ABSTRACT

The historical reality of ideological systems constructions has always tended to project the theoretics and pragmatics inherent in the perspectives of socialism and its sometimes necessary preceding capitalist practice. These have remained global theories and sociocultural movements since social and political economies are part and parcel of global cultural realities. The era of pure ideological systems constructions and the economic and political anti-parties they tend to garner seem to be now part of a definite historical past as most of the global community moves towards a post-ideological socio-economic welfare of the mixed economy type. If this postulation remains true to current realities, then there are grounds to entertain the point that the people’s collective consciousness tilts in the direction of socialism. There is a move towards the realization of some of the ends of socialism without the attempt at the adoption of the explicit theory from the scientific standpoint and the implications thereof. Socialism can be said to be true to human nature even if this does not imply wholesale historical socialism of the West. This entails that when reference is made to socialism in a work of this nature, such reference is not to a univocal conception of the theory. All socialism has not been the product of the type of struggles that characterized the occidental and oriental theories of the same. The paper settles for Igbo-African socialism which is less popularized historically with less literary pool to its credit. Modal socialisms of the cultural type have remained existential realities in traditional communities. It is a theory of socio-economic-pragmatism and even moral didacticism since cultural peoples not only lived it but somehow made it a dependent factor in the whole valuation of their existence. Traditional socialism provides lots of theoretical insights through its generational value appreciation but these are from posterior systematic reflections concerning its true end. In this work, an effort has been made at extracting salient values from the socialist ideology of the Igbo past. The methodology used in highlighting theories and behaviours within a given worldview and recommending implementable policies in light of the current Nigerian situation was derived from the wider hermeneutical context.