The Workers Party of Ethiopia – An example of how to not build a Marxist vanguard party

When building a Marxist vanguard party of the working people you need ideological commitment, rooting among the workers and peasants mainly, collective leadership and a proportional social composition (by class, gender and ethnic composition) to be representative. There is an example in history, how to not achieve this goal: The Workers Party of Ethiopia (WPE).

Lack of urgency in building the party

The Derg, the military government of Ethiopia, ruled the country since 1974. Despite the socialist claim of the regime, there was no ruling party until the year 1984. Ethiopia under the Derg was officially allied to the Soviet Union, which was setting the Derg under pressure since 1977 to form a party as soon as possible¹. Still it took until December 1979 to even form a preparational organization for the founding of a party: The Commission for Organizing the Party of the Working People of Ethiopia (COPWE). Nota bene: This was still no party, just an organization. The Derg were comfortable in ruling as a military regime, they saw no need in founding the party as soon as possible.

Mengistu Haile Mariam, the leader of the Derg, already promised in February 1977 in an interview with the East German newspaper Neues Deutschland two things: The establishing of the People’s Democratic Republic of Ethiopia and the founding of a Workers Party of Ethiopia². The latter, as mentioned, came in the year 1984. The former even took until 1987 to be officially announced by the adoption of a constitution. There is no example in history of the socialist states where there was such a long discrepancy between announced promise and actual delivery in practice.

Lack of ideological commitment

The reason for that can be found in a lack of ideological commitment by the members of the party. The ideological commitment to Marxism is questioned by bourgeois Africanists and historians just as contemporary diplomats from the socialist countries, such as the German Democratic Republic.

British bourgeois Africanist Christopher Clapham gives the following accession of Mengistu´s commitment to Marxism:

While Marxism-Leninism is evidently a very useful doctrine to a leader in Mengistu’s position, to speak of conviction would imply an idea of it as a view of the world to be implemented for its own sake, rather than as an instrument for achieving nationalist and statist goals, and of this I can see no sign.³

So Clapham accuses Mengistu of mimicry, of paying lip services to Marxism just to boost his legitimacy. He is not alone with that claim.

A diplomat from the German Democratic Republic wrote:

Despite the regime in Addis Ababa might try to look anti-imperialist and Marxist, in core it is a petty bourgeois military regime.⁴

When even your allies do not regard you as genuine, then it is a clear warning sign. Mengistu also delivered examples of his lack of commitment to the socialist cause.

In August 1986 Mengistu stressed in an interview with the West German magazine Der Spiegel:

The peasants are allowed to cultivate their land in a cooperative or privately. We will create in a short period of time a wealthy class of peasants in Ethiopia.⁵

He promised the blue from the sky, while an actual Marxist would know that the peasantry cannot improve their situation without joining cooperatives, because otherwise they cannot accumulate enough to improve their livelihood. The “wealthy class of peasants” also sounds like the creation of a class of kulaks – big peasants that live from the cheap labor of the small peasantry and agrarian proletariat, a rural medium bourgeois class. But that is not all.

In May 1989 Mengistu said in an interview with a British TV program:

Having said that capitalism and socialism are but stages on the scale of development, it follows that Marxism is the ideology of a society pursuing the ideals of socialist socio-economics. Now, our long-term objective is to build a socialist society. But this is a very distant objective, an ideal.⁶

Mengistu makes it look like he regarded socialism as some sort of utopia rather than an actual goal to achieve. This view alone is very anti-Marxist because for Marxism socialism is scientifically a necessity for society and possible to achieve. He also admitted in that interview that the private sector is the dominant sector in Ethiopia:

In other words, there is a state sector as well as a very modest cooperative one and, alongside these, there is a very large and significant private sector. But the level of finance, technology and capital at which these sectors operate is really so low that it doesn’t make sense to speak either of capitalism or socialism. This is a point that must be emphasized.⁷

There were many non-Marxist African countries that followed their branch of African socialism, which achieved far more on the field of nationalization and formation of cooperatives in less years than the Derg in 15 years: Zambia under Kaunda and Uganda under Obote, to just name two examples. What did Mengistu and his government do with their time and with the means the socialist countries were giving them?

So it was even before 1990 very obvious that the Derg barely took measures to transform the private-capitalist economy into a socialist economy. In 1990 Mengistu openly abandoned Marxism-Leninism and said in an interview with the Jerusalem Post:

It was on the basis of the assessment we have made of these developments that we have introduced a mixed economy in our country and restructured our party into a non-ideological party. This is not just empty rhetoric. We have taken already concrete steps.⁸

The “concrete steps” included to just keep the private-capitalist sector:

In our country, the economy is predominantly private.⁹

Mengistu threw away Marxism and the socialist goal. On the 11th Plenum of the CC of the WPE in March 1990 he also openly said:

As seen from all angles, the transition to the socialist system guided through the programme of the National Democratic Revolution has proven difficult and unattainable.¹⁰

Instead the Ethiopian government now even allied Israel, an imperialist power. In the end the Derg and their WPE behaved like a clique of mercenaries selling out to the highest offer.

An unhealthy social composition of the party

The Workers Party of Ethiopia had an unhealthy social composition in its leading organs and at the party congress of 1984. That mercenary mentality had its roots in the overrepresentation of the armed forces within the party.

