Mengistu Haile Mariam

[Intifada]

This man was head of state of Ethiopia from 1977 to 1991.

I have heard the term "Marxist Dictator" being applied to him, and that his regime was brutal and repressive.

In the late 70s apparently thousands of suspected enemies were killed in the "Red Terror".

He was granted asylum in Zimbabwe, hiding from from attempts by Ethiopia to extradite him to face trial by the current authorities in the country.

I want to know the views of other members on this forum about this man, and the extent to which the Soviet Union and Cuba assissted him.

[Intifada]

Nothing?

[Bealfan]

Comrade,

I'm Eritrean, I have known Mengistu's brutal regime as I have lived through it.

I think I can answer your question why Mengistu is never a true socialist.

As you know, Mengistu came to power through a coup and killing the Emperor of Ethiopia HaileSlasie and his 55 Ministers. although the government reported that the EMperor died of sickness while he was in prison, it was a widely known fact that Mengistu shot the Emperor himself and buried him under his office.

When Mengistu came to power, he decided that he needed the popular support of the countries left, which is the intellectual and students. And one more reason why he chose socialism on such a short notice is that because the only ally he could have gotten was the USSr as he just liquidated an American ally.

Anyway, I don't think mengistu deserves to be called Socialist. We call men like Che socialists, we call men like mengistu and bocassa dictators. One more thing, did you know that Mengistu had a golden chair, and when he fought with Somalia on the Ogaden, he gave 3 cuban generals each a Mercedes Benz plated with Gold, while people were dying in the country because of hunger.

Anyway, Man, I will get back to you if you have more questions. Just post them here.

Bealfan aka AK-94u

[Intifada]

Thanks for responding.


-------------------------

Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Dec. 30, 1999
issue of Workers World newspaper

-------------------------

THE ETHIOPIAN REVOLUTION REVISITED: WHY DO THE
IMPERIALISTS HATE MENGISTU?

By Deirdre Griswold

The revolution that swept Ethiopia in the 1970s got the
most oblique of references from the imperialists this week.
And then it was only to complain that South Africa had
allowed the leader of Ethiopia's revolution, Col. Mengistu
Haile Mariam, to leave for his home in exile in Zimbabwe
after having received medical treatment.

The U.S. and other imperialist countries had put strong
pressure on South Africa to seize Mengistu for "war crimes."
The Western media add the word "dictator" to his name as
though that were his title.

Who is Mengistu and why do the imperialists hate him so
much? Is it true he is a brutal war criminal?

Ethiopia is the second-largest country in sub-Saharan
Africa. Its economic potential is enormous, but its people
are still among the poorest in the world.

Mengistu became its leader in the 1970s at a time of great
revolutionary ferment after the feudal monarchy of Emperor
Haile Selassie was weakened by peasant rebellions, student
demonstrations and strikes by the small working class
following a terrible famine.

Ethiopia had never been subjected to the worst brutalities
of colonial rule in the same way as the rest of Africa,
having defeated an Italian expeditionary force in 1895 at
the battle of Adawa. But it was invaded by Mussolini's army
in the 1930s. Selassie survived the occupation in exile in
Britain, and returned to the throne after Italy's defeat in
World War II.

From then on, the emperor collaborated with U.S. and
British imperialism. For many years, the largest U.S.
monitoring post for the Middle East was at its Kagnew air
base in Eritrea, then part of Ethiopia. However, Selassie
retained a reputation in the world as the leader of a proud
and independent African state.

A FIERCE CLASS STRUGGLE

It was the class struggle within this feudal society that
eventually produced the revolutionary military government
led by Mengistu. The working class was too small to take the
power directly. The aroused peasants were too dispersed,
although they fought in the same way that peasants fought
their wars in Europe hundreds of years ago--rising up
against the landlords or their managers, seizing the land
and then trying to survive off subsistence farming.

With the country in turmoil, a struggle erupted in the
Ethiopian military, which was being called on to repress the
masses. Junior officers broke with--and even shot--those of
their officers who supported the old feudal system. They set
up a 125-member Provisional Military Administrative Council
to run the country.

In successive struggles, the leadership of this council
kept moving to the left. Mengistu, a colonel who came not
from the elite but from a people who had been serfs, emerged
as the leader with a socialist orientation. The PMAC deposed
Emperor Haile Selassie and his Crown Council.

The social transformation in Ethiopia combined elements of
both a bourgeois and a socialist revolution. Its first
sweeping act was to nationalize all land and extra houses in
1975, thus breaking the back of the landlord class. This was
followed by the nationalization of the banks, insurance
companies and what little industry existed.

