[Militant No. 395 – 3rd March 1978, p. 10]
In the last few weeks the Ethiopian regime has begun a massive counter-offensive against Somali-backed forces in Ogaden, the region of Ethiopia claimed by Somalia. From all accounts, vast quantities of Russian arms have been air-lifted in and the Ethiopian army has been stiffened with about 6,000 Cuban advisers.
World-wide predictions in the capitalist press that the Dergue’s regime was about to collapse, because of the war in Ogaden, the bloody battles in Eritrea and turmoil within Ethiopia, are being confounded.
Quite apart from the massive aid now being received from the Eastern bloc, the Ethiopian regime has acquired an enormous resilience through the land reforms and nationalisation measures which have given it a mass basis, particularly among the peasantry.
United States imperialism is incapable of intervening directly against Ethiopia in this post-Vietnam era. The capitalist powers have had to content themselves with secondary support for Ethiopia’s enemies, mainly through the Arab states supporting sections of Eritrean liberation movement and Somalia.
Yet while the Dergue has been consolidating its position and preparing for counter-offensives on two fronts, the country has certainly been convulsed by violent struggles. There has been a bloody struggle for power within the Dergue itself, while at the same time the Dergue has launched a savage repression against all its political opponents.
What, then, is going on in the Horn of Africa? The key to understanding the complex and rapid events undoubtedly lies in an analysis of the revolutionary changes which have occurred in Ethiopia since the fall of Haile Selassie in 1974.
The Ethiopian revolution was set off in 1974 by a mutiny in the army. Profound discontent among the junior officers and in the lower ranks reflected a deep crisis in the feudal despotism of Haile Selassie. For the young officers – like the students and intellectuals who had already openly demonstrated their opposition to the regime – the Wollo famine, in which over 100,000 died early in 1974, became a symbol of all that was rotten and corrupt in Ethiopian society.
At first, the wider aims of the young officers were vague. Linked to their immediate demands for improved professional status was their desire for the thorough reform of the country. But once they toppled the Emperor’s own government, they unleashed powerful forces for change, unforeseen and beyond their control.
Dergue Sparks Mass Upheaval
The Dergue, the provisional military administrative council, quickly took power into its own hands. Like its counterpart in Portugal, the Armed Forces Movement which brought down Caetano, the radical officers triggered off a revolutionary upheaval. Ferment among the soldiers, strikes by workers, the arousal of the cruelly exploited and oppressed peasantry, and demonstration by the students, pushed the Dergue irresistibly to the left.
When the Dergue took over, however, they found that the levers of power had gone dead. As with the AFM in Portugal, they faced the complete crumbling away and collapse of the old regime. Far from developing the economy, capitalism and imperialism, in so far as they had penetrated Ethiopian society, had only intensified its problems. Given the enormous pressure for change, bottled up for so long under Haile Selassie, the Dergue was forced to carry out fundamental social changes to ensure it kept its own position of power.
Each move of the counter revolution, based primarily on the big landlord families which formed the backbone of the old ruling class, only served to push the Dergue forward. As the original, ‘moderate’ leadership of the Dergue hesitated and stalled they were pushed aside by the radicals, like Lt-Col. Mengistu Haile Mariam, who were prepared to go the whole way. The pace of events, moreover, was accelerated by the crisis in Eritrea and Ogaden and the threat of intervention backed by the capitalist powers.
Thus, utilising the revolutionary energy provided by the mass movement of workers and peasants, the Dergue presided over rapid social changes which spelled the end of landlordism and capitalism and effected a decisive break with world imperialism.
Early in 1975 land reform measures which ended feudal landlordism and chattel slavery were carried through. All the main industries and banks were nationalised. Education and welfare began to be extended to much of the rural population for the first time. Peasant associations took over administration in many areas; and workers’ and peasants’ militias were formed “to defend the revolution.”
Does all this, it must be asked, add up to a ‘socialist revolution’?
The Direction of Social Change From Above
As it implemented sweeping changes, the Dergue increasingly adopted Marxist language. It now describes itself as ‘Marxist-Leninist’. In reality, however, the Dergue has nothing in common with the Marxism of Lenin and the Bolsheviks who led the Russian revolution.
The fundamental changes over which the Dergue has presided could not have happened without the intervention of the masses. But the country’s barbarously low cultural level, the weakness of the working class and the absence of a genuine Marxist party, have meant the direction of the revolution from above by an officer caste drawn from the middle layers in society.