The Central Committee of the WPE elected in 1984 had 97.5% male and only 2.5% female members. 47.5% of its members were members of the armed forces, so civilians were just a slight majority, while the armed forces were massively overrepresented. It is not a bad thing to have a significant amount of military cadres in the party leadership, but not that far out of proportion compared to the common civilian working people. The next discrepancy is that the CC was obviously dominated by Amhara people, who were the dominant people in Ethiopia´s history but are just one quarter of the entire people. Ethiopia is a multi-ethnic country, but the party leadership did not even roughly represent that fact¹¹.

Also the Party Congress that elected this CC was by social composition far away from actually representing the working people of Ethiopia. 93.7% of the delegates were men, just 6.3% were women. Just 19.26% of the delegates were workers and 11.81% were peasants, while the armed forces and state bureaucracy accounted for 68.93% of the delegates. That the class background of their parents was in 6.87% workers, in 64.86% peasants and 28.27% another class¹² cannot be regarded as an excuse for this massive disproportion. The WPE was in fact a party of the army, not of the workers and peasants.

When announcing the founding of the COPWE on 17. December 1979, Mengistu Haile Mariam said:

Right from the beginning when we declared that socialism is our guiding principle, we would have announced the establishment of “Socialist Party” if our fundamental aim was the pursuit of mere name and form.¹³

He tried to make it look like they waited for so long because of necessary preparations, but that cannot hide this fact: The WPE could only be called a workers party by the mere name. It is not unusual that socialist parties in the beginning struggle with issues of proportionality among different groups of the working people, but the dominance of the military in the WPE is too obvious. It is clear that the party was just a half-hearted project by the Derg.

Mao said in 1964 in a conversation with an expert from Zanzibar, who claimed that Africa would have no communist party at the moment:

The question of establishing a communist party must rest on whether there are any industrial workers. I see that there are industries in Africa. Many of the countries have industries, some have been established by the imperialists and some have been established by the Africans themselves; there are mines, railroads, highways, and other industries. Although there is no communist party at present, there will be one of these days.¹⁴

As we can see for example the WPE did not root among the working people mainly, but the armed forces. It was only pro forma a communist party. Mao was right, that communists parties will form, but the way the WPE was formed was obviously not meant.

The collective leadership issue

Democratic centralism formally makes collective leadership mandatory. However, we all know that paper and reality are two different things. In the case of the Derg it was the same. A cult of personality was built up around Mengistu Haile Mariam due to his high power among the Derg. Mengistu was shown next to Marx, Engels and Lenin at the First Party Congress of the WPE in 1984¹⁵ as well as on other occasions. This of course was a copying of the cult of personality that existed in many other socialist countries. But according to Christopher Clapham it did not stop there. He accuses Mengistu of copying forms of the cult of personality that were common to the Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie¹⁶. Marxist education fell flat. The Derg just created a cult around Mengistu Haile Mariam as a person, but he did not represent an actual Marxist-Leninist line, as shown above. It is no wonder that Christopher Clapham therefore writes about Ethiopia under the Derg:

The role of ideology, often regarded as a critical feature of Marxist-Leninist regimes, nonetheless appears to me to be largely a matter of iconography.¹⁷

Mengistu turned Marxism into a caricature just like he turned democratic centralism into a caricature. This statement he made in 1994 is especially a blatant lie:

I was and still am a revolutionary democrat that strongly opposes political hegemony of both the indigenous and international dictators.¹⁸

It might be more true that he saw himself as a “revolutionary democrat” (in a bourgeois sense) than a Marxist, but he is guilty of ruling as a dictator of a military regime. This is what he obviously denies. In September 1978 Mengistu called in a speech to crush the Maoist EPRP (Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Party) and the Soviet-revisionist MEISON (All Ethiopia Socialist Movement)¹⁹ – and they were bloodily crushed. A year later Mengistu said: One feature of the political education is to expose the true colours of Maoism, which had in the early stages of the revolution confused many people.²⁰ But the truth is that this is that kind of talk the Soviet-revisionists at that time were all spreading. Mengistu himself was more careless – he crushed all who did not recognize his military regime, whether they were Maoists like the EPRP or not, like MEISON. MEISON could have delivered civilian cadres for a party, but the Derg under Mengistu´s leadership was not willing to share power with civilians.

A military attaché from the German Democratic Republic criticized the isolation of the Derg from the masses and the “after 1979 growing cult of personality around Mengistu”. He said clearly:

The main problem was, that despite all outer metamorphosizes the Ethiopian leadership staid a military government.²¹

Ethiopia´s main problem was that it was in general a military dictatorship that blocked the path for civilians to become part of the government collective. That Mengistu ruled as a dictator is also in that context not unusual: In the army the highest rank has the say. For a government this principle is harmful and for the formation of a Marxist party even more. Mengistu single-handedly drove Ethiopia against the wall with his disregard for collectivity and personal dictatorship as military leader.

Final remarks

Building a communist party is accompanied with certain hardships and problems, as seen above. But these can be overcome and the party gathers experience from overcoming them. Why this example from Ethiopia of the 80s? To learn from it for the future. Also a negative example can be a teacher, when learning from it what to watch out for when forming a communist party. With this negative example in mind, many odysseys into dead ends can be prevented in the future. This will save a lot of time, efforts and material that is better to be used to progress as a party.

Learn from the past to build a better tomorrow!