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DW, I'm sorry to have taken so long to reply. Other business intervened. But the subject is important, so I have come back to it.ti. DW wrote: > > If there were a workers movement or a peasant movement of > some kind in Ethiopia I have no doubt he would of commented on it. That could well be why he was silent. I have thought something similar. But just because we may know *why* Trotsky ignored the internal situation in Ethiopia, doesn't mean that Trotsky was *right* to do so. There were few workers in the Ethiopian Empire, and there wasn't a revolutionary peasant movement. But that doesn't mean that Ethiopia was a blank slate, free of classes, conflicts, and politics. There were important class and political developments in Ethiopia, as in black Africa in general. I will list some of them later on. But first, some points on method. Trotsky didn't have to praise Haile Selassie to the skies. He didn't have to imagine that a revolutionary dictator would inspire the anti-imperialist movement. He could simply have supported Ethiopia against the Italian invasion and backed whatever resistance took place. But that's not what he did. Instead, he wanted to make a point about what anti-imperialism meant and what solidarity for Ethiopia meant. To do this, he compared Selassie to Cromwell and Robespierre (which he meant as praise), and he imagined that the "dictator" Selassie might galvanize the anti-imperialist movement. And at that point, one can no longer excuse ignoring the internal situation in Ethiopia. Trotsky was setting forward a path for anti-imperialism. As a result, it would be important for any serious progressive person to consider whether he was right in the light of how the war developed, and about Selassie's prospective role in the anti-imperialist movement. Indeed, it should have been especially important for *Trotskyists* to consider the experience of the war. Yet the Trotskyist movement has shown little if any interest in what happened. It didn't compare Trotsky's "thought experiment" with the real world. That's clear even on this internet list. While ignoring what happened in Ethiopia, the Trotskyist movement took his statement as an important guide. This has led some of them to put an anti-imperialist gloss on a number of other vicious dictators. Some even have gone so far as to support the Taliban. In 2002, I wrote an article about a debate among British Trotskyists on this issue, "The socialist debate on the Taliban". See part one, where I reproduced material from Bob Pitt and Ian Donovan http://www.communistvoice.org/28cTaliban.html and part two, where I went into the issue of Trotsky's stand on Selasie, Stalin's on the Emir of Afghanistan, etc. http://www.communistvoice.org/29cEmir.html > Trotsky's statement, akin to his hypothetical "Democratic Imperialism" (UK) > vs "Fascist Brazil" is a similar thought experiment as well akin to the the > real-world situation w/the Italian invasion of Ethiopia. Yes, it's a similar thought experiment, but it's not akin to the real-world situation. In fact, he had to make a thought experiment about *Brazil*, precisely because experience had disproved his thought experiment about *Ethiopia*. It was 1938 when he wrote about Brazil. At that time, everyone knew that Selassie had fled Ethiopia (he didn't return until 1941), and Trotsky would have looked ridiculous if he had repeated his ideas about Selassie. But instead of reconsidering his theory in the light of experience, he shoved experience under the rug and changed the subject to what his imagination said about Brazil. The fact is that, on this and other questions, Trotsky asserted a number of false things with absolute confidence. And he wouldn't go back and correct himself. >You are not arguing > so much here with Trotsky as it then entire Comintern from it's Second > Congress onward. No offense, but that's bull. I've written on Lenin's stand on anti-imperialism many times, and on the difference between Leninist anti-imperialism and "non-class anti-imperialism". If you want to pursue this subject seriously, start another thread on it, and I'll discuss it with you. But for the moment, I'm going to dwell on the real-world situation with Ethiopia. It's a serious issue. > > We have an interesting discussion on Permanent Revolution (PR) on Louis' > blog. I'd suggest Joeseph you take a looksee there. I would be interested to see this discussion, although I don't have time to take part in it. Also, I have to admit the limits of my computer knowledge. Where can I find the blog? I thought that, being on the Marxism list, I was seeing Proyect's views and the comments on them. > My own criticism of PR > is that in fact it *doesn't* offer guidance on struggles for national > liberation. It's not poised as a strategy for the national democratic > revolutions. It *starts* after a victory by democratic and workers forces. > PR could not, nor would it want any one want to project it for > Ethopia...which is why Trotsky doesn't do it. Yes. And I would be interested to see your criticism. But it's not as if Trotsky has some additional theory that does give guidance on such questions. Moreover, "permanent revolution" rules out anyone having a serious strategy for such things: it would be stageist opportunism, or otherwise outdated. Yet with regard to such issues where "permanent revolution" couldn't conceivably apply, Trotsky didn't simply fall silent. Instead he still makes confident assertions. He does this by adopting mechanical rules which have done tremendous harm. ........................ So now let's look at some of the events around the historic struggle to defeat the Italian occupation of Ethiopia:: * Selassie was an absolutist emperior who presided over an expansionist empire which oppressed a number of subject peoples. This would be important for the war and the subsequent events. It's just as important as national oppression in Europe. * Selassie fled Ethiopia on May 2, 1936, about a week and a half after Trotsky praised him. He fled not just because of Italian pressure, but from fear of the Oromo people, one of the oppressed peoples in Ethiopia. Selassie fled as the capital of Ethiopia, Addis Ababa, was about to fall. He could have retreated with his troops away from the Italians, but was afraid of passing through territory inhabited by the Oromo. * Ethiopian resistance increasingly took on the form of a partisan or guerrilla war. The Ethiopian regime's administration was unable to provide leadership to it, and it was instead centered in the movement called the Patriots. This major uprising of the Ethiopian people was a forerunner of the partisan wars and resistance movements that would arise in occupied Europe. It deserves the same serious attention to be devoted to it. It's far more important than arbitrary thought experiments. * The Ethiopian Empire's oppression of various subject peoples played a bad part in the war. The Italian fascists were able to exploit the resulting hatreds and obtain some support in parts of Ethiopia. As far as I know, Selassie never attempted to placate the subject nationalities with promises of reform. This failure had the same miserable effect as it would have had in Yugoslavia if the partisans had not made promises to respect the national rights of the various nationalities there (they failed, however, to make the same promises to the Albanian Kosovars - this was a failure whose consequences are still being felt today). * Selassie's flight and the inability of his administration to lead the resistance spread discontent with his absolutist regime. The defeat of the Ethiopian army, despite heroic efforts by its soldiers against superior weaponry, led Ethiopians to think about why this had taken place. The Patriots were *not* a revolutionary movement, nor a class movement of the peasants, but they wanted reforms in Selassie's regime. To see what happened, it's useful to continue this survey into events that took place after the vicious murder of Trotsky in August 1940. He died, but his theories remained, and have to be judged in the light of subsequent events as well as those in his lifetime. * With the help of British troops, Selassie would return to Ethiopia in 1941. He was immediately concerned to prevent reform and preserve absolutist rule. He reorganized the country to maximize his power, and this quickly provoked several revolts. The most notable one was the Woyane uprising in Tigray in 1943; it was suppressed with the help of the British air force. Just as the Ethiopian partisans were a forerunner of other partisans in World War II, the suppression of their hopes for reform was a forerunner of how the World War II Allies treated other movements. * In 1950, Ethiopia was linked with Eritrea in a federation, as Selassie succeeded in his efforts to replace British rule over Eritrea by union with Ethiopia. In 1962, Ethiopia dissolved the federation with Eritrea and outright annexed it. Thus Selassie continued on the expansionist course of the empire and paved the way for years and years of more war, more blood, more tragedy. But in a way, this was in accord with Trotsky's dream that Selassie might play a role like that of Oliver Cromwell: Cromwell, besides overthrowing the royalists, was also the bloody butcher of Ireland, and in Marx's view this oppression of Ireland was "the shipwreck" of the English republic. How deaf and blind could Trotsky be to the national issue in Ethiopia as to have praised Cromwell in an article on the Ethiopian war in 1936 - a war in which the national issue impeded the resistance to occupation? * Around 1958, Selassie finally decided to take part in the general movement in Africa. He did obtain a good deal of influence among newly-independent states, and when the Organization of African Unity was formed, its headquarters were located in Addis Ababa. But far from this giving a great new impulse to the anti-colonial and anti-imperialist movements, Selassie's main efforts were to restrain hostility to Western imperialism and to prevent condemnation of Ethiopia's domination of subject nationalities. Indeed, he was one of the moving forces behind the tragic idea that the right to self-determination should not apply to the affairs of independent African states. * Haile Selassie was overthrown in 1974. But the legacy of the empire's national oppression and absolutism continued to plague Ethiopia in the actions of subsequent governments. That's was the reality of Ethiopian absolutism: it makes a mockery of Trotsky's dreams of the progressive dictator who would inspire the anti-imperialist cause. No wonder Trotsky's thought experiments about anti-imperialism had such bad consequenes for the Trotskyist movement. -- Joseph Green _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