All this was greeted with enormous popular support--
except, of course, from the former rulers and their agents.
Some of them formed a counter-revolutionary army-- called
the "Ethiopian Democratic Union," interestingly enough--that
mounted attacks on the revolution from neighboring Sudan.

The PMAC organized a huge peasant army in response. This
writer visited Ethiopia twice in 1978, after the landlord
army had been thrown back. In the countryside, peasants'
associations had formed with the support of the government.
They greeted visitors with signs that read: "We'll never let
the landlords come back."

In Addis Ababa, the capital, barefoot militias guarded
public buildings with Kalashnikov rifles. Women were also
armed in the urban kebeles, or block associations.

The kebeles organized cooperative markets that sold basic
goods at low prices, getting around the price-gouging
merchants. One proud tender of a stall told me about her
hard life as a serf before the revolution. She had escaped
physical abuse by walking for days to get to the capital.

The growth of popular organizations paralleled a mass
literacy campaign. In eight years, literacy was boosted from
10 percent to 63 percent throughout the country.

As hostility to the Ethiopian Revolution grew in the West,
support came from the Soviet Union and countries in Eastern
Europe. The German Democratic Republic in particular helped
with technical training and items like clothing and toys for
the small children attending kindergartens for the first
time in Ethiopian history.

CIA TRIES TO DISMEMBER ETHIOPIA

The U.S. could not be seen as overtly organizing the
overthrow of an African government, but the media here were
full of outrage at Ethiopia's orientation toward the
socialist countries. And behind the scenes, the CIA was busy
trying to dismember the country by assisting, or having its
allies assist, separatist movements and outright invasions.
With 90 different ethnic groupings that had been brought
into a central state through the conquests of a feudal
empire, Ethiopia was vulnerable.

One such invasion came from Somalia in 1977. It was
depicted in the media here as a liberation movement by
Somali people in the Ogaden plains of eastern Ethiopia. In
fact, army troops with tanks and heavy weapons penetrated
far into the Ethiopian highlands before being repulsed.

The editor of Newsweek, Arnaud de Borchgrave, revealed in
the Sept. 26, 1977, issue of that magazine that the Somali
president had received a secret message from President Jimmy
Carter encouraging him to seize Ethiopian territory. The
U.S. soon arranged $500 million in aid from Saudi Arabia--
equal at that time to two years' gross national product for
Somalia.

Although Ethiopia won the war, it was at a stiff cost for
a poor country attempting to reorganize society.

WAR WITH ERITREA

The thorniest problem for Ethiopia was the Eritrean
separatist movement. This pro vince on the Red Sea contained
Ethiopia's only ports. Its struggle for independence had
begun under Haile Selassie, and its leaders were originally
anti-imperialist. But once the revolution happened in
Ethiopia, a subtle shift began. The Eritreans began
receiving more support from Arab regimes in the region.

The Eritrean leaders characterized the PMAC as fascist and
collaborated with all its opponents, including even the army
of landlords known as the Ethiopian Democratic Union.

The war between Ethiopia and the Eritrean movement was
fierce. But the leader who replaced Mengistu with the
blessings of the U.S. and Britain, Meles Zenawi, has also
waged a bloody war with Eritrea over the past year. No one
in the West is calling him a dictator.

There are no demands from the State Department or the
White House to bring proven mass murderers like General
Suharto of Indonesia to justice. Suharto killed a million
Indonesians and hundreds of thousands of East Timorese. But
he took power in a military coup with U.S. support, and was
an anti-communist ally in Asia favored all along by
Washington.

Mengistu, on the other hand, told the Organization of
African Unity in 1977 that "We have cut the umbilical cord
to imperialism." Could this be why the imperialists still
want his head?

In a deal brokered in London, the umbilical cord was
restored in 1991 when the PMAC was overthrown and Mengistu
resigned. The USSR had been broken up and the prospect of
building some form of socialism in Ethiopia, predicated on
assistance from the socialist camp, had been scuttled.

FEUDALISM CANNOT RETURN

In 1993, the new regime accepted a program of
privatization laid down by the international imperialist
banks. However, the travails of the revolution were not
totally in vain. It produced lasting results that cannot be
reversed.

The anti-feudal aspect of the revolution achieved its
objective. Today, Ethiopia describes itself as a place where
"land is public property." The peasants hold subsistence
plots on lease from the government. Foreign investors also
can lease land for modern agriculture. But the days when the
peasants had to turn over 75 percent of their crops--and
often their very bodies--to the landlords have passed into
history.

