The Class Character of the Ethiopian Revolution

Demonstration in Addis Ababa during the early days of the 1974 revolution.

Following is an excerpt from an article published in the first, and to my knowledge only, issue of Ethiopian Marxist Review, published in 1980 by the Study, Publications and Information Center of the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Party in Europe. This really interesting passage on the class nature of the Ethiopian revolution appears in an article by Mulugeta Osman (a pseudonym?) that is otherwise a review of several books published on the 1974 revolution. The beginning of the essay negatively reviews two books (by Raúl Valdés Vivó and the Ottaways), before generally lauding that by John Markakis and Nega Ayele and then two works by Addis Hiwet. But this extended section stands on its own as a Marxist explication of the nature of the revolution itself. I have made a couple corrections of typos and broken the final extended paragraph up for legibility.—ISH

 from “REVIEW OF BOOKS ON POST-1974 ETHIOPIA”

by Mulugeta Osman; Ethiopian Marxist Review, No. 1, August 1980

Addis Hiwet, whose writings on the formation of the centralized « modern state» and the « transitional social-formation in pre-1974 Ethoipia » are very pertinent, also advances the proposition, in his 1976 book, that the regime is a « Corporate state ».

Underlying the errors in this respect (though Addis Hiwet does not sufficiently explain why he adopts the « Corporate » label while firmly rejecting the « fascist » one), there emerges a wrong understanding of the nature and dynamics of the February Revolution itself, a negation of the proletarian character of this revolution and attributing to it the pettybourgeois label as Nega and Markakis do in the conclusion to their book. Without clearly grasping the character of the Revolution itself, it is evidently difficult to identify « the hidden secret » of the policies and line of the military regime.

The 1974 February Revolution caught in its whirlpool all the classes associated with decaying feudalism (landlords, the aristocracy and nobility the peasants) and with « emergent » capitalism (workers in the factories and industries, in the public administration, the petty bourgeoisie, lumpenproletariat ... ) . The February Revolution was not merely a revolution directed against feudalism and the comprador-bureaucratic bourgecisie, it also, at the same time, manifested an internal crisis for the trade unions, the armed forces, the state adminstration, and for the workers, peasants, women, students, etc ... The assault on the conditions of oppression led to or was intrinsically linked to the attack on the organizational forms of this oppression. Therefore, the February Revolution negated the political and economic forms of domination, in the place of feudal Ethiopia, which recognised an individual's political existence only via the possession of land and the subjugation of the peasant, the revolution forwarded a radically different conception of the organization of the society. The issue is not as to whether a particular class homogenized and led the whole movement. It was rather of a question of which class best embodied the liberation of other classes in its fundamental drive for liberation; in other words the question was not which class imposed its particular class liberation as the « liberation » of the others but rather which class had to liberate the others in order for itself to be really free.

The Ethiopian Revolution was not, therefore, a bourgeois revolution. The existing bourgeoisie, in most cases linked to the land and thus to the feudal system, was not capable of transforming the society on its behalf, to reappropriate and accumulate the mass of labour power under its own rule and to assure the dominance of capitalism. Bureaucratic and comprador in its majority, the bourgeoisie, as the Michael Imru experience showed, failed to recuperate the movement and to put it on its own bourgeois rails. If the February Revolution was not a bourgeois revolution, it was neither a petty-bourgeois revolution. The Ethiopian petty-bourgeoisie, though it played a prominent role in the revolutionary process, was not able to impose its hegemonic hold on the revolution, to assure its privileged position vis a vis the proletariat and to realize its bourgeois aspirations. The contradictions which exploded in February were so great that they surpassed the petty-bourgeois limitations, the petty-bourgeois blueprint of economic and political development were insufficient, and this class had to tie itself to the demands of the proletariat during the revolution. This is why the petty-bourgeois, unable to impose its hegemony over the revolutionary process, had to resort to a coup in order to assert its autonomy as a class in front of both the proletariat and the bourgeoisie.

The proletarian character of the February Revolution is not to be automatically derived be it from the number of the proletariat in the country or the abscence or presence of a proletarian party, nor is it dependent on the nature of the trade union in place. The Revolution posed the question of political power not in the form of replacing the rulers with new ones but in the revolutionary sense i.e. the social content of this power and the reorganization of the society in new forms which express the utilization of power by the masses, their social participation. The partial and sectarian demands and, thus, partial liberation, could be expressed only within this general struggle for political power and this is why all the various demands could find consensus around this fundamental issue. And this question of power and reorganization was not simply an item on the future plan but one that was being actualized (the popular committees in various areas, of which the People's Committee in Jimma is but one example) is also an important feature of the process as a whole. The revolution, therefore, could not be confined within the limits of the bourgeois democratic revolution (and even the agrarian question was linked to the question of power and a revolutionary organization of the society in opposition to the conditions and organizational forms of oppression), it was not a simple antifeudal struggle (abolition of landlordism, distribution of land, etc), nor did it confirm to the « orderly and gradual » process which the petty-bourgeois dreams of in order to realize its aspirations to turn bourgeois. The only class which could stand as a pole uniting the various revendications of the classes and thus expressing the unification of the individual and collective conditions of the various classes was the proletariat. The February Revolution, as a revolution for social emancipation, had a predominantly proletarian character, a character that cannot be exclusively framed within the actual number or organizational strength of the proletariat in the country.

