Guilt and Atonement: The Genesis of Revolutionary Spirit in Ethiopia By Dr. Messay Kebede Aug 4, 2004

A country that has gone through a traumatic and adverse experience cannot move forward without dealing with the causes of its hardship. Not only are concealed mistakes likely to be repeated, but also a fresh start cannot happen unless acute awareness exorcises the demons of the past. That is why Ethiopians must repeatedly go back to and reflect on the circumstances that led to the revolution of 1974.

A good number of scholars derive the revolutionary spirit that took hold of most students and members of the Western educated elite in the late ’60s and early ’70s from the severity of Ethiopia’s social and political problems. On top of economic stagnation and widening gap between the rich and the poor, scholars underline the impediments of ethnic oppression, which further concentrated wealth and power in the hands of a small Amhara elite. They argue that the lack of reforms so exasperated these problems that students and members of the intelligentsia saw no way out except through the hard path of revolutionary changes.

Yet, this attribution of the revolutionary spirit to the deep contradictions of the imperial society little agrees with the choices and methods characteristic of the revolutionary standpoint. The vision of a society that lies in ruins would advise caution, not revolutionary upheavals. It is inconsistent to argue that most students and members of the intelligentsia became revolutionary because of their grasp of the severity of Ethiopia’s problems. Such a grasp would have guarded against the danger of radical solutions and encouraged the need for a prudent approach. You don’t break up a system that you regard as fragile and explosive by calling for revolutionary upheavals. Instead, you advocate a pragmatic line and take reforms as the rational way to fix the system.

If objective conditions invited reforms rather than revolution, what, then, drove the majority of students and intellectuals to revolutionary convictions? The very fact that we are dealing with students and intellectuals easily suggests that we direct our attention to the mental process triggered by the exposure to modern, Western education. Because modern ideas and methods did not grow from the native culture, modern education took the form of displacement of native values and beliefs. It became a process of acculturation, of Westernization resulting in the depreciation of the traditional legacy.

Most vulnerable in this process of acculturation was the legacy of religious beliefs. Because the Ethiopian Orthodox church did not develop a hermeneutical approach by which it could reconcile its traditional beliefs with the requirements of the modern world, the exposure to the scientific method and the rationality of Western cultural heritage induced many educated Ethiopians to adopt a skeptical attitude, if not to reject religious faith altogether.

The important issue here is that Westernization is neither a smooth process nor free of deep psychological disturbances. While to be westernized means to become modern, it also signifies a deep sense of betrayal on the part of Westernized Ethiopians. How could it be otherwise when Westernized Ethiopians define their identity by their cultural and historical legacies and base their dignity and pride on the value of those legacies? Western education is most valued, but its acquisition requires the adoption of iconoclastic attitudes to Ethiopian identity and values. In short, the more modern Ethiopians became the higher the scorn for their own legacy soared.

The unleashing of a deep conflict between two incompatible but equally important commitments, namely, the dedication to Ethiopianness and the pursuit of modernization, is thus the inevitable consequence of modern schooling. Since the progress of modernization is how Ethiopians move away from Ethiopianness while remaining profoundly attached to it, the experience of modernization is indeed fraught with distressing, traumatic downsides. And as the commitment to modernization gains the upper hand, the distress develops into a guilty conscience.

Let it be said at once that this analysis of the rise of the revolutionary spirit excludes the case of all those groups and individuals who became revolutionary because of their hatred for Ethiopia. The analysis only applies to those Ethiopians who believed that revolution is the correct and sole remedy for Ethiopia’s ills. Whereas the former used revolution to weaken Ethiopia so as to deploy their evil design, the latter became revolutionary out of love: destruction meant for them the renewal and empowerment of Ethiopia. Clearly, to speak of guilt is to presuppose love.

It is important that we focus on the various methods that Western educated Ethiopians of the ’60s and early ’70s devised to overcome the feeling of guilt. Hedonism was one way of drowning the remorse of betrayal in sensuous excitements that modern life offered to the educated: the promise of social mobility, consumerism, and individualism conspired to convince the hedonist Ethiopian that Westernization was a good thing for Ethiopia. Revolutionary commitment was the other extreme method of wiping out guilt. Indeed, guilt is overcome if betrayal is construed as affirmation. And the best way to affirm, to prove your loyalty is to position yourself in favor of a radical change. The more radical the change, the more the betrayal appears worthwhile. If we have to betray Ethiopia, let it be for the best, nay, for the absolute: only the type of change that puts Ethiopia upside down can offset the abomination of natives turned into gravediggers of their society. When you scorn reforms and cry out for revolution, what else is motivating you but the need to believe that you destroy for the very best?

Grant that revolutionary commitment has a redeeming function, and it becomes clear that one of the reasons that made Marxism-Leninism so attractive to many educated Ethiopians is the psychological urge to appease the prickles of guilty conscience. The theory stigmatized Western capitalism as imperialist invasion and domination: this blackening of the West camouflaged the desertion of Ethiopian tradition with a nationalist dressing. It convinced Ethiopians that the tradition they came to reject under the spell of Westernization was truly responsible for the “backwardness” of Ethiopia. The iconoclastic discourse on Ethiopian heritage thus acquired the added value of ushering in the empowerment of the people of Ethiopia.

