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| Popular demonstration during the February 1974 Ethiopian Revolution; photo from the Italian Communist newspaper L'Unita |
I have finally immersed myself in enough readings to start
identifying issues and asking questions. I thought it would be useful
to organize my thoughts into the following “questions,”
identifying themes and patterns for further reading, thought,
analysis, and ultimately, writing. I am neither a trained historian nor academic, but as
someone who has been a leftist activist for a large portion of my
adult life I find a surprising depth of relevance in the story of the
Ethiopian revolution to themes which continue to confront any
movement for revolutionary change.
It's extraordinary to find this exciting, heartbreaking,
fascinating history told not a century after the fact but with the
immediacy of eyewitness observation from participants in living memory.
And in a leftist culture dominated by Eurocentrism and the
increasingly arcane minutiae of early 20th-century Europe,
it's refreshing to find this relevance and inspiration hiding in
plain sight in the relatively recent history of sub-Saharan Africa.
Some of these questions are
intended to be provocative. As I have written before, I do not
consider myself an impartial observer but a partisan of actual
liberatory socialist revolution. After my initial research I find my initial loyalties to the EPRP “side” fundamentally unchallenged, but I think there are some hard issues
that shouldn't be ignored. My investigation has definitely revealed
some sad chapters and difficult questions that I think it would be
dishonest not to address. Some of these questions I obviously have
preliminary opinions on.
Read my original statement of intent about this blog here.
Follow my reading list here (A work in progress).
(A short key to abbreviations for the unfamiliar appears at the
end of this document)
***
1. Ethiopia before and during its 1970s revolution bore a stark
resemblance to a telescoped version of Tsarist Russia and the Russian
revolution. Unlike the rest of Africa, the failure of colonialism to
subjugate most of Ethiopia for an extended period left a highly
organized indigenous feudal empire intact, containing the growing
seeds of capitalist development in a starkly evident class society
where both an urban proletariat and a rural peasantry were suddenly
becoming self-aware. The revolution snowballed during the lives of
one young generation, forcing that generation to
invent political praxis for itself in a country with
very little
political tradition. Suddenly
exposure to the global Marxist-Leninist left and the civil
rights/Black power movements in the US blossomed into the need to make life-or-death strategical decisions. The EPRP, organized
clandestinely and abroad in 1972 and formally revealed in 1975 is
said to be Ethiopia's first political party of any sort. Ethiopian revolutionaries reached out to China, to the Palestinian resistance, to the socialist countries of the Soviet bloc, and to Arab nationalist regimes for assistance, receiving guns, training, books...and heavy introduction to the internal contradictions of the world's socialist movements. But in the Ethiopian February revolution, it was as though Kerensky himself remained at the helm, simultaneously hijacking and repressing the revolution to prevent an Ethiopian October. What does
the ultimate failure of the revolution teach us about the application
of lessons of classical Bolshevism and other communist trends? Was
this the last possible revolution of this classical type?
2. The Western left’s not-yet-successful reliance on
strategies for socialism involving the development of mass,
essentially reformist workers parties has been historically
counterposed in practice variously by those influenced by Maoism (in
favor of people’s war and rural armed struggle); by those in a
Soviet orbit (in favor of military bonapartism and ex post facto
development of mass organizations); and by anarchists/autonomists (in
favor of urban insurrection or autonomous parallel development). The
EPRP —attacked as “anarchists” by their enemies, though
adhering to Marxism-Leninism — found success as a mass, clandestine
urban party, yet sought unsuccessfully to become a guerrilla
movement. The EPRP deeply influenced mass organizations like trade unions (CELU,
teachers), the Zemacha campaign (mass literacy movement), student
groups (especially in the diaspora); organized clandestine
fractions in the military (Oppressed Soldiers Organization), inside
the Derg, inside Kebeles (formal community centers), inside the
police, an underground revolutionary trade union (ELAMA), an
underground youth organization (EPRYL), and urban and rural military
units. It published several regular underground journals with mass
national distribution and readership and participated where possible in public discussions in
the legally sanctioned press. What does the EPRP’s experience of
organizational models and strategies teach us?
3. Thousands and thousands
of young revolutionaries died at the hands of the Derg regime and its leftist allies, and
targeted assassinations by the EPRP took many lives. Did the EPRP's insistence on armed
struggle provoke the “Red Terror” or was it the correct response
to particularly vicious repression? The EPRP vacillated between
calling the Derg and its civilian leftist allies “fascists” and
pondering overtures of unity with those forces. Was there ever a
basis for unity? Was the Derg “fascist”? What is the
verdict on the lethal sectarianism of the Ethiopian left: EPRP vs.
