[of the total export earnings), have wiped out…]

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of the total export earnings), have wiped out the country's foreign exchange reserves.

This has badly disrupted supplies of vital imports like inputs for industry and food. Tanzania is drawn ever tighter into the orbit of finance capital through its growing reliance on bank loans.

Interest payments on these loans consume increasingly large shares of the total surplus value produced in the country.

The imperialist drive for profits means that the conditions for granting loans laid down by the major banks and the international institutions of finance capital (IMF , World Bank), involve increasingly severe attacks on the living standards of the masses.

Last November Nyerere was forced to turn down a desperately needed IMF loan for fear that the IMF's conditions could unleash mass opposition that rapidly advanced beyond the control of the government (particularly with the army tied up in Uganda).

Nyerere called on the masses to make sacrifices in the face of an imperialist attack on Tanzanian "socialism".

Bailed out

By March of this year the chronic shortages of essential foodstuffs could no longer be disguised as temporary.

Nyerere put out an urgent plea to imperialist governments and banks, and was bailed out by a World Bank loan. This was followed by the recall from Uganda of 10,000 Tanzanian troops.

The levels of combativity of the undefeated Tanzanian working class and poor peasantry are rising.

This is developing within an overall forward movement of the working masses on a world scale and in particular in Central and Southern Africa-regions with which Tanzania has close coffee historical, economic and political ties.

A. weakened imperialism is seeking desperately to stem the revolutionary tide of struggle and create conditions for restoring capitalist stability.

The stability of capitalist control in backward Tanzania, a country in itself of little importance to imperialism, is one of the crucial factors in shoring up imperialism's more strategic outposts (most directly Kenya).

Under the heel of imperialism, the development of capitalism in Tanzania moulded the country's productive forces to serve the profiteering of foreign monopoly capital.

Tanzania, as a German and then a British colony, was drawn into the world market as a source of raw materials (mainly agricultural), and a market for capital and manufactured exports from the imperialist nations.

Conquest

Industry, transport and technology were introduced by imperialism only to the extent that they improved the systematic and organised plunder of the country.

The integration of Tanzania

Tanzanian export

into the word market went hand in hand with the chaining of its masses to the international division of labour.

On the basis of armed colonial conquest, finance capital squeezed super profits from the forced cheap labour of the pauperised rural masses.

Backwardness

The legacy of colonialism, and the continuing neo-colonial domination by imperialism, mean that the economy suffers extreme backwardness and severe unevenness.

Production -which takes place solely in search of profits - is so heavily geared to the export of cash crops (mainly coffee and cotton), that these account for nearly 80% of total export earnings, while food production has been retarded.

The economy is completely dominated by fluctuations in the prices for these commodities on a world market controlled by finance capital.

Industry was stunted under colonialism, and remains backward despite the growth that followed the destruction of direct imperialist rule.

The backwardness of industry undermines the development of agriculture, yet the economy ishment of the masses.

Force-moved

Over 90% of the total population of nearly 18 million lives in the countryside. Out of this rural population, over 90% (that is about 14.5 million) have been force-moved into over 8000 government-controlled villages, where peasant families are granted the use of small plots.

The great majority of the village population in turn consists of the semi-proletarian and poor layers of the peasantry.

Barely subsisting through working the land, this downtrodden section of the peasantry is forced in varying degrees to seek wage-labour as a supplement to the miserable family income from backward small-scale farming.

This provides industry and large-scale agriculture with a potentially massive reserve army of labour, which is the basis of the low wage structure, and which discourages strikes by unskilled workers.

Workers who lose their jobs, either through run-downs and cut backs or as a result of militant action; face being forced with their families into the villages by the regime.

Peasant farming

In this way the impoverished rural masses serve to relieve the capitalist state of the bulk of the burden of social services.

Part of the means of subsistence for the exploited layers of the peasantry may frequently come from selling cash or food crops to government cooperatives, which are dominated by rich peasants and capitalists involved in trade, storage and transport-all of whom take their share in the robbery of poor peasants by finance capital.

Although agricultural production for the internal and world markets is dominated by large-scale enterprises, a significant share of this production comes from small-scale peasant farming. Much of this peasant production is enforced by the regime in a drive to increase vital foreign exchange reserves (through earnings on cash crop exports and savings on food crop imports).

The workers on the big capitalist farms form the largest fraction of the employed sector of the working class. (The total number of wage-workers in Tanzania is under half a million, out of a total labour force of nearly 7 million).

The dominance over the countryside by the towns, which are the economic and political nerve centres in capitalist society, assures to the urban proletariat the decisive strategic position in backward countries under the domination of finance capital.

