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Capitalism or feudalism? the famine in Ethiopia
Abstract
The famine in Ethiopia, as in the Sahel, is not simply a ‘natural’ disaster but has social and economic origins. Moreover, the suffering is not simply the compounding of the effects of food shortage by the harsh burdens borne by tenant formers. While southern Ethiopia, where famine is now beginning to strike, had a feudal land system imposed in the 19th Century, the northern provinces where the famine first hit has a system where there were lords of the land but no landlords and peasants had the security of access to land even though they paid ‘tithes’. The commercialisation and mechanisation of agriculture in the last generation has eroded those rights. Landlords are becoming capitalist farmers and a landless class is growing. The famine is accelerating these processes, just as it is exacerbated by them.
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SOURCES
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