In essence, every class society is a dictatorship of one
class over another, whether the political form is that of a
democracy or a totalitarian state. The huge prison
population and the armies of police in the United States,
the self-proclaimed most democratic of the imperialist
countries, are evidence of the underlying class struggle and
the brute force needed to contain it.

Nevertheless, the imperialists, wallowing in cash, find it
suitable at this point in history to buy legislatures and
presidents in their home countries rather than nurture
military regimes--although they have engineered the most
autocratic and openly brutal forms of rule in oppressed
countries when the masses there challenged the status quo.

The imperialists hate Mengistu not because he was a
dictator, but because the dictatorship in Ethiopia was one
exercised by the oppressed classes over the bourgeoisified
feudals and their imperialist allies. And for that very
reason, Mengistu has earned his place in the history of the
unfolding African revolution.

- END -

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I would like to know what you think of this article.

I have heard that Mengistu continued many of Selassie's policies with regards to minorities.

What do you think of Meles Zenawi?

[Bealfan]

Man,

this is so full of shit. where did you get this?

I won't get into facts because there is a lot to correct,.infact almost everything here is a lie..I know it was written by a sympathetic leftist writer.....but it still is a fabrication and so full of lies.

Yes, Mengistu continued some policies of the government he just ousted, like repression of minorities, killing innocent people and so on......Mengistu was more worse than Hitler.

Let me tell you something you never imagined about Meles though, he was a CIA agent, chances are that he is still is... Don't ask me to prove it, it is not a mere speculation but it is a very hush-hush thing.

Now , what do you expect me to think of such a man!?!

[RedAnarchist]

Dictators are the world's most greedy and selfish people. Often they will latch onto a idealogy or religions to justify their power, but the truth is simply that they want to use the country like their personal bank and servants. People like Mengistu and Mugabe both claimed to be leftist, but in reality they are not, and we on the true Left should never support people like them.

[Daymare17]

What do you think about this Bealfan?

(Extract from Ted Grant: The Colonial Revolution And The Deformed Workers' States (1978) (http://www.marxist.com/TUT/TUT4-4.html)



Ethiopia

This in its turn has an enormous effect in the countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America. The bourgeois-Bonapartist regimes in the colonial countries are charged with terrible contradictions. Their problems are insoluble. They spend large sums on armaments, further exacerbating the poverty of the masses. They are inherently unstable. They provoke the hatred of the workers, the petit-bourgeoisie, the students and peasants. Even the weak bourgeoisie they represent comes into collision with them.

It is in this social soil that plots, counter-plots and conspiracies in the army flourish. The army (or armed forces) is always moulded in the image of society and is not independent of it. Where the army dominates, that indicates a crisis in society and a regime of crisis.

Different cliques, groups or even individuals at the top in the army come to reflect groupings, sections of classes or classes in society. They do not represent themselves but precisely reflect the antagonistic interests of different classes in society.

Under conditions of social crisis people change. This applies to classes and even individuals. Thus Marx explained that with the decay of feudalism a section of the feudal lords, bigger or smaller as the case may be, goes over to the side of the bourgeoisie in the bourgeois revolution. A section of the bourgeoisie, particularly the intellectual bourgeoisie, can also put themselves on the standpoint of the proletariat.

No more barren, formalistic, anti-dialectical, philosophically idealist, anti-'Marxist philosophy' idea in the history of the movement has been put forward than by those who argue that because Castro began his revolutionary struggle as a bourgeois democrat with bourgeois democratic ideas and goals that therefore he must remain a bourgeois democrat for all eternity. They forget that Marx and Engels themselves began as bourgeois democrats who broke decisively with the bourgeoisie and became leaders of the proletariat.

Under conditions of the crisis of capitalism in Portugal[2], a semi-colonial country, a majority of the officer caste, sickened by the decades of dictatorship and the seemingly unending wars in Africa which they realised they could not win, moved in the direction of revolution and 'socialism'. Only our tendency explained this process.

This gave an impetus to the movement of the working class, which then reacted in its turn on the army. This affected not only the rank and file, and the lower ranks of the officers, but even some admirals and generals who were sincerely desirous of solving the problems of Portuguese society and the Portuguese people.

This was something that would have been impossible in previous revolutions. Thus, 99 per cent of the officer caste supported Franco in the Spanish civil war.

True enough, because of the reformist and Stalinist betrayal of the Portuguese revolution which prevented it from being carried through to completion, there has been a reaction. The army has been purged and purged again to become a more reliable instrument of the bourgeoisie.

But how far this has succeeded remains to be tested in the events of the revolution in the coming months and years.

