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Postal union leaders go to sleep
Joseph Green
In the Midst of Crisis, Union Leaders go to Sleep:
the Situation among Postal Workers, late September 2020
By Tim Hall, Detroit Workers' Voice, Sept. 26, 2020
There is a pause in the postal workers' mass actions, due to the unwillingness of
the union leaders to call for any major events. The widespread-but-tiny rallies at
300 locations, (according to American Postal Workers Union leaders) across the
country at the end of August have not been followed up. The APWU leaders are
setting aside any idea of mass action, instead relying on the November election to
remove Trump, the principal roadblock to any improvements. They are focusing
their efforts on defending mail-in balloting, whose proper conduct clearly would
favor Biden against Trump. Their focus is entirely on getting Biden into office, not
on building the strength of the workers to defend themselves. Their refusal to call
more and expanding actions is especially grievous, considering that in August
and September the plight of the post office and of postal workers was on
everyone's lips, due to late deliveries, the publicity about DeJoy's removal of
postal machinery and Trump's attacks on the post office; never had postal
workers had such a chance to make a forceful statement and receive wide public
support. But the top union leaders. Dimondstein of the APWU and Rolando of the
National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC) refused to call the workers into
action. This was a betrayal of the postal workers.
Main Focus on Readying for Mail-In Balloting
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
On September 17 a federal judge issued a nationwide order that forbids the
postal service from making any operational changes that could interfere with the
delivery of the mail in the election. Another judge a few days later ruled similarly.
Ballots must be considered first-class mail or priority. Late trips by carriers, which
DeJoy banned, causing delays, are permitted, as is overtime. DeJoy was ordered
to return removed sorting machines. This is a partial victory for the postal unions
and the many other forces alarmed by the destructive activities of Postmaster
DeJoy, Trump's lackey, on the delivery of mail. It does not, however, guarantee
that the election will be run properly, but it does improve the prospects. On
September 24 DeJoy declared that he could not re-install the 711 sorting
machines removed nationally (the post office normally removes about 380 per
year), as they had been dismantled and cannibalized for parts for other machines,
but he claimed the USPS was capable of processing the ballots, an assurance
which few postal workers believe.
More Information on Postal Workers' Plight Emerges
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
While things are quiet, more information has emerged about the extremely
difficult situation postal workers have faced, not only during the COVID-19
pandemic, which has exacerbated everything, but also for years leading into it.
This material strengthens the points I made in my last report (1). During the
COVID pandemic, 83 postal workers have died from the disease, the number of
postal workers testing positive has tripled from 31,000 to 96,000 from June to
September, and about 52,700 of the agency's 630,000 employees have taken
time off due to COVID, either as sick or quarantining or caring for COVID victims.
This goes a long way toward explaining the delays in delivery that developed
even before DeJoy got his claws on the service. Workers have been working
overtime for years, due to management's refusal to hire sufficient new workers.
One Detroit processing worker nearly died on the machine, having been on the
grind for years.
An article from Salon (2) illustrates the deep difficulties postal workers have
faced. In addition to showing the widespread destructive effect of the pandemic,
the article also exposes the poor preparations by postal management and their
mishandling of the infected and healthy workers in pandemic conditions.
Under-staffing, as I pointed out last time, leading to inflexibility and late deliveries,
is also exposed.
The Efforts to Get Rid of DeJoy
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In late summer the union leaders focused their efforts on getting rid of Postmaster
Joy and his disastrous alterations of postal production methods and plans. But
now that federal judges have ordered the mail to be more or less normally
processed, efforts to get rid of DeJoy have subsided. These efforts are no longer
prominently featured on the APWU web site.
Efforts to Get Funds for the USPS
These efforts are completely stalled, while Congress is unable to produce any
kind of stimulus for the masses. The House has passed a bill that would give $25
billion to the USPS, but it is stalled in the Senate. According the APWU, without
this aid the post office will run out of money by early next year. But this, too, takes
a back seat in the leadership's eyes to the election, or will be solved, they hope,
by the election.
