“An Essential Contribution”: A Book Review

I am pleased to share the following book review from a veteran of the 1970s struggle. Ordering information for my book follows afterwards. I am available for telephone or zoom interviews...leave a comment to inquire.—ISH 

LIKE HO CHI MINH! LIKE CHE GUEVARA!
THE REVOLUTIONARY LEFT IN ETHIOPIA, 1969-1979
Foreign Languages Press, Paris, 2020, by Ian Scott Horst

Book Review by Tariku Debretsion

I am a veteran of the Ethiopian Student Movement (ESM) and the Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Party (EPRP), and I find this book to be a comprehensive documentary analysis of the Ethiopian Revolution of 1974. With 502 pages and 889 extensive citations, the book is an essential contribution to the study of the Yekatit Revolution.

The book is unique in that instead of writing his own narrative or analysis, the writer chose to present the complex development of the revolution through the participants’ own narratives, thoughts, and analysis. For this, he used massive documents published by the Ethiopian Student Unions over the 25 years that preceded the revolution and a decade of the Ethiopian left parties’ and their antagonist the Derg’s publications. Vivid testimonies of the individuals who participated or were caught in the revolutionary tempest are extensively cited. Even secret documents from the CIA and KGB are uncovered to present the assessment and involvement of the superpowers. The Yekatit 1974 Ethiopian Revolution was a classical revolution in the spirit of the French and the Russian revolutions. The writer has succeeded in presenting a very incisive and comprehensive picture of this epochal, albeit tragic, revolution: the gallant struggle of the Ethiopian Student Movement over two and half decades; the frantic effort of the leftist parties that morphed from ESM to play a vanguard role to the revolution and their fatal internecine fights; the treachery of the fascist Derg faction led by Mengistu Hailemariam in hijacking the revolution; the intervention of soviet imperialism that sealed the fate of the revolution; and the orgy of violence that was the devastating massacre of a generation of the country’s educated Youth.

 

Ian Scott Horst, as a true revolutionary, has been able to grasp that the Yekatit revolution is part of the international struggle for the emancipation of the oppressed and exploited classes. As Ethiopian revolutionaries extensively studied international revolutions to guide them in their struggle, they in turn have--through their successes and shortcomings--contributed worthwhile experiences that need to be studied and examined by all internationalists. Inter alia: how the first socialist revolution ends up landing the crushing blow to a popular revolution; how Marxism/Leninism can end up as a cover ideology to a fascist military regime; the fate of international solidarity in the present era; the role of armed struggle in modern age social revolutions and more. After the Soviet revolution and the rise of Stalin, Marxism changed from an instrument of revolution into a canonized dogma. This splintered the leftist forces into followers of Stalinism, Trotskyism, Maoism, Enver Hoxha, etc., and expended much of their energy in squabbling among themselves. Unfortunately, this was the reality of European and American revolutionaries in the 70s as well.

 

I was a student activist in the early 70s in Germany and had strong relationships with many leftist organizations. Mostly they were student revolutionaries like the Ethiopians. The Ethiopian students used to watch with bemusement how much time and energy these groups spent manifesting their ideological purity and superiority versus other groups and by their propensity to splintering. This was a manifestation of their alienation from the working classes which they aspired to lead.

 

The experience in the ESM was different in that Marxism-Leninism was regarded as an instrument to study and analyze the actual situation and a guide for action. The Ethiopian students were voracious readers of revolutionary literature and most of their writings were supported with heavy doses of quotations from the Masters. However, the focus was on the actual situations on the ground and actual courses of actions to take. As a result, there was minimal splintering in the movement, and those that occurred were based on the assessment of the existing situation in Ethiopia rather than on ideological interpretations. Current Ethiopian activists, regardless of their political ideals, need to study this book as a comprehensive guide to the revolution for two main reasons. First, because the current conflicts are a continuation of the unresolved revolution. One cannot understand properly the current struggle without studying its roots. Secondly, when current activists look back to this time it is too often to assign blame and settle scores rather than gain insight. Name-calling and finger-pointing are not a substitute for knowledge to be gained from the introspective study of past experiences Ian didn’t try to tell us what the revolution was about or what it should be, rather he lets the protagonists tell their own stories and readers derive their own conclusions. 

 

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Like Ho Chi Minh! Like Che Guevara! is available from the Foreign Languages Press storefront. The cover price is low and the shipping from France is reasonably priced and inexpensive. Order 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

Celebrate Red October: "Socialism without democracy is unthinkable"

EPRA fighters in a base area, late 1970s

November 7, 2017 in the Gregorian Calendar marks the centenary of the Russian Revolution of October 1917 (where the Julian calendar was observed). Despite its eventual defeat, the Russian Revolution ushered in an era where the old systems of oppression and exploitation were fundamentally and fiercely challenged as models for the organization of society. It marked the first successful attempt by socialist revolutionaries to overthrow capitalism and replace it with the rule of the common people. It was a watershed moment in human history, and capitalism and imperialism spent the rest of the twentieth century trying to reverse its successes. As a timely series of articles commissioned by the African American Intellectual History Society for its Black Perspectives feature on the Russian Revolution and the African Diaspora explains, the Russian Revolution came even to inspire a generation of revolutionaries around the world: and Ethiopia was no exception. As students of the Ethiopian revolution know, this was a complicated legacy, and during the Derg time, both pro- and anti-regime forces would claim the same socialist legacy as their own. In my opinion, however, any claim to inherit the spirit of the Russian Revolution by the military regime was entirely illegitimate.

