Home » Ausgaben » Socialisms in Development » Official Marxism and Socialist Development in Ethiopia: Rhetoric and Reality

Official Marxism and Socialist Development in Ethiopia: Rhetoric and Reality

Autor*innen: Admasie, Samuel Andreas
https://doi.org/10.20446/JEP-2414-3197-33-3-49
Volume XXXIII • Issue 3 • 2017
Seiten 49-68
Keywords: socialist development, class relations, state socialism, manufacturing, surpluses

Abstract

In the aftermath of the 1974 Ethiopian revolution, the government came to adopt an official strand of Marxism that featured a number of characteristics inherited from the late Soviet interpretation of its own experience, and a number of instrumentalist contortions corresponding to the interest of the emergent dominant strata. This generated contradictions between the emancipatory ideational categories employed and the social-material characteristics of the actual process of attempted development. Nowhere were these contradictions greater than in the manufacturing sector, where exhortations and demands for sacrifice on the part of the working class were only matched by the – increasingly farcical – rhetorical place of prominence of that class. By focussing on the rhetorical aims, the practical means, and the achievements recorded in this sector, this article aims to analyse the concrete manner in which these contradictions manifested themselves. The findings indicate that the effort to construct and develop a socialist economy – narrowly defined as such in terms of the judicial form of ownership – failed on a number of levels. This failure is traced back to the nature of power relations in ‘Socialist Ethiopia’, and draws attention to the manner in which the ideology of ‘state socialism’, which shifts attention from the aim of revolutionising productive relations to the development of productive forces under state ownership, has generally been used to legitimise the rule of bureaucratic categories and to conceal exploitative relations prevailing under such rule. In this, the article draws on Marxist theorisation and critique of that ideology.

Literatur

Alemayehu Geda (2011): Readings on the Ethiopian Economy. Addis Ababa: Addis Ababa University Press. Andargachew Tiruneh (1993): The Ethiopian revolution, 1974-1987: A Transformation From an Aristocratic To a Totalitarian Autocracy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511563102

Assefa Fisseha Yebiyo (2015): Ethiopia: Development With or Without Freedom. In: Brems, Eva/Van der Beken, Christope/Solomon Abay Yimer (eds.): Human Rights and Development: Legal Perspectives From and For Ethiopia. Leiden/ Boston: Brill, 101-138. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004280250_006

Bahru Zewde (2014): The Quest for Socialist Utopia: The Ethiopian Student Movement c.1960–1974. Woodbridge etc.: James Curry.

Bahru Zewde (ed.) (2010): Documenting the Ethiopian Student Movement: An Exercise in Oral History. Addis Ababa: Forum for Social Studies.

Bettelheim, Charles (1976): Class Struggles in USSR: First Period: 1917-1923. New York: Monthly Review.

Bettelheim, Charles/Chavance, Bernard (1981): Stalinism as the Ideology of State Capitalism. In: Review of Radical Political Economics 13(40), 40-54. https://doi.org/10.1177/048661348101300107

CELU (1975): YeISEAMA Liyu Teqlala Gubae Yasalefachew Wusanewoch. Mimeo. Addis Ababa: Confederation of Ethiopian Labour Unions.

Clapham, Christopher (1990): Transformation and Continuity in Revolutionary Ethiopia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Dawit Woldegiorgis (1990): The Power of Decision-making in Post-revolutionary Ethiopia. In: Ottaway, Marina (ed.): The Political Economy of Ethiopia. New York: Praeger, 53-72.

Democracia (1976): YeSerategnaw Guday AwajNa Yekebertew Medeb. In: Democracia 2(30), n.p.

Democracia (1975): Min Aynet Soshalizm?. In: Democracia 1(20), n.p.

Dessalegn Rahmato (2009): The Peasant and the State: Studies in Agrarian Change in Ethiopia 1950s-2000s. Addis Ababa: Addis Ababa University Press.

EEA/EDRI (2005): Industrialization and Industrial Policy in Ethiopia. Research Report. Addis Ababa: Ethiopian Economic Association/Ethiopian Economic Policy Research Institute.

Eshetu Chole (2004): Underdevelopment in Ethiopia. Addis Ababa: Organization for Social Science Research in Eastern and Southern Africa.

Ethiopian Marxist Review (1980): Editorial. In: Ethiopian Marxist Review 1(1), 3-6. EPRP (1975): Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Party Programme. N.P.: EPRP.

ESUNA (1975): Report on the 23rd Congress of ESUNA. In: Combat 3(2), 1-119.

Gebru Mersha (1995): State Farms in State-Centred Accumulation Strategies in Socialist Africa: The Rationale and A Critique. PhD thesis. The Hague: Institute of Social Studies.

Kiflu Tadesse (1993): The Generation – part I: The History of the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Party. Silver Spring, MD: Independent Publishers.

Kiflu Tadesse (1998): The Generation – part II: The History of the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Party. Lanham: University Press of America.

Markakis, John/Nega Ayele (1978): Class and Revolution in Ethiopia. Nottingham: Spokesman.

Mengistu Hailemariam (1984): Central Report. Founding Congress of the Workers’ Party of Ethiopia. Addis Ababa: WPE.

Mengistu Hailemariam (1982): Speech Delivered to the Second Congress of the All Ethiopia Trade Union. Addis Ababa: Provisional Military Government of Socialist Ethiopia/Commission for Organizing the Party of the Working People of Ethiopia.

Meskerem (1983a): The Relationship Between Economics and Politics During the Transition Period. In: Meskerem 3(12), n.p.

Meskerem (1983b): The Process of Expansion of Socialist Production Relations in Ethiopia. In: Meskerem 3(12), 19-37.

Meskerem (1983c): Marxism and Contemporary Popular Struggles. In: Meskerem 3(13), 15-44.

Meskerem (1983d): The Non-Capitalist Path of Development and its Problems. In: Meskerem 3(14), 17-39.

Meskerem (1982): Opportunism Under the Guise of Marxism. In: Meskerem 3(10), 48-65.

National Workers’ Control Committee (1986): YeSerto Aderu Qutitir Komite Yeaserar Hidet. In: Meskerem 27(7), 36-60.

Office of the Wage Board (1985): Incentives System: For Acceleration of Growth of Output and Reduction of Production Costs. Preliminary Proposals for Discussion.

PMGE (1975): Proclamation No. 64 of 1975: Labour Proclamation. In: Negarit Gazeta 35(11), 55-90.

PMGE (1976): Programme of the National Democratic Revolution of Ethiopia. Addis Ababa: Provisional Military Government of Ethiopia.

PMGSE (1984): Ten-year Perspective Plan 1984/85-1993/94. Addis Ababa: Provisional Military Government of Socialist Ethiopia.

Stalin, Joseph V. (1939): Dialectical and Historical Materialism. In: History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks): Short Course. New York: International Publishers, 105-131.

Sweezy, Paul M. (1981): Four Lectures on Marxism. New York and London: Monthly Review Press.

Teshale Tibebu (2008): Modernity, Eurocentrism, and radical politics in Ethiopia, 1961–1991. In: African Identities 6(4), 345-371. https://doi.org/10.1080/14725840802417885

WPE (1984a): Programme. Addis Ababa: Workers’ Party of Ethiopia.

WPE (1984b): Guideline on the Economic and Social Development of Ethiopia (1984/85 – 1993/94). Draft. Addis Ababa: Workers’ Party of Ethiopia.