RACIAL-SINGAPOREANS 53 individuals, regardless of racial affiliations, into their conceptual and material interests, such 'universal' concepts are able to provide the 'bonds of horizontal solidarity' among the newly enfranchized citizens of 'Singapore', the nation. Candidate 'universal' concepts available at the time were, among others, •anti- colonializm, class politics and socialism/ communism, and capitalist economic modernization. Anti- colonializm was useful in gaining independence (Chan, 1984). However, this was attained without any revolutionary struggle, which might be construed as the presence and expression of the 'collective will' of the population and be subsequently elevated to the level of a 'founding' myth of the new nation, as in Indonesia (Yong, 1992). As for class politics, the left had by the time of independence been politically suppressed and decimated by the emergent People's Action Party (PAP) government. Furthermore, the case for 'communism' was by then increasingly conflated with radical segments of the Chinese population, particularly the highly mobilized middle-school student population and undergraduates in the newly founded Chinese medium Nanyang University. The PAP's own history as a coalition of a group of English-educated, professioanlly-trained social democrats and a populist left faction that was well embedded in the 'outlawed* radical trade unions had transformed the former group, who inherited the political fortune of the party, into staunch anti-communists.2 The obvious candidate concept available to ground the reason of the new state was capitalist development. With the monopoly of state power in hand, a reconstituted PAP government turned on the persuasive material promises of capitalism for the new 'Singaporeans'. Political separation which led to the apparent 'collapse' of the anticipated larger Malaysian market for the Singapore's fledgling industrialization might be said to have placed the economic viability of the island nation in serious jeopardy. The PAP government astutely seized this apprehension and conceptually crystallized it into an issue of the 'survival' of the new nation. The 'reason for the state* was thus from the very outset defined in economic terms rather symbolic ones. Politics was reduced to economics: 'Political problems ultimately mean the problem of how we make our living, how we can give everyone a fair and equal chance to study and work and have a full life' (Lee, 1962:83). The 'survival' of the new nation, defined in economic terms, in turn embodied the problems of individual citizen's ability to 'make a living' (Goh, 1976). National life became the rational basis for organizing the new nation.; they became the criteria by which performance of the regime is defined, assessed and legitimated, and sharing a part of this material progress become the entitlement of citizenship.