To mark this occasion and provide some clarity, I am transcribing and republishing an article on the meaning of socialism from Abyot, information bulletin of the Foreign Committee of the Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Party, that in turn translates and summarizes an article from the EPRP’s clandestine journal Democracia. This article appears in the Feb.–March 1979 issue (Vol. 4, No. 2) of Abyot. I have re-typed this article and errors of transcription are my own; I’ve made a handful of small spelling and punctuation corrections for legibility. I assume the cited Democracia article is translated to English from the original Amharic by the Abyot editors.

In today’s post-Soviet era, many of these arguments about how the Soviet Union came to betray the original vision and intent of Lenin and the Bolsheviks seem somewhat distant, but in fact they should inform any sober assessment of the continued relevance of socialism to the still-necessary liberation of the world’s peoples. —ISH

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DEMOCRACIA Exposes the ‘Socialism’ of Social-Imperialism

In its Volume 5, No. 4 issue, Democracia, organ of the EPRP, exposes the ‘socialism’ of social-imperialism.

For the broad masses, says Democracia, there is no socialism without democracy and there is no democracy without socialism. Democracy is necessary and useful for the construction of a socialist society. However, social-imperialists and revisionists, presenting themselves as examples are trying to show that ‘socialist construction’ is possible with the absence of any sort of democratic and human rights. That is not all. They have gone to the extent of trying to show how “socialism” can be built under fascism. Exposing their true colours, however, they have shown that democratic and human rights erode socialism, and that socialism and democracy are mutually exclusive.

EPRP’s position, continues Democracia, on the relation between socialism and democracy is diametrically opposed to the position of the social-imperialists and revisionists. At a time when all sorts of anti-socialists are professing about socialism, we have found it necessary to explain in short the principal charateristics which scientific socialism differs from all the ‘socialisms’ of the anti-socialists.

Socialism, says Democracia, is a system which arms the proletariat and broad masses with broad democracy. Socialism is a system which is based on the power and supremacy of the proletariat. Socialism is a system in which the proletariat and broad masses organize themselves in many forms to be able to administer themselves. Socialism is a system in which the proletariat and broad masses acquire more democracy, welfare and development than the capitalist system in the political economic and cultural fields. In the Soviet Union, however, the party which still works in the name of the proletariat is trampling the proletariat and broad masses underfoot and deprives them their democratic rights. It has kept the proletariat aside from political power. It has concentrated all the power in its hands and has become an anti-socialist party of few bureaucrats which defends their bourgeois interests.

Thus continues Democracia, the first socialist country has been turned to be a social-imperialist country. As a bad example and through its practices, policies and influence it has and is still challenging, opposing and fighting against the purity, expansion, development and triumph of socialism. Putting the parties in Eastern Europe, Cuba, Mongolia and Vietnam, who are in power, under control; the Soviet Union has also had these parties establish an anti-democratic and anti-people rule.

The dictatorial rulers of the Soviet Union, says Democracia, have and are still attempting to present the rules of their anti-people and anti-socialist puppets in a number of countries as ‘socialist’. In contradistinction to the struggle of the masses for democracy and socialism, the Soviet rulers have presented the anti-people rule of their puppets as ‘socialist’ in an attempt to prolong the life of the reactionary system and destroy the peoples’ resistance. Hasn’t the demagogue Mengistu’s fascist regime calling itself ‘socialist’ also called the proletariat, broad masses and the proletarian party counterrevolutionaries?

For the social-imperialists and fascists, continues Democracia, socialism means a system of which a regime of handful few dictators has the control of the masses and when the people do not have any control of the government. For them, socialism is being against democracy, anti-proletarian, anti-people and which combines the reactionary superstructure and practices which enables them to maintain their fascist and exploitative rule. The difference between the socialism we are fighting for and the ‘socialism’ of the social-imperialists and fascists is as wide as heaven and earth. To us socialism is a system in which the proletariat and broad masses hold state power; in which they take part in all responsible positions, in which the right of the people to call or change the officials of the government elected locally or at a country-wide level is guaranteed, in which there is a proletarian- led regime that stood for the broad masses of the people.

For the social-imperialists and fascists, ‘socialism’ means depriving the proletariat and broad masses of the people their democratic and human rights; depriving them the right to free speech, press and assembly; and depriving them the freedom of movement in their own country. ‘Socialism’ for the social-imperialists and fascists is a system in which the masses are subjected to constant repression, harassment, torture and execution until they bow to silence. For us, socialism is the exact opposite of this. Socialism without democracy is unthinkable. Socialist democracy is different from and superior to bourgeois democracy both in breadth and form. Socialism is not only a system in which the proletariat and broad masses have the right to free speech, press and assembly and organization; but also the right to sound out their opinions or protests against their regime or any organization without restrictions. Under socialism the masses also have the right to take a different position and make it public, the right to protest. Socialism cannot be a system in which a democracy narrower than bourgeois democracy reigns.

A system in which the proletariat and broad masses do not directly take part in the excercise of power, says Democracia, cannot be socialist. There is no socialism if the proletariat and broad masses do not take part in decisions of government affairs and if they do not administer themselves in a democratic system. Socialism is not democracy for the ruling class and government officials and dictatorship over the masses as it is like in the Soviet Union and its allies. Socialism cannot be a system in which those who oppose are imprisoned, kept in concentration camps, tortured, executed and where the freedom of speech of the masses is abolished.