The weakness of world capitalism almost automatically ruled out the stabilisation of the regime on a capitalist basis. Step by step, without any conscious strategy, the Dergue was pushed by the threat of counter-revolution and the pressure of the masses into taking ‘socialist’ measures. The language of Marxism was adopted after the event, as a rationalisation. Because the changes were directed from above, and were not determined by the democratic initiative and control of the workers and peasants, the Ethiopian revolution has from the very beginning taken a distorted form.
Compelled to break from the chain of world capitalism, the Dergue turned to the ready-made model of the deformed workers’ states in Russia and Eastern Europe. From the start, the officers adopted the bureaucratic methods and policies that came to predominate in Russia, after the isolation of the revolution and with degeneration of workers’ democracy and the crystallisation of a bureaucratic ruling caste represented by Stalin.
Not only has the Dergue adopted the Stalinist model, but given the division of the world into two camps, dominated by US imperialism and the Russian bureaucracy respectively, the new Ethiopian regime inevitably gravitated towards the latter and already has become dependent on Russian aid and support. This can only mean that it will increasingly come to replicate its dominant counterpart in Russia.
The abolition of landlordism and capitalism in Ethiopia is nevertheless a tremendous step forward. For the first time, millions of peasants have been lifted from the position of pack animals to play a part in the development of society. In spite of all the difficulties, the land reforms have undoubtedly given the Dergue an enormous fund of popularity among wide sections of the peasantry.
But the bureaucratic character of the regime makes it certain that the revolution will only be secured at enormous human cost. This has already been made clear in two key respects: (1) by the violent repressive character of the internal political struggle; and (2) by the bloody national conflicts in Eritrea and Ogaden, which have turned the Horn of Africa into a new “cock-pit of the powers” (albeit by proxy as far as the US is concerned).
Political Repression and Bloody Purges
In Ethiopia the revolution has been faced with fundamental tasks comparable to those of the Russian revolution of 1917:
(I) the carrying through of a fundamental land reform, historically the task of the capitalist class, but indefinitely postponed because of the extreme weakness and political incapacity; (ii) telescoped with the first task and all the changes that go with it, the nationalisation of modern industry, the key to socialist development and historically the task of the working class.
In Russia, the Bolshevik party led by Lenin and Trotsky based themselves on the small, but concentrated and well organised, working class which through its programme gained the support of the poor peasantry. The tasks of the revolution were carried out through the soviets of workers’, soldiers’ and sailors’, and peasants’ representatives, the most democratic institutions ever created. This alone guaranteed the defeat of the counter-revolution and the foreign capitalist intervention in the first period after 1917.
The Dergue, however is using the entirely different methods employed by the Stalinist dictatorship which usurped the democratic workers’ control exercised through the soviets. Thus the internal political struggle in Ethiopia since the overthrow of Haile Selassie has been stained with bloody purges and horrifying repression.
Dergue’s Terror
In recent months the ‘red terror’ has reached unprecedented heights. “A figure of 80,000 to 100,000 political prisoners in all would probably fall short of the real number,” writes ‘Le Monde’s’ correspondent (16th February). Reports coming out of the country indicate that summary trials, public executions and night-time assassinations of the Dergue’s opponents are the nightmarish norm.
The Dergue now brands most of its opponents as “members of the EPRP” (Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Party). Actively opposed to the regime before 1974, the EPRP, which was mainly based on students, welcomed the Dergue’s social measures but expressed opposition to the military leaders’ dictatorial methods. In Autumn 1976, the EPRP characterised the Dergue’s regime as “fascist” and began to prepare a guerrilla struggle in the countryside.
It was the assassination of leading members of the Dergue by the EPRP which provided the justification for the government’s bloody purge against the EPRP or suspected EPRP militants. These mistaken tactics indicate that the EPRP is far from having a clear Marxist perspective. But because it offers virtually the only active opposition to the Dergue’s dictatorship within Ethiopia, the EPRP has undoubtedly won significant support from young workers looking for a non-military, democratic road to socialist revolution.
For Marxists, the leading role of the working class, even in a country where they form a minority of the population, is of key importance. In Ethiopia, the trade unions based on the working class concentrated in the big (mainly textile) factories around the capital played a crucial part in destroying the old regime and in providing the steam to implement the Dergue’s nationalisation measures.
Yet the Dergue soon showed itself hostile to the independent action of the workers. In December 1975, less than a year after it took over the 75 major companies, the Dergue decreed the abolition of the old Confederation of Ethiopian Labour Unions and its replacement by the state-controlled All-Ethiopian Trade Union, in which opposition to the Dergue was outlawed.