This being the case, the section of the petty-bourgeoisie which appropriated the state power via a coup had to move in two. interlinked directions. One was to destroy to the last all the means and instruments which could enable the proletariat to appropriate power and social emancipation. And thus the abolition of the various committees set-up by the people, the dissolution of CELU and others and the relentless terror against the EPRP and against any attempt at autonomous organizational action. Secondly, the military regime had to present its own liberation, i.e. the liberation of the petty-bourgeoisie from its conditions of oppression by the Haile Selassie state apparatus and the bourgeoisie as the liberation of the people as a whole, the general interests of the people are thus said to be incarnated in the interests of the regime and, its logical development, in Mengistu. Hence, once again the political existence of the individual or group exists only within the framework of the subjugation of the individual by the state.

Within this framework, the resort to « socialism » as an ideological facade highlights the repression and beyond it the subjugation of the individual to the state. The military regime did not express the interest of one particular class in this respect as it was striving to mould all classes in its interest. True enough, like a bonapartist state it had the appearance of conflict with all classes but unlike such a state it did not enjoy the support of a vast section of the peasantry. The realization of the liberation of the petty-bourgeosie, actualized on the political level by the taking over power and the setting-up of new organizational forms (kebele and the like), required on the economical sphere the appropriation of surplus both from the peasant and the proletariat.

The nationalization measures are intended to facilitate the extraction of increased surplus, the accumulation of capital, etc, i.e. the transformation of the petty-bourgeoisie into a state or bureaucratic bourgeoisie. This transformation necessarily implied a contradiction with the landlords and also with the comprador and bureaucratic bourgeoisie which were compromised (by their role within the Haile Selassie state apparatus and their link with land) and attacked as strategic enemies by the February Revolution. The transformations also called for regimentation of the mass of peasants and workers within the options of the military regime.

From this drive by the regime to impose its interests as the interest and needs of the society at large follows its conflict with almost all the other classes (including the fraction of the petty-bourgeoisie which has gone to the side of the proletariat) and its drive to shape and reorganize the whole socio-economic formation. The overall weakness of the bourgeoisie as a whole, the weakness of the petty-bourgeoisie as a consequence, the continuing revolutionary struggle of the masses and the international crisis of capitalism lie at the root of the weakness of the regime in realizing its aims, a weakness that the intervention of the USSR has partially eliminated while opening up new forms of contradiction accentuating the regime's overall weakness in the long-term. In this sense, then, while the regime may have at one time or another manifested certain features that could be stretched to be called « bonapartist », such a characterization of the regime is off-mark.

Quick Review: Marina and David Ottaway

ETHIOPIA, Empire In Revolution
By Marina and David Ottaway, Africana Publishing Company/Holmes & Meier, hardcover 1978, 250pp.

I had the pleasure of reading a recent essay by Professor John Markakis entitled “The Revolution and the Scholars,” in the 2016 issue of Northeast African Studies journal. In the essay Markakis, co-author of the landmark Class and Revolution in Ethiopia, surveys from today’s decades-later vantage point some of the volumes written during the Derg period which have become standard reference works on the revolution. These include René Lefort’s Ethiopia, An Heretical Revolution; Halliday and Molyneux's The Ethiopian Revolution, and Marina and David Ottaway’s Ethiopia, Empire in Revolution, among others. I am pleased to report that Markakis’s judgment of the Ottaways’ book can be quoted to neatly summarize my own view of the Ottaways’ work:

“Having failed to to draw the political implications of class and ethnic contradictions, the Ottaways are unable to account for the popular upheaval that irrupted in 1974. Instead, they go to some lengths to discount the contribution of the social groups involved in it.” (NEAS 16:1, p. 92)

The Ottaways were based in Addis Ababa during the early years of the revolution. She was an academic, he a journalist, both presenting leftish views in the fashion of the post-Vietnam era. Though they describe having to ship their primary resources, research notes and draft writings out of the country just ahead of being expelled from Ethiopia in mid-1977 during the Red Terror, their book seems to have become an edifice of pro-Derg Western leftist apologia writing. The book is quite full of detailed information, including some garnered from behind the scenes via interviews and the period of massive public debate in the first two years of the revolution. It reproduces a number of Derg proclamations in full as appendices, and as such is certainly a valuable historical record.