Under socialism political power is in the hands of the proletariat and broad masses. Thus the existence of the special and highest form of organization of the proletariat, its weapon of struggle and leader, the proletarian party, is indispensable. Without its party the proletariat cannot seize political power. For us, however, a proletarian party is not something that the masses would worship and follow blindly because it claims to be one. It should be one which the masses support and have confidence on due to the correctness of its political positions, the struggle it conducts, its method of work and the day-to-day activity it performs. A proletarian party cannot replace the proletariat to make the revolution. It cannot be commanding and know-all against the proletariat and peasantry once it seizes political power. It is the proletariat and broad masses who are the creators and the driving force of the locomotives of history. This is true under socialism too. The guarantee of the existence of a genuine proletarian party, its source of power and legal base are the masses. The right of the proletariat and broad masses to control their party, to criticize the party, to express their views before any important decision is taken, to oppose or support or to take part in decisions is guaranteed. Socialism does not mean where a party isolated from the masses imposes its dictatorship over the masses as it is in the Soviet Union.

For the social-imperialists, socialism means when few self-proclaimed “geniuses” control state power isolating the party members, suppressing inner-party democracy and speak on behalf of the members of the party. It means where few (or one) individuals become autocrats worshiped and feared like gods. For us socialism means where party members discuss and decide on important decisions, where the leadership is everytime elected, where the party works on the basis of collective responsibility and leadership, where a genuine party which do not have mini-gods seize state power.

For the social-imperialists and fascists socialism is where a policy of chauvinism reigns supreme in the name of ’unity and indivisibility,’ the right of oppressed nations is trampled under the rule of the gun and where national oppression is maintained in many forms.

For us, socialism is a system in which the equality of and right of nations to self-determination is guaranteed; in which the languages, culture existence are respected, in which oppression nations use their own language as the medium of instruction; where there are no national privileges; where unity and assimilation is created on the basis of voluntariness and equality; where proletarian internationalism flourishes; and which is free of chauvinism and narrow national mindedness.

For the social-imperialists, socialism means depriving the political and organizational rights of other political organizations and putting them under their tutelage. It means to claim the right of invading other countries, exploiting peoples, controlling other goverments and abolishing their state sovereignity.

Socialism is democracy, equality and respect of people and countries, brotherhood and proletarian internationalism, justice and peace. What social-imperialism practices is the invasion of Czechoslovakia, dispatching mercenaries to put down national liberation movements of other countries. As an imperialist power, it also competes and contend or collude and agree with other imperialist powers for the plunder and division of the world.

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Quote of the Day: Actions Speak Louder Than Words

"To anyone who does not have a nodding acquaintance to Marxism-Leninism, what is confusing about the regime in Ethiopia is the contradictions in the regime's talk of socialism while it kills communists; in its declaration of 'unrestricted democratic rights to the broad masses' while it massacres workers who staged peaceful demonstration using their declared 'rights,' in its declaration of land reform while depriving the peasants to defend themselves from counter-revolutionary landlords, and so on. The latest act in this historical drama of self-contradictory double talk is the latest proclamation to disarm the people with the bluff of 'arming the people' at the same time." —Abyot, Ethiopian Peoples' Revolutionary Party Foreign Section, March 1977

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.

Late 1976: A Change in Course?

FORWARD, newsletter of WWFES, January 1977

In late 1976 the Derg was rife with internal conflict. Following the elimination of Major Sisay Habte in the summer, tensions increased between Mengistu and his backers in Meison and WazLeague on the one hand, and others in the upper echelons of the Derg including General Teferi Benti, head of state, vice chairman Atnafu Abate, and others including Alemayahu Haile. A number of the regime's reforms seemed to be faltering, and despite a dramatic uptick in violence between the military and the Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Party following a failed assassination attempt on Mengistu Hailemariam and the assassination of a number of Meison figures by the EPRP's urban guerrillas, nobody seemed to be decisively winning the war for public opinion.

At the end of the year, the Derg announced a number of internal changes it hoped would start to cool things down. Although Mengistu, still the Derg’s number two, was not to be completely defanged, his allies in POMOA like Haile Fida and Senay Likke were given notice that POMOA was not necessarily the vehicle for future civilian power its members hoped. These reforms culminated with the late January 1977 speech by Teferi Benti that precipated Mengistu's move against him when he called for national unity and refused to demonize the EPRP. At the beginning of February, Mengistu had Teferi, Alemayahu and several others executed, and Dr. Senay Likke was shot by a disgruntled Derg member in a palace shoot out.

The February events were a watershed moment when Mengistu seized total control of the military government, and when the most disastrous period of repression against the EPRP was begun. This article, from the January 1977 issue of Forward, published by the World Wide Federation of Ethiopian Students and representing the pro-EPRP Ethiopian student diaspora in the United States and Europe, seems to have been written after the internal reorganization was announced, but before the fateful events that would change everything at the beginning of the new year.

The polemical and rhetorical flourishes here are vivid: yet within the dated language and what we know now to be the misplaced certainty of its revolutionary optimism, this article contains some clear insights into the differences between the Derg and the EPRP opposition, including some clear explication of the realities of class rule in the new “Socialist” Ethiopia. The article, and accompanying cartoons, doubles-down on the characterization of the Derg as “fascist.”

I have retyped this article from the original, without editing or correcting mistakes in the original printed piece except for a few minor instances for clarity.

