Military Marxist Regimes in Africa
John Markakis, Michael Waller
Routledge
This volume and Special Issue of The Journal of Communist Studies offers a survey of radical military regimes in Africa, a spreading political fashion on that continent. Not all such regimes adopt a Marxist discourse and align themselves diplomatically with other Marxist regimes. We shall be concerned with those that do because of the Journal's focus of interest. We are aware that we are dealing with a category that overlaps with others; the current regimes in Ethiopia and Burkina resemble those in Libya and Ghana in more respects that either resembles the Soviet Union or Vietnam. Moreover, the extent to which the regimes treated here are to be regarded as Marxist, or as forming part of a communist movement, is not a simple matter to determine, and the grounds for any judgment are certain to be controversial. Also, there have been cases where a commitment to Marxist principles and an alignment with the Soviet Union have not been very long-lasting.