Ethiopia Again

 “Ethiopia in Theory – Revolution and Knowledge Production," 1964-2016, by Elleni Centime Zeleke, 2019 

(Part 2)

This is a social-science literature review of the Ethiopian Revolution and aftermath, which started in 1974 with the overthrow of Haile Selassie, royal power and feudal relations in the countryside.  The author does not push a point of view as to the best ideas, groups and actions that powered the revolution.  Her main concern is actually ‘where did the ideas come from’ – i.e. ‘knowledge production.’  I find this a scant rationale for a book on that revolution, which keeps it in the academic sociology ghetto, though it is evident she leans to the left.  At the end she endorses a Marxist slant on African development.  She calls for a class analysis, seeing the economic rationales behind claims to ‘democracy.’  The book is a useful, if academic, history of ideas up to 2018, about a revolution and country few know about.

Addis Ababa, Ethiopia today

Elleni reviews the topics covered in the Ethiopian student journal “Challenge” starting in the 1960s put out by the ‘educated youth.’  They looked at issues like the intentional under-development of Ethiopia and how imperial forces buttressed feudal relations. They pointed out that Selassie's feudalism enabled capital penetration.  Much was made of Stalin’s definition of a nation, Maoist ‘new democracy,’ as well as advocacy of guerilla war.  After ‘new democracy’ it was theorized that there would be a “subsequent socialist revolution.”  Some advocated kebelles, i.e. local peasant committees, which were later formed by the Derg and still exist today.  Elleni says that many ideological claims were ‘empty formulas,’ as little was empirically known about how peasants went about their lives.  Agricultural production actually dropped after 1975, leading to famine and civil wars.  

The LAND QUESTION 

Elleni notices a distinct continuity of people and issues since the 1960s in Ethiopia, starting with the old demands of ‘land to the tiller’ and ‘national self-determination.’  10 regions were designated based on ethnographic factors in 1995 as reflective of the latter.   This continuity was shown in the 2005 election, where World Bank neo-liberals openly challenged the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front’s (EPRDF) ‘revolutionary democratic’ policies on these two issues.  The EPRDF later over-hauled land property relations in Addis Ababa and other cities in line with neo-liberal privatization.  The EPRDF legalized a land lease market in cities over 2,000 population, thus contradicting the country’s 1975 Constitution, which said land could not be sold or privatized.   (Even wage labor on farms had been abolished in 1975.) This resulted in small farmers and poorer urbanites losing their land and households.  In 2011 small-holder agriculture involved 80% of the Ethiopian population of 85 million. There were only 175K light-industry workers at that time. 

The EPRDF also made overtures to Saudi Arabia and the UAE, two conservative capitalist theocracies.  There were indications that both Ethiopian Air and Ethiopian Telecom were on the sales block to pay government debts due to international loans. This was all in the context of a move to ‘liberalization,’ concurrent with the increased influence of an Oromo party in the EPRDF in the 2018 election.  The EPRDF was also tied to the Tigray People’s Liberation Front at this time.  The TPLF started a rebellion in 2020 against the EPRDF leadership that has now devolved into a bloody civil war in Tigray involving Ethiopian and Eritrean troops.

Elleni discusses the false dichotomy in most western-oriented ‘social sciences’ of ‘liberalization versus authoritarianism’ – where authoritarianism is defined as state-led development.  She calls it a ‘false telos.’ None of them deal with the issue of retaining or creating social goods against the influence of global capital, but only unleashing the market.   

AFRICAN THEORIES

Elleni’s last section is highly theoretical, considering various interpretations of African and non-Western development, attempting to avoid a ‘Euro-centric’ model. She defends the ‘critical theory’ of Euro-Marxists Herkeimer and Adorno against various neo-liberals.  She challenges some of the conclusions of “African philosophy” and the ethnography of cold war social science that focused on ‘the primitive mind.’  She contends with the cultural relativism of Digesh Chakrabarty, who posits that there are parallel concurrent histories, 1 and 2, the second still existing outside capital; and the Marxist Jarius Banaji, who understands that capital will use all forms of pre-capitalist economics – trade, slavery, subsistence farming, debt, tribalism, theocracy – to accumulate profits.  In other words, primitive capitalist accumulation continues up to now.  These disparate economic systems are so interrelated to the point that Banaji even claims Indian petty commodity peasants are now also proletarians. 

Ethiopian cows threshing

Enlightenment ‘reason’ is seen as part of the logic of capital, where ‘rational’ economic actors always act in their own individual interest.  Chakrabarty alleges that capital considers pre-capitalist modes as “the delusions of a madman.”  Elleni attempts to blend Chakrabarty and Banaji by critiquing Lukac’s almost impenetrable essay, “Reification and the Consciousness of the Proletariat,” showing how it posits ‘trans-historical labor’ – something Marx never did. Labor is actually historically specific. The impact of Lukac's essay was to model all developments of world capital on how labor and capital developed and exist in Europe, which Elleni knows is untrue.  Ethiopia under Selassie and the Derg show this.

Lastly she argues with Neil Davidson about his contention of the impossibility of overcoming capital in a condition of scarcity – as was attempted in Ethiopia and other places.  Elleni points out that ‘scarcity’ is also historically determined.  What was once acceptable as a standard of living might one day become too limited and visa versa; what was once acceptable suddenly becomes waste, over-production and ruin.

Thanks to Solomon for loaning me the book!  We also carry a shorter history of the Ethiopian revolution covering 5 years, which is not so academic.

Prior blog reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to search the 14 year archive of reviews:  “History and Class Consciousness,” (Lukacs) “The Law of World-Wide Value” (Amin); “Amiable With Big Teeth,”(McKay) “Land Grabbing,” “Slave States,” “Female Genital Mutilation,” “Comrade Harry McAllister,” “Dirty Wars” (Scahill).   

And we sell it at May Day Books!

Red Frog

June 12, 2021