JUNTA “REORGANIZES”: IT IS ANOTHER FRAUD YET!

from FORWARD, Vol. 1, no. 3, January 1977

Cartoon accompanying this article from FORWARD

The last several weeks have seen a lot of fanfare being made regarding the most recent proclamation which "determines" the "powers and responsibilities" of the Ethiopian military junta and that of its Council of Ministers. The junta's mass media has been making wild claims about the "revolutionary" and "Marxist-Leninist" nature of its recent exploits — just like countless other decrees and proclamations that it had issued in the past. And once again the international press, bourgeois and revisionist alike, is echoing this same declarations. The Ethiopian masses, whose heroic struggle and combative initiatives are dealing heavy blows to the fascist junta, have long understood that this and the many others issued in the past are merely expressions of despair and arrogance at worst and sugar-coated bullets of counter-revolution at best. The deceptive nature of this manuscript as well as the disgusting serenade played by the junta's mass media and its"friends" elsewhere merits a few comments.

Any action of a government is determined by the nature of the state and the class it represents. The state in any society is not a body that stands above classes or reconciles class differences, but rather an organ of class rule by which a definite class exercises its dictatorship over other classes. The different kinds of states obtaining in the world today can be categorized broadly into two types of dictatorships — revolutionary dictatorships and counter-revolutionary dictatorships. In the former case, we are referring to the people‘s democratic dictatorship based on the alliance of revolutionary and democratic classes and social strata under the leadership of the working class and its party as well as the state system of the dictatorship of the proletariat (i.e. socialist states). By counter-revolutionary dictatorship, we mean to refer to the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and all other reactionary classes over the broad masses. This could assume a multitude of forms.

The present day Ethiopian state, controlled as it is by the fascist military goons and the social-fascist petty-bourgeois propagandists, both serving the bureaucratic and compradore bourgeoisie, falls within the latter category. Despite the fact that it has meticulously attempted to hide its counter-revolutionary nature by persistently masquerading behind high-sounding "socialist" phraseology and pompous pronouncements and slogans, and this thanks to the Haile Fida-Senai Likke clique of social-fascist intellectuals, it remains to be a puppet of imperialism, especially that of U.S. imperialism, and is used as an instrument for oppressing and exploiting more than 90% of the Ethiopian peoples.

Why are we then being bombarded with such proclamations? What is their real nature? The answers are quite clear. When reactionary classes are besieged, they are led into hypocrisy and into utilizing dual tactics of repression and deception. Hence, they steal the slogans of the masses in order to benumb and confuse the masses so as to preserve their class rule, if only in a new form. Even the notorious Hitler has to masquerade himself as a ‘national socialist,’ as a ‘friend of the working people,’ etc. But Hitler, if it is to be remembered, came to no good end. The military clique and its cohorts are of the same stuff. In their own stupid way they try to sound ‘revolutionary while practising counter-revolution. The words of the great proletarian leader and teacher summarize all of this. “The victory of Marxism in theory,” said he, “compels its enemies to disguise themselves as Marxists; this is the dialectics of history.” (Lenin, “The Historical Destiny of the Marxist Theory”).

In light of the above as well as the unequivocally proven fascistic nature of the Ethiopian junta, how should one see this latest decree about the "new" organizational structure? Under this proclamation, the derg consisting of all its members is called the "Congress" which will have a "central committee"  of 40 and a "standing committee" of 17. Such a reorganization, we are told, is in line with "Marxist-Leninist principles"! And whether one likes it or not, what the junta would like us believe is that it has finally emerged as a Marxist-Leninist organization! But one may be inclined to think that a mere regrouping and change of names cannot transform reality; if this hadn't been so, Ethiopia would have been a socialist country two years ago. One "need' not ask such a question though as one would then become "anarchist", "anti-revolutionary" and what not — labels that the Junta so lavishly attaches to revolutionary and democratic forces.

The other parts of the proclamation deal with the “powers” and "responsibilities" of each of the organs of the derg — its chairman, vice-chairmen, committees, the "congress" and their relations to the council of ministers. Let us just take a pick at their duties proclaimed therein. “The PMAC members assigned to various posts will have the responsibility of tracking down economic saboteurs, bringing them justice...," says one. "The duties of the PMAC members concerned include the disarming of reactionaries both in rural areas and urban centers and arming defence squads guarding the revolution...", says another. We all know, of course, that when the Junta says tracking down economic saboteurs", it means massacring revolutionary workers; when it says "disarming reactionaries, it means disarming the peasants and arming the feudalists and its own hitlerite storm troops; and when it says "guarding the revolution",  it means guarding the counter-revolution. All of these is borne out by the 2-1/2 years of ·its fascist rule! What this reorganization does, in sum, therefore is legalizing the already practised rights of each and every member of the Derg.

But why come at such a time? Since it usurped power, the junta has been beset with contradictions and factions even within its own ranks. Attempted coups and counter-coups, rumours of impending coups, are not unusual these days. Recently, for example, the Abune (the head of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church) had to interfere in order to avoid "bloodshed" of an impending coup, and to "safeguard the revolution' (!). Recent dissatisfactions amongst members of the armed forces which are expressed through mass defections as well as low morale are also shaking the very foundations of its power. Hence this proclamation is an attempt to cover up this state of desperation and to hoodwink the people into believing that there is a "collective" leadership, that the derg is a "democratic" body, etc. But facts are facts and nothing can be further from the truth. Teferi Benti or mengistu, Atnafu or any other demon can not change the nature of the state by decree!

Another cartoon from the January 1977
issue of FORWARD.