Mass Actions
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
At the end of August, 300 or so nationwide small rallies were held by postal
workers to protest privatization. They seemed to have had only a minor effect on
the public, though they were featured on the evening local news in many places,
but they made a statement in the midst of the intense national discussion that
was taking place then about the post office. But the APWU leadership did not
follow up on them, and the chance to create some momentum and have a major
impact was lost. In April and May car caravans of protest took place in Detroit;
this too could have been used to generate momentum. They created enthusiasm
among the workers themselves at the Detroit processing center. By now,
however, even the call-ins to various Congresspeople have diminished; all
emphasis is on the election.
Activities of the Union Leaderships
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The APWU website highlights, as its central message, a PBS feature with
Dimondstein under the slogan “Save the Post Office!” It was recorded in the first
days of August. Such is the dead-headed lethargy of the top union leaders! Here
we are, one month away from the election, and they are running a video in which
the PBS interviewer begins by saying, “Here we are, three months to the day from
the election....” Also on the web site, Dimondstein has a feature prominently
claiming it will help the workers “check your voter registration status and get the
information you need to vote, including polling place locations and resources to
vote by mail safely, securely and on time.” It doesn't work. The last activity of the
“Grand Alliance” (with the NALC) was June 23. The latest activity listed in the web
site under “Campaigns: The U.S. Mail is Not for Sale!” is the turn-in of petitions
defending the postal service on January 6, 2020, right around the time when the
novel coronavirus was setting foot in this country. Dimondstein should audition for
Rip Van Winkle.
The APWU leadership has engaged the members in phone-calling and petitions
to Congress in an attempt to over-ride the Republican control of the Senate and
hence of all legislation. But even this is on hold. There is not even an explicit call,
with tactics on how, to defend the mailing process at the plants and at the
stations. Just... Vote! and all will be well....
As for the carriers' union, according the the NALC web site, the leadership is not
extremely concerned about the current crisis. The union has joined with other
postal unions (presumably the APWU) and postal management, including DeJoy,
to create an Election Task Force to guarantee that the mail is delivered properly.
This has set up local task forces to try to handle any problems that may arise. It
does not envision a crisis. The NALC did not participate in the APWU-led rallies
at post offices on August 28. All Fairly Quiet on the Postal Front, seems to the the
NALC's view.
Rank-and-File Activists
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Labor Notes group has been meeting. I have missed a couple of them.
Minutes of the meetings show that while they are in touch with the conditions they
are mostly concerned with preparing for handling mail-in balloting and have few
thoughts of mass actions. They have some contacts in cities where the members
of the postal Board of Governors live and may bring pressure on them.
Prospects
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
There seems to be no prospect of any large-scale mass action called by the
union leaderships. The August actions could have been used to fire things up for
something larger, like perhaps rallies at each state capital, but that momentum
was quickly lost, without any plans for more being presented at the time. The only
thing the APWU leadership has engaged the members in is phone-calling and
petitions to Congress in an attempt to over-ride the Republican control of the
Senate and hence of all legislation. But even this is on hold.
This is what happens when the rank and file has no organization to directly
express itself and relies on the top union leaders, Democrats or Republicans, to
lead a fight work the workers' interests. Next to nothing. A grand opportunity lost,
squandered. Just squandered.... <>
Notes
(1) Tim Hall, "Postal workers outraged as attacks on the postal service continue,
but what are the postal unions doing?", August 26,
2020,http://www.communistvoice.org/DSWV-200826.html.
(2) Maryam Jameel, "Postal workers are catching COVID by the thousands. It’s
one more threat to voting by mail", Sept. 19, 2020,
Salon,https://www.yahoo.com/news/postal-workers-catching-covid-thousands-155901798.html. <>
From Detroit/Seattle Workers' Voice mailing list
September 26, 2020
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Re: New Political Science Research Debunks Myths About White Working-Class Support for Trump | College of Arts
John Reimann
The article does admit that 60% of white workers voted for Trump. It then proceeds to imply that this is nothing but a continuation of a voting pattern that has gone on for many years. But that, in turn, implies that Trump is just a continuation of what's been happening in the Republican Party for many years. Of course, there are elements of the past Republican Party in "Trumpism", but to fail to see a sharp break really is a failure to see what's happening in the US (and the world, in fact). This, then, implies a sharp shift in the thinking, the consciousness, of his supporters, including white workers. Not that it's something completely new or different, but that elements of the consciousness that were deeply buried have come to the foreground and are dominant now. So, yes, this is new. John Reimann “Science and socialism go hand-in-hand.” Felicity Dowling Check out:https:http://oaklandsocialist.com also on Facebook
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Gilbert Achcar, "From One Arab Spring to Another: A Regional Revolutionary Process" - Cornell
Louis Proyect
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Why I’m for Voting For Biden and Urge You To Do So - New Politics
Louis Proyect
Dan La Botz says vote for Biden to prevent Trump from seizing power like an American Pinochet. Sure. Since BLM-led general strikes have been forcing the bourgeoisie to its knees, there's no alternative.
