What are your opinions about Siad Barre?

[willowtooth]

What are your opinions about Siad Barre? What are your opinions about Somalia? What are your opinions about forming "Greater Somalia"


The Barre-led military junta that came to power after a coup d'état in 1969 said it would adapt scientific socialism to the needs of Somalia. It drew heavily from the traditions of China. Volunteer labour harvested and planted crops, and built roads and hospitals.

Almost all industry, banks and businesses were nationalised, and cooperative farms were promoted. The government forbade clanism and stressed loyalty to the central authorities.

A new writing script for the Somali language was also adopted.Although his government forbade clanism and stressed loyalty to the central authorities, the government was commonly referred to by the code name MOD.

This acronym stood for Marehan (Siad Barre's clan), Ogaden (the clan of Siad Barre's mother), and Dhulbahante (the clan of Siad Barre son-in-law Colonel Ahmad Sulaymaan Abdullah, who headed the NSS). These were the three clans whose members formed the government's inner circle. Later, the president Siad Barre incited and inflamed clan rivalries to divert the attention of the public away from his increasingly unpopular regime. By the time his regime collapsed the Somali society began to witness an unrepresented outbreak of inter- and intra- clan conflicts.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siad_Barre

[Guardia Rossa]

Wikipedia ain't a good source, but if he really advocated a "Greater Somalia" and threw the clans one against each other so he could remain in power, I don't think he is nowhere near the left.

"Scientific Socialism" apparently became a codename for "Dictatorship and State-Capitalism"

I wonder why....

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Barre, like Mengistu, was a nationalist strongman who managed to push through some minimal bourgeois-democratic reforms only because of Soviet backing. When the Soviet Union collapsed, Barre and Mengistu were finished. Of course, the states that succeeded them were hardly any better, with Somalia literally fractured into rival statelets, the EPRDF government in Adis Abeba cracking down on all political opposition and the new state of Eritrea - well they're going to have democracy any day now, honest, they've been preparing the stage for elections for over twenty years.

As for "Greater Somalia", the Somali people have a democratic right to live wherever they please. (Of course this is a democratic right and as such is not an absolute - i.e. we wouldn't support imperialist intervention to "free" the Somalis in Ethiopia.) It seems many Somali people in Ethiopia wanted to live outside Ethiopia ruled by the Derg/COPWE/WPE, although it's questionable if they wanted to live under Barre either. We don't have a fixed view on this - it's not that one single unit encompassing all Somalis is a necessity. But if the Somalis want that unit, or if the Somalis in Ethiopia want to secede from Ethiopia and establish their own Ogaden state, that is their democratic right. None of this means supporting Barre, or the Somali state in general. In fact despite his claims of "scientific socialism", Barre represented only the rule of a particular nationalist stratum of the petite bourgeoisie, bourgeois in outlook and ruling over a state where the relations of property were capitalist.

Our (Trotskyists') perspective isn't a united bourgeois Somalia, or a united bourgeois Ethiopia, Djibouti etc. but the socialist federation of the Horn of Africa as part of the united socialist states of Africa, with the borders of Somalia, etc. to be determined on democratic and socialist principles.

[Comrade Jacob]

He seems like a cool chap.

[Os Cangaceiros]

Just another Bonapartist in an era (Cold War) that was full of 'em.

[Spectre of Spartacism]

The Spartacist League/US, when it was still a revolutionary organization in the 1970s, provided a good analysis of Ethiopia. Their analysis could also applied to the other strongmen who ruled over developing countries during the Cold War by trying to play the US and the Soviet Union off against one another in attempting to develop an indigenous bourgeoisie capable of competing with imperialist firms.

Here is what they had to say in the September 1978 issue of Young Spartacus.


Within a month of its declaration of Ethiopian "socialism," the Derg announced the most heralded of its "progressive" measures, the January 1975 nationalization of the banks and insurance companies. In the following month more than 100 industrial firms were taken over by the state. For the junta's apologists, this is undoubtedly proof that Ethiopia is on the "noncapitalist road." But similar sweeping nationalizations have occurred in economically backward countries ranging from Peru to Burma. No one would suggest that the sheiks who nationalized oil production in Kuwait did so for any other reason than to funnel the proceeds into their Swiss bank accounts. Even the Ethiopian monarchy wholly or partially owned sixty industrial firms in the late 1960's.

Nationalized property has a different content depending on whether the state which takes over the firms is bourgeois or proletarian. In states like Cuba, China or the USSR, nationalized property functions as part of a system of planned economy no longer subject to imperialist control. In such workers states, despite the presence of a parasitic petty-bourgeois Stalinist bureaucracy, the old bourgeois state apparatus has been smashed and replaced by a new state machine based solely upon collectivized property. In the case of Burma, Ethiopia, etc., no such social overturn has taken place. In these bourgeois states, nationalizations are an attempt by the weak bourgeoisie to develop its industry in hothouse fashion. In countries where the bourgeoisie is too weak to make such an attempt, the petty bourgeois bonapartists step in and channel the proceeds of state office into developing a full-fledged bourgeoisie.

Another role of such nationalizations is to guarantee the flow of surplus value to the imperialists. The Derg committed itself to compensating the owners of the foreign corporations nationalized in 1975. As the Marxist economist Shane Mage noted in such cases: "If reasonably full compensation is paid, this amounts to mortgaging the future of the country to foreign capitalists. Instead of profit and depreciation, the tribute to imperialism is now called interest and amortization. And this change of form is no blessing to the people of a colonial country. The ability of a private corporation to repatriate profits is limited by the market and thus subject to wide cyclical fluctuations. Payments of principal and interest on government bonds, on the other hand, must be met in both good and bad years, even if it requires great sacrifices from the native population. Compensation payments thus have the effect of transforming the national government into a medium for the extraction of surplus value from the native working class and its transfer to foreign capitalists." -The Colonial Revolution Capitalist or Socialist? (1960)

The Derg spelled out its continuing ties to imperialism in its "Declaration on Economic Policy of Socialist Ethiopia," which explained that, "There are factors which make the participation of private capital both foreign and domestic not only beneficial but also essential" (Africa, April 1977). This was confirmed by the government-controlled Ethiopian Herald (10 September 1977) which announced, "local businessmen and industrialists are also encouraged to continue their functions in serving the interests of the broad masses."

[willowtooth]

Just another Bonapartist in an era (Cold War) that was full of 'em.

how so???

[Os Cangaceiros]

How so...what? He was a military official who seized power in a country and promised to institute ostensibly progressive reforms (often using the language of socialism and anti-colonialism). There was a lot of that going around in that general time period. Machel in Mozambique, Sankara in Burkina Faso, Alvarado in Peru, Nasser in Egypt, the list goes on...

[Sentinel]

He seems like a cool chap.

Infraction for spam. It is bad enough to post oneliners in the Learning forum, but totally contentless ones will certainly not be tolerated.