First, some developing countries have had what has been called a bureau-
cratic mode of production. The bureaucracy controls and manages the means
of production through the state. It provides the necessary organization. It pro-
liferates opportunities for bureaucratic careers by the creation of public bod-
ies needing public managers – marketing boards, development corporations
and other parastatal organizations and their subsidiaries (Hirschmann, 1981).
It articulates an ideology of state ownership and planning. It organizes the
means of its own reproduction by passing on to the offspring of bureaucrats
disproportionately advantageous opportunities to obtain the qualifications
needed for entry into bureaucratic occupations and therefore the new class.
For example, the post-independence bureaucracy in Mali used its access to
political power to acquire some of the characteristics of a social class. It con-
trolled the infrastructure of the economy and the means of repression, using
them to maintain its dominance, particularly in its conflict with weak indige-
nous social classes, notably the landed aristocracy and the petty-bourgeois
class of traders. Above all it created a nationalized sector of the economy
which under the label of socialism enabled the economy to be brought under
bureaucratic control.
Tanzania is another case. The ideology of African Socialism justified public
ownership and bureaucratic management and direction of, at the very least, the
commanding heights of the economy. The state controlled most of the eco-
nomic surplus created rather than leaving it to be privately appropriated.
Surplus extraction was through state institutions. The bureaucracy thus acted in
relation to the means of production in a way analogous to a property-owning
ruling class. The bureaucracy not only managed the means of production
through state-owned enterprises, but also controlled the different prices of the
factors of production to ensure that direct producers generated a surplus which
the bureaucracy then accumulated and deployed. Removing the rights of work-
ers to strike, initiating government controls of the trade unions, imposing statu-
tory wage ceilings, engaging in manpower planning, taking control of
agricultural marketing, and controlling the prices paid to agricultural produc-
ers, were all part of the bureaucracy’s control over the means of production and
the surplus created. The weak social classes allowed a ‘ruling clique’ to
become a ‘bureaucratic bourgeoisie’ consisting of ministers, senior civil
servants, high military and police officers and high-level party bureaucrats.
This ‘bureaucratic bourgeoisie’ developed from being essentially politico-
administrative with a regulative role in the economy to being, after the Arusha
Declaration, the ‘dominant actors in the economy’: ‘political power and con-
trol over property now came to rest in the same class’ (Shivji, 1976, p. 85).
Secondly, the expertise which the bureaucracy has can be seen as another
factor of production, in addition to land, labour and capital. The bureaucracy
168 Understanding Third World Politics