Mengistu Haile Mariam was a bloody militarist and nationalist dictator; how is it then that for a period in the 1970s he was hailed as some sort of socialist by many on the left? That indeed is the puzzle and I hope to indicate in this essay the type of confusion which led to this predicament.
The fall of the military regime of Mengistu in Ethiopia which had effectively ruled the country since 1974 poses a number of extremely important questions for socialists, both at the level of theory and in practical activity. The regime in Ethiopia had been a self-proclaimed ‘socialist government’ which had attracted considerable support among the left in the capitalist countries during the 1970s. It was touted as being a regime worthy of support, since it was alleged to have had a socialist orientation, whatever that may mean. Moreover, on a broader canvas the revolution of 1974 in Ethiopia presented some very sharp questions of theory about the role of the state in society, its class nature and its functions. Above all it presented the problem of the nature of a regime in a society that was manifestly underdeveloped from a capitalist and industrial point of view, which allegedly was in a transition to socialism.
The present essay is written on the basis of notes made for a talk given in London on 4 October 1992. This was the first time that I had publicly spoken about Ethiopia since my return from that country in the early 1980s. The reason for my reticence up to that point was that I did not wish to implicate any of those people who had been associated with me whilst I was in the country. The fall of the Mengistu regime has allowed me to speak freely for the first time.
Ethiopia may seem to be a remote country, mainly known in the mass media for its continued famines, but its revolution of 1974 poses questions of near-universal significance for socialists as we near the start of the twenty-first century. It may well be that we shall need to revise some long-held ideas once we have examined the facts of the situation and cast aside some preconceived formulae. To understand the revolution of 1974 it is first of all necessary to establish a few facts about the history of Ethiopia. It is there that I shall begin
