effective and increasingly socialist parastatal performance must be
seen to lie. Lawyers can be left to draw from the foregoing pages
specific conclusions relevant to their own practice. However, one
general point can be reiterated clearly: that in a socialist country
lawyers and others with technical skills cannot be allowed to
ignore the broadest kinds of implications of their work. It is not
enough to be exclusively preoccupied with the mechanics of ad-
justing the relationships between established bureaucratic in-
stitutions, or with more precisely defining the terms of agreements
with the outside world, important though these exercises are. For,
carried out without awareness of the broadest kinds of challenges
which present themselves to a nation embarking on socialist con-
struction, such improvements may merely serve to streamline the
status quo rather than to transform it. What is also necessary is a
creative effort to define ways in which energies essential to
socialism can be released—by breaking through legalistic veils of
secrecy which fend off from the parastatals the necessary pressure
of party and people, for example or by placing various contract
negotiations at all times firmly within the context of the im-
peratives of genuine ‘self-reliance’. Needless to say, lawyers must
work closely with others in such creative socialist endeavour, but
they need not be the last to join the ranks of the peasants and
workers.

 

Notes

1. Erik Svendsen ‘Problems of Economic Policy in Tanzania — 1972-3", Paper
read to Economic Research Bureau, University of Dar es Salaam August
1972.

2. A number of the formulations in this section have been elaborated upon more
fully in John S. Saul, ‘African Socialism in One Country: Tanzania’, in G.
Arright and J.S. Saul, Essays on the Political Economy of Africa (Monthly
Review Press, New York, 1972).

3. The model of the ‘self-centred economy is at the core of Samir Amin’s
magisterial L'Accumulation a I' Echelle Mondiale (Paris 1970); he has neatly
summarised his argument in his ‘Underpopulated Africa’, Majimaji, No. 6
(June, 1972).

4. Mahbub ul Haq, ‘Employment in the Seventies: A New Perspective’ in In-

ternational Development Review, 1971/4

Cf. A Seidman, ‘Comparative Industrial Strategies in Bast Africa’, Economic