Our building programmes have progressed rapidly because we allowed the individual worker to earn as much as he can over his other workers by working as hard as he likes. Our lowest productivity level is in many sections of our own government services such as our publicly owned dockyards where managers are on salary scales instead of the profit-sharing and bonus schemes of private industry, and where our workers are on wage rates which apply equally between the proficient hardworking man and the mediocre and not so hardworking man.
We have had to recognise these faults. It has not changed our belief in the basic tenet that no man should exploit his fellowman. We believe it is immoral that the ownership of property should allow some to exploit others. But in order to get economic growth we have had to base our policies on the principle, “From each his economic best, To each his economic worth.” The ultimate ideal, “From each his best, To each his need”, can only be relevant after we have moved away from ignorance, illiteracy, poverty, and economic backwardness.
In order to get economic growth we have had to base our policies on the principle, “From each his economic best, To each his economic worth.”
Reflecting on the past decade of few achievements and many omissions is a sobering exercise. But the fact that we are today gathered in Bombay to discuss these problems is in a small way a tribute to the tenacity of the democratic socialist. If we re-evaluate and re-formulate our thinking and policy to make a more effective contribution in the next decade we can still make a contribution to Asia’s and Africa’s advance.
Lee had a deep aversion to welfarism, having seen how it had sapped the people of their will to work and given rise to a culture of dependency in welfare states in the West. He rose to hammer home this point during the 1991 Budget debate in Parliament on March 19, 1991, his first major speech in the House since stepping down as prime minister in November 1990. He took his longtime political adversary Lee Siew Choh to task for advocating that Singapore emulate the welfare systems found abroad.
Why the welfare states failed
Mr Deputy Speaker, Sir, the divide between Dr Lee Siew Choh and me is an unbridgeable one, although we originally had him as part of the PAP. And it stems from a fundamental difference in approach to life and to society. We were both idealistic enough to believe that in a more compassionate world with equal opportunities, there would be less poverty, less misery, more opportunities, more prosperity. That is why he joined the PAP. He then went in for utopian politics. He believed in the communist (socialist) credo that all men should be made equal and be equally treated and equally rewarded.
Once upon a time, in the 1950s, many Singaporeans, especially the Chinese-educated, believed that China was a stupendous success in instant revolution and industrialisation, arising from glossy magazines and brilliant broadcasts to production figures and spick and span showpieces for distinguished visitors to be taken to, children’s palaces, model factories, model villages. I believe the majority of young Singaporeans or young Chinese in Singapore in the 1950s would have voted for that system. That is the danger of one-man-one-vote. It was a mirage, it was a con job. We knew it only in the 1970s and it became obvious to everyone in the 1980s.
After all these years, let me pose one simple question to the Member: 70 years in the Soviet Union of the egalitarian society, have they banished begging, prostitution, misery, hunger? Is that the way? To suppress the individual instinct to perform, to excel, to be better than the other, to get better rewards, bigger prizes, to increase his family’s chances in life, so that they can have a better kickoff? All that was stifled with the objective of an equal egalitarian society.
God did not make the Russians equal. Lenin and Stalin tried to.
God did not make the Russians equal. Lenin and Stalin tried to. You are too long, they chop you down. The end result is total misery. They tried it in China, it has failed. They tried it in Vietnam, boat people. In North Korea, total devastation.
Let me take a few instances. Even in the capitalist West where they have tried throwing money at problems, what is the end result? You go down New York, Broadway. You will see the beggars, people on the streets. Worse than in the ’50s and in the early ’60s, before the Great Society programmes. Why? Why did it get worse after compassion moved a president, motivated with a great vision of a society which was wealthy and cared for, could look after everybody – the blacks, the minorities, the dispossessed, the disadvantaged. There is more unhappiness and more hardship today and more beggars, more muggers. Why is that? Have we not learnt?
Where are the beggars in Singapore? Show me. I take pride in that. Has anybody died of starvation? Anybody without a home left to die in the streets, to be collected as corpses?
Because we came to the realistic conclusion that the human being is motivated by instincts that go down to the basic genes in life. And the first basic instinct is to protect yourself, and stronger than that, to protect your offspring so that there is the next generation. You kill that link, you have killed off mankind. They half killed that link in China by removing the children from parental control to the communes, and disaster followed. We went with the instinct of the individual.
Where are the beggars in Singapore? Show me. I take pride in that.
Not all can perform in a free and equal society. Free chances, there will always be the losers. There is the altruistic streak in society. Individuals who have done well, who want to do something for their fellowmen, and we should use that. Not everybody has it in the same measure, and we have used it. You ignore that and substitute for the altruistic individual with that drive to do something for his fellowmen, a bureaucracy, and you have got corruption, inefficiency, and failure.
It has happened over and over again. Do we need to learn all over again when we can see what happened to the British and the Australians? They went in for compassionate welfare programmes. They paid their unemployed almost as much as the employed when they lost their jobs. They had the right to refuse three or four jobs until the right one came along, commensurate with what they were getting the last time, to their liking. The result was layabouts. So finally the Australians gave up, and a Labour government in Australia has struck down unemployment benefits. If we do not learn from other people’s errors, costly errors, we would be ruined, wouldn’t we? We have got very little margin to spare.