Since the incrimination of tradition is how its destruction is pictured as an act of deliverance, the need for atonement finds its ultimate expression in the educated elite defining itself as the savior of Ethiopia, as the new messiah with the historical mission of freeing the people and inflicting the final punishment on the forces of obscurantism and reaction. Evidently, the revolutionary spirit covers up a move first inspired by Westernization. It metamorphoses betrayal into an expression of greater commitment. What Marxism-Leninism offered was precisely this possibility of converting betrayal into messianism, of transfiguring the uprooted elite into the rescuer of Ethiopia.

Earlier I mentioned that the religious commitment of many Ethiopians was shaken by the impact of Western ideas. One observation on which most of us agree is that conversion to Marxism-Leninism was all the more painless the more the belief in religious promises had declined. I remember quite distinctly that people of my generation offered the greatest resistance to Marxism when they remained faithful to Orthodox Christianity. Let us admit it, the story of the spread of Marxist-Leninist views among the young of the 60s and 70s is the story of Westernized Ethiopians who, having walked away from the traditional beliefs of their people under the impact of Western ideas, were craving for a substitute.

In what sense was Marxism-Leninism a substitute for the loss of religious feeling? First of all, as the theory denounces all the religions of the world as the opium of the people, it prohibits the switch to Western religious views. In thus throwing all religions, including Western ones, in the garbage of history, the theory greatly reduced the sense of betrayal by allowing Ethiopians to turn their back on their legacy without becoming proselytes. Again, what the radical generation liked most in Marxism was its defiance of the West: the defiance flattered its nationalism even as it was debunking Ethiopian values.

But there is more to the matter than this. So distressing is the loss of religious feeling that nothing less than the eruption of revolutionary spirit is liable to assuage it. Who can deny that the best substitute for that loss is a theory that claims to be scientific and modern while preserving the promises of Christian religions? Such is precisely the case of Marxism with its theory of class struggle and the advent of the just and equal society after the overthrow of exploiting classes. What else was this happy end of history reproducing but the eschatological promises of religion?

The question is: Who brings this happy end to the Ethiopian people? No doubt, the educated elite: by assuming the messianic mission of deliverance, this elite does no more than offer the people the very promises of religion with the added characteristic that the ideal life happens in the real world. This messianic role, which I have elsewhere called “elitism,” is the ultimate expiatory act of the educated elite. Betrayal is construed as a necessary condition for realizing the deepest aspirations of the Ethiopian society, the aspirations enshrined in the eschatological beliefs of Christianity, those of the Last Judgment and the final triumph of the Good. Some such betrayal is simply greater love, ultimate nationalism.

While resentment against the West has a hand in the Ethiopian receptivity to the socialist ideology, an even deeper motive for such receptivity is, therefore, the need for expiation. Witness: one editorial of Addis Zemen writes in 1976 that one of the basic goals of socialism is to “allow Ethiopians to reappropriate the original foundation of religion, namely that of love and peace,” which foundation has been distorted and betrayed by subsequent ruling elites. The statement transforms the conversion to socialist beliefs into a negation of the negation, that is, into a denial that ends up reinstating Ethiopian values. Revolution is thus greater fidelity.

What is one to conclude from this equation of revolutionary spirit with the quest for atonement? Essentially that Ethiopia being at a crossroads in her long existence, our ability to turn the tide in favor of renaissance depends on the right choices we make. The derivation of the Ethiopian revolution from socioeconomic hindrances simply overlooks the fact that the establishment of an inappropriate economic and political system is not our only affliction; our mind, our thinking has also been messed up. The neglect of this major calamity fools us into thinking that economic and political reforms are enough to get us out of our problems. We forget to fix the mind as well, for no reform can succeed unless it is undertaken by a sound mind.

The coming election in Ethiopia sets the stage for the present government and Ethiopian opposition parties to vie for power in order to implement what they think is best for Ethiopia. Yet what fails Ethiopia is less the lack of reforms than the inability to create a grassroots movement in support of modernization, that is, of democracy and economic pursuits. Ethiopia cannot modernize if ordinary people do not participate in the venture, if they do not see modernization as their own purpose. Development theories that exclusively come from above have failed again and again. A change of direction cannot happen unless those who govern and those who aspire to govern remove elitism from their programs, which, as we just saw, is a byproduct of Westernization and its subsequent cultural disorientation. Needless to say, the removal includes the ethnicization of Ethiopian politics, which is a direct upshot of the revolutionary spirit.

A policy of cultural renaissance should accompany any serious proposal for economic and political reforms. By cultural renaissance I mean the attempt to renew with the permanent values of Ethiopianness, as exemplified by our long and glorious history of survival. Renovation occurs when modern ideas and methods are grounded on Ethiopia’s cultural legacy through a hermeneutical work. The only positive antidote to guilt, and hence to elitism, is the renovation that defines the use of modern ideas and methods as the enhancement of Ethiopianness. In this way, history starts and ends in Ethiopia, that is, we relearn to center Ethiopia. This movement from the periphery of the world to the center is the cultural empowerment that conditions our ability to reform and modernize Ethiopia.