But what it has demonstrated is the need for a genuine dialectical understanding and interpretation of the events of the present epoch. If such a transfonnation was possible, in a semi-colonial but imperialist capitalist Portugal, how much more could similar processes take place in the newly independent countries of Africa and of Asia?

Events in Ethiopia have crushingly confirmed the theses we have worked out. There, the famine brought about by Haile Selassie and the landlord nobility, was the last catastrophe even the officer caste was prepared to tolerate. The callous indifference of the Emperor and the landlord class to the famine and the death from starvation of hundreds of thousands and possibly even millions, plus the accumulated social contradictions in a backward country under the pressure of imperialism, pushed the middle layers of the officer caste to organise a coup.

This in its turn awakened the movement of the small working class in Addis Abbaba and the students and petit-bourgeois layers in the capital and in the towns. It awakened the peasantry also into a cataclysmic movement to gain control of land. Thus the 1000 year old 'empire' and its class structure crumbled to dust.

The crisis in the army and the attempts at counter-revolution, the further impetus this gave to the guerrilla war in Eritrea, the querrilla war in the Ogaden, aided by the direct intervention of Somalia, the uprisings of the Galla and other tribes, all acted as a spur to the revolution.

The movement of the classes in turn had its effect on the new ruling junta in the army. It produced splits and individual and group conspiracies of officers. These reflected the classes in battle in Ethiopia and the developing civil war in the whole country. Whatever the individual whims of the officers, they reflected (as in Syria) - and had to reflect - the class struggle taking place. Hardly any wished for a return to the old regime.

The model of the Emperor's landlord semi-feudal regime was rejected by the bulk of the officer caste. But there were differences as to how far to go, which ended in armed conflicts and executions. This, in a distorted way perhaps, reflected the struggle of the classes in Ethiopia.

It ended in the victory of Lieutenant Colonel Mengistu. Already the land had been divided among the peasants and industry nationalised without compensation to the imperialists and the native capitalists (though of course compensation is not necessarily the decisive factor).

In the struggles Lieutenant Colonel Mengistu emerged victorious as a Bonapartist dictator under the influence of the wars and civil wars. In order to obtain mass support Mengistu, formerly a high-up officer of the Emperor, has been forced to go all the way. He has declared himself a 'Marxist-Leninist' (probably without reading a single word of Marx or Lenin) and set about creating a one party 'Marxist-Leninist' totalitarian dictatorship. This is in the image of Moscow or Peking. The landlords and capitalists are expropriated and the imperialist countries are without real influence on the processes taking place in Ethiopia.

In this case the process is clear. It is even clearer than in Mozambique, Angola or the former Aden, and this without a direct struggle against imperialist occupation.

The imperialists are too weak and debilitated to intervene directly by military means and can only grind their teeth in impotence.

But undoubtedly only the Militant foresaw these possibilities in advance for many countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America. The revolution, or rather the primary tasks of the revolution, in backward countries have been accomplished in the regimes mentioned above. Landlordism has been eliminated. Capitalism has been destroyed, the influence of imperialism dispelled.

Thus the bourgeois origin of the leadership of the guerrilla movement in Cuba was of third or fifth rate importance. What was important was the attempt to take action to bring Cuba back to neo-colonial status which precipitated the break of Castro with American imperialism.

It is the social and economic similarities which are decisive for a Marxist in the social overturns in these countries.

To carry through a revolution like that of Russia in October 1917 requires the consciousness, the action, the understanding and the active participation and movement of the proletariat itself in the overthrow of capitalism and landlordism. It requires organs and organisations through which the proletariat can move, such as soviets, shop stewards committees, trade unions and so on. After the victory of the rule of the workers, the checking and control can be effected by such organs of workers' rule.

In a revolution according to the norm such ad hoc committees and traditional organisations are indispensable. They are a training ground for the workers in the art of running the state, of developing the solidarity and understanding of the workers. After a victorious overthrow of capital they become vehicles for workers' rule, the organs of the new state and of workers' democracy.

But where - as in Eastern Europe, China, Cuba, Syria, Ethiopia - the overthrow takes place with the support of the workers and peasants certainly but without their active control, clearly the result must be different. The petit-bourgeois intellectuals, army officers, leaders of guerrilla bands use the workers and peasants as cannon fodder, merely as points of support, as a gun rest, so to speak.

