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important to our concern as any characteristics of the group of
parastatals taken as a whole or of individual parastatals viewed
separately. Moreover it will be apparent that this, broader em-
phasis refers not merely to the relationships which exist between
the parastatals and the formal governmental planning system. This
is important, of course, and will certainly claim our attention; in-
deed the costs and benefits of relative parastatal autonomy within
the established framework of bureaucratic decision making is a
live question in Tanzania and a currently changing feature of the
situation here. But it is still primarily a question of division of
labour within the conventional bureaucratic structures. There is a
broader context beyond this to which we must also refer the
student of progress and performance in the parastatal sector — to
the realities of imperialism and dependence, to the nature of the
domestic class structure, and to the characteristics of Tanzania’s
ideological and political accomplishments, all of which impinge
upon the functioning of the institutions immediately under review.

1. Aspects of a Political Economy of Tanzania

In the sections which immediately follow the present one we
shall look directly at the functioning of the parastatals per se: in
Section II investigating the ways in which they both coordinate
among themselves and relate their activities to the broader ap-
paratus of bureaucratic decision making and control; in Section
III, exploring the ways in which individual parastatals order and
institutionalise their own activities within the specific spheres
assigned to them. Naturally, in these two sections, we will pin-
point those efforts which are being made to streamline operations,
train badly needed personnel, and guarantee increased efficiency.
But in both cases we will also return to a similar, and essential
point: short-falls in performance are still to be understood more as
a reflection of the major contradictions which continue to charac-
terise the overall Tanzanian system than as failures of
organisation, narrowly defined, at either the sectoral or the en-
terprise level. Indeed, it is precisely as weaknesses in the fields of
bureaucratic coordination and control, structural reorganisation
and training begin to be overcome that the deeper contradictions
which bedevil Tanzanian socialism come more clearly to the fore.
It will be the task of the present section, therefore, to identify the
nature of these contradictions as briefly, even as baldly, as

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