The State in Post-Colonial Societies: Tanzania

Abstract

With the recent work of Samir Amin and others, Marxist understanding of African economies has begun to progress; political analysis has lagged far behind however. For too long the ground has been ceded, by default, to the ideologues of establishment political science and to their various permutations on the themes of "political modernization" and "one-party states". This comment applies not merely to "radical Africana" of course. A similar short-fall in radicalism's scientific understanding of the political can be noted with reference to Asia and Latin America as well. The problem of "the state" as it presents itself in the context of "underdevelopment" has been undertheorized and little researched. The present essay seeks to contribute to a further discussion of this issue.