Their aim, conscious or unconscious, is not power for the workers and peasants, but power for their elite. They had and have their model in Stalinist Russia.The revolution - change in property relations -begins where the Russian revolution ended, Stalinist Russia of 1945-9, or if you prefer, Stalinist Russia of 1978. They are fundamentally the same; a one party totalitarian state where the proletariat is helpless and atomised, with an apparatus of control of the state by the officials. The guerrilla army chiefs, who with an iron hand imposed discipline, take control undoubtedly with the support of the masses but with no organs of workers' rule independent of the state. Also, none of the rights and powers of the workers and peasants, which the existence of soviets as organs of workers' power would mean, exist.

For a transition to a Bonapartist workers' state such organs of workers' democracy, indispensable for a healthy workers' state, would be an enormous hindrance. They constituted a tremendous obstacle to the Stalinist bureaucracy in Russia, which had to wage a Herculean struggle and even a one-sided civil war to erase the last remnants of workers' democracy, which stood in the way of their untrammelled and dictatorial rule. This was reflected through the one man dictatorship of Stalin and his successors.

What is important is that this was the model of 'socialism' for Mao, for Castro, for Mengistu, for the Burmese generals and for the Baathist 'Muslim' generals in Syria.

...

State Capitalism?

Why is Mengistu's regime 'state capitalist' and different to the others? There is no explanation. [The Trotskyist sects] merely echo the arguments of the student, Maoist ultra-lefts in Ethiopia. At least the Ethiopian Maoists have the consistency to declare - as the Maoists have done everywhere - that Russia too is 'state capitalist'.

The proof of the 'fascist' character of the Mengistu regime, they claim, is the vicious repression, the executions, the repression of national rights and the national revolutions of a similar character to that of Ethiopia - of Eritrea and the Ogaden - and the suppression of other national minorities. The crushing and dissolution of independent trade unions and all the nascent democratic organs of self-expression of the workers and peasants is certainly to be condemned. So also is the concentration of power into the hands of the Army junta clique and the dictatorship of Mengistu.

But one rubs one's eyes in disbelief at the shallowness of the 'Marxism' of these self-styled Trotskyists'. For every crime committed by Mengistu in this regard, Stalin committed a hundred times more! The repression of independent organs of the workers must have reached a state of perfection by the bueaucracy in Russia. Puppet 'unions' exist which resemble the Arbeitfront of the Nazis in Germany. The Russian 'Communist' Party is the arm of the bureaucracy itself and has long ago ceased to be a workers' party. Concentration camps, or 'labour camps' as they are called, and psychiatric 'hospitals' have been established for all dissidents - right or left.

The national oppression of the minorities, and especially of worker dissidents, reached levels never reached even under Tsarism. A one-party totalitarian machine has been established without allowing any opposition anywhere among workers, peasants and intellegentsia. The regimentation of art, science and government into a Stalinist straitjacket, without any independent initiative or thought, has been unequalled in history except, possibly, in Hitler's Germany. More or less, that is the picture common to all the proletarian Bonapartist states, including China and Cuba.

Some of the sects pick up the characterisation of the Mengistu regime from the Maoists. They also support the heroic guerrilla peasant war in the Ogaden and in Eritrea, which, if victorious, would probably end in a carbon copy of Cuba or of Mengistu's Ethiopia. That would be inevitable with a backward economy and with the limited nationalist leadership looking to their own resources alone and not seeing the necessity of linking up with the workers of the advanced capitalist countries. If there is a struggle for national rights of these peoples - so long as there is not the direct intervention of imperialism - we would give critical support to the struggle as we would for example to the struggle of the Ukranian people for independence from Stalinist Russia. An independent socialist soviet Ukraine would prepare the way for a genuine and voluntary socialist soviet federation of all the peoples of the USSR. This could only be achieved by the overthrow of the Russian Stalinist bureaucracy by the Russian working class.

Support for Revolution

Unfortunately in Eritrea and the Ogaden, as in Ethiopia for the next period, democracy will receive short shrift. This is inevitable on the bases of a peasant war, as well as the Stalinist ideology of their leaders.

But as we did in the case of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia (Kampuchea) and for that matter China also - we would give support without closing our eyes to the inevitability of Stalinist totalitarian regimes whatever the result of the conflict.

Because of its character as a national struggle (though on the basis of state ownership and the elimination of landlordism and capitalism) and the limited outlook of its leadership, neither the Somalis nor the Eritreans have a means of influencing or winning over the peasant soldiers of Ethiopia. They too have carried through a revolution and are influenced by the national idea of a united Ethiopia.

The proletarian and far sighted policy of Lenin - in standing firmly for the bourgeois-democratic right of self-determination - has no place unfortunately in the policy of the Ethiopians. But neither is there present, on any side in the conflict, the other policies of Marxism - democratic-centralism in the Party, democracy in the soviets, trade unions and so on.

