Serious consideration of ideology and economic progress is singularly appropriate at this stage in East Africa's history, in relation to the Uganda coup and the current difficulties between Tanzania and Uganda. Both events have a crucial ideological dimension and have already had deep repercussions on the economy of the two countries and of the East African Community as a whole. That the subject is appropriate, however, does not render it any easier to deal with adequately. At the outset, I encountered four basic problems.

First, the very definition of “economic performance” is itself an ideological decision, in that ultimately it requires a value-judgment on the relative importance of various possible indices of achievement. Whether rapid expansion in per capita income is more significant than the creation of a slower-growing but more regionally and sectorally balanced economy; what division is appropriate between current consumption and investment for future consumption; what economic value is attached to a certain pattern of ownership of the means of production, or to a particular policy of distribution of the economic surplus--all of these basic questions about the economic objectives of a society can only be answered ultimately by reference to ideological values. This interdependence between the terms of the topic is an index of its complexity.