Thoughts on Lee Kuan Yew
Scott Nelson
Spring 2018
What follows was originally an email written in thanks to two Singaporeans who gave me a couple of books by their country’s founding father, Lee Kuan Yew. The books are The Singapore Story: Memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew, Pt. 1(Singapore: Marshall Cavendish Editions, Straits Times Press, 2000) and One Man’s View of the World(Singapore: Straits Times Press, 2013). I have yet to read the second volume of his memoirs, From Third World to First. My interest in LKY was sparked initially by the reverent tones in which many other statesmen have spoken of him. While the organization is poor and the contents of this email may not live up to the expectations generated by the subject at hand, I have nevertheless left it more or less unedited, save for removing those personal comments dedicated to the original recipients.
What strikes me more than anything else about Lee is his sober and judicious reasoning. He reminds me in this sense of the subject of my PhD dissertation, the French writer Raymond Aron, who also had a knack for “thinking politically”, which amounts to a realistic assessment of the possible effects of one’s actions. This nevertheless does not amount to an amoral consequentialism, since Lee was also a highly principled individual. I might begin by indicating some of the most moving portions of The Singapore Story that I believe were seminal sources of both his convictions as well as his agile political manoeuvring.
The first is his chapter on the Japanese occupation of Singapore during the Second World War. This chapter alone is worth the price of the book. In it he manages to provide both the deep-seated reasons for his nationalism as well as a moving account of the breakdown of society and how easy it is for men – both occupiers and occupied – to be transformed into beasts. Up until that point the fundamental superiority of the British over the colonized had been accepted as axiomatic. However, the Japanese occupation revealed their inability and unwillingness to assume leadership and guide their colonies. More importantly, the experience of Japan had taught Lee the hard lesson of war and human nature. As he describes it:
The three and a half years of Japanese occupation were the most important of my life. They gave me vivid insights into the behaviour of human beings and human societies, their motivations and impulses. My appreciation of governments, my understanding of power as the vehicle for revolutionary change, would not have been gained without this experience. I saw a whole social system crumble suddenly before an occupying army that was absolutely merciless. The Japanese demanded total obedience and got it from nearly all. They were hated by almost everyone but everyone knew their power to do harm and so everyone adjusted. Those who were slow or reluctant to change and to accept the new masters suffered. They lived on the margins of the new society, their fortunes stagnated or declined and they lost their status. Those who were quick off the mark in assessing the new situation, and swift to take advantage of the new opportunities by making themselves useful to the new masters, made fortunes out of the terrible misfortune that had befallen all in Singapore.
The Singapore Story, p. 74.
This passage is reminiscent of Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War, particularly when the Greek historian relates the breakdown of society due to the civil war in Corcyra. It is equally reminiscent of Tacitus’ Annals and the platoons of flatterers that emerge in a tyrannical system who are adept at ingratiating themselves to the powers that be. Lee would later deride these same obsequious characters in venting his frustration at the Asian students returned from England whose pride was unduly inflated when they permitted themselves a critical comment on their British overlords, underscoring the gulf separating the timid assertiveness of their words and their pusillanimous deeds. (pp. 137-138).
If Lee’s experience of the Japanese provided a lesson in the ways of power and the extremes of human nature and formed his nationalistic convictions, he would spend several years developing his tactics and methods in his ongoing struggle with the Communists, which I believe is the second important source of Lee’s convictions and political acumen. The Japanese enjoyed their supremacy over the people of Singapore as long as they had the military means to enforce it; the Communists were more of a menace in that they had captured the minds of many of the people, especially the Chinese, who were a key group for the PAP. So much of The Singapore Story is a balancing act between the Communists in the PAP, the UMNO, later Barisan Sosialis, the Tunku and then the Indonesians, the British, all of the widely varying personalities with whom Lee had to deal, and all within the context of the Cold War. At times the balancing act appears so complex as to confound a Metternich.
However, the Communists in particular appear to have been a longstanding and vexing issue for Lee. Communists the world over had established their bona fides in their stalwart resistance to Fascism, and so they enjoyed postwar credibility beyond even that afforded to them by the attractive utopian promises of their ideology. When Lee spoke to Alan Lennox-Boyd (UK secretary of state for the colonies) about the probability that imprisoned comrades such as Lim Chin Siong would win in the 1959 election, his British interlocutor expressed amazement that Lim’s imprisonment would not have the contrary effect of sowing distrust for him amongst the electorate. To this Lee prudently observed that “in Singapore, when you are locked up by a government with a British governor and a British chief secretary in charge, you become a martyr, a champion of the people. Your popularity increases.” (p. 258).