Our policy is dictated first by the international socialist proletarian revolution and its interests. The defeat of imperialism and the overthrow of landlordism and capitalism in the Horn of Africa are big steps forward.

This is despite the conflict between 'socialist states' which sows confusion among the advanced workers and the proletariat generally. The complexity of the problem and the need to keep our ideas clear is shown by the way imperialism and the Russian and Cuban bureaucracy have changed sides.

Yesterday the imperialists supported Haile Selassie and the landlord-capitalist regime in Ethiopia against Somalia and the guerrilla movement in Eritrea. Russia and Cuba financed, armed and organised the Somali state and supported the guerrillas in Eritrea with arms, finance and technical assistance. Ethiopia assumed more importance in their eyes, with the collapse of the Emperor, followed by the overthrow of the semi-feudal landlord-capitalist regime. Ethiopia has 35 million people against approximately 2 or 3 million each in Eritrea and Somalia.

Opportunistically taking advantage of the civil war in Ethiopia, organised by the landlord-capitalist counter-revolution, President Barre of Somalia sent troops into the Ogaden. He hoped for the disintegration and collapse of the Ethiopian revolution. He was nationally limited and short-sighted, interested only in a 'greater Somalia'. Undoubtedly the imperialists, surreptitiously through the semi-feudal reactionary Arab states like Saudi-Arabia, gave support to the Somalis, as they now give support to the Eritreans despite the social character of the movement in Eritrea. They wish to weaken Ethiopia and strike a blow against the Russian bureaucracy.

The Russian bureaucracy and Castro have changed horses in mid-stream after vainly attempting to persuade the Somali rulers to make a compromise and establish a federation of Eritrea, Somalia and Ethiopia. This would undoubtedly have been the best solution, given the character of all these regimes either as Bonapartist deformed workers' states, or such states in the process of formation.

When the Somalis rejected this proposal the bureaucracy switched sides. It is not certain that the Ethiopians were in agreement with this proposal either. Now they are trying to negotiate some form of agreement between Eritrea and Ethiopea. If the Eritreans do not accept some form of limited 'autonomy' Cuba and Russia seem certain to support the crushing in blood of the Eritrean attempt at self-determination. The imperialists, unable to intervene directly, will weep crocodile tears about the national and democratic rights of the Eritrean people. (Yesterday they brutally tried to suppress the rights of the Vietnamese people.)

But what is really entertaining about these dramatic conflicts is the position of some of the sects. They solemnly declaim that Russia (correctly) is a deformed workers' state and Cuba (incorrectly) a relatively 'healthy' workers' state. But in no way do they explain how and why the relatively 'healthy' workers' state of Cuba or the deformed workers' state of Russia actively helps the 'fascist' state of Ethiopia to establish itself and suppress the national rights of the people of Eritrea who are attempting to establish a 'Marxist' regime and the Somalis of the Ogaden and the other minorities.

Undoubtedly, on the basis of land distribution, the overwhelming majority of the Ethiopian peasants support the Ethiopian regime for want of an alternative.

It is theoretically possible of course that for the purpose of 'defence' against other capitalist states, a deformed workers' state or even a healthy workers' state could ally itself with a reactionary or fascist state. Stalin's Russia did this in 1939 with the 'non-aggression' pact with Hitler's Germany.

But what strategic necessity was there for Brezhnev and Castro to switch from supporting Somalia and Eritrea to their 'fascist' rivals? The rulers of the deformed workers' states would look with trepidation at the rise of a healthy workers' state in the industrialised countries because of the social reverberations it would provoke in their own countries. But they would welcome the establishment of social regimes on the pattern of their own regimes in the backward and neo-colonial countries.

This strengthens them internationally against their capitalist imperialist rivals. The basic world antagonism between the social structures of these countries and capitalist countries remains.

Stalinism and Fascism

Ethiopia is a country far more backward than Russian Czarism or even pre-revolutionary China, and is under conditions of civil war on every front. With a leadership which takes Cuba and China as its model, without revolutionary training, this officer leadership has moved towards Stalinist conceptions in the course of the revolution. But we cannot throw out the baby with the bathwater. We must separate out the enormously progressive kernel from the reactionary wrappings. Landlordism and capitalism have been eliminated and this decisive fact will have far-flung effects on the whole of the African revolution in the coming epoch.

Not for nothing did Trotsky explain to the American Socialist Workers Party that, separated from state ownership of industry and the land, the political regime in Russia was fascist! There was nothing to distinguish the political regime of Stalin from that of Hitler except the decisive fact that one defended and had its privileges based on state ownership while the other had its privileges, power, income and prestige based on the defence of private property. That was a fundamental and decisive difference! There is no difference in the fundamentals of economic and political structure of Ethiopia from China, Syria, Russia or any of the deformed workers' states.