Meison/POMOA, EPRP vs. anja (factions). What are the historical
verdicts on the cases of Fikre Merid, Getachew Maru and Berhanemeskel
Reda; Senay Likke and Haile Fida; Tesfaye Debessay?
4. The competitive EPRP and Meison originated
organically in the Ethiopian left/student movement, especially in the
diaspora, and found favor in segments of the urban proletariat and
petit-bourgeoisie. Yet both were outflanked by Colonel Mengistu, who
seems to have had no history on the left before the February 1974
revolution. Mass action drove the revolution while political power
was confined to a relatively small collection of players inside the
government and later the military. The relationships between (and
inside) the Derg, the government, the military, and the civilian left
were far more complex than revealed at first glance. How did the Derg
successfully coopt the revolution and check the civilian left? Where
did Mengistu's ideology come from? Mengistu seems to have followed
scripts first from Meison/POMOA and later the Soviet bloc, launching
legitimate (if incomplete) revolutionary reforms like literacy and
land redistribution, while consolidating his personal power through
repeated purges and coups inside the ruling body. LeFort says his
mobilization of the lumpen and declassed peasantry was the key to his
social base outside the military. The one reform he resisted, and
what might be considered the primary demand of the EPRP, was popular
democracy. In a country where most of the competitors for power
claimed to be for socialism, what does this battle over democracy
suggest? Here the Maoist doctrine of “New Democracy” found itself
in direct contradiction to “National Democratic Revolution.” How
was EPRP's call for revolutionary popular democracy against what it
saw as the repeating phenomenon of the African military dictator
different than counterrevolutionary democracy movements in other
socialist countries? In an ongoing revolutionary situation, who or
what is the State? How did the class struggle actually combine and
unfold in the revolution? (Peasantry, Proletariat, Urban
Petit-bourgeoisie, Rural landowning class, Feudal
class/Royalty/Comprador Bourgeoisie, Lumpen Proletariat, National
Bourgeoisie). (Side note: ponder Nicaragua where an
assortment of civilian left groups maintained shifting levels of
opposition and critical support to the post-revolutionary
Sandinista regime in the 1980s).
5. If politics were underdeveloped in
Ethiopia, nationalism was not. Ethiopia resisted Italian invasion twice,
losing its self rule only for the period of 1936-1942. Ethiopia’s
revolution was deeply connected to the struggles of national
minorities. Like Russia, Ethiopia is a country of diverse national
identities historically dominated by a single ethnic group. Rene
LeFort calls Eritrea (and the relationship of Eritrea to Ethiopia is up for discussion) the “crucible” of the Ethiopian revolution,
citing a more developed political tradition in colonial Eritrea and
noting the dominance of ethnic Eritreans in the general Ethiopian
radical milieu. Wallelign Mekonnen’s groundbreaking paper on the
national question is virtually the founding document of the Ethiopian
civilian left (and Wallelign's death in a 1972 airplane hijacking is a portent of future tragedy). EPRP attempted to negotiate this minefield, and yet
ultimately found itself at odds with TPLF and EPLF, despite endorsing
Eritrean independence. Today’s Ethiopian federalism, widely seen as
the oppression of the whole nation by the Tigrayan minority ethnic
group, makes nobody happy: unrest involving national minorities like
the Oromo people is today again dominating headlines. Upon the overthrow of the Derg, newly independent
Eritrea promptly found itself at war with its long-term allies in the former
TPLF. What are the lessons here regarding self determination, multi-ethnic
states, and the relationship of political to ethnic conflicts? Is there
any conflict between the consciousness of national liberation and the
consciousness of socialism?
6. Ironically, the avowedly socialist Derg
remained military supplied by the United States for its first two years in power. After
it eliminated the civilian left, the Derg thoroughly coopted socialism
in a statist model a la Eastern Europe, only to abandon
socialism as the Soviet Union floundered, on the eve of itself being
displaced, in the very late 1980s. The Derg was overthrown by the TPLF, the
core of which was the cadre of MLLT, which upon assuming power in
turn abandoned Marxism-Leninism and allied with the United States.
Though some argue little continuity with the classic EPRP suppressed
by the Derg remains, today's EPRP factions have officially renounced socialism.