Lee would therefore always have to ensure that he took a constitutional approach in order to maintain legitimacy in the eyes of the people. (p. 263). He in fact was shrewd enough to turn the radicalism of the Communists to his benefit:
My way of constitutional opposition, working within the law, was in marked contrast to that of the communists, and I got results. But without the communists going beyond the law and using violence, my methods would not have been effective. It was the less unpleasant option I offered that made them acceptable to the British. Just as in Malaya, had there been no terrorism to present the British with the humiliating prospect of surrendering to the communists, the Tunku would never have won independence simply by addressing larger and larger gatherings of Malays in the villages. It was the disagreeable alternative the communists posed that made constitutional methods of gentle erosion of colonial authority effective for the nationalists and acceptable to the colonialists. In pre-war India, where there was no communist threat, constitutional methods of passive resistance took decades to work.
The Singapore Story, p. 211.
This is not to say that Lee always played the role of the delayer, never knowing when to strike: when the PAP won the Tanjong Pagar by-election, they saw that the PAP was beginning to enjoy legitimacy as a people’s party without needing the revolutionary baggage of Communism any longer. They accordingly began to tighten the screws on their Communist “allies” through measures that would give them greater constitutional control over the party. Lee’s trip to Rome gave him a model for designing elections to the central executive committee similar to elections for the new pontiff. On 23 November 1958 the PAP’s constitution was amended so that there would be two types of party members: “ordinary members, who could join either directly through PAP headquarters or through the branches, and cadre members, a select few hundred who would be approved by the central executive committee. Only cadres who had been chosen by the CEC could in turn vote for candidates to the CEC, just as only cardinals nominated by a Pope could elect another Pope. This closed the circuit, and since the CEC controlled the core of the party, the party could not now be captured.” (p. 287).
Once in power Lee and his colleagues took the difficult but necessary measures to balance the country’s budget (such as lowering civil servant pay). They also moved quickly to capitalize on the post-election momentum and enthusiasm they enjoyed and thus adopted some of the Communists’ tactics, such as having government officials toiling with their hands in cleaning the streets as a display of their commitment to the people. They organized various clubs and associations to instil a sense of community and positivity in the population, not to mention teaching them new skills. They created a Works Brigade to get the unemployed off the streets and put them to work on infrastructural projects such as farming, road building, bricklaying and construction. They acknowledged the importance of women’s emancipation and that women should be given the same education as men in order to contribute to society. Finally, they installed a programme designed to give every child a school place within one year. (pp. 317-327).
Lee of course did not manage to accomplish everything entirely by himself. He was surrounded by good men, three of whom he sees fit to mention in his memoirs:
Three men played critical roles in the open fight to defeat the communists. Raja was superb. His fighting spirit never flagged. After the Barisan mounted their attacks on us in mid-1961, when everything looked bleak and we were in the depths of despair, Raja roared like a lion. They reviled the PAP as turncoats and renegades who had sold out the people; Raja answered in terms as pungent, rebutting and debunking them. He put his pamphleteering skills to work, and his robustness stiffened everybody’s morale. He was convinced that we were in the right, that we must fight, and that we would win.
Next, Pang Boon – quiet and soft-spoken, dependable and reliable, good in his assessments of who were loyal at PAP headquarters and in the party branches. He kept our loyalists together and in good heart, so that we had Chinese-educated party workers who became the core of an election organisation. Together with the grassroots community leaders, this made up for what had been demolished by the defecting Barisan supporters when the PAP split.
But my most important backroom player was Keng Swee, with his clear mind and sharp pen. He helped me refine the tactics that defeated the communists. For every clever move they made, we worked out a counter-move. Throughout this fight and for the next 21 years until he retired as deputy prime minister in 1984, he was my alter ego, always the sceptic, always turning a proposition on its head to reveal its flaws and help me reshape it. He was my resident intellectual par excellence and a doughty fighter. There were several other stalwarts, but these three stood out.
The Singapore Story, p. 510.
These friends, coupled with Lee’s careful manoeuvring, balancing constitutionalism, legitimacy, and the gradual acquisition of power, were key to his entire approach. Lee’s political acumen also enabled him to see that there was always a battlefield beyond the present theatre of operations. After the declaration of Singapore’s independence in 1963, Lee was working on the constitution in a series of conferences. One of his constant concerns was to build in as many safeguards as possible to check and balance the federal government, especially seeing as how the army and police would be under the control of Kuala Lumpur and there was always the risk that Kuala Lumpur could declare a state of emergency and govern outside the law. (pp. 502-503). An example from earlier in his life when he was an advocate for various unions has him and D. N. Pritt, a fearless champion of the Left, ridiculing the court for the “duplicity of the charges” in a trial concerning a group of eight students who had been arrested and charged with sedition:
In essence, the students were all accused equally of publishing with the intention to ‘libel the Queen or libel the government or to incite the people of Singapore or to promote ill-will.’ He [Pritt] wanted to know which particular ‘intent’ the prosecution attributed to each individual defendant. He argued that a charge that concealed within itself so many different alternative charges must be bad. He asked the court to strike it out and instruct the prosecutor to frame one that was less ambiguous.