I take this advantage, not because I believe Dr Lee will influence a younger generation of Singaporeans, but just in case there are the few errant minds, to remind them where we would have been if we had pursued the policies he advocated. I am proud of the ethos with which we have infused a younger generation of Singaporeans. We have given them the chance to stand up, be self-reliant, and be enough of a team, of a nation, so that all can perform at their best, and the whole group, including the losers, will not perish. And that is achieved by going with human instincts, going with basic culture, and making adjustments along the way for those who would otherwise lose.
Watch any tennis tournament. There are vast differences in ability. There are vast differences in the prizes they award and the royalties that go with the first prize, as you sponsor shirts, rackets, tennis shoes, tennis bands, wrist bands. But what we do not see are the preliminary eliminations. They get prizes too. Otherwise, for every competition you may not get more than eight turning up, and you may find the same players competing to be the final eight.
I therefore ask him, even at this late stage: Does he really want to mock our urging the younger generation to respect their elders and look after them? Watch out. There may come a day when he will be grateful that his grandchildren had listened to us and respect him and have affection for him and visit him in his old age. Otherwise he may be left to Mr Wong Kan Seng’s old folks’ home, and that will be a tragedy which I would not like to visit on my worst enemy.
Education was always one of Lee’s key concerns. But not for him the egalitarian idea that all students are equally able, if given equal attention in schools, or extra tuition to make
up for what they lack at home. To him, some children are obviously more gifted than others. Rather than holding these bright ones back in the name of equality, he argued in a meeting with school principals at the Victoria Theatre on August 29, 1966, that they should be drawn out and helped to excel. These children would form the elite in Singapore, from which would be drawn the country’s future leaders. On their shoulders would be the task of raising the lot of all in society.
Schools must have character
The ideal product is the student, the university graduate who is strong, robust, rugged, with tremendous qualities of stamina, endurance, great intellectual discipline and, most important of all, humility and love for his community; a readiness to serve whether God or king or country or, if you like, just his community.
Supposing now, I am given superhuman powers. I say, “Look, here is Singapore with this limitation: 2 million people. What kind of schools, education would I have?” I will tell you what I think I would want to do if I were endowed with superhuman powers.
I would like first, at the very top of your society, to rear a generation that has all the qualities needed to lead and give the people the inspiration, the drive to make it succeed. This would be your elite. If you go to any country, even young ones like Australia, they have special schools.
What is the ideal product? The ideal product is the student, the university graduate who is strong, robust, rugged, with tremendous qualities of stamina, endurance and, at the same time, with great intellectual discipline and, most important of all, humility and love for his community; a readiness to serve whether God or king or country or, if you like, just his community.
Every society produces this type or they try to. The British have special schools for them. They send them to Eton and Harrow and a few very exclusive private schools which they call “public schools”, then they send them on to Oxford and Cambridge. They have legends that the Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton.
The Australians are trying to do it. Recently, Prince Charles went to this school at Geelong. This is their equivalent where they try to build the complete Australian with great vitality, outdoor life, resourcefulness. Even caught in the bush, he will learn how to survive, and he will have great qualities of discipline and heart. That is your ideal.
And, from time to time, such people are produced. The Americans produce them, the Russians produce them, the Chinese produce them. The Germans produce them; the Indians produce them, but with this slight difference: that the Indians have never placed the emphasis on the physical side. They have always placed it on the spiritual side.
We should try to do that. Not every boy is equal in his endowments in either physical stamina or mental capacity or character. But you want to try and get all those with the potential to blossom forth. That is your spearhead in your society. On them depends the pace of progress.
You remove these 150 people, if you can identify the 150; whoever wants to destroy this society, identifies these 150 people and kills them, the push will be gone.
This government at the moment – the whole of this administration – is running on I would say the ability and drive and dedication – not on the basis of what they get in salaries – of about 150 people. You remove these 150 people, if you can identify the 150; whoever wants to destroy this society, identifies these 150 people and kills them, the push will be gone. This is a very thin crust of leadership. This has to be spread quickly, more and more.
Then you have your middle strata of good executives. Not everybody can be a leader, can be a general, can be a prime minister, can be a top scientist or a physicist. And you can be the best general in the world or the best prime minister in the world, but if you do not have high-quality executives to help you carry out your ideas, thinking and planning, you cannot succeed. So you need the middle strata of good executives. And then, finally you have your broad base.
In any army, in one battalion, you have 60 to 70 officers, one to two hundred sergeants and corporals, and the others, about 500, are privates. It must be. This is life. And the quality of your privates determines the quality of your army as much as the quality of the generals does.
I am as much interested in the bottom as I am in the top of this pyramid. But we must accept the fact that this is life.