Even in the countryside, where the regime is most popular, measures have been taken to curb the initiative of the masses. When the land reforms were carried out, peasant associations, or ‘kebeles’, were formed in many areas to supervise the reforms and take over local administration. More recently, these bodies, originally organs of popular power, have been transformed into agencies of control from above, acting as “committees of public safety” to suppress, exile, imprison, or execute all opposition elements.
Under Mengistu, the Dergue has also moved against the ‘Marxist’ intellectuals with whom it worked to begin with. When they first seized power, and were groping their way forward, the young officers looked to the intellectuals for support. As in other under-developed countries, the intellectuals exerted a disproportionate political influence. Intellectuals returned from exile in Europe supplied the Dergue with Marxist terminology and ideas. For a time, the Meison (All-Ethiopian Socialist Movement) a ‘Marxist’ party based on middle class intellectuals, acted almost as a civilian ‘politburo’ to the Dergue.
In January 1975, 40,000 students were sent to the countryside to help carry through the reforms, and played an important part in raising the political awareness of the peasantry.
Soon enough, however, the Dergue began to fear the rival influence of the intellectuals and the danger that they would channel deeper-rooted opposition. In the Summer of 1975, the Dergue recalled the rural ‘Zematcha’ of the students. It began to warn against the “dangers of ultra-leftism” and to identify “law and order” with the security of the revolution.
In October of last year serious fighting erupted in Addis Adaba, provoked by the execution in jail of the leaders of the Meison, which had previously been forced underground. Over 350 were killed in fighting in the capital in the space of a few days.
In November, the deputy head of state, Lt-Col, Afnatu Abate was deposed and executed. He himself had been vice-president of the Dergue the previous February, when Mengistu had replaced the former vice-president, Brigadier Teferi Bante, who had been executed. Thus, through a bloody internal struggle, Mengistu concentrated the leadership of the Dergue in his own hands.
Following this, the Dergue intensified its campaign against the EPRP. Gun battles became a nightly occurrence in Addis Adaba. Various reports suggested that over 3,000 students and workers were killed last November alone. “The purges among members of the EPRP have been much more drastic than the killings six months ago, when bodies, including those of children, were left by the roadside as a warning to the public,” stated one report at the end of November.
These developments continuing now, clearly testify to the Bonapartist character of the Dergue and the complete lack of democracy in the new state organs created by the regime.
The Character of Ethiopian Regime
Next week we will deal with the struggle in Eritrea; the war between Ethiopia and Somalia; and the internal ramifications of the developments in the Horn of Africa.
Meanwhile, we have to ask: what attitude should socialists take to the momentous changes in Ethiopia in the last four years?
First, it is necessary to recognise the fundamentally progressive character of the social changes that have taken place under the Dergue. Landlordism and capitalism have been abolished. The fact that the Dergue was forced to carry through the land reform and the nationalisation of industry is proof of the utter inability of capitalism to develop countries like Ethiopia, and these measures provide the only means by which the country can be pulled into the modern world.
At the same time, however, it is equally necessary to adopt an implacably critical attitude towards the dictatorial, bureaucratic regime that has arisen from the revolution. Its reactionary, nationalistic position on the national question (which we will come to later) is the counterpart of its repressive role internally.
Ethiopia cannot be regarded as a socialist state, only as a deformed workers’ state, in which new social relations corresponding to the interests of the working class have been established in a grotesquely distorted manner.
Some of the basic economic tasks of the socialist revolution have been taken on by military middle class leaders because such terrible social contradictions have developed that Ethiopia could no longer wait for change. Under the conditions of extreme backwardness which prevail in Ethiopia, a Bonapartist leadership has been pushed into pre-empting the tasks of a genuine socialist leadership because of the weakness and isolation of the Ethiopian working class – and because of the long delay of socialist revolution in the advanced countries of western capitalism.
With its mass basis among the peasantry and aid from the Russian bureaucracy, it is very unlikely that the regime of the Dergue will fail to consolidate itself in the next period. But the revolution itself can only be taken forward through a struggle for democracy by the working class. Its demands must be:
- Freedom of speech, assembly, and the press;
- Democratic trade unions independent of the state;
- Democratic workers’ control and management of the nationalised industries;
- Soviets of democratically elected workers’, soldiers’ and peasants’ representatives;
- The abolition of the army and the placing of the workers’ and peasants’ militias under the control of the soviets to defend the gains of the revolution;
- The right of the peoples of Eritrea, Ogaden and other national minorities to self-determination;
- For a Socialist Federation of Ethiopia and Eritrea and Somalia;
- For a Socialist Federation of Africa.
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