One other aspect of the decree which demands close scrutiny is the expressed desire of the junta in coordinating "efforts of progressive forces (read social-fascist renegades and pro-junta elements) to establish a working class party". This, of course, is not a new "effort". Such a talk has been in the air for over two years. We were told at that time that it will be a party of "all classes", "of all people", etc. But for quite a while now the talk about a "working class party has been getting louder and louder. Why this sudden "change of heart"? Since the EPRP, the vanguard of the Ethiopian proletariat and the undisputed leader of the Ethiopian New Democratic Revolution, declared its program over a year-and-a-half ago (after a 3-1/2 years of clandestine existence), the junta and the renegade clique have been thrown into a fit of rage and desperation and their vile scheme of presenting their so-called "party" was heavily frustrated at that time. After that their "Ethiopian socialism" was re-baptized to "scientific socialism", followed by such pompous slogans as "a new democratic revolution", "revolutionary united front", "a working class party", and what not.

What sort of a working class party can they possibly talk about? You have guessed it all: a “working class party” without the working class, no doubt!! The heroic Ethiopian proletariat, which has unequivocally supported, embraced and defended the EPRP, has already passed its verdict on such manoeuvres of the junta when it resolved in its September, 1975 Congress as follows:

"...such being the reality and when the government has suppressed and trampled upon democratic rights, condemned and persecuted the organization of the masses, a party which is formed by the government for its own interest with hand-picked individuals who are neither elected by nor represent in any way the broad masses is unacceptable. Such a party cannot fulfill the interests, needs and objectives of the oppressed masses and as such cannot be supported by the oppressed masses in general and the proletariat in particular. Such a party is a device by which those who are thrown out through the front door worm their way in by the back door. Such a party cannot safeguard and promote the rights and interests of the masses. On the contrary, as its very creation is meant to dupe and lord over the masses, the proletariat vehemently opposes such devious aims and devices." (CELU Resolution)

And it is such a working class which is called "unconscious" of its class interests! And it is its vanguard — the EPRP — which is called "anarchist" and whose liquidation is the principal preoccupation of the junta and its hired intellectual boot-lickers!!

Seen with this in mind their talk about "facilitating the establishment of a working class party" is simply a fraud designed to deny what is already common knowledge. The so-called "All-Ethiopian Socialist Movement", composed of an assortment of social-fascists, agent-provocateurs, declared CIA agents, most of whom have long years of experience in subversion and sabotage within the Ethiopian Student Movement and were ignominiously expelled from it at one time or another, has already been established. It only remains to be declared, "officially" that is . Then why the attempt to cover it up? For a change of name, perhaps!

A few more words about some other aspects of the junta's decree remain to be said. The junta claims that it has a "historic responsibility of preparing the masses and handing over power to whom it belongs — the people." A lofty and welcome move, indeed — if it were not just bubbles, that is! But we all know that this is just wild talk! "Preparing the masses" can only be taken to mean preparing the necessary public opinion for the declaration of their phoney party. Otherwise the masses are already prepared under the leadership of the EPRP to overthrow the dark rule of the fascist junta.

Further, "handing over power to whom it belongs" can only mean handing over power to their "party" — to themselves, that is! "Handing" over power to oneself is called handing over power to the people. What a weird logic! But historic for its weirdness and absurdity nevertheless!!

Such are the features of this perfidious scheme. It is doomed to fail. As these fascists and social-fascists cannot reconcile themselves to their class enemies, i.e. the broad masses of the Ethiopian masses, they have to go on making attempts after attempts, manoeuvres after manoeuvres. How true it is that reactionaries never learn from their mistakes: they make trouble, fail; make trouble, fail again; again and again til their doom! This is the logic of all reactionaries. And these Ethiopian fascists and their intellectual mentors cannot go against this logic!

– end of original text –

Symbolic Confusion, continued

Marx, Engels, Lenin, Siad

Expanding on my previous post, more conflicting imagery:

Wall painting of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Somali president Siad Barre, from formerly socialist Somalia, apparently photographed in Mogadishu in 1991. Socialist Somalia and Socialist Ethiopia fought a short but brutal war, 1977-1978, as the US and USSR abruptly switched clients.

Marx, Engels, Lenin as Trinity

Painting of Marx, Engels and Lenin done in traditional Ethiopian style, source of this photo suggests it was done this way to mimic Ethiopian paintings of the Christian Holy Trinity.

Marx and Engels in Amharic translation.

Ethiopia-printed version of Marx and Engels. Source suggests this is Capital, I'm thinking "The Communist Manifesto" is more likely. Lifegoal: visit the International Institute of Social History collection in Amsterdam. From the same source, a Derg/Workers Party magazine features the familiar silhouettes on a flag:

Stamps from the Derg regime commemorating the 60th anniversary of the Russian Revolution, picturing Lenin, issued in 1977.

Symbolic Confusion - Lenin’s Legacy

Pro-Derg rally in Meskel Square, probably 1984

 “It is still incredible to me that the RRC’s [Relief & Rehabilitation Commission, an Ethiopian government agency] most difficult task was convincing our own leaders of the very existence of a widespread famine that was now swallowing up the entire nation. But their sights were set solely on upcoming anniversary celebration. Throughout the country, red flags and pictures of Mengistu, Marx and Lenin were being distributed.... The usual slogans were posted everywhere: ‘The oppressed masses will be victorious!’ ‘Marxism-Leninism is our guideline!’.... Preparations for the celebration were in full swing, including the phony elections for the newly-formed Marxist-Leninist Party.... Hundreds of North Koreans were in Addis decorating the city. They had been invited during Mengistu’s recent visit to North Korea, where he had been impressed by the colorful ceremonies and meticulously planned parades. Money was poured into new buildings, highways, conference halls, and a huge statue of Lenin in the center of Addis. There was no mention of famine anywhere except in my office.” —Dawit Wolde Giorgis, former RRC head, writing in 1989 about 1984, in Red Tears: War, Famine and Revolution in Ethiopia (pp.134-135)

