Mengistu

[Rudi]

Are there any admirers or those who are sympathetic to the former president of ethiopia and communist, Mengistu? Do you guys Know of any books in English about him and the period called the "Red terror" or the communist military junta called the Derg which are sympathetic or at least not biased in any way?

Cheers

[Savage]

There's somone on revleft whose user name is 'Mengistu Haile Mariam'.

[Die Neue Zeit]

His book is particularly strong in examining the mass organizations that the Derg created to engage the peasants and urban workers, notably the peasant associations and kebelles. Based on his examination, I reached the conclusion that these were genuinely democratic structures for people to control the state.

Assuming that the kebelles were one avenue of working-class political organization (and hopefully an independent one), what did Derg do re. unions?

To what extent was there state aid for worker cooperatives?
To what extent was there a Kulturkampf of sorts against organized religion and especially groups headquartered abroad?
To what extent was there a strong but managed party system (say, a separate party for the peasants in a national unity government)?
To what extent were the land holdings, banks, natural monopolies, and the commanding industrial heights under state ownership?
To what extent were "goons" and "thugs" used to repress the bourgeoisie and liberal opposition, such that the only property owners were the "national" petit-bourgeoisie?

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

Do you guys Know of any books in English about him and the period called the "Red terror" or the communist military junta called the Derg which are sympathetic or at least not biased in any way?

Africa in Struggle: National Liberation and Proletarian Revolution (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0910383006?ie=UTF8&tag=prikeypre-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0910383006) - Daniel Fogel

Product Description

AFRICA IN STRUGGLE takes a fresh approach to African history. It chronicles and analyzes African liberation movements and counter-movements -- from initial African resistance against European colonial invasion to the major political upheavals since 1945. Fogel shows how the aborted revolutions in Algeria and Kenya set back African history by reimposing repressive rule under a post-colonial regime. The civil wars in Congo/Zaire and Nigeria, abetted by competing imperialist interests, set back African history even more by aggravating ethnic tensions and resentments. On the other hand, victorious workers' and peasants' revolutions in Angola, Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau provided tantalizing vistas of freedom and creative social initiative.
Fogel brings a sharp theoretical perspective to the complex and often confusing array of people's revolts, military coups and civil wars that have shaped much of African history since the second world war. He exposes how emergent African ruling elites often disguise their class and ethnic oppression of the people with pseudo-liberating slogans drawn from socialist and communist theories. He examines pan-African nationalism in the light of African liberation movements on the ground. He deals in depth with the theories and practice of Kwame Nkrumah, who took over the colonial state in Ghana from the departing British rulers and tried to reorient it to serve the people -- and of Amilcar Cabral, who patiently prepared a grassroots revolutionary movement in Guinea-Bissau that, after ten years of armed struggle, broke Portuguese colonial rule.

From the Inside Flap

"We are now in a position to say a few words about D. Fogel's book Africa in Struggle," wrote a revolutionary student in Ghana to ism press. "We found it to be an excellent book on Africa of comparable importance to [Walter] Rodney's How Europe Underdeveloped Africa."Its analysis is rigorously Marxist-Leninist (in the best term of the word), and comes like a gush of fresh air amidst the stale...bourgeois, liberal, pseudo Marxist writings on Africa. Rightly the crucial importance of the state and its interplay on the policies of a regime is realized and with this recognition the error of many well meaning authors who...end up echoing the so-called 'revolutionary' role of many petty-bourgeois regimes which institute a few reforms, dabble in rhetoric, and deepen the distortions of the national economy which they put under the direct supervision of the bourgeois state machine."

468 pages. $8.66

[Chimurenga.]

I would absolutely recommend this book: http://fuckyeahmarxismleninism.tumblr.com/post/538364787/the-ethiopian-revolution-and-the-struggle-against

You can read it and/or download it as well and it's written from a Marxist perspective.

[Red Commissar]

What is he doing now btw? Has anyone spoken to him since he left the country?

[Chimurenga.]

What is he doing now btw? Has anyone spoken to him since he left the country?

He's laying low in Zimbabwe and avoiding prosecution in Ethiopia. His memoris are supposed to be coming out sometime in the future.