Nationalism,socialism and planning: Influential ideas in the South

The paper discusses the origin of three influential ideas in the South, the reasons why they are found persuasive by Southern elites, and finally whether they are helpful in promoting modernization. It argues that all three ideas are Janus-faced, combining the ‘modern’ aspects of the rationalist Enlightenment with the partly ‘pre-modern’ rural nostalgia of the Romantic movement. But the ideas are dysfunctional in terms of the desired aims of ‘nation-building’ and attaining material progress. Nationalism, far from being an adhesive can become a disintegrative force in pluralistic societies. Planning becomes a means of suppressing the agents of the economic modernization that is desired. The waving of the Enlightenment and socialist banner of equality in suppressing the merchant, financier and entrepreneur is a smokescreen. The suppression reflects more atavistic impulses, which amount to a denial of the irreducible uncertainty that unavoidably attends commercialization, monetization and industrialization.