey volume from Palgrave/Macmillan for the academic market, it contains a wealth of information on anti-imperialist struggles around the world. It will be available in both digital and physical media formats.

I am excited to announce that this second edition contains an essay commissioned by Palgrave from me on imperialism in Ethiopia, entitled “Ethiopia, Revolution, and Soviet Social Imperialism.” It extends the discussion of Soviet involvement in Ethiopia beyond the way the topic is introduced in my own new book; as is my style it presents a bunch of period documents and sources to make its case.

**

Finally just another pitch for my own new book Like Ho Chi Minh! Like Che Guevara! The Revolutionary Left in Ethiopia, 1969-1979, by Ian Scott Horst, soon to be published by Foreign Languages Press in Paris. It’s shown here with another book being released the same day, part of FLP’s ground-breaking New Roads series: Critiquing Brahmanism is an important new study by Comrade Ajith, a leader of the Indian Maoist movement. These two books will be available for order soon!

Book Announcement!

I am excited to announce that the Foreign Languages Press of Paris, a relatively young publishing house based in the Maoist (MLM) movement, will be releasing my book Like Ho Chi Minh! Like Che Guevara! The Revolutionary Left in Ethiopia, 1969-1979 on September 1, 2020.

FLP is named in tribute to the classic publishing house of revolutionary China which spread revolutionary literature around the globe in the 1960s and 1970s. My book, over 500 pages with almost 1,000 footnotes, is a documentary history of the Ethiopian revolution, with focus on the story of the two main civilian left parties, the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Party (EPRP) and the All-Ethiopian Socialist Movement (Meison), whose differing visions of revolution and socialism were at the core of the unfolding events of the 1970s which ended in bloody tragedy. I present extended excerpts from period documents, classic Marxist writings, eyewitness histories, and declassified spy memos to tell the story of the politics of the period.

The book will be available to order from the FLP's web shop as soon as it is formally released; the cover price and shipping costs will be accessible to most. A virtual online booklaunch event will take place the evening of Sunday, August 30 (USA time). See the FLP website for details.

 I will have more information on the volume and other new writing after release.