One central obstacle in the way of modernizing societies in the Third World is the difficulty of combining tolerance and development the author studies the social, cultural and political conditions which favor social and economic development., avoiding economic reductionism of the kind which sees the market and economic growth as the only path to development as well as that which sees the disappearance of capitalism as the cure for all evils. Bula says that all societies are conflictive by nature, but some manage to solve their conflicts by consensus. In the Third World there are a number of economic and political interests opposed tothe opening up of society, and progress towards equi ty and solidarity will only be achieved with contradiction and conflict. The challenge is therefore to form a paradigm for democracy which gives values and qualitative growth priority over quantitative growth; one that prizes the quality of life and the environment. This is the task of society as a whole, from which the new social movements will produce the leading agents in the new paradigm.