Proleritarianization in Tanzania: A Human Resource Management Approach - Book Review

Marxist analysis of wage labour and its contradictions in the capitalist mode of production provides the guiding framework for theoretical and empirical understanding of the emergence of the working class and its struggle in Africa. Shivji’s book, Law, State and the Working Class in Tanzania (1986) thoroughly documents the evolution of wage labour, its exploitation and struggle against colonial and immediate post colonial state in Tanganyika. Whereas this book had previously been reviewed by Gutkind (1987) and Nimtz (1989), the current work depart from these previous literature by employing Human resource Management, as an alternative theoretical approach for examining the influence of labor management in the process of proleritarianization in Africa and Tanzania in particular. Arguably, it was the introduction of human resource management practices and capitalist industrial exchange relations on Tanganyika pre-colonial socio-economic system that constituted to the emergence of the system of wage labour known today.