Response to “Culture Is Destiny: A Conversation with Lee Kuan Yew”
Response to "Culture Is Destiny: A Conversation with Lee Kuan Yew"
In Fareed Zakaria’s 1994 interview with Lee Kuan Yew, four years after he stepped down as Singapore’s Prime Minister (yet stayed as the senior minister in the executive cabinet), Lee Kuan Yew divulged his viewpoints on the United States, culture, and modernization. The two first center the conversation on the United States, wherein Lee Kuan Yew complimented a minimal set of qualities of the USA, but then mostly degraded the nation, specifically the prevalence of public misbehavior in the United States. He attributes this misbehavior to lack of order, overdependence on good government, and individualistic nature of citizens in America, all of which he claims is minimal in Singapore. He proposes that his nation’s success depends on the instilled cultural values of family, education, and hard-work. Regarding family, he proposes that the ‘East Asian’ reliance on family, instead of the government, helps establish order. As he raved about East Asian culture, he made a daring remark that all people are not equal. Other themes in the transcript included how he believed Asia will transcend the West in their quest to modernize without becoming Western, meaning modernizing while retaining their traditions and cultural values, and by their past experiences in warfare, as well as by learning from the West and its failures. No matter how extensively Zakaria attempted to highlight the contradictions or holes in LKY’s arguments, the prime minister seemed ready to support his statements with anecdotes or bizarre statements. Two glimpses are his statements about how all people are not equal and his thoughts of a possible reformation of a one-man-one-vote system…
Analyzing Lee Kuan Yew’s responses through the lens of Weber’s three forms of legitimacy can help clarify how Lee Kuan Yew came to be the strongman that he was. The most obvious pillar that the prime minister mastered is one on “traditionality”, as he places great emphasis on culture. This cultural essentialism that he proposed however implied a cultural supremacy, as well. This discourse, however, is dangerous in a diverse state like Singapore, where not everybody is East Asian, especially today. Still, at that time, Singapore was growing in diversity and Zakaria did inquire Lee Kuan Yew about his multicultural-multiethnic state, wherein Lee argued for some assimilation into the state’s ‘culture’. One ponders about what Lee Kuan Yew’s stance would have been today, in the increasing diversity of his nation. Does he think the culture of the nation is being distilled by the propensity of migrant laborers in the nation? Though I may not know too much about the economic logistics of Singapore, I also would assume that like other wealthy nations it is dependent on the exploitation of migrant workers. As Lee Kuan Yew places his culture on a pedestal and attributes his economic success to the values of family, I wonder if he would confess and thank the culture of the migrant laborers… Next, Lee Kuan Yew definitely ranks high in charisma. Upon reading the transcript, it is apparent how quick-witted Lee Kuan Yew was. His ability to answer Zakaria’s questions so succinctly, and sometimes creatively, is impressive, such that readers may want to listen to the tapes themselves. His confidence to suggest the idea of unequal peoples or new voting styles emphasized his charisma. The popular support he received within Singapore, proven by the longevity of his career best amplifies his charismatic behavior, as well. In terms of rational-legal authority, Lee Kuan Yew not only helped devise the constitution of Singapore, he led both the incorporation of Singapore into Malaysia in 1963 but also its separation in 1965, all garnering support from his constituents. Furthermore, his ability to catapult Singapore to its current economic standing (and even its 1994 economic standing) was unprecedented. In the transcript, he indicates that their transition from an agricultural society to an industrial one in the span of only a few decades demonstrates their great capabilities. Some may attribute that to his strong will and charisma, but it also reflects how his legitimacy also arises from rational-legal authority, as the government he created and molded continues to support and uphold him. It is thus clear that Lee Kuan Yew abounded in all three pillars of Weber’s conception of legitimacy, as Lee Kuan Yew was not only seen as a legitimate ‘benevolent dictator’ but an effective and impressive one in his political and economic accomplishments. However, with this transcript, it begs into question if political and economic success is possible without such authoritarian measures and cultural essentialism or cultural supremacy?
