Class Struggles in Tanzania

Class Struggles in Tanzania was published fifty years ago. Its publication in 1975, was received with great enthusiasm among the left in Tanzania, and internationally, having also been published by Monthly Review Press in New York, and by Heinemann Educational Books in London. Much of the debates at the University of Dar es salaam during the days of the Arusha Declaration, TANU’s Policy of Socialism and Self Reliance (1967), revolved around the question of classes and class struggles in Tanzania, and by association, in all newly independent African countries and other countries in the South.
With the same extensive research and lucidity, in this 50th Anniversary edition, Shivji provides a critical analysis of the transition from nationalism to neoliberalism over the last four decades, exposing in doing so, the complicity of the comprador class with international monopoly capital to the immiseration of the masses of the people. The new and extensive introduction to the book, titled Class Struggles under Neoliberalism, is an incisive analysis of the transformation of the country driven by accumulation by extraction, the form of accumulation in Africa, that is most characteristic of a neoliberal political economy. Shivji succinctly narrates the rise of new classes and the fall of the old while identifying their salient characteristics. The local comprador bourgeoisie includes the big, middle and small bourgeoisie and the politico bureaucratic rentier class. At the other end of the pole are the working people while in between is ensconced the pretty differentiated petty bourgeoisie. Class Struggles in Tanzania, 50th anniversary edition, is an indispensable resource for those wishing to understand the economics and politics of neoliberalism in Tanzania, and in other African countries and the global South.

About the author
Issa G. Shivji is Professor Emeritus in Law at the University of Dar es Salaam. He has published over a dozen books, numerous journal articles, and many book chapters. He is a co-author of the first comprehensive biography of Julius Nyerere, published in 2020. Professor Shivji is the Chief Editor of the Tanzania Yearbook of Public Law and a Member of the Pan-African Scientific Committee of the Encyclopedia Africana Flagship Project of the African Union.
Issa Shivji presents a sharp Marxist critique of Tanzania’s post-independence society, dismantling the myth of a classless African state. He unpacks the power dynamics of the ruling elite and insists on the need for a class-conscious approach to development and governance.