From Guerrilla to Government: The Rise and Fall of the TPLF — A Maoist Critique

Prologue: Class War in the Highlands

In the oppressed northern periphery of Ethiopia, amid the iron hills of Tigray where hunger and humiliation reigned, the seeds of rebellion germinated. The Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) was not merely a party—it was born as a People’s Army, a product of class contradictions, forged in the crucible of feudal exploitation and military fascism.

It was 1975, the Derg’s boots were on the peasantry’s neck, and imperialist comprador capital had chained the countryside. Into this material reality stepped young revolutionaries, guided by Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought, who declared war not only against a fascist regime but against the semi-feudal, semi-colonial system itself.

1975–1991: People’s War and New Democracy in Practice

In its revolutionary phase, the TPLF practiced what Mao taught: mobilize the masses, build base areas, encircle the cities from the countryside. They seized land from feudal landlords and redistributed it to poor peasants, unleashing the creative energy of the rural proletariat.

They built mass organizations—women, youth, peasants—and established red political power in liberated zones: underground schools, people’s clinics, and revolutionary committees. They waged a just war rooted in the people’s interests, not elite ambition.

Strategic alliances with the EPLF and EPDM helped bring down the Derg by 1991. But Mao warned us: "The danger lies in the heart of victory."

1991–2012: Revisionism, State Capitalism, and Betrayal

Once in power, the TPLF chose to compromise with imperialism. Under Meles Zenawi, the party that once evoked Mao embraced the "developmental state"—state capitalism managed by technocrats, funded by global finance. The revolutionary line was abandoned. Surveillance replaced the mass line. Imperialist institutions like the IMF and USAID were welcomed.

Land reform without emancipation, GDP growth without power to the people—the TPLF’s rule became a lesson in betrayal. The party became a bureaucratic elite, and socialism a hollow slogan.

2012–2018: Crisis of Legitimacy and Mass Revolt

Meles’s death triggered a legitimacy crisis. Protests swept through Oromia and Amhara. The Qeerroo movement rose from below. The OPDO, a TPLF puppet, broke ranks not from ideology, but pressure. TPLF’s isolation was now complete—it had lost the people, the revolution, and its purpose.

2018–2020: Abiy Ahmed and the Bourgeois Centralist Turn

Abiy Ahmed dissolved the EPRDF and formed the Prosperity Party—bourgeois nationalism cloaked in unity rhetoric. The TPLF refused to join, retreating to Tigray. The OPDO, once a tool of TPLF control, now buried its creator. Yet this was no revolutionary rupture, just another factional power shift within the ruling class.

The war that followed was not a people’s war, but a clash of state elites, each disconnected from the masses.

Conclusion: From Revolutionary Flame to Revisionist Ashes

The TPLF once held revolutionary promise. But it succumbed to the disease of power, abandoning Marxism-Leninism-Maoism for bureaucratic capitalism. What began as people’s war ended as revisionist decay.

This is not a tragedy—it is a lesson. Without class struggle, power rots. Without cultural revolution, revisionism prevails.

“Revolution is not a dinner party.” — Mao Zedong

The Ethiopian masses still seek land, dignity, and self-rule. Their liberation lies not in technocracy, but in a return to the mass line, people’s war, and revolutionary transformation.