Questions to Consider:
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Do you find any contradictions in Lee Kuan Yew’s views on American/Western culture and modernity? What do you think of these contradictions?
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What do you think about his overemphasis on East Asian values in Singapore and how this contradicts/relates to Singapore as now officially part of “Southeast Asia”?
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Can you think of other leaders in Southeast Asia or beyond that seek to emulate Lee Kuan Yew’s characteristics or values? Why do you think they want to act like him/those characteristics?
Relevant Quotes:
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“‘Again, we were fortunate we had this cultural backdrop, the belief in thrift, hard work, filial piety and loyalty in the extended family, and, most of all, the respect for scholarship and learning,’” (Zakaria 114).
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“‘Let me be frank; if we did not have the good points of the West to guide us, we wouldn’t have got out of our backwardness. We would have been a backward economy with a backward society. But we do not want all of the West,’” (Zakaria 125).
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“But as a total system, I find parts of [America] totally unacceptable: guns, drugs, violent crime, vagrancy, unbecoming behavior in public - in sum the breakdown of civil society. In the East the main object is to have a well-ordered society so that everybody can have maximum enjoyment of his freedoms. This freedom can only exist in an ordered state and not in a natural state of contention and anarchy,’” (Zakaria 111).
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“ We have focused on basics in Singapore. We used the family to push economic growth, factoring the ambitious of a person and his family into our planning…The government can create a setting which people can live happily and succeed and express themselves, but finally it is what people do with their lives that determines economic success or failure,” (Zakaria 114).
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“‘… the World Bank Report’s conclusions are part of the culture of America…It makes the hopeful assumption that all men are equal, that people all over the world are the same. They are not. Groups of people develop different characteristics…Genetics and history interact,” (Zakaria 117).
Outside Sources:
Comments
Anna,
This was a good application of Weber’s model of legitimacy. Lee’s spin on “traditional” authority is interesting because Singapore’s history as a port that was attached to various Malay empires before it was absorbed into the British empire means that the PAP had to figure out how to define and navigate postcolonial independence. To what extent does one inherit and continue to apply British forms of government? It seems that the PAP combined what they inherited (e.g. education system like the O and A levels, Parliament, British laws, etc.) with Confucius values that the Chinese majority could presumably relate to to create their own version of traditional authority. But I would also add that in addition to the three forms of legitimacy, the state very deftly sold and continues to sell a narrative of anxiety that Chua Beng Huat gestures to in his introduction– the idea that the Singapore is small, land-and-resource-scarce, and always at the brink of irrelevance. That Lee Kuan Yew has triumphed over these challenges is a key part of the origin story of Singapore’s “success” and continues to give the state legitimacy to this day.
I think you’re also getting somewhere when you point out Lee’s emphasis of “East Asian values” and the existence of minorities (Malays, Indians, and “others”). I see it not as a contradiction (per your question) but the reality of what some have called “Chinese privilege,” a claim that has provoked a lot of outrage amongst the Chinese majority in Singapore. It is such that migrant labourers belong to a separate category when covid case numbers are reported (“community” vs “imported” vs “dorm population”).
Anna,
I really enjoyed the way you paused and tried to unpack the curious way in which LKY achieves his legitimacy, especially because the tendency of most readers when trying to “understand” Singapore is to approach it with irony and sarcasm instead of analytic clarity. Trying to take his deployment of tradition, charisma and rationality seriously is a valuable way to unpack the LKY phenomenon. Of course, as Vanessa points out above, it’s important to attend to the way some of these techniques manipulate history and tradition (and legal rationality) in very instrumental ways. I for one was laughing out loud to myself when reading about the claim that Americans tend to expect the government to solve everything and that in Singapore they are distrustful of government. At the same time, this point does raise important questions about the dynamic relationship between individuals and collectives that are more complicated than they first appear.