The book was written in mid-1977, after Mengistu’s seizure of power in February 1977, but before his decisive elimination of potential counter-leadership within the Derg in the Fall of the same year. But the fact that this book is a dated or incomplete picture of the revolution is not really the problem with it.

The Ottaways wind up legitimizing the Derg’s claim to the mantle of socialism by sneering at the social forces outside the military.

“The EPRP [Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Party] conceived of revolution in terms of a mass movement from the bottom up. No such movement ever existed in Ethiopia, however, and the EPRP implicitly recognized this historical fact in drafting its plans for a people's government. Its proposed alliance of workers, peasants, progressive intellectuals, and progressive elements of the petty bourgeoisie was to be implemented through direct interest-group representation.” (p. 119)

And yet, it is this “non-existent” movement that actually manifested the 1974 revolution and the massive political turmoil of the following two years. They note that the EPRP proclaimed itself in 1975, while casting doubts that the EPRP’s claim to existence as a pre-party tendency in the period before 1975 was in any way significant. In fact my research leads me to see how the revolutionaries that revealed themselves in 1975 on both sides of the pro/anti military divide had been carefully preparing for the possibility of revolution for years, in fact in ways remarkably similar to the Russian revolutionaries before 1917.

Elsewhere the Ottaways seem fixated on the small size of the Ethiopian working class, and take a sneering attitude toward the Ethiopian labor movement as it attempted to find its voice and exercise its power in the aftermath of February 1974. They seem disdainful of Ethiopian working class activists, suggesting that they should have just lined up behind the provisional military government.

“The position of the CELU [Confederation of Ethiopian Labour Unions] during this transitional period was obviously confused. Despite its lack of a coherent vision, the confederation assumed it would continue as an autonomous organization, and even enjoy the protection of the government against management. But since the government had now become the largest employer in the country, CELU's hopes were quite naive.”  (p. 107)

While the Ottaways attempt to document the conflict between the Ethiopian civilian left and the Derg and its leftist allies, they completely wave away the principles behind that conflict.

“...The inability of like-minded politicians to compromise or cooperate remained a constant impediment to the revolution. It gave rise to the civilian left's bitter hatred for the military left; it spawned some half-dozen splinter leftist civilian groups with practically identical ideological platforms....This attitude caused the...[EPRP] to reject all cooperation with the military even though there was little difference between its program and that of the Derg.” (p. 101)

Somehow the Ottaways fail to understand that the EPRP’s demand for a people’s provisional government free of the military was one of two centrally defining factors not only to their program but to their growing base of support. (The other was the EPRP’s approach to the national question). It wasn't just a “little difference” and it wasn't just banal infighting: these were thought-out matters of principle about the nature of the revolution itself. Again and again throughout the course of the period when leadership of the revolution was under contention, it was this difference of mass democracy versus military control that virtually defined the dynamic of the period. Perhaps now, long after the defeat of all the players of the 1970s, it’s possible to see how the untried path charted by the EPRP offered more than the unfolding of history actually delivered.

Without getting into an extended discussion of the EPRP's ideological foundation in Marxism-Leninism or compassing its exact location in the ideological debates on the left, it is often presumed by observers that intense struggle within the left is a matter of mindless, self-defeating infighting. But any student of actual revolutionary leaders like Lenin and Mao — neither of whom could be accused of being wedded to comfy armchairs by a perverse love of internecine conflict — quickly comes to the conclusion that revolutionary struggle is marked by fierce competition between contending lines of politics and leadership just as much as it is marked by the combat in the streets between opposing class or societal forces. So the Ottaways’ insistence that the differences between EPRP and Meison were trivial, or that CELU was just naive and stubborn reflects something important about the Ottaways’ views about the issues themselves.

The Ottaways recognize that at the time of their writing, things are unsettled. But in this volume and its follow-up, 1981’s Afrocommunism, they express a surprisingly willingness to give the Derg the benefit of the doubt. The cheerleaders of the Derg among the world left, chiefly those in the orbit of the Soviet bloc, would build on the Ottaways’ arguments.

Ethiopia, Empire in Revolution is out of print but seems to be readily available.