https://newpol.org/why-im-for-voting-for-biden-and-urge-you-to-do-so/
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In Debate: A Socialist’s Case for Howie Hawkins | Left Voice
Louis Proyect
As part of our ongoing analysis of the U.S. Green Party, guest writer, John Palmucci offers a counter to Ezra Brain’s Left Voice article: “A Socialist Case Against Howie Hawkins and the Green Party.” Palmucci argues that most criticisms of the Green Party do not apply to its presidential candidate, Howie Hawkins and that socialists should have no qualms with voting for him. https://www.leftvoice.org/guest-post-a-socialists-case-for-howie-hawkins
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Re: New Political Science Research Debunks Myths About White Working-Class Support for Trump | College of Arts
Viejo Oso Gruñon
The White Working-Class is the most marginalized group in the country?! Wow?!
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Re: The Sinking Middle Class | Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist
Paul D'Amato
Marx also used it to describe ideas he considered to be representative of the interests of that class, even if those propounding the ideas were not strictly members of the petty bourgeoisie ;
toggle quoted messageShow quoted text
18th Brumaire: The peculiar character of social-democracy is epitomized in the fact that democratic-republican institutions are demanded as a means, not of doing away with two extremes, capital and wage labor, but of weakening their antagonism and transforming it into harmony. However different the means proposed for the attainment of this end may be, however much it may be trimmed with more or less revolutionary notions, the content remains the same. This content is the transformation of society in a democratic way, but a transformation within the bounds of the petty bourgeoisie. Only one must not get the narrow-minded notion that the petty bourgeoisie, on principle, wishes to enforce an egoistic class interest. Rather, it believes that the special conditions of its emancipation are the general conditions within whose frame alone modern society can be saved and the class struggle avoided. Just as little must one imagine that the democratic representatives are indeed all shopkeepers or enthusiastic champions of shopkeepers. According to their education and their individual position they may be as far apart as heaven and earth. What makes them representatives of the petty bourgeoisie is the fact that in their minds they do not get beyond the limits which the latter do not get beyond in life, that they are consequently driven, theoretically, to the same problems and solutions to which material interest and social position drive the latter practically. This is, in general, the relationship between the political and literary representatives of a class and the class they represent.
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Re: The Sinking Middle Class | Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist
Mark Lause
David R. Roediger not Dan Roediger.
On Sat, Sep 26, 2020, 2:12 PM John A Imani <johnaimani3@...> wrote:
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Re: The Sinking Middle Class | Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist
John A Imani
Louis Proyect, in his review of
“The Sinking Middle Class", cited its author Dan Roedigger: “...as important as it is to recognize that teachers, nurses, and millions of less adequately paid office and sales workers are key elements of the US working class, contradictions of everyday life won’t let us rest there What are we to do with a teacher, or nurse, or sanitation worker, or meatpacker from Green Bay who becomes a labor activist while professing to still (or also) be middle class? Must she pick? Should labor scholars decide for her? These questions are especially vexed because the working class is largely defined by a relation to capital and management, while the middle class includes a variety of such relationships and often turns significantly on personal choice.” So the former is an economic category while the latter is a 'state of mind'. Agree. 