;

2
i
3
i
E_T
.

S

P I e

A N SS T ASEIS SE

PRI

T

with ideological considerations — to be left to the narrowly-
defined ‘experts’. This is one of the most important implications of
preceding sections. The more radical perceptions concerning the
imperatives of development which are available to progressive
members of the petty-bourgeoisie must override the views of the
conservative members of that class while pressures from an ever
more conscious mass of peasants and workers must,
simultaneously, impose their objective interest in the structural
transformation of the economy upon a bureaucratic group temp-
ted by self-interest towards caution and convention. In short, the
generating of concrete socialist strategies cannot be simply regar-
ded as the responsibility of the civil-service technocracy; clearly,
other inputs into the planning process are necessary.

One major means by which the ideological underpinnings tor
such strategies, and for detailed socialist planning more broadly
conceived, have been guaranteed elsewhere is by the mechanism
of unequivocal (and effective) party hegemony. Similarly, in Tan-
zania, TANU could well play the essential role both of focussing
the energies and insights of the most progressive members of the
petty-bourgeoisie (those who have, in Cabral’s suggestive phrase,
decided to ‘commit suicide’ as members of that class ‘in order to
reborn as revolutionary workers, completely identified with the
deepest aspirations of the people to which they belong’), while
also acting as a conduit for the novel assertions of the mass of the
population.

As observed in Section I this is, in certain respects, the role
TANU has always played. The dramatic expansion of the
parastatal sector by means of the nationalisations of 1967 sprang
precisely from an initiative of the Party designed to alter much of
the inherited economic structure, and not from any conceptions
first developed by the civil service. More recently Mwongozo, the
TANU Guidelines of 1971, suggests that the Party’s net is to be
cast even more widely. The assumption that ‘neutral’ foreign and
domestic technocrats can be left to get on with the job of im-
plementation once very general socialist guidelines have been laid
down is beginning to be discarded. The responsibility of the party
is to lead the masses with their institutions in the efforts to
safeguard national independence and to advance the liberation of
the African. The duty of a socialist party is to guide all activities
of the masses. The Government, parastatals, national

28