The Derg “Organizes” Workers

I’ve been spending a lot of time reading through the amazing cache of diplomatic cables from the US embassy in Addis Ababa in Ethiopia in the 1970s at Wikileaks. I found this in a cable from January, 1978. As a reminder, the Confederation of Ethiopian Labour Unions was founded in the 1960s, the Derg forced it to disband in 1976, replacing it with the “All Ethiopia Trade Union.” CELU had come under EPRP control; AETU initially was controlled by Meison. It's pretty clear that AETU was not actually an attempt to empower the working class, but to control it. This quick analysis from the US Embassy staff says it all:

3. COMMENT: ALMOST SINCE ITS INCEPTION AETU HAS LIMITED ITS ACTIVITIES, EITHER FORCIBLY OR BY CHOICE, TO POLITICIZATION OF WORKERS AND NON-WAGE DEMANDS. BECAUSE OF THE FLUID POLITICAL SITUATION AMONG THE CIVILIANS, AETU HAS BEEN INDOCTRINATING, AETU HAS MOVED FROM ONE PMAC-SANCTIONED MARXIST-LENINIST FACTION TO ANOTHER WITHOUT MAINTAINING ANY REAL INDEPENDENCE. RATHER THAN BE AN ADVOCATE OF WORKER DEMANDS, AETU HAS BECOME A POLITICAL AND SOMETIMES SECURITY TOOL OF THE PMAC. IT APPEARS THAT PMAC WILL USE AETU TO FILL GAPES IN CADRE FORMATION PROGRAM LEFT SINCE JULY '77 BY DECLINE OF ALL ETHIOPIAN SOCIALIST MOVEMENT (AESM OR ME'I SONE). HOEVER, AETU'S LACK OF TRAINED IDEOLOGUES AND HIGHLY EDUCATED MANAGERS WILL ONLY CONTRIBUTE TO ITS DEPENDNCE ON PMAC FOR ITS CONTINUED SURVIVAL. AS A CIVILIAN ARM OF THE PMAC, ALL AETU LEADERS ARE PROSPECTIVE ASSASSINATION TARGETS. MATHERON (January 13, 1978, source)

Also fascinating is a later cable. A few months later, AETU is reorganized, and another cable details how Meison has been forced out, with a tragically hilarious description of democratic rights.

SUMMARY: ETHIOPIAN TRADE UNION (AETU) "ELECTED" NEW 9-MEMBER EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE MAY 25 AFTER EMERGENCY MEETING DURING WHICH FORMER AETU LEADERS CONDEMNED AND DISMISSED. CHAGEOVER REPRESENTS FURTHER DECLINE OF CIVILIAN MARXIST-LENINIST GROUP, ALL ETHIOPIAN SOCIALIST MOVEMENT (AESM OR ME'I SONE), OF WHICH RECENTLY DEPARTED NEGEDE GOBEZIE WAS MAJOR FIGURE. SOVIET AND EAST GERMAN (GDR) INVOLVEMENT IS UNCLEAR AT THIS TIME. END SUMMARY. 1. IN CONTINUING EFFORT TO ELIMINATE ALL ETHIOPIAN SOCIALIST MOVEMENT (AESM OR ME'I SONE) FROM CIVILIAN POLITICAL COMPETITION, ON MAY 25 ALL ETHIOPIAN TRADE UNION (AETU) DISMISSED ALL FORMER OFFICE HOLDERS FROM AETU EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE AFTER 37-HOUR EMERGENCY MEETING AND REPLACED THEM WITH NEW NINE-MEMBER COMMITTEE. AMONG REASONS GIVEN FOR CHANGE WERE CORRUPTION, POLITICAL SABOTAGE, ABUSES OF AUTHORITY, ADVANCEMENT OF SELF-INTEREST, EXERCISE OF DICTATORIAL POWERS AND MISAPPROPRIATION OF FUNDS BY ME'I SONE-AFFILIATED LEADERS OF AETU. NEW EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE WAS ELECTED TO MEET CHALLENGE FACING AETU IN ITS ROLE FOR EVENTUAL ESTABLISHMENT OF PROLETARIAN PARTY. 2. AETU STATEMENT ANNOUNCING DISSOLUTION OF FORMER EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE WAS INTERESTING IN ITS FORTHRIGHT DENOUNCEMENT OF ME'I SONE AS A WHOLE, DROPPING PRETENSE OF ME'I SONE "RIGHT-ROADERS" AS ONLY ANTIREVOLUTIONARIES WITHIN ME'I SONE. SLOGAN PREVIOUSLY PROMULGATED BY ME'I SONE, "DEMOCRATIC RIGHTS FOR THE MASSES, NOW", WAS LABELLED SUBVERSIVE BECAUSE DEMOCRATIC RIGHTS CAN ONLY BE OBTAINED THROUGH STRUGGLE, NOT "DELIVERED ON SILVER PLATTER." AETU WAS ALLEGEDLY UNDER "IRON GRIP OF FEW AMBITIOUS PSEUDO-PROGRESSIVE INDIVIDUALS OPPOSED TO CONCEPT OF UNION OF ETHIOPIAN MARXIST-LENINIST ORGANIZATIONS (UEMLO)." THESE INDIVIDUALS FURTHER IDENTIFIED AS ME'I SONE AND CONDEMNED FOR CHANNELING FUNDS OBTAINED THROUGH AETU TO ME'I SONE GROUP, "WHICH HAD BETRAYED THE REVOLUTION."
(May 26, 1978, source)