'Middle class' is a myth of mind perpetrated upon and perpetuated in us to divide us, as the working class, from ourselves. The determinant(s) of one's class is(are) the element(s) of the value of the commodity that that one brings to the market. The commodity that we as workers sell on the market is our ability to labor, our labor-power, designated in Marxian economics as v. So long as the element of the value of the commodity that members of the asserted 'middle class' sell on the market is limited to their ability to labor v then they are 'working class', matters not how 'well-paid' they are. So long as they can just as well be fired as hired then they are working class, all other such self-flatteries, all other feigned pretensions aside. Comrade Proyect then cited Marx: "The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production... Can I give a good non-Christian "Amen". Such confusion of sociological descriptors with economic categories also infects the usage of the term 'petit-bourgeoisie'. All too oft used as a castigation, it is an "I will know it when I see it" type of proposition, hurled as an aspersion upon those in certain professions, e.g. teachers. Or those perceived as affecting a certain lifestyle. As above, 'states of mind'. But most peculiar is its usage amongst self-proclaimed-Marxists when Marx and Engels are quite clear that petit-bourgeois is an economic category, specifically, a class. A class whose elements of value of their commodity offered on the market differs from the elements of value of the products of other classes. An accounting of those elements of the petit-bourgeois' commodity value would here take longer when this has gone on long enough. But suffice it to say (by Marx and Engels):
“Of course he (the capitalist) can, like his labourer, take to work himself, participate directly in the process of production, but he is then only a hybrid between capitalist and labourer, a ‘small master’.” Marx. " Capital Vol 1. " https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch11.htm
“It
now turns out that not every
sum of money can be transformed into capital — that a minimum
exists: the cost price of a single labour-power and of the necessary
instruments of labour. In order to be able to live like a worker, the
capitalist would have to have two workers, with a rate of
surplus-value of 50 per cent, and yet save nothing. Even with eight,
he is still a small master.” Engels. “Synopsis of Capital”
(Vol 1) Chap 3. Section 5.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/1868-syn/ch03.htm JAI
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U.S. Elections: Is a "shitstorm" coming?
John Reimann
The winning candidate for president will very possibly not be settled on November 3. Is a "shitstorm" coming, especially **after** the elections? How confused could things get and what is the role of the working class? “Science and socialism go hand-in-hand.” Felicity Dowling Check out:https:http://oaklandsocialist.com also on Facebook
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Re: The Degrowth Delusion
Louis Proyect
On 9/26/20 11:21 AM, Biibi R wrote:
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/oureconomy/degrowth-delusion/ <https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/oureconomy/degrowth-delusion/>Leigh Phillips is an ecomodernist, totally into GMO, industrial farming, nuclear power, etc. My critiques: https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/07/26/ecological-limits-and-the-working-class/ https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/05/08/beyond-the-uproar-over-planet-of-humans/ https://louisproyect.org/2018/09/01/jacobin-air-conditioning-and-productivist-nonsense/ https://louisproyect.org/2019/05/12/why-a-factory-farm-and-a-car-factory-should-not-be-confused/
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The Degrowth Delusion
Biibi R <becausetheworldisrou@...>
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"Hubert Harrison: The Struggle for Equality, 1918-1927” and the 2 volume Harrison biography
Louis Proyect
Hi,
Hope
you are well.
The
forthcoming
(December
2020) Columbia
University
Press
publication of “Hubert
Harrison: The
Struggle for
Equality,
1918-1927” (https://cup.columbia.edu/book/hubert-harrison/9780231182638 ) follows
“Hubert
Harrison: The
Voice of
Harlem
Radicalism,
1883-1918” ( https://cup.columbia.edu/book/hubert-harrison/9780231139113 ).
This
two-volume
biography by
Jeffrey B.
Perry (www.jeffreybperry.net ),
based on
extensive use
of the Hubert
H. Harrison
Papers and
diary, is
believed to be
the first
full-life,
multi-volume,
biography of
an
Afro-Caribbean,
and only the
fourth of an
African
American after
those of
Booker T.
Washington, W.
E. B. Du Bois,
and Langston
Hughes.
St.
Croix-born,
Harlem-based
Hubert
Harrison
(1883-1927)
was a
brilliant
writer,
orator,
editor,
educator,
critic, and
activist who
combined class
consciousness
and
anti-white-supremacist
race
consciousness,
internationalism, and struggle for equality into a potent political
radicalism.
Harrison's
ideas
profoundly
influenced
"New Negro"
militants,
including A.
