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Louis Proyect wrote: > If you want to hear the government' defense of its policies, the go-to > guy is Thomas Mountain who lives in Eritrea and pumps out a steady stream > of articles with titles like oeThe Cuba of Africa ( > http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/05/21/the-cuba-of-africa/ ) . Yes, Thomas Mountain has been at it a long time. Back in 2001, he was upset with the "Communist Voice" because while defending the Eritrean right to self-determination, we denounced the politics of EPLF and sought to encourage the development of an independent working class trend in Eritrea. A number of letters were exchanged. Below are some excerpts from CVO comrade Frank Arango's summary of this correspondence: "Can one support proletarian independence [in Eritrea} while upholding the right to self-determination? "Vol. 6, #3 and Vol. 7 #1 of Communist Voice carried a two-part article on the 1999-2000 Ethiopian-Eritrean war. This was one of the more bitter conflicts of recent times, and although an OAU/UN-brokered peace agreement is now in place, a lasting peace is still not assured. The Eritrean people won their right to decide whether or not to separate from their former Ethiopian colonial masters in 1991. In 1993 they overwhelmingly voted to do so. But the 1999-2000 conflict was driven by the Ethiopian government's thirst to reverse the right of the Eritrean people to remain free. And it killed many scores of thousands of people during the war, laid waste to major areas of Eritrea during its May-June 2000 offensive, etc. , in order to achieve this purely chauvinist aim. "Part I of the article dwelt on the fact that the right of nations to self-determination (or, in Eritrea's case, to decide for themselves whether of not to remain independent) remains an important issue on the Horn of Africa and in today's world. It pointed out that the present governments of Eritrea and Ethiopia stem from liberation fronts, and discussed what can be expected from such organizations if they gain power when led by petty-bourgeois and/or bourgeois forces. And it stressed that the working class should struggle to lead democratic movements itself. Part II dealt with some of the questions surrounding the outbreak of the war, the culpability of the U. S. and other major imperialist powers in it, etc. It also developed as a main theme the crucial issue of the Ethiopian and Eritrean workers needing to develop politics and organization independent of the bourgeoisie, and of the traditional nationalist illusions in Eritrea. This last theme has gotten one of our readers upset. "As author of 'The right to self-determination and the Ethiopian-Eritrean war' I received several comments from readers. Among them was a note from Thomas Mountain, a member of the U. S. -Eritrean Friendship Association. Mountain's views conform to one of the negative tendencies in today's left: to subordinate the working masses to the rule of the local bourgeoisie in the name of opposing U. S. interference, bullying and denial of the rights of nations to self-determination. But since he says he's 'ready for revolution' this causes some tension in what is in reality a common reformist or even liberal position. ..... "More letters between Mountain and CVO members showed he's a wild defender of Eritrea's ruling party (the EPLF/PFDJ). He tries to explain the U. S. appeasement of the Ethiopian aggressors simply on the basis of the Eritrean government being a black role model which the white-supremacist CIA wanted to wipe out. To do this he has to ignore a wealth of facts showing that the dominant imperialist powers--the U. S. , World Bank, etc. --had formed an alliance with the Eritrean regime in the 90s. He also makes preposterous claims regarding this government, and not just to us. At Dehai. com he says to the world that Eritrea (which he calls 'the light of Africa') 'has chosen self-reliance over dependency" and "has said no to the World Bank and the IMF'. And to me he makes such claims as that 'Eritrean society is the most democratic society. . . in the world, if not in all history'! "But I had had the audacity to point out in my article and in my letters to him that this [the Eritrean regime--JG] was a capitalist regime 'tied to imperialism by a thousand threads'. I commented on some of the ways it restricted democracy for the masses. And I argued that the Eritrean working class had to reject the politics of the EPLF/PFDJ and build a class movement independent of the bourgeoisie and the traditional nationalist illusions. Mountain's response was to accuse me of slandering the great and good EPLF/PFDJ, and to say that I must have white-supremacist blinders on because I don't agree with his assessment of the motivations of the U. S. vis-a-vis the Eritrean government. Eventually he stopped writing. "Thomas Mountain signed some of his letters to us with the phrase 'ready for revolution'. Yet his standpoint is to support one of the exploitative and oppressive regimes of the present imperialist world order." http://www.communistvoice.org/27cEritrea.html _________________________________________________________ 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