Together with the agricultural proletariat, the urban working class is in potential command of the chief industrial, transport and agricultural enterprises.

Commanding

On the other hand, the overwhelming domination of the backward capitalist countries by the imperialist bourgeoisie, means that the national bourgeoisie is weaker than corresponds to the level of development of the productive The uneven and combined nature of capitalist development in Tanzania has raised the numerically small working class to the commanding social position in the nation.

But to mobilise the underlying strength of the working class in a struggle to smash imperialist control, a revolutionary party based on a transitional programme must be built.

In the struggle against imperjalism, the working class faces

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Last month the supreme body of the Nyerere regime met to investigate the "violation of democratic rights" in Tanzania. This cosmetic showpiece along with other desperate postures and rhetoric, arise in a context of gathering mass militancy that is fuelled by a rapidly deepening economic crisis. Jim Farnham looks at the workers' struggle in - Getting on famously: Nyerere with imperialist envoy Andrew Young historical legacy of petty urgeois nationalist leadership. Nyerere's TANU party own as Chama Cha Mapini since 1977) came to power the basis of the political ngth of the working class lin a mass struggle against ish colonial rule.

The smashing of colonial unfolded as the high point i forward movement of the king class that emerged out thalist word of the second During the war, the working i had been structurally gthened through the omic growth that was stimd by the appetite of the Nialist war machine, and by ruption in imports from sit rations.

AT TimE 20:3 TasE Wednesday Tanzania.

Coffee picking Workers moved into struggle in defence of their living standards from a position of strength, against a weakened ruling class, and the movement gained force.

With relative ebbs and flows this forward movement developed, drawing in its wake the anti-imperialist struggles of broadening layers of the peasantry and urban petty bourgeoisie.

The oppressive social relations maintained under the racist colonial regime, combined with the escalating levels of workers' struggle, served to radicalise broad layers of the urban petty bourgeoisie.

The democratic demands made by the petty bourgeoisie coincided in form with many of the demands raised by the workDE 72ss Face is che strength of the per bourgais nabonalists projected an all-class national alliance on the basis of these demands, and sought to organise workers in the trade union (TFL) and workers and poor peasants in the nationalist TANU.

The working class turned to TANU/TFL as vehicles of An indication of the growing mobilisation of workers in the late fifties is given by the official annual strike statistics.

These recorded that between 1954 and 1960 the number of strikes increased from 40 to over 700; the number of workers involved from 4,600 to nearly 90,000; and the number of days lost from 7800 to 1.5 míllion.

The power of the movement of workers' struggle in this period dragged the petty bourgeois nationalists in its wake and threatened to cast aside all elements seeking a compromise with British colonialism.

The British imperialists, forced increasingly onto the defensive by the mobilised strength of the working class, sought to create the conditions for the nationalist leadership to assert control over the working class.

The success of this unavoidable policy rested on the fact that workers in struggle reached the limits of spontaneity. Lacking the leadership and programme to chalienge the reformist programme of TANU, the working masses were diverted from carrying forward the struggle for their own independent interests, and saw victory in the concession forced on British imperialism-the handover of the administration of the capitalist state to the Nyerere leadership.

For British imperialism, to retreat from direct political control under the attack of the working class was a setback.

Shipwrecked

But the reformist politics of Nyerere and the political disarming of the working class, promised to keep Tanzania under the overall sway of world imperialism-at least while the new balance of forces persisted.

All the attempts by the new Sisal is government to tackle the problems of backward productive forces and social relations were shipwrecked on the rock of finance capital.

The unfolding logic of a reformist programme in the era of imperialism drove TANU to attack the oppressed masses and betray their interests in the cause of imperialist profitability.

Mounting grievances amongst the working masses over the inability of the new government to implement the reforms demanded in the struggle against colonial rule, threatened the stability of the regime.

These grievances came to a head in 1964, when Nyerere faced a soldiers' mutiny over wages and against British officers and the threat of workers' strikes in solidarity with the soldiers.

Nyerere called in British troops from his imperialist masters and crushed the soldiers' rebellion.

Under conditions of martial law, he arrested militants and opponents, dissolved the TFL, and banned all political organisations outside of TANU.

The TFL was replaced by a government-controlled trade union federation, NUTA.

On the basis of those repressive moves Nyerere strengthened his political regime.

No threat In 1967, he announced plans for sweeping "nationalisation and collectivisation"

The state ownership of banks, trading houses and plantations, and a controlling state share in imperialist industry posed no threat to international monopolies. They were paid generous compensation, while management, finance, technology and distribution remained under their control.