Philip
Randolph and
Marcus Garvey,
and his work
is a key link
in the two
great strands
of the Civil
Rights/Black
Liberation
struggle: the
labor- and
civil-rights
movement
associated
with Randolph
and Martin
Luther King
Jr. and the
race and
nationalist
movement
associated
with Garvey
and Malcolm X. These two volumes can be ordered from Columbia University Press at 20% discount by using Code “CUP20” (you will not be charged for volume 2 until the book is being released). Please share this information with others and please encourage your public library and your college and/or university library to include the Harrison biography in their collections so current and future generations can learn from the life of Hubert Harrison. For a recent Columbia University Press Blog article on the two Harrison volumes entitled “Hubert Harrison: ‘The Father of Harlem Radicalism’” see https://www.cupblog.org/2020/08/16/hubert-harrison-the-father-of-harlem-radicalismby-jeffrey-b-perry/ Jeffrey
B. Perry
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Re: New Political Science Research Debunks Myths About White Working-Class Support for Trump | College of Arts
maryannewolf1@...
None of this is new. All of this was known in the days following the 2016 election. Democrats didn't care, they still don't. They need someone to blame for Clinton's defeat. Who better than the most marginalized group in the country?
Sent: Saturday, September 26, 2020 at 8:05 AM
From: "Louis Proyect" <lnp3@...> To: marxmail@groups.io Subject: [marxmail] New Political Science Research Debunks Myths About White Working-Class Support for Trump | College of Arts
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Re: New Political Science Research Debunks Myths About White Working-Class Support for Trump | College of Arts
Mark Lause
This idea that the white working class in the middle of the country (ignored by the Democrats) is responsible for Trump is an article of faith for the coastal liberals who actually paved the way for him. So much so that I doubt the most thorough and irrefutable scholarship imaginable will ever budge them off of it. .
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New Political Science Research Debunks Myths About White Working-Class Support for Trump | College of Arts
Louis Proyect
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Quantifying national responsibility for climate breakdown: an equality-based attribution approach for carbon dioxide emissions in excess of the planetary boundary - The Lancet Planetary Health
Louis Proyect
By Jason
Hickel As of 2015, the USA was responsible for 40% of excess global CO2 emissions. The European Union (EU-28) was responsible for 29%. The G8 nations (the USA, EU-28, Russia, Japan, and Canada) were together responsible for 85%. Countries classified by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change as Annex I nations (ie, most industrialised countries) were responsible for 90% of excess emissions. The Global North was responsible for 92%. By contrast, most countries in the Global South were within their boundary fair shares, including India and China (although China will overshoot soon). https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196(20)30196-0/fulltext
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Why is the nationalist right hallucinating a ‘communist enemy’? | Politics | The Guardian
Louis Proyect
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Censorship, Curiosity and "Cuties" - CounterPunch.org
Louis Proyect
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H-Net Review [H-Africa]: Becker on Berhe, 'Laying the Past to Rest: The EPRDF and the Challenges of Ethiopian State-Building'
Andrew Stewart
---------- Forwarded message --------- From: H-Net Staff via H-REVIEW <h-review@...> Date: Fri, Sep 25, 2020 at 7:28 PM Subject: H-Net Review [H-Africa]: Becker on Berhe, 'Laying the Past to Rest: The EPRDF and the Challenges of Ethiopian State-Building' To: <h-review@...> Cc: H-Net Staff <revhelp@...> Mulugeta Gebrehiwot Berhe. Laying the Past to Rest: The EPRDF and the Challenges of Ethiopian State-Building. London Hurst Publishers, 2020. 376 pp. $70.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-1-78738-291-6. Reviewed by Derick Becker (University of Nottingham Malaysia) Published on H-Africa (September, 2020) Commissioned by David D. Hurlbut _Laying the Past to Rest_ is essential reading for anyone who wishes to understand contemporary Ethiopian politics. The book is primarily an in-depth case study of the rise of the Tigrai People's Liberation Front (TPLF) and its development over time, the creation of the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Forces (EPRDF), and the transformation of post-civil war Ethiopian politics. It is a work that stands at the intersection of several literatures from African liberation movements to democratic transitions and perhaps even party politics in Africa. It is a rare work of scholarship that combines an insider's view with academic distance to critically evaluate the history of the movement as well as its successes and failures in government. Mulugeta Gebrehiwot Berhe pulls no punches in laying blame on the EPRDF for its failure to instill democratic norms and for providing space for the destabilizing ethno-nationalist politics that have arisen since its assumption of power. There is, indeed, a subtle sense in the concluding chapters that the author, who played an active role in the TPLF-EPRDF and civil war, laments not just the