How the EPRP Spiked U.S. Imperialism from the Ethiopian Labor Movement

I ran across a series of remarkable documents on Wikileaks that reveal a fascinating moment when both the Derg and US imperialism were taking action to suppress the radicalization of Ethiopian workers.

CELU Logo

An early June, 1975, cable from an Addis Ababa diplomat back to his boss in the State Department, reveals a US Charge d’Affaires Parker Wyman positively freaking out about developments within CELU, the Confederation of Ethiopian Labour Unions. In following a chain of self-referenced cables on Wikileaks, an incredible story is revealed which I haven’t actually read in this amount of detail anywhere else.

CELU was founded in 1962, assisted by pro-imperialist forces in world labor (aka the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations, AFL-CIO) hoping to create a captive, docile labor organization with whom the “business community” could cooperate to forestall more militant working class organizing while claiming to promote the free organization of labor. Of course Ethiopian law forbade strikes, and it wasn’t CELU’s original intention to challenge that. It’s not for nothing that the AFL-CIO is jokingly referred to worldwide as the “AFL-CIA.”

However, bad timing for the AFL-CIO in Ethiopia: The development of an organized urban working class in Ethiopia coincided with revolutionary times, and Ethiopian leftists quickly identified CELU as a valuable conduit for expanding their influence among workers. CELU seems to have been beset by factionalism between its original leaders and younger revolutionaries, but joined EPRP May Day activities out in the streets in 1975. Shortly afterwards the Derg closed it down, and arrested a handful of its leaders. But by the end of May, the Derg relented and allowed CELU to continue to function. The younger generation seized the moment to win leadership of CELU.

Kiflu Tadesse, in the first volume of his landmark The Generation history of EPRP, tells the story in more detail of how the leftists, mainly from EPRP but also from Meison and Senay Likke's WazLeague, gained control of CELU from its old guard. But he doesn’t tell a key part of the story of what was actually an impressive, albeit temporary, EPRP success. Let's piece it together.

Here are excerpts from the cable, which reveals palpable panic over sudden communist subversion of CELU:

"IN SESSIONS JUNE 2 AND 3 NEW CELU PROVISIONAL EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE BEGAN CONSIDERATION OF NUMEROUS PROPOSED CHANGES. FIRST ACTION TO BE TAKEN WAS VOTE TO SUSPEND OLD CELU CONSTITUTION.... FIVE POINT RESOLUTION NEXT CONSIDERED.... DEBATE INCLUDED EXTENSIVE CRITIQUE OF AMERICAN LABOR RELATIONS WITH "SOCIALIST COUNTRIES" GOING BACK AS FAR AS BOLSHEVIK REVOLUTION. AFL-CIO ESPECIALLY CONDEMNED FOR ALLEGED ANTI-SOCIALIST ACTIONS IN CHILE IN RECENT YEARS. PRESENTATION WAS IN SUCH GREAT DETAIL THAT IT WENT FAR BEYOND KNOWLEDGE OF LABOR GROUP PARTICIPATING IN DEBATE. CONCLUSION PROBABLY THAT MATERIAL WAS FED IN EITHER BY CELU STAFFERS GIRMACHEW LEMMA...AND/OR KIFLU, WHO SPENT SEVERAL YEARS STUDYING JOURNALISM IN RUSSIA. IN ANY CASE, THIS WAS FIRST SPECIFIC APPEARANCE OF COMMUNIST LINE AND CONTENT WAS DISTINCTLY RUSSIAN."

Germatchew (Girmachew) Lemma, EPRP labor leader

Germatchew Lemma and Kiflu (Tadesse), were two former student activists who had become leaders in the Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Party. At this point in 1975 EPRP was largely underground, and while its “Democrasia” paper was widely circulated, the name “EPRP” was not yet publicized until later that year.

Germatchew was a respected activist. In his memoir Wore Negare, former EPRP activist Mohamed Yimam recounts, “He was an electrifying speaker who mesmerized the audience. Charismatic and towering, he had a commanding presence that that eclipsed anyone who stood near him.... In Girmachew I saw a leader that I was instantly attracted to and seemed capable of leading people to do anything that he wanted them to.”