Marx, Engels, Lenin, Mengistu? Workers Party Conference, 1980s

“What is now happening to Marx’s theory has, in the course of history, happened repeatedly to the theories of revolutionary thinkers and leaders of oppressed classes fighting for emancipation. During the lifetime of great revolutionaries, the oppressing classes constantly hounded them, received their theories with the most savage malice, the most furious hatred and the most unscrupulous campaigns of lies and slander. After their death, attempts are made to convert them into harmless icons, to canonise them, so to say, and to hallow their names to a certain extent for the ‘consolation’ of the oppressed classes and with the object of duping the latter, while at the same time robbing the revolutionary theory of its substance, blunting its revolutionary edge and vulgarising it.”—V.I. Lenin, State and Revolution, quoted in “Down with all Revisionist Distortions Against the Ethiopian Revolution, in the pro-EPRP journal Forward, published by the World-Wide Federation of Ethiopian Students, February 1977.

Pro-Derg rally, probably May Day 1977. Civilian left contingent with portraits of Stalin, Lenin, Marx

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was of course the Russian revolutionary who successfully led the Russian October Revolution of 1917. After decades of revolutionary organizing, his wing of the Russian socialist movement emerged triumphant after years of repression and setbacks. His Bolsheviks had rejected the social-patriotism that virtually destroyed the socialist movement during the first World War, and fought their way to dominance after the February Revolution overthrew the Russian emperor or Tsar. When the Bolsheviks emerged triumphant after October at the head of the world's first socialist country, a world communist movement grew like wildfire around the strategical, tactical and philosophical expansion of Marxism that Lenin used to lead the oppressed and working peoples of Russia to victory. Lenin died in 1924, only a few years after the triumph of October, and it's from that moment that Marxism-Leninism appears as the professed ideology of communists around the globe. It is also from that moment that the seeds of future revisionisms sprout.

Huge poster of Lenin overlooks
pro-Derg rally, 1970s

It's too complicated to address here in detail, but numerous rifts and divisions appeared in the communist movement over the coming decades. Lenin’s Communist Party successor Stalin, confronted by a hostile world and to the need to transform the new Soviet Union into a self-reliant power that could resist counterrevolution and imperialism, lead the communist movement for a while, often subjecting the movement to turns necessitated by the foreign policy needs of Russia. Trotsky's defection in the late 1920s spawned a whole new wing of the movement, and Mao’s innovative road to revolution in China in the 1930s and 1940s ultimately led to another wing.

By the time of the Ethiopian revolution in 1974, competing streams of communist thought all claimed the mantle of Marxism-Leninism, and most pointed back to the same inspirational volumes of Lenin’s oeuvre, printed in competing editions in Moscow, Beijing and clandestine printshops around the world. But it doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that not everyone who calls herself a communist actually means the same thing, and here is the challenging thing about revisionism: people with diametrically opposed politics pretend to use the same words and images to justify their actions. 

“Marxism-Leninism eventually became the new reigning orthodoxy both inside the USSR and its allied communist parties. However, it was no longer a vibrant theory of revolution, but a state religion, a dogma and infallible science used to justify the requirements of whatever the policy the leadership needed it to. Soviet Marxism-Leninism was deterministic, mechanical and economistic.” — Doug Enaa Greene writing on the history of revisionism in ‘The Final Aim Is Nothing’ in Links, International Journal of Socialist Renewal

Mengistu's office in Addis Ababa,
occupied by TPLF fighters in 1991

It then becomes a question of subjectivity to interpret who is actually applying — or synthesizing — Lenin’s ideas to make a revolution, and who is using them as a justification for something else altogether.

When an army led by the Tigrai People's Liberation Front entered Addis Ababa 25 years ago this month and overthrew the Derg's fifteen-year rule, they marched into Mengistu's palace office to reveal a wall of Leninist mementos and communist souvenirs. Clearly Mengistu professed a love of Lenin. But Mengistu had also been engaged in a war of annihilation with others who similarly professed a love of Lenin and an adherence to his ideas.


“Combating every brand of opportunism — be it revisionism or dogmatism, ‘is a question of extraordinary, indeed of primary, importance’ to all Marxist-Leninists engaged in the struggle for true democracy and socialism. After enumerating the many episodes in the long history of arduous struggle waged by the Ethiopian people against internal and external enemies, namely feudalism and western imperialism led by US, ABYOT (vol. 2 no. 7) reminds its readers of the emergence of a fresh enemy in the arena of the Ethiopian democratic revolution, the Soviet hegemonists and their cohorts from Cuba and East Europe.

Feature on Lenin in the pro-EPRP
publication Goh (Dawn), 1975

‘The EPRP did not start to to fight the Moscow counter-revolutionaries only at the time they took the side of fascism and stood against the Ethiopian revolution. When the EPRP was founded it declared that revisionism constitutes a very grave danger and is the main one to the international communist movement. Consequently, the EPRP consistently fought against revisionism both inside and outside the party....’

In a number of its publications, especially in its official organ DEMOCRACIA, the EPRP has been widely teaching the masses the danger posed by the Soviet bureaucrats to the Ethiopian revolution... The supply of arms, ‘experts,’ interrogators, etc. and the diplomatic support the USSR is giving to the crumbling fascist state cannot be isolated from the nature of today’s ‘Soviet’ state. ABYOT describes the ‘Soviet’ Union as a ‘country where democracy has been stifled. It is a country where a clique of bureaucrats rule with iron hands in the name of the working class. It is a country where the working class has no say either in the running of the government or the industries. It is a country where the people are muzzled, where genuine Marxists are hounded....”—from ‘Soviet Hegemonism Exposed,’ in the pro-EPRP journal Forward, WWFES January 1978

Lenin quoted in the pages of EPRP's Abyot, February 1978

By all accounts, the idea of Marxism-Leninism was introduced to the the military Derg by civilian leftists who came from the same largely student-based revolutionary milieu as the EPRP.