The latest events in Indo-China have served again to show the ridiculous contortions of the policies of all the sects. Our tendency gave wholehearted support to the struggle of the Vietnamese 'Communist' Party of Ho Chi Minh and its Laotian and Cambodian off-shoots in their peasant guerrilla war against American and world imperialism and their native puppets.

We supported the struggle unconditionally and wholeheartedly. We supported it because it was a colonial war for liberation. We would have supported such a war even under bourgeois or petit-bourgois leadership which had fought merely for the right of national self-determination alone. But it inevitably became a war for social liberation as well as national liberation - in the sense of fighting for the elimination also of landlordism and capitalism. Without this, the struggle could not have been carried on for decades against overwhelming military odds.

How far the sects have strayed from the Marxist or Trotskyist method was shown by the polemics between two different sects of the same international tendency about how far the Vietnamese were 'unconscious' Trotskyists operating on the basis of the permanent revolution.

None of these worthies have understood the peculiar character of the epoch as far as the colonial or ex-colonial areas of the world are concerned. Nor have they understood the inevitable perversion of the revolution under either open Stalinist - or pseudo-communist leadership - or that of radical sections of the officer caste. They have not understood the inevitable consequences when a colonial revolution is led to its progressive and 'final' conclusion of eliminating capitalism and landlordism but when the main force is not that of the working class with a Marxist leadership.

When the main force is a peasant army using classic peasant tactics of guerrilla war, then it must result in a 'deformed workers' state' even if that were not the aim of the leaders. In the event of an army coup of the younger officers, allied to 'intellectuals' and students, the consequences would - inevitably - be the same.

This is particularly the case given the world environment of strong Bonapartist workers' states, in the form of Stalinist Russia and other countries. Taken together with the existence of the imperialist powers there could be no other outcome.

Of course if there were in existence healthy workers' states - for instance in Russia, or one of the big industrialised states of Europe, or Japan - then the results and the possibilities would be entirely different. The proletariat and people of the advanced workers' states would give aid and assistance to a workers' state in a backward country, linking the economies together, and sending tens of thousands of technicians to small countries and hundreds of thousands to one with a big population. That would mean rapid industrialisation plus workers' democracy. That is what Lenin meant when he said Africa could move straight from tribalism to communism.

But given the present relationship of class forces in international affairs, with classical reformism and Stalinist reformism dominant in the workers' movement of the advanced countries, such a conclusion in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos was ruled out.

[Bealfan]

Man, this is way too long for me to answer right now,.......Can I answer after the 12th, that is the day I finish my exams.

[B_T_N_H]

This is Bealfan!

Man, this is another bullshit, get this , Mengistu wasn't even a Marxist Leninist .... the closest he ever came to Marxism-Leninism is when he shook hands with Mikhail Gorbachev.

If you wanna know what really was up in Mengistus regime , read what the west claims about him,........I am not saying that all of it is true, But most of it can be taken at face value.

Bealfan aka Ak-94u

[B_T_N_H]

This is Bealfan!

Man, this is another bullshit, get this , Mengistu wasn't even a Marxist Leninist .... the closest he ever came to Marxism-Leninism is when he shook hands with Mikhail Gorbachev.

If you wanna know what really was up in Mengistus regime , read what the west claims about him,........I am not saying that all of it is true, But most of it can be taken at face value.

I will read the Book by Ted Grant though,

Bealfan aka Ak-94u

[RedFlagOverTrenton]

I've said it before and I'll say it again.. Mengistu was an Amhara imperialist who continued the policies of Selassie with even greater efficiency and brutality, using state-capitalist "collectivization" schemes to enforce his will against minority nationalities.

Robert Kaplan may be a right wing asshole, but read "Surrender or Starve" anyway. The evidence there is almost incontrovertable, unless you assume that he's making up all the interviews, eyewitness accounts and primary sources he looked at during his travels.

[B_T_N_H]

Originally posted by [email protected] 14 2005, 05:59 PM
I've said it before and I'll say it again.. Mengistu was an Amhara imperialist who continued the policies of Selassie with even greater efficiency and brutality, using state-capitalist "collectivization" schemes to enforce his will against minority nationalities.

Robert Kaplan may be a right wing asshole, but read "Surrender or Starve" anyway.
Right

this is as close as I could have come to access Mengistu.