direction of contemporary Ethiopian politics but also the failure of the EPRDF to uphold its revolutionary democratic ideals. The book largely follows a chronological format beginning with the origins and foundation of the TPLF, its development after years of struggle, and its rise to power and the transformation of Ethiopian politics. This approach is more than a simple historical narrative of a group over time; it is also intimately bound to the theoretical framework to explain how and why the group made the decisions it did and why and how it was successful where so few other movements in the civil war were. It also allows the author to do more than state that the TPLF-EPRDF failed to transition to a true political party from its origins as a liberation movement; it allows him to explain why. The author borrows heavily from a particular approach to the study of organizations that seeks to place them in context. That is, we see the history of the TPLF not just as a liberation movement that won but also as an organization with internal dynamics engaging and reacting to the external dynamics of the region, the state, and eventually the international system. The book opens by placing the TPLF's founding as a student group within the broader politics of student activism in 1970s Ethiopia in the waning days of emperor Haile Selassie's rule. The TPLF is, thus, a product of its time--a product of the growing opposition to the centralizing rule of the emperor and the ways Marxist/socialist thought provided a framework to understand this rule and the solutions to it. Many student groups of the time, the TPLF included, were primarily organized by ethnicity. Their Marxist-inspired debates were focused on how to approach the problem of centralizing Amharic rule: as a traditionally class-based one or, mixing ethnic and socialist politics, a colonial one of ethnic rule and subjugation. Where a group fell in such debates determined whether they later aspired to a pan-Ethiopian resistance or ethnic separatism. The TPLF, though initially viewing the problems in Tigrai through the lens of Amharic colonialism, later and somewhat intriguingly comes to thread the needle on this question. When the military overthrew the emperor and associated itself with a pan-Ethiopian socialist student group, the founders of the TPLF saw the same centralizing tendencies that defined the rule of Selassie. This initially led the founders to concentrate on liberating Tigrai alone and to see the problems facing the state through a colonial ethnic lens. But as the author notes, this was never a fully settled debate within the TPLF. Yes, Marxism helped the TPLF understand the plight of poor peasants but internal debate continued over whether separation was the solution. Regardless of such debates, unlike many other dissident groups formed after the military coup, the TPLF organized and recruited on the basis that their struggle would be a protracted one. This proved key early on as its fighters were not looking for a quick victory, making minor setbacks less threatening to its military strategy. Similarly it meant that the group focused heavily on its internal organization to recruit members and take and hold territory. For Berhe these early decisions would prove key to the group's immediate and long-term success as well as the dynamics of its evolution. From an early stage the TPLF was able to take and hold territory. But to hold territory it would need to be governed. The revolutionary socialist origins of the group came to bear on both how the group organized itself as a rebel movement and as a local government. Internally, the TPLF organized itself with a democratic ethos. Its leaders were elected--and crucially removed--by members and criticism was built into its rules. Similarly, the TPLF sought to empower peasants where it held territory and did so by encouraging local governance and the use of local customs and norms to do so. Over time both processes fed the internal development of the movement's logistics and more effective structures of governmental organization. This ultimately gave the group a certain "stateness" that it would carry through to government when it came to power. By the 1980s the group had steadily spread its territorial power base and eliminated rival groups that did not share its values. This period also brought a formal process of review and, importantly, a clearer declaration of its political thinking. Perhaps the most important decisions of this period concern how to understand the nature and purpose of the liberation movement. Gone was any sense that the troubles in Tigrai were best understood as colonial--and thus the solution being a separate state. In its place, the TPLF sought to paint its movement as radically socialist (and thus somehow also democratic) but also intriguingly as pan-Ethiopian and nationalist. The people of Tigrai, like the Oromo and Eritreans and others, had clearly suffered under the centralizing rule of past and then current governments. The solution, however, lay not in irredentism but in unity, in recognizing the right of all the peoples of Ethiopia to live together as a nation of nations. This guiding principle would later serve as the basis of the EPRDF as an umbrella group of other ethnic political parties/movements. But importantly it would also serve as the basis for placing self-determination in the new Ethiopian constitution. For the author these developments reflect the internal dynamics of the Ethiopian civil war, the need to