Abstract
Socialism in Africa was undergoing a deep crisis in the mid-1980s. All socialist states were in dire economic straits, and most were still struggling unsuccessfully to create the political institutions they thought necessary for the system to become rooted in the society. The internal difficulties of the African socialist countries were further compounded by the pressure put on them by Western governments (and above all Western financial institutions) to abandon their socialist policies in favor of a free market approach to economic development. An increasing number of regimes, hard pressed by mounting debts and in need of new loans, was complying with these requests. Among them were a self-proclaimed Marxist country such as Mozambique and one, like Tanzania, which had long resisted (and in fact continued to denounce publicly) the IMF conditions as thinly disguised anti-socialist measures.1
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Notes
See David Albright, ‘Moscow’s African Policy in the 1970s’, in David Albright (ed.), Communism in Africa ( Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980 ) pp. 35–66.
See J. P. Nette, ‘The State as a Conceptual Variable’, World Politics XX, 4 (July 1968): 559–92.
Gunnar Myrdal, Asian Drama: An Inquiry Into the Poverty of Nations, abridged edn (New York: Pantheon Books, 1971 ) p. 182.
We will mention only two books which provide a good overall view both of the varieties of African socialisms and of the changes the ideology and the countries expousing them have undergone through the years: William Friedland and Carl Rosberg (eds), African Socialism (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1964 )
and Carl Rosberg and Thomas Callaghy (eds), Socialism in Sub-Saharan Africa ( Berkeley: Institute of International Studies, 1979 ).
For a discussion of these points, see David and Marina Ottaway, Afrocommunism (New York, Africana Publishing, 1981), especially, chapter 8.
The Agricultural Marketing Corporation (AMC), created after the revolution, originally tried to impose marketing quotas on all peasant associations in the country. The experience of the first years was disappointing. Most associations simply did not sell any grain through the AMC. The response was not that of a hard state—for example, sequestration of crops of reluctant farmers—but that of a soft state. The AMC simply decided to concentrate its efforts in buying grain from three regions, Goj jam, Shoa and Arssi, and de facto ignoring the others. See Alemayehu Lirenso, ‘Grain Marketing in post-1974 Ethiopia: Problems and Prospects’, paper presented at the Eighth International Conference of Ethiopian Studies, Addis Ababa (26–30 November 1984 ).
See Julius Nyerere, The Arusha Declaration Ten Years After ( Dar Es Salaam: Government Printer, 1977 ).
For a detailed discussion of the ujamaa villages, see Dean McHenry, Jr, Tanzania’s Ujamaa Villages: The Implementation of a Rural Development Strategy (Berkeley: Institute of International Studies, 1979).
Goran Hyden, Beyond Ujamaa in Tanzania: Underdevelopment and the Uncaptured Peasantry ( Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980 ).
See Joseph Hanlon, Mozambique: The Revolution Under Fire (London: Zed Press, 1984) p. 100 ff;
and Allen and Barbara Isaacman, Mozambique: From Colonialism to Revolution (Boulder, Co.: Westview Press, 1983) p. 145 ff.
‘Ministry of State Farms Development: Its Role, Organization and Future Activities’, (Addis Ababa, June 1984 ) and Workers Party of Ethiopia, Guideline on the Economic and Social Development of Ethiopia, 1984/85–1993/94, draft ( Addis Ababa, September 1984 ).
For a discussion of the Ethiopian land tenure systems before the revolution see John Cohen and Dov Weintraub, Land and Peasants in Imperial Ethiopia. The Social Background to a Revolution (Assen, The Netherlands: Van Gorcum and Co., BU, 1975 ).
See, for example, R. Ulianovsky, Socialism and the Newly Independent Nations (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1974 ); and Developing Countries on the Non-Capitalist Road. Proceedings of the Third International Conference of Africanist Marxists of the Socialist Countries ( Sofia: Publishing House of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, 1974 ).
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© 1987 Zaki Ergas
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Ottaway, M.S. (1987). The Crisis of the Socialist State in Africa. In: Ergas, Z. (eds) The African State in Transition. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-18886-4_8
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