EPLF-ruled independent Eritrea is ranked (at least by its enemies) as
among the most repressive states on the planet. The “People's
Republic” of China is developing a massively predatory relationship
with Ethiopian industry and agriculture. What are the legacy and
prospects of three failed attempts at socialist power for the
liberatory project promised by socialism to the future of Ethiopia? By 1978, the two main wings of the civilian left now both in opposition to the Derg (as well as to each other), and the ruling Derg itself, all used the iconic hammer and sickle as their symbol. Addis Ababa's massive Lenin statue, built by a regime that arguably had little in common with Lenin's actual ideology, was pulled down by crowds in 1991 celebrating legitimate liberation from tyranny.
Is the well poisoned?
7. It wouldn’t be an overstatement to
say that imperialism has wreaked havoc on the Horn of Africa for well
over a century. Did Italian imperialism import class consciousness
and post-feudal political consciousness via Eritrea? The Ethiopian
royalty earned respect for its resistance to Italian imperialism in
both the 1890s and the 1930s, and used that reputation to attempt to
outflank “African socialism” as a pro-American pole in
continental politics during the independence wave of the 1950s and
1960s. The royalty's domestic reputation began to fail only in the
late 1960s, collapsing in the wake of famine in the early 1970s. US
imperialism and the Soviet Union abruptly swapped sides between
Ethiopia and Somalia in 1976-1977; and then the US switched sides
again after the fall of both the Ethiopian and Somali regimes in the
early 1990s, turning Somalia into a collection of failed states,
ethnic enclaves, and bases for reactionary Islamic fundamentalists,
and turning Ethiopia into a proxy for regional US military power. Chinese
capital (imperialism?) appears a significant motor force in Ethiopia
today. Cuba’s intervention in Ethiopia against Somali invasion was
decisive, yet not extended to the Eritrean front, eventually
resulting in Eritrean secession. Leftist opposition groups in
Ethiopia in the 1970s found themselves in the middle of a hot battle
in the Cold War, ideologically challenged by being targeted by both
imperialism and the Soviet bloc. What are the prospects for
independent national struggle in a world dominated by neocolonialism,
imperialism, social imperialism, and neoliberalism?
8. Many people, unfortunately, in my opinion, including far too
many leftists, view history as the progression of actions of great
(or terrible) men. To look at the Ethiopian Revolution as merely the
story of Mengistu Hailemariam is I think to make a serious
misjudgment of how history happens, of how, in this case, the
Ethiopian revolution unfolded. He was a key figure, for sure, and
certainly for a moment triumphant, and more than a little villainous.
But what Marxism teaches us about the people being the motor force of
history, this is actually true: What the focus on Mengistu reveals to
me, at least, are all the ideological weaknesses of what I would call revisionism (and
let me say here clearly that I reject out of hand the term
“Stalinist”): the post-war Soviet top-down method of socialism by directive, military
force, and the willful wishful thinking of too small a political
minority. This unfolded repeatedly (and ultimately unsuccessfully and
often tragically) in the third world: South Yemen, Afghanistan,
Benin, Burkina Faso, Madagascar, etc. It's true that 20th-century
socialism was ultimately politically outgunned by Western
imperialism, but I think that the broadly-defined pro-Soviet project
of state socialism also collapsed worldwide under the weight of its own
contradictions. (Ironically given what, in my opinion, is socialist
Cuba's problematic role in Ethiopia, I think the survival of Cuban
socialism into the 21st century is in fact a positive counter example
of how important mass popular support for a revolution actually is). It seems that
EPRP's leaders were too busy living their moment of
history in a fiery flash to deliver ideological or theoretical
innovation at their high watermark, at least from the perspective of
my initial investigations, and without knowledge of Amharic. Few survived to have the benefit of
hindsight. Survivors writing today have focused on righting the
historical record, or apologizing for their actions, or preserving
the memory of what was lost: most seem pretty adamant in their
ideological renunciation of the old EPRP's values. So the final
questions are left to us, observers from a geographic and historical
distance: Is there an overarching lesson from the Ethiopian
revolution for the revolutionary project as a whole? What would
actual revolutionary democracy look like? How, next time, do the good
guys win?
I would be interested to exchange ideas with anyone who has studied this revolution.
Notes:
EPRP: Ethiopian People's Revolutionary
Party
Meison: All-Ethiopian Socialist Movement
POMOA:
Provisional Office of Mass Organization Affairs
TPLF: Tigray
People's Liberation Front
EPLF: Eritrean People's Liberation
Front
MLLT: Marxist-Leninist League of Tigray
CELU:
Confederation of Ethiopian Labor Unions
Derg: Amharic for “committee,” a group of military officers who seized power in 1974