Kiflu is of course the author of the definitive Generation books we’ve just cited. While he did go to university in the Soviet Union, to attribute his intervention here to Soviet subversion shows how clueless the US embassy was about the dynamics on the ground. While the USSR was not yet in 1975 fully the patron of the Derg, it was then — and ultimately — completely disinterested in the civilian left, and in the end backed the Derg’s state-controlled labor federation.

Back to the cable, again full of insinuations that a dark communist conspiracy is at hand:

MARKOS HAGOS, NEW CHAIRMAN, WAS NOTIFIED LATE JUNE 2 THAT HE APPOINTEDORER DELEGATE TO ILO GENEVA CONFERENCE. FACT THAT HE COULD COMPLETE HEALTH, PASSPORT, TAX AND ALL OTHER FORMALITIES TO ENABLE HIM TO DEPART NEXT DAY SUGGESTS HE MUST HAVE BEEN PREPARED WELL IN ADVANCE....IT IS BECOMING MORE APPARENT THAT STRATEGY OF MAY 31-JUNE 1 MEETING WAS CAREFULLY PRE-PLANNED. SEVERAL INFORMANTS, RELIABLE IN PAST, BELIEVE THAT PRIME MOVERS WERE GIRMACHEW LEMMA OF CELU STAFF AND GETACHEW AMARE WHO SUPPOSEDLY OBTAINED SUPPORT OF LT. COL. ATNAFU ABATE, 2ND VICE CHAIRMAN OF PMAC, AND LEFT-WING GROUP IN DIRG. FORMER OPPOSITION LEADERS, MAINLY FROM SMALL UNIONS, ARE SAID TO HAVE JOINED IN ENTHUSIASTICALLY AND WERE REWARDED WITH SEATS ON PROVISIONAL EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE.

Markos Hagos, leader of CELU in 1975.

Markos Hagos, the new leader of CELU, was in fact an EPRP member. He was not a former student leader, but came out of the rank and file of insurance company workers. CELU staffer Getachew Amare seems to have also been EPRP, at least he was accused of being so when he was put on a Derg deathlist in 1977 (Kiflu, v1, p.144). Atnafu Abate was one of the three leaders of the Derg in 1975. The reference here is curious: while Atnafu seems to have often disagreed with eventual Derg sole leader Mengistu — indeed he was eliminated by Mengistu in late 1977 — but I have yet to see a source corroborating communication between EPRP and Atnafu at this time, only later after Mengistu's first, early 1977 purge.

The cable goes on to urge its distribution to US agents attending the upcoming ILO conference to be on the lookout for CELU radicals.

FOR GENEVA: PLEASE PASS FOREGOING INFORMATION TO PAT O'FARRELL AND JERRY FUNK OF AALC ATTENDING ILO CONFERENCE.

AALC is the acronym for “African American Labor Center.” Here’s a brief background on AALC from Beth Sims’ Workers of the World Undermined: “The African-American Labor Center (AALC), founded in 1964, is active in some 31 countries ranging from Angola to Zimbabwe. Its founder and first director was longtime labor activist and CIA operative Irving Brown.' He molded the institute into an anticommunist organization that spread the doctrine of labor-business harmony and bread-and-butter unionism to its African beneficiaries. Under Brown, the AALC became a vehicle for funneling U.S. aid to procapitalist, economistic African trade unions, a role which it continues to play today.”

The US embassy was so clearly concerned about the presence of revolutionaries within CELU, it wanted to keep an eye on the CELU organizer during his trip abroad. And so the relationship between the US government and advocates of labor peace is exposed.

As mentioned,  it wasn’t just the US embassy that was worried about CELU and worker radicalization. The U.S. Embassy was watching the Derg’s repressive moves against CELU with optimistic caution. A previous cable is fascinating. From May 1975:

6. COMMENT: IF CAUSE OF RUCKUS IS -- AS ASSERTED -- SIMPLE EXASPERATION WITHIN DIRG WITH CELU IN-FIGHTING AND MOVE TRIGGERS REASONABLY STRAIGHTFORWARD ELECTIONS, LABOR MOVEMENT COULD CONCEIVABLY EMERGE STRENGTHENED FROM THIS EPISODE. HOWEVER, IF RADICALS HAVE THEIR WAY, THE STRENGTH TO OVERRIDE OPPOSITION IN AT LEAST SOME UNIONS, AND THE MOMENTUM TO PRESS AHEAD WITH ATTEMPT FOIST MORE PLIANT LEADERSHIP ON CELU IN PREPARATION FOR ITS TRANSFORMATION, DIFFICULT DAYS COULD LIE AHEAD.

