can begin to ask fruitful questions on the issue of workers’ par-
ticipation and its implementation.

In Tanzania the concept was introduced as a follow-up to the
Arusha Declaration and the nationalisation measures. But while
the nationalisations had been made under some philosophic con-
ception of the re-organisation of society at large, the conception of
workers’ participation at the factory-level was not conceived as
part of a system of new socio relations—a method of
‘democratising the revolutionary process’, to use Castro’s phrase
again.

The Presidential directive for the establishment of workers’
councils undercovers this conception. It starts with a long
quotation from a speech by President Nyerere where he urged for
giving workers information about the institutions in which they
work. Without such information, he said, the workers cannot take
‘a pride’ in their jobs, and as such cannot be expected ‘to be en-
thusiastic about their jobs’.

There is no attempt to relate the factory level participation to
the more general forms of democratic control in the socio-political
life of the country. Yet in this discussion I have argued that it is
precisely the social relations in the broad context that determine
the relations that can prevail at the micro-level.

It is well-known, however, that subsequent to the policy of
workers’ councils other factors brought about ‘Mwongozo’, which
goes a step further than the Arusha Declaration in arguing for the
‘democratisation’ of social processes in general. It is here that the
question of ‘participation’ is put in a broader context—viewed
now as a ‘method of work'.

It is now realised that the ‘method of work’ reigning in the
country as a whole is not democratic. . . . in the government ad-
ministration, whereby one man gives the orders and the rest just
obey them’. Hence an overhauling of the whole structure is very
much called for, and it is the party which is given the task of in-
stituting this change for ‘supervising the implementation of goals’
as one of its leadership functions. ‘Apart from giving guidance on
the structure of the government, the party should also give
guidance on the method of work and how decisions should be
reached’.

This ‘guidance’ still has to be given by the Party® and we can-
not here try to anticipate the nature it will take. I just want to raise

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