ceptualisation and in implementation. Thus Mapolu has carefully
examined the ideological formulations central to ‘Workers par-
ticipation’, emphasising that the programme is in no real way
designed to resolve the continuing contradiction between workers
on the one hand and the petty-bourgeoisie on the other in a
progressive manner.

As a consequence of the absence of political strategy due to the lack of
a class ideological position, there has also been no conception of
bureaucracy as a structural phenomenon. The tendency has been to
view workers' participation not as a structural mechanism for the con-
trol of certain strata by the class that should be the pillar of socialist
construction but principally as a wrong attitude which leads to wrong
methods of work.

It follows therefore that when one reaches the factorylevel, participation
can only be minimal in substance. Essentially, the tasks of ‘management’
belong to the managers and the workers can come in only occasionally
to ‘help’ in certain fields and to also quench their thirst for information
on what is going on in the factory as a whole. This seems to be the only
explanation for the preponderance of the managers in the workers’ coun-
cil and the council's mere advisory powers.*

Under such circumstances, workers’ self-assertion is too easily
coopted at the enterprise level, on the one hand, and not readily
generalised to the system as a whole, on the other. In short
though such workers’ participation may occasionally yield some
positive results in increased productivity it is not likely to be con-
verted into a mechanism for fully releasing human energies, for
raising class consciousness or for pressing upon the system those
broad strategic concerns which we have seen to be so crucial to
socialist advance and in which the workers could begin to take an
interest.

Mapolu’s suspicions find support in the alacrity with which
managers as implementors have availed themselves of the
programme’s cautious phrasing. George Kahama, the General
Manager of N.D.C. began an important speech to N.D.C.
managers in 1971 by noting that industrial relations in the
‘developed world’ manifest ‘a spiral of escalating irresponsibility’
(not any kind of class confrontation — even under capitalism:) and
devotes almost all his attention to the need to ‘educate the Tan-
zanian workers to exercise their participation ‘with discretion’
49 Needless to say, there is almost no mention of possible

33