That May, Derg representatives went to workplaces where the workers were represented by CELU to justify trying to shut down the confederation. Another cable discusses a confrontation between EAL workers (Ethiopian Airlines, organized by CELU) and the Derg:

DIRG CAPTAIN THEN TOOK FLOOR AND WENT THROUGH EXPLANATION ON REASONS FOR CELU HEADQUARTERS.... CAPTAIN PLACED EMPHASIS ON "CAPITALIST ORIGINS" OF AND SUPPORT FOR CELU. HE NOTED THAT SUCH A CELU HAD NO PLACE IN SOCIALIST ETHIOPIA. THIS ELICITED IMMEDIATE REJOINDER FROM SEVERAL EAL EMPLOYEES WHO NOTED THAT CELU HAD BEEN IMPORTANT TO THEM; ASKED BY WHAT AUTHORITY DIRG HAD CLOSED IT; AND DEMANDED TO KNOW WHAT DIRG PROPOSED PUT IN ITS PLACE. "WE HAVE SUPPORTED CELU WITH OUR VOTES AND OUR MONEY* WHAT ARE YOU DOING FOR US?" OTHER EMPLOYEES THEN REPORTEDLY SPOKE UP TO SAY THAT DIRG HAD DISSOLVED STUDENT ORGANIZATIONS WHICH HAD SUPPORTED ITS RISE TO POWER AND TO NOTE THAT DIRG NOW SEEMED BENT ON DOING SAME TO UNIONS. DIRG SPOKESMAN REJOINED THAT "CIA" HAD FINANCED CELU AND IT OBVIOUS THIS COULD NOT CONTINUE. SEVERAL EMPLOYEES THEREUPON IMMEDIATELY RESPONDED THAT DIRG WAS FINE ONE TO TALK ABOUT AMERICAN SUPPORT. IT WAS BEING SUPPORTED BY AMERICAN FUNDS AND AMERICAN SUPPORT FOR ETHIOPIA WAS SURELY NOTHING NEW. DIRG MEMBERS THEREUPON WITHDREW. NEW EAL GENERAL MANAGER TRIED CONCLUDE SESSION ON PATRIOTIC NOTE EMPHASIZING NEED FOR DISCIPLINE. EMPLOYEES TOLD HIM THAT EAL WAS DISCIPLINED ORGANIZATION, BUT THAT DID NOT MEAN EMPLOYEES UNPREPARED SPEAK THEIR MIND TO HIM OR TO DIRG.

And so the Derg’s attempt to use a left-wing posture to justify its repression of CELU was rebuffed, and as noted, the Derg at least temporarily relented.

Yet here is the meat of the US concern, and actually the Derg’s concern as well. In the resolution at that June meeting, the workers of CELU under their new, revolutionary leadership, actually did the right thing and formally renounced ties with the AFL-CIO. This gets at the heart of the competing socialist strategies in the Ethiopian revolution: the Derg attempted to impose its will, the EPRP went to the people. The text of this amazing resolution is reported in another cable:

WHAT IS AFL-CIO?
1. THIS ORGANIZATION SHOWED ITS TRUE REACTIONARY NATURE BY SEVERING ITS RELATIONS FROM THE WORLD WIDE LABOR UNION WHICH WAS LED BY PROGRESSIVES AND FROM THE SOCIALIST RUSSIAN LABOR UNIONS ESTABLISHED IN THE EARLY 20TH CENTURY. 2. THIS ORGANIZATION WAS ANTI-BOLSHEVIK AND WORKED AGAINST THE ANTI-REACTIONARY CAMPAIGN WHICH WAS CARRIED OUT IN THE WEST WHEN THE GREAT BOLSHEVIK REVOLUTION CRUSHED THE REACTIONARY ELEMENTS. 3. THIS IMPERIALIST ORGANIZATION REFUSED TO RECOGNIZE THE RUSSIAN PROGRESSIVE GOVERNMENT EVEN AFTER PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT TRIED TO ESTABLISH RELATIONS WITH THE NEW REVOLUTIONARY GOVERNMENT OF RUSSIA. 4. FROM EARLIEST TIMES, WHEN AMERICA DECLARED WAR AGAINST SPAIN THE MADE THE PHILIPPINES ITS COLONY, THIS ORGANIZATION SUPPORTED THE INVASION IN THE NAME OF THE WORKING CLASS AND IS THEREFORE ANTI-WORKING CLASS. 5. THIS ORGANIZATION SUPPORTED THE AMERICAN INVASION OF VIETNAM, WHICH CAUSED THE DEATH OF OVER TWO MILLION PEOPLE. 6. THIS ORGANIZATION HAS SOUGHT TO RULE OVER THE THIRD WORLD AND HAS BEEN A SABOTEUR ESPECIALLY IN AFRICA, THROUGH SUCH ORGANIZATIONS AS THE AALC. 7. THIS ORGANIZATION SUPPORTED THE PREVIOUS LEADERSHIP OF CELU AND CHANNELED ALL ITS MONEY TO REACTIONARY ELEMENTS. THEREFORE, CELU HAS SEVERED ITS TIES WITH THE AFL-CIO AND IS READY TO FACE ANY HARDSHIPS WHICH IT MAY ENCOUNTER AS A CONSEQUENCE.