If I were given superhuman powers, I would say, “Right, then I form these schools.” Not just one. I will probably form three or four; and boys and girls, all who have potential, near-geniuses, people who can read your poetry in three languages if you give them the training, give them the character that goes with it. Then you have this middle strata.
Then – which is what Singapore has not reconciled itself to – there are people who are just average. But even that average, we must nurture. That average person must be one who has a sense of discipline in himself, and social discipline. He respects his community and does not spit all over the place.
There are societies in the world where things have dropped so low that your social discipline has collapsed. Recently, I went through a capital where the army had taken over and they decided to smack down a whole row of shanty-huts built on pavements and roads. The structure had collapsed. The state was no longer able to control; the politicians were in a hopeless mess. So, people built all these huts all over the place. The army came with the gun and cleaned it up. They were ashamed of it. But they did not solve the social problems. Because the people still had nowhere to go. They probably slept on the pavements and they excreted on the pavements. The society had collapsed. And this has happened in a number of places in Asia. Because that bottom layer of average boys and girls was never given the care, the attention and the inculcation of good responses, good habits, good attitudes.
How do you produce this sort of structure: top leaders, good executives, well-disciplined and highly civic-conscious broad mass? I say it goes back to the school and the teacher. And the school or the teacher is a very personal thing. We have expanded all these schools so fast, you might as well now call these schools by numbers – School No. 75 or School No. 85. We are taking names of roads and streets for schools. They have no special character.
To me, just reading the Cabinet paper from the Ministry of Education of our requirements for secondary schools and about there being no need for more primary schools, my mind goes back to the day I went to school. And to me, the school was the beginning and end of life, with the teachers who were in charge of me.
You cannot have anonymous schools and anonymous teachers.
You know, the school must have character; it must belong. You cannot have anonymous schools and anonymous teachers – which was what we tended to do because we were expanding so rapidly. You take Raffles Institution, change it and call it Beach Road School. You have lost something. That is why the schools that did not expand too rapidly, Chinese High School, Chung Cheng, Nanyang, Catholic High School, St Joseph’s, ACS: they maintained an esprit de corps. The boys were proud for it. And, because we expanded so much, the government schools went down so low that we abolished the inter-school sports because there were no sports masters.
I say we reverse that. There must be enough talent in the population. Build it up; reverse the process. Identify the school; make it mean something. A teacher cannot really perform his duty unless he feels he is doing something worthwhile. I want every school teacher in the classroom to feel for and with his flock of 35 or 32 children. If you do not feel that, you cannot give the pupil something.
Lee identified culture as a key determinant of a society’s chances of success as early as the 1960s. Some cultures were “hard”, driven, and had a will to achieve. Others were more languid. These “soft” cultures set greater store by gracious living and an easy life. They were less ready to make sacrifices to attain material progress. Lee believed such different cultures existed in Asian societies. Their effects were acutely felt in multiracial societies like Singapore, he said in a speech at the Foreign Correspondents Association’s dinner in Tokyo o
n March 21, 1967.
Being a hard nation
I think you must have something in you to be a “have” nation. You must want. That is the crucial thing. Before you have, you must want to have. And to want to have means to be able first, to perceive what it is you want; secondly, to discipline and organise yourself in order to possess the things you want – the industrial sinews of our modern economic base; and thirdly, the grit and the stamina, which means cultural mutations in the way of life in large parts of the tropical areas of the world where the human being has never found it necessary to work in the summer, harvest before the autumn, and save it up for the winter.
You must want. That is the crucial thing.
In large areas of the world, a cultural pattern is determined by many things, including climatic conditions. As long as that persists, nothing will ever emerge. And for it to emerge, there must be this desire between contending factions of the “have” nations to try and mould the “have-not” nations after their own selves. If they want that strongly enough, competition must act as an accelerator, and no more than an accelerator to the creation of modern, industrial, technological societies in the primitive agricultural regions of the world.
I think Asia can be very clearly demarcated into several distinct parts – East Asia is one: it has got a different tempo of its own. So have South Asia and Southeast Asia. I think this is crucial to an understanding of the possibilities of either development for the good or development which is not in the interest of peace and human happiness in the region.
I like to demarcate – I mean not in political terms – demarcate them half in jest, but I think half with some reality on the basis of difference in the tempo according to the people who know what these things are. I mean East Asia: Korea, Japan and mainland China and including the Republic of China in Taiwan and Vietnam. They are supposed to be Mahayana Buddhists. And then there is Cambodia, Thailand, Burma, Ceylon, which are supposed to be Hinayana Buddhists. According to the Hinayana Buddhists, if the bedbug disturbs you then you take your mattress and shake it off; there is that compassion not only for the human being but for the bedbug, and you give it another chance and you let it off. Either it finds its way on to some other creature or it finds its way back to your bed. But watching the Japanese over the years, I have not the slightest doubt that is not what they do. And I think this makes some difference. I am not talking now – isms or ideologies. It is something deeper. It is part of the tempo, the way of life.
Lee Kuan Yew: The Man and His Ideas Page 53