At the same time, profit repatriation was guaranteed, and favourable tariffs and contracts offered.

TANU/CCM's programme of nationalisation has protected and supported a fledgling neocolonial bourgeoisie, too weak to accumulate capital in competition with the international monopolies.

Through the government securing the political conditions for the increased exploitation of workers, local capitalists entered as junior hirelings in imperialist profiteering.

The collectivisation of peasant farming had been launched on a limited experimental scale in the early sixties, together with the national introduction of peasant cooperatives.

These measures were part of the moves toward an alliance with the peasantry by the TANU leadership which came increasingly to represent the interests of the upper echelons of the urban petty bourgeoisie and the embryonic bourgeoisielayers acutely aware of their weakness in relation to the working class.

But collectivisation under the continuing domination of big capitalist farms and on the basis of backward productive forces is doomed to failure.

The product of this failure was the increasing necessity to reassert the levels of control over small peasant production that were maintained under colonial rule. The failure of the alliance with the poor peasantry propelled the government closer to finance capital.

In this way, the "collectivisation" became in reality the enforced "villagisation' described above.

During the sixties, the working class had undergone a significant strengthening of its urban component in relation to the agricultural.

This was based on the decline of the agricultural proletariat numerically (following a catastrophic fall in the price of sisal), and an increase in the numbers of urban workers, following the growth of manufacturing industry.

In addition, the colonial migrant labour system had been smashed in the struggle against British rule, contributing to the growth of the settled urban proletariat.

These changes in the structure of the working class enhanced its strategic position in the nation. And despite the setbacks it had suffered in the sixties, the working class remained undefeated.

The underlying build-up of militancy in the working class erupted in a wave of strikes and factory occupations in the early seventies. Without the leadership necessary to consolidate and develop the levels of political independence, spontaneously forged in these struggles, the actions were put down by vicious state repression.

In the coming period of struggle, an undefeated Tanzanian working class, facing growing attacks on its already miserable living standards, is bound to move into escalating open With the undoubted growth of opposition to Nyerere amongst layers of the urban petty bourgeoisie, there is a perspective of the emergénce of contenders for the leadership of the mass struggles ready to erupt.

This highlights the crucial task of revolutionary Marxists in Tanzania-the building of a revolutionary leadership armed with a programme of democratic and transitional demands to take up the fight-in conflict with all reformist or Stalinist currents-for the dictatorship of the working class. r Only the overthrow of capitalism under the regime of the proletariat, based on an alliance between the working class and the poor peasantry, offers a way forward for the oppressed. masses in backward Tanzania.

The social and economic position of the peasant masses under capitalism mean that they are incapable of playing an independent political role. Only with the working class in power can the peasant masses be liberated from oppression and ruin.

Marxist theory, as confirmed by the Russian revolution, shows that although the downtrodden peasant masses of the countryside have an objective economic, social and cultural interest in the socialist revoluWage *..ii tion they do not automatically give it their consistent support.

In the struggle for power, the working class must advance bold revolutionary programme for agriculture to secure the support of the poor peasants.

The elements of this programme will include: expropriation under workers' control of agricultural workers and poor peasants; a programme of aid for the small farmer (cheap credit, implements, fertilisers, use of facilities of the largescale enterprises, etc.

The working class must offer the same decisive leadership towards the oppressed layers of the urban petty bourgeoisie.

The artificial separation of the national and international revolutions in the Stalinist theory of "socialism in one country" conceals the counterrevolutionary self-interest of the Stalinist bureaucracies.

For revolutionary. Marxists, the absence of the economic basis for the independent construction of socialism in Tanzania does not imply the impossibility of the proletarian dictatorship.

On the contrary, it means that the socialist revolution is international; that the development of the struggle in Tanzania and the building of a workers' government able to carry through a massive programme of socialist development will require the solidarity and aid of the international working class and that the Tanzanian revolution can triumph finally only as a link in the world revolution.

Only the dictatorship of the working class opens up this road for the Tanzanian masses-all other roads lead in the end towards defeat and barbarism.

The defence of the Tanzanian masses against imperialism and its agents demands the building of a revolutionary proletarian leadership rooted in the strategy of permanent revolution.

Only in this way can the struggle be taken forward from spontaneous militancy towards the overthrow of capitalism.

The fight for revolutionary leadership is the fight to build the revolutionary - workers' party, section of a reconstructed Fourth International.

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In cent weeks the questions Who killed Blair Peach?' and Who killed Jimmy Kelly?' have been pushed to the fore in spotlighting the ruthless tactics