Lenin’s ideas were brought to Mengistu first by the likes of Haile Fida and Sennay Likke. Mengistu and his fellows were largely career military officers, isolated from the ideas spreading in the student movement. Indeed while many Ethiopian revolutionaries spent their formative years radicalizing at American universities, Mengistu spent a period in training in the 1960s at US military bases in the American south. Only after “Socialist Ethiopia” was already established, did Derg cadre begin interacting with the Soviet Union, many being sent for education and training in the USSR and Eastern Europe. By 1977, U.S. imperialism had pulled back its support of Ethiopia, and the Ethiopian government needed a strong ally, which it found in the Soviet bloc. It is, of course, left to the observer to decide who best manifested Lenin’s ideas in the course of the Ethiopian revolution.

Soviet propaganda: “Young Ethiopians study the
Russian language, the language of Lenin.”

“It cannot be too strongly maintained that... that the Social-Democrat’s [how communists referred to themselves at that time] ideal should not be the trade union secretary, but the tribune of the people, who is able to react to every manifestation of tyranny and oppression, no matter where it appears, no matter what stratum or class of the people it affects; who is able to generalise all these manifestations and produce a single picture of police violence and capitalist exploitation; who is able to take advantage of every event, however small, in order to set forth before all his socialist convictions and his democratic demands, in order to clarify for all and everyone the world-historic significance of the struggle for the emancipation of the proletariat.” —V.I. Lenin, What Is To Be Done, 1902

A few weeks ago I posted the story of the EPRP’s role in driving the CIA out of the Ethiopian labor movement. Here's a coda to that story that I think suggests something fundamental about the revisionist attitude toward working people, far different than Lenin's.

This account was written by Valentin Korovikov, Pravda's Africa correspondent, in 1979:

“The bankrupt Confederation of Ethiopian Labour Unions had to be replaced by a new Trade Union Association. The law emphasized that in their political and production activities the unions should be guided by socialist principles and by the overall programme for the country's progressive development.... The new labour legislation showed that the military government was taking practical steps to secure the interests of the working people and to improve their life, even though the underdeveloped Ethiopian economy offered few chances for this. The proclamation of workers’ rights helped to expose the demagogy of the ultra-left and anarchist groups that had sought to depict the Dergue as the anti-democratic dictatorship of a military junta.”—Ethiopia: Years of Revolution, p.51

And so the workers’ struggle was reduced to a law that promoted production, banned strikes, and replaced independent working class organization in favor of a top-down state-allied association.

Toward the end of his life, relatively young but in ill health, Lenin was well aware of the challenges to come: the existential challenge of the Soviet Union to survive, and the challenge of keeping the revolutionary flame burning not only in the world movement but inside of Russia itself. In one of his last essays, Lenin worries about the tendencies to entropy and bureaucratization:

“We have been bustling for five years trying to improve our state apparatus, but it has been mere bustle, which has proved useless in these five years, of even futile, or even harmful. This bustle created the impression that we were doing something, but in effect it was only clogging up our institutions and our brains. It is high time things were changed....

25 years ago: Addis Ababa's Lenin statue toppled
in the aftermath of the TPLF victory. Ironically the core
of the TPLF also described themselves as ‘Marxist-Leninists’

In all spheres of social, economic and political relationships we are ‘frightfully’ revolutionary. But as regards precedence, the observance of the forms and rites of office management, our ‘revolutionariness’ often gives way to the mustiest routine. On more than one occasion, we have witnessed the very interesting phenomenon of a great leap forward in social life being accompanied by amazing timidity whenever the slightest changes are proposed.

This is natural, for the boldest steps forward were taken in a field which was long reserved for theoretical study, which was promoted mainly, and even almost exclusively, in theory..... I think that this has happened in all really great revolutions, for really great revolutions grow out of the contradictions between the old, between what is directed towards developing the old, and the very abstract striving for the new, which must be so new as not to contain the tiniest particle of the old....

The general feature of our present life is the following: we have destroyed capitalist industry and have done our best to raze to the ground the medieval institutions and landed proprietorship, and thus created a small and very small peasantry, which is following the lead of the proletariat because it believes in the results of its revolutionary work. It is not easy for us, however, to keep going until the socialist revolution is victorious in more developed countries merely with the aid of this confidence, because economic necessity, especially under NEP, keeps the productivity of labour of the small and very small peasants at an extremely low....” — from Better Fewer, But Better, 1923

This essay, and the whole thing is worth reading, shows Lenin deeply aware of what was happening inside the Soviet government, and with the hindsight of history we can see that everything he talks about in fact came to worsen, not improve. It's not hard to see how the Soviet view of Leninism evolved into something different than the fiery struggles of working and oppressed people for their own emancipation in which it developed, into a kind of roadmap for following a correct institutional model of state control and development. Certainly the cultural revolution in China, winding down by the time of the Ethiopian revolution, represented an attempt to confront this same tendency, harnessing another interpretation of Marxism-Leninism to inspire ongoing revolutionary will and mass democratic participation. Judging by today's China, revisionism won that round as well.

