War in Ethiopia Shows Need to Fight Patriotism and Ethnic Nationalism
November 25—The Ethiopian Army is poised to attack Mekele, the capital of Tigray province. This war started three weeks ago. It has already claimed hundreds of lives and forced tens of thousands to flee across the border to Somalia. Rulers on both sides are committed to a fight to the death.
Whose death? Workers on both sides are dying. And for what?
Soldiers and young workers in Ethiopia grew up in a country which capitalists have ruled, since 1995, on the principle of ethnic nationalism. It’s now more urgent than ever that they turn this deadly fight among capitalists into a revolutionary struggle for communist workers’ power.
When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, US imperialists ushered into power the Tigray People Liberation Front (TPLF). This was the strongest of the guerrilla armies that had been fighting against the Soviet-backed Dergue.
Eritrea, formerly an Ethiopian province, seceded. The TPLF, representing a small minority, led the reorganization of Ethiopia into eight semi-autonomous regions, based on ethnic nationalism.
Each regional ruling class has promoted ethnic nationalist cultural institutions and ethnic nationalist ideology to cover up their exploitation of the masses.
In spite of its initial support from US imperialism, the TPLF government has been using this divide-and-rule strategy and a fascist police state to provide a “stable investment climate” for Chinese capital.
China, the rising imperialist, has built infrastructure and many factories in Ethiopia. Ethiopian workers of all ethnicities slave for $27 a month in textile and other small manufacturing.
This exploitation can’t last forever. But ethnic nationalism has allowed the masses’ anger to be directed away from class struggle, into ethnic-nationalist movements and uprisings.
Two years ago, the old coalition fell apart. Abiy Ahmed became prime minister. All the regional partners except the TPLF joined his new “Prosperity Party.” The government instituted neoliberal reforms that have opened Ethiopia to European and US imperialists.
Abiy won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2018 for ending the long-standing Ethiopia-Eritrea war by throwing the TPLF under the bus. Just days later, the International Monetary Fund loaned Ethiopia $3 billion to help European & US imperialists compete with China in exploiting the working class in Ethiopia.
As Abiy moves to consolidate power in the hands of the federal government, ethnic nationalist misleaders have mobilized mass protests and ethnic violence. Nowhere has the resistance been as fierce as in Tigray—ruled by the TPLF nationalists who formerly ruled the entire country.
This summer, confronting political instability, Abiy used the excuse of the pandemic to postpone parliamentary elections. The TPLF regional government in Tigray held elections in September anyway. The federal government responded with economic reprisals. The Tigray regional army attacked a federal army compound in Tigray and the war was on.
Both ethnic nationalism and patriotism are deadly illusions—in Ethiopia and everywhere. They are based on the idea that workers have more in common with bosses who speak the same language than they do with working people who may speak a different language, but face the same oppression, poverty and exploitation, day after day, week after week.
How does it help you if the boss who pays you a starvation wage waves the same national flag? If the boss speaks your language or worships in the same temple? How does it help you if your ethnic rulers make deals with Chinese imperialists instead of European imperialists?
As long as we see ourselves as different from our working-class family of another country, religion, language, ethnicity or “race,” the rulers will continue to get rich off our sweat and rule off our dead bodies.
Once we see that we are more like other workers than different, our common class interest is the material basis for unity. For all its weaknesses, the 20th century communist movement acted on that basis. In Ethiopia, the Marxist-Leninist movement against Haile Selassie and the Dergue united workers and students of all ethnicities. However, its line didn’t attack nationalism or patriotism.
Today the ICWP is organizing in South Africa against xenophobic attacks on migrant workers. In South Asia against the fascists who would divide Hindus from Muslims. Everywhere in the world against the racists who would divide us.
We proclaim loudly that nationalism and patriotism are everywhere attacks on the masses. We are building one International Communist Workers’ Party for our one international working class.
We have nothing to lose but our chains! We have a world to win!