expand the TPLF's power base, and, crucially, a sense that the strident socialist rhetoric of the group's founding was finding fewer and fewer willing listeners as the Cold War wound down. Berhe's analysis more or less follows this basic template over succeeding periods of time: internal and external dynamics in a _pas de deux_. But it is the concluding analysis where his book proves its true value and to which we jump ahead to now. The author never quite frames his work in the context of party politics or the rise of one-party rule. But it is hard not to look at his final chapters as anything but a study of the rise of one-party authoritarian rule. His concluding chapter is an analysis of the success and failure of the EPRDF to implement its true reformist agenda and create a democratic state--albeit a socialist democratic one. The post-civil war era saw the growing power of the EPRDF and the slow melding of party and state that so often defines one-party rule. This is the era of the rise, yet again, of one-party rule and increasingly ethno-nationalist politics. Both of these outcomes the author directly connects to the internal organization of the party and its failure to create the nation of nations at the center of its political program. During the transitional period between the ouster of the military dictatorship and the first free elections, the TPLF/EPRDF was the only party with both a highly organized military wing and decades of experience actually governing. As a result, it seamlessly blended into the power structures of the collapsed military regime to hold the government together until a new constitution could be worked out. But as the author sees it, the movement failed to use its powers to build up democratic norms; specifically it failed to build up a true free press or foster a climate for the development of political parties unaligned with its own EPRDF. While it initially used its local governance approach across the country, in time it also sought to co-opt local governance under the EPRDF. As party members moved into governance, some of its famous discipline and self-criticism broke down as well. Politicians began using their offices for personal gain and silencing critics even from within the party. Whatever democratic ethos the movement once had faded away after its spectacular electoral losses in the 2005 elections. These elections still saw the EPRDF with majority power, but it lost power in Addis Ababa to a coalition of opposition groups that ultimately boycotted the results. This created a vacuum quickly filled by the EPRDF who then further eroded any remaining differences between state and party. It is hard to square some of the author's conclusions with both the facts known and presented and those known but not presented. For one Berhe seems to avoid recognizing that the EPRDF had become an authoritarian one-party rule under the leadership of Meles Zenawi. He also argues that multiculturalism flourished in Ethiopia due in part to the nation of nations approach of the EPRDF. But he limits this to the arts and culture more broadly while giving no mention at all to how the EPRDF government has been credibly accused of stoking ethnic violence and engaging in its own ethnic violence particularly toward the Anuak of Gambella during the government's failed villagization program--a horrible echo of similar programs under the military dictatorship it replaced (see, for instance, Human Rights Watch's _Targeting the Anuak: Human Rights Violations and Crimes against Humanity in Ethiopia's Gambella Region_ [2005] and Human Rights Watch's _Waiting for Death: Forced Displacement and "Villagization" in Ethiopia's Gambella Region_ [2012]). Instead Berhe sees the rising ethno-nationalist politics as a result of the vague constitutional means through which ethnic groups are empowered and in the failure to inculcate sufficient democratic norms such that the opposition could accept winning short of dominance. These are not, however, major flaws in this work. Indeed there are few flaws in this work beyond some unusual copyediting mistakes (particularly the one where we find President Jimmy Carter still president in 1989). But I think it does reflect in part some of the insider's view that actually makes this book so strong. This is clearly someone disillusioned with the EPRDF and its failure to create a truly democratic Ethiopia. The study of success and failure must, _a priori_, assume some normative value in what is being assessed. It is here then where I believe the author should have more clearly laid out his position and time in the movement and after. One only captures small asides here and there where the reader will know that the author was a participant in some of the events discussed. Something of his own biography here might have helped place his analysis in its own personal context. The book remains a remarkable work of scholarship providing insights into not just Ethiopian politics but African politics more broadly. Future scholars seeking to understand the rise of one-party states or the dominance of personal rule will find here a useful resource. Citation: Derick Becker. Review of Berhe, Mulugeta Gebrehiwot, _Laying the Past to Rest: The EPRDF and the Challenges of Ethiopian State-Building_. H-Africa, H-Net Reviews. September, 2020. URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=55365 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. -- Best regards, Andrew Stewart
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