tion nor introduce democratic institutions and other "symbols of modernity" where such a demand did not yet exist. According to Daniel Lerner, "the effort of new governments ... to induce certain symbols of modernity by policy decisions, in a sequence which disregards the basic arrangement of lifeways out of which slowly evolved those modern institutions now so hastily symbolized," would always come to grief. With some irritation, Lerner noted that in-conceived innovations, "taken in ignorance of the model," introduced a "stochastic factor" into an otherwise predictable sequence of events. In other words, they forced social scientists to rely on guesswork. One of the practical goals of modernization theory, it appears, was to encourage political leaders to stick to the script.

In its unilinear conception of history, its insistence that developing societies had to pass through a prescribed sequence of stages, and its confidence that eventually they would all arrive at the same destination, modernization theory resembled the cruder versions of the Marxism it was intended to refute. In an essay pleading for a "more differentiated and balanced analysis," Reinhard Bendix noted that Lerner, Rostow, Clark Kerr, and other students of development tended to "predict one system of industrialism for all societies in much the same way as Marx predicted the end of class struggles and of history for the socialist society of the future." Bendix pointed out that modernization theory also drew on the whole sociological tradition. It was deeply "beholden," he said, "to the conventional contrast between tradition and modernity." Other critics have made the same observation, calling attention to its dependence on "familiar paired differences." According to Dean Tipps, "modernization theorists have done little more than to summarize" the work of Maine, Tönnies, and Durkheim.

A close reading of the literature bears out this contention. To cite a typical example, C. E. Black, in his Dynamics of Modernization, characterized modern society as one in which "the individual is atomized—torn from his community moorings, isolated from all except his immediate family," and deprived "not only of the support and consolation offered by membership in a more autonomous community, but also of the relative stability of employment and social rules that agrarian life provides in normal times." At the same time, modernization brought about a general improvement in the standard of living, according to Black. The "comparative method" showed that as "societies become more productive, wealth

-159-