ABSTRACT
Socialism, a Western political ideology emphasizing popular democracy and equality, in practice has nowhere yet achieved its ideals. Monolithic and modernizing, modelled on the Soviet experience as prototype, practical socialist agendas in many different countries tried with varying degrees of success to replace allegedly undemocratic and inegalitarian ‘traditional cultures’ (see, for example, Binns 1979, 1980; Lane 1981). Only in the post-Mao period did the People’s Republic of China, in the context of economic reform, declare its intention to create ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics’, and ease its past onslaught against ‘feudal superstition’ (Feuchtwang in press; Cheater 1991a).