But the ultimate tragedy of revisionism is that it seems to cast its spell mostly only on its own true believers, and the result is a poisoned well. How, now, to present Lenin's bold, insightful and — I believe — actually still relevant and correct, ideas in the context of an Ethiopia where Lenin became the face of oppression?

Workers Party CC member and RRC head Dawit Wolde Giorgis visited a refugee shelter in the town of Korem during the 1984 famine:

“There were a few who still had the strength to shout at us in anger and despair, ‘Why are you coming to see us? We've had so many visitors, why doesn't Mengistu come to see us?’ As if to mock them, even here [in the famine-struck region] the streets were decorated for the upcoming celebration. Heroic posters of Marx and Lenin frowned down upon them in the streets and even inside the shelters. Some, having nothing further to fear from the authorities, were bold enough to point a bony arm at the red flags and shout, ‘That cloth should be covering our bodies, not hanging in the streets! This isn't our wedding, it's our funeral...it's not a time to celebrate it's a time for grief.... Where is the bread? Where is the bread?” —Dawit Wolde Giorgis, op cit, p. 140

The legacy of the Derg's “Leninism”

Ideological Combat

Mao’s works were distributed worldwide in inexpensive, accessible formats.

“[W]ithin EPRP at first there were not what one would term hardliners. For example, there were no Maoists among the nine members of the [original 1972] Central Committee. Amazingly, within the Algerian [exile] group, Gezahegn Endale was a Trotskyite. The others...had a critical outlook and did not espouse either the Moscow, or the Albanian or Peking line. It is possible that this was to be a problem when they later merged with the ‘Abyot’ group.... [In] ESUNA [the Ethiopian Student Union in North America], as time went on...it degenerated into a Maoist sect. As things worsened, ‘Bejing Review’ became the sole approved reading material. On the battlefield, fighting would break out among guerrillas  belonging to one or other school of thought. This proved to be a thorn in the side of the Foreign Relations Committee.’’ —Melaku Tegegn in Bahru Zewde, Documenting the Ethiopian Student Movement, pp. 148-151)

“[Originally] Chinese books on socialism flooded the streets with Mao's red books for everyone in the cities especially for those who could read English....[Eventually] the Soviets advised Mengistu to burn Chinese communist books and condemn Maoism. They also instructed cadres to burn valuable historical books on Ethiopia, published in the West....While playing a role of destroying Ethiopian and Chinese books in the country, the Soviets advised the cadres to observe Soviet holidays, such as Lenin's birthday, Soviet Armed Forces Day, and the Bolshevik Revolution Day.” —Dawit Shifaw, The Diary of Terror, p.110, 117

“Mao Tse Tung has said it is good when the enemy attack us, paints us black and accuses us wildly. The fascist junta [Derg], continues to wildly accuse and smear the name of the EPRP. It has called the EPRP ‘fascist,’ ‘feudal,’ ‘CIA agent,’ ‘anarchist,‘ etc. And now, as if it has found another food label, it has started to label the EPRP ‘anarchist and Trotskyite.’ That these two tendencies are not the same does not worry the junta. The EPRP, which is a Marxist-Leninist Party, had a clear stand on Trotskyism long before even the junta's top dogs heard the word ‘socialism.’ As a Marxist-Leninist Party opposed to all anti-Marxist trends (like Trotskyism, anarchism), the EPRP has emerged as the undisputed vanguard of the proletariat and no amount of vilification and name-calling is going to change this. We say with Enver Hoxha ‘The other truth has been proved right once again. They are enjoying empty phraseology, labeling us as Trotskyites. We tell them openly it is they who have fallen into the bog of Trotskyism.” — Study, Publication and Information Center of the EPRP Foreign Committee, in Abyot, Feb-March 1978

Symbolic Confusion 2 - Hammers and Sickles

From Abyot, 1978. EPRP, EPRA, EPRYL, ELAMA logos.

The hammer and sickle icon was developed in Russia during its 1917 revolution. The hammer symbolizes the proletariat, and the sickle the peasantry. Like Ethiopia, Russia was a country with vast social forces outside the urban working class, and the Bolsheviks wisely sought ways to symbolically reflect this necessary alliance of power and unity against oppression and exploitation. The hammer and sickle became the symbol of communism, wielded proudly by socialist revolutionaries of every imaginable ideological stripe around the world, and wielded menacingly by anti-communist reaction as proof of communism's authoritarian violence.

While the hammer and sickle was replaced by various socialist movements, especially in developing countries seeking to suggest independence from the Soviet Union, it seems to have become the absolute symbol of the Ethiopian revolution's socialist ambitions.

It was adopted by the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Party, despite the EPRP's general animosity to the modern revisionist Soviet leadership, and used by their mass organizations like the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Army (EPRA), the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Youth League, and the EPRP's revolutionary trade union ELAMA.

But in altered form, the hammer and sickle was also used by the All-Ethiopia Socialist Movement (Meison), EPRP's main leftist competitor, and by EMALEDH, the Union of Ethiopian Marxist-Leninist Organizations that was an abortive attempt to unite Ethiopia's civilian left behind the Derg. And of course the hammer and sickle was adopted by the Derg itself, as a symbol of its eventual governing face the Workers Party of Ethiopia, and of Ethiopia's general allegiance to the socialist camp.

Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Army logo (EPRA)

EPRP logo per Wikipedia

Meison journal cover, from Red Terror museum

Meison logo per Wikipedia France

Meison logo per Wikipedia

EMALEDH's Yehibret Demts, Feb 1979

EMALEDH float? Pro-Derg rally.

Derg banners and billboards, Addis Ababa