Big_Don, what do you think in this

[1949]

RFOT, I don't defend Mengistu here, but, what is your source for saying Ethiopia was imperialist under him? Imperialism, in the scientific, Marxist sense, after all, is not just invading other countries, but a stage of capitalism--characterized by monopoly, the emergence of finance capital, export of capital to oppressed countries, etcetera. I was unaware that such a high development of capitalism existed in any African nation.

[Salvador Allende]

I actually like Mengistu Haile Mariam. He actually took power in 1974, not 1977. The fact most people ignore about the "Red Terror" was that it was completely neccesary for victory in the war. In 1977 with the backing of the USA, Somalia invaded Ethiopia and if it weren't for the Red Terror and troop aid from East Germany, North Korea and Cuba, Ethiopia would have fallen to a foregin invader. Mengistu also presided over popular land reforms. Mikhail Gorbachev cut Soviet aid and said he would resume it once Mengistu had stopped land reform and the socialist economics. This allowed a counter-revolutionary coup. Mengistu is the only leader in Africa who truly tried to bring Marxism-Leninism to his country and if it weren't for the Soviets he would have succeeded. Robert Mugabe is correct to take Mengistu in and treat him like a comrade, Fidel would do the same.

[Intifada]

I am also beginning to admire Mengistu after reading more about the man.

[Hero_of_the_Revolution]

Salvardor Allende,

You are really misled about Mengistu, he was tyrannical monster who never gave a fuck about his country and his people.

Let me explain in detail.

Megistu came to power in a coup e’tat. He inherited an Ethiopia that was so torn by landlords, and local feudal powers that led a life the just the way feudal Europe used to be.
In 1974, Somalia invaded Ethiopia over a territory that was ceded to Ethiopia when the Italians left called Ogaden. Mengistu never had any orientation with politics. But the choice or adaptation of Scientific Socialism is because:

1. Socialism, at that time was appealing to poor countries like Ethiopia because it promised rapid transformation from poverty to industrialization.
2. Mengistu chose Socialism because he was not likely that he was going to receive help from the Americans, who were close allies of HaileSlasie.
3. So that he could win the favor of the left wingers in Ethiopia, mainly the intellectuals and the students of the universities.

Anyhow, after he came to power Ethiopia experienced not the boost of socialism, but the tyranny of a monster.

I have to ask you a question though. On what grounds do you call the rebels counter-revolutionaries.You do release the fact that they were communists, I hope?

Mengistu was never a socialist. He was much worse than HaileSlasie

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

B_T_N_H/Bealfan/Hero_of_the_Revolution is pretty right from my understanding. During the cold war, there were many dictators who played lip-service to socialism in order to secure Soviet aid . . . most ran pretty standard gate-keeper states, that were largely the same as 'non-socialist' African states at the time.

[Salvador Allende]

Mengistu Haile Mariam was most certainly the closest thing to a good Socialist leader in Africa (perhaps with the exception of Robert Mugabe if you count him). Just because there were many dictators doesn't prove to me that he was one. From what I hear Mengistu was quite a good leader and of course certainly favourable to the Somalian invaders. He has always stood by his beliefs even in the face of Gorbachev telling him to abandon his policies and even now in Zimbabwe when all other "Marxist" leaders in Africa have denounced Marxism-Leninism and promoted the return to full Capitalism.

[Hero_of_the_Revolution]

Originally posted by Virgin Molotov [email protected] 18 2005, 07:27 PM
B_T_N_H/Bealfan/Hero_of_the_Revolution is pretty right from my understanding. During the cold war, there were many dictators who played lip-service to socialism in order to secure Soviet aid . . . most ran pretty standard gate-keeper states, that were largely the same as 'non-socialist' African states at the time.
Virgin Molotov Cocktail. .... Thumbs Up

Salvador Allende

I don't how you like Mengistu, But would be willing to send you a book to tell you the truth about Mengistu. But what books have you been reading?

[RedFlagOverTrenton]

RFOT, I don't defend Mengistu here, but, what is your source for saying Ethiopia was imperialist under him? Imperialism, in the scientific, Marxist sense, after all, is not just invading other countries, but a stage of capitalism--characterized by monopoly, the emergence of finance capital, export of capital to oppressed countries, etcetera. I was unaware that such a high development of capitalism existed in any African nation.

Hmm. I think you may be right, in the sense that the Amhara exploitation of the oppressed nationalities mostly took the form of resource extraction, land seizures, forced labor, etc etc - more primitive forms of exploitation than imperaialism in the sense that Lenin talked about. So I might have used that term in the wrong way. Perhaps 'Amhara chauvinist' would have been a better, more accurate definition.