a regime that would be sufficiently removed from the immediate interests of
any one of those three classes to be able to exercise independent power and
manage conflict provided it did not challenge their common interest in
private ownership of the means of production. So whereas the national
bourgeoisie in a developed capitalist society, or the metropolitan bour-
geoisie in a colony, could establish their dominance this was not possible in
post-colonial conditions where ‘none of the three propertied classes exclu-
sively dominates the state apparatus or subordinates the other two. This
specific historical situation confers on the bureaucratic–military oligarchy
in a post-colonial society a relatively autonomousrole’ (Alavi, 1972).
This model of state autonomy was inspired by a particular country at a
particular period in its history. It did not always fit the post-colonial situa-
tion in other countries. Imperialism and the penetration of foreign capital
had been less intrusive in some regions than in South Asia. The internal
social structure was consequently very different at the time of independ-
ence. In Tanzania, for example, the ethnic composition of the society was
relatively untouched by European intervention. It consisted of a large num-
ber of small groups with no pattern of inter-ethnic dominance. One group in
the region of Mount Kilimanjaro, the Chagga, had benefited from the intro-
duction of cash crops. A class of relatively rich peasant cultivators devel-
oped, but not a class of large landowners receiving part of their wealth in
rents. Some of the richer peasant producers became petty-capitalist invest-
ing in other activities such as local trade, but the extent to which this
constituted any kind of new socio-economic class was very limited.
The relations of production within the different societies that made up
Tanzania were communal, based on settlements consisting of kin-groups, and
lacking landlords or employers of landless labour. The relationships between
producers were those of kinship and ethnicity. Population density was rela-
tively low. Land was readily available. Some societies, notably the Masai,
were pasturalist. By the time of independence a class structure, brought about
by the combination of indigenous economy and foreign intervention, hardly
existed. Rural people produced goods on the basis of small-scale communi-
ties with land held in common. Land could not be alienated and accumulated.
Rights to occupancy and cultivation alone attached to individuals and fami-
lies. There was a relatively small basis for a landed oligarchy or an industrial
or commercial middle class, the last being mainly Asian in origin. An embry-
onic working class was also beginning to emerge at the time of independence
based on textiles, motor transport and tobacco processing.
The most powerful African class in the process of formation was what
some analysts referred to as a petty-bourgeoisie of teachers, civil servants,
116 Understanding Third World Politics