It’s a remarkable statement, clearly contextualizing AFL-CIA activity within the aggressive agenda of imperialism. Of course this is not an accident: it was written by the EPRP.

In yet another cable the embassy’s informants describe the authors of this resolution, again worriedly insinuating the authors are agents of the Soviet bloc. It’s clear the embassy is unaware of dynamics out on the street, highly confused about the nature of the opposition to the Derg. Their red-baiting is obvious, but their finger pointed at the Eastern bloc is laughable. It is again interesting that they tie the authors to Atnafu: One might note by implication that the embassy saw political stability in Mengistu’s wing of the Derg. Indeed in 1975 the Derg was still being armed by the United States. From the cable:

MESFIN GEBRE MIKAEL, ONE OF ORIGINAL FOUR FOUNDERS OF CELU, NOW WITH ILO, TOLD EMBOFF JUNE 7 THAT THE FOUR "TECHNICAL ADVISORS"LED BY KIFLU AND GIRMATCHEW WERE RESPONSIBLE FOR DRAFTING RESOLUTIONS PASSED BY CELU....HE ALSO BELIEVES THAT KIFLU, "THE BRAINS" OF THE GROUP, WHO HAS FOUR YEARS JOURNALISM EXPERIENCE IN RUSSIA, SECURED FINANCING FROM MOSCOW CHANNELED THROUGH HUNGARY AND BULGARIA AS WELL AS FROM "CHRISTIAN TRADE UNION GROUP-IN BRUSSELS TO PAY ORGANIZING EXPENSES.... PUBLISHED DOCUMENT IS ACTUALLY SECOND DRAFT. FIRST DRAFT WAS VERY RADICAL AND ANTI-DIRG.... GEBRE SELASSIE GEBRE-MARIAM, ANOTHER OF CELU'S FOUR ORIGINAL FOUNDERS AND NOW ADVISER TO MININT, AGREED THAT FIRST DRAFT WAS WRITTEN IN STRONG LANGUAGE AND ATTACKED DIRG.... HE IS FAIRLY CONFIDENT, HOWEVER, THAT ELECTION WAS CONTROLLED THROUGH ABOVE-CITED TECHNICAL ADVISERS WHO, HE ASSERTED, ARE IN TURN CONNECTED TO DIRG FACTION LED BY LT. COL. ATNAFU, PMAC SECOND VICE-CHAIRMAN.

Here is the coup de grace: This final cable, dated June 11, 1975, also recommends that AALC operations in Ethiopia be terminated because of CELU’s new, anti-imperialist position. And so, even in the face of suppression by the Derg military government, EPRP successfully drove US imperialism out of the Ethiopian trade union movement. Wow.

Unfortunately, CELU was finally banned by the Derg in September of 1975, leaving the newly radicalized CELU only a few months to organize. The Derg set up its own pro-government trade union association, the All Ethiopia Trade Union (AETU). A new labor code did not guarantee the right to strike. And so the “socialist” Derg continued the tradition of labor peace. The EPRP meanwhile continued to organize clandestinely in the working class, setting up an underground revolutionary union, the Ethiopian Workers Revolutionary Union, or ELAMA.

Markos Hagos went underground in 1976. Sources conflict on his fate: Kiflu says he was publicly executed as part of the first wave of the Derg’s “War of Annihilation” in 1977. The April-May 1977 issue of Forward, journal of the World Wide Federation of Ethiopian Students, says he was “killed on March 24 in a gun battle with fascists, who attempted to arrest him. In the fierce gun battle, the valiant revolutionary fighter had finished off well over 20 of the search squad soldiers before his death.”

Germatchew Lemma went underground with the rest of the EPRP leadership. Kiflu tells the story in vol. 2 of The Generation how Derg surveillance identified several EPRP safe houses in June of 1977. After a half-hour gunfight, Germatchew and a number of other party members escaped the initial raid. But Germatchew was killed attempting to reach a fallback safe house. Unbeknownst to him it had also been raided and Derg soldiers lay in wait. He “was killed on the spot.”

Atnafu Abate in 1975

Derg member Atnafu Abate, suspected by the embassy of being connected to the CELU rebels, was executed by Mengistu in November of 1977. Ironically Mengistu accusations against him included “consorting with CIA agents.”