Analysing the Ethiopian revolution

Abstract

Ethiopia has in fact experienced a thorough‐going revolution —a fact often ignored or denied by the Left internationally, presumably because it was not made by an organised mass movement and because of the fact of military rule. It is indeed a ‘revolution’ in that it represents an irreversible change from the absolutist state; it has involved a fundamental social transformation, chiefly with respect to the rural relations of production, and has thereby created a vastly expanded internal market of petty producers. These revolutionary outcomes are not to be denied because of the nature of the regime, which is indeed repressive, and incapable of solving the two basic issues now facing the revolution: the nationalities issue and political democracy. But it must be recognised that the regime and form of the state are themselves results of the revolutionary upheavals but also the inheritor of the ideas and policies of the Ethiopian Left. There is an urgent need now for a mature, reconstituted Left in Ethiopia but such a reconstitution will require that the various elements on the Left all take a long, critical look at their own history.