I had already protested along the same lines, but I did not have Pritt’s standing as a senior QC, nor his powers of invective. Although the judge ruled against him and found that the charges as framed were not bad, he had scored with the public both in court and in the newspapers.
The Singapore Story, pp. 164-165.
Legally, Lee and Pritt may have had their case thrown out; however, they saw that the legal battlefield was only a part of the larger and more important political battlefield in which they had gained a victory. These examples are evidence of Lee’s talent for long-term strategic thinking, hailed by all sorts of distinguished statesmen, such as Henry Kissinger and Margaret Thatcher. His approach always took into account the possible consequences of his actions. He knew that the Communists, for example, could be neither appeased through kowtowing nor bent through forceful opposition. David Marshall’s approach was emblematic of the first, while Lim Yew Hock’s typified the second. Lim’s heavy-handed treatment of them enabled them to brand him a puppet of the “colonialist imperialists” and thereby undermine the support offered him by the Chinese-speaking masses. (p. 251).
How did Lee, ethnically Chinese but unable to speak it fluently, manage to convince the Chinese he was on their side? It would appear to have been a lifelong struggle to grasp the language, for Lee wrote an entire book chronicling the challenges in learning Mandarin later in life (Keeping My Mandarin Alive: Lee Kuan Yew Language Learning Experience). (In this book apparently Lee describes the difficulties of learning the language in his 30s and the importance for overseas ethnic Chinese to learn Mandarin. I too would fall into that category and perhaps it is high time I also come to grips with the language of one half of my heritage.) But in the political arena time is not always on our side and so Lee would once again turn a deficiency to his advantage. In the 1955 elections he found himself up against a Chinese-educated rival in the Democratic Party, Lam Tian, who questioned his ability to represent the Chinese voters since he could neither read nor write the language. It was a fair criticism and appears at various moments in his memoirs to have been a source of insecurity. Lee’s response, however, was the best he could make given the circumstances: “Logically, since Lam Tian does not read and write Tamil and Malay, it means he does not propose to represent the Malay and Indian population of Tanjong Pagar.” (p. 183).
Lee’s exchange with Lam Tian also demonstrates his eloquence, unadorned, direct, and sparse. In this he was the polar opposite of one of the Western statesmen who enjoyed his praise, Winston Churchill. Lee’s observations and comments are often so unvarnished, logical, and to the point as to pierce the armour of his opponent’s emotional arguments. During the UMNO’s “Crush Lee” campaign, Lee made – in Malay, no less – what he felt was his most important speech in the federal parliament before a hostile audience that had been nourished on anti-PAP and anti-LKY propaganda. Just as Lam Tian had asserted that Lee would be incapable of representing the Chinese, so too were Lee’s criticisms of the UMNO’s preference for conferring privileges upon the Malay population misconstrued as attempts to establish a Chinese Malaysia:
How does the Malay in the kampong find his way out into this modernised civil society? By becoming servants of the 0.3 per cent who would have the money to hire them to clean their shoes, open their motorcar doors? … Of course there are Chinese millionaires in big cars and big houses. Is it the answer to make a few Malay millionaires with big cars and big houses? How does telling a Malay bus driver that he should support the party of his Malay director (UMNO) and the Chinese bus conductor to join another party of his Chinese director (MCA) – how does that improve the standards of the Malay bus driver and the Chinese bus conductor who are both workers in the same company?
If we delude people into believing that they are poor because there are no Malay rights or because opposition members oppose Malay rights, where are we going to end up? You let people in the kampongs believe that they are poor because we don’t speak Malay, because the government does not write in Malay, so he expects a miracle to take place in 1967 (the year Malay would become the national and sole official language). The moment we all start speaking Malay, he is going to have an uplift in the standard of living, and if it doesn’t happen, what happens then? … Meanwhile, whenever there is a failure of economic, social and educational policies, you come back and say, oh, these wicked Chinese, Indians and others opposing Malay rights. They don’t oppose Malay rights. They, the Malays, have the right as Malaysian citizens to go up to the level of training and education that the more competitive societies, the non-Malay society, has produced. That is what must be done, isn’t it? Not to feed them with this obscurantist doctrine that all they have got to do is to get Malay rights for a few special Malays and their problem has been resolved…
The Singapore Story, pp. 612-613.
When we turn to Lee’s more recent pronouncements on the world contained in One Man’s View of the World, we see that he has lost nothing of his incisive insight. Much of his worldview here seems to be informed by his concern that a country maintain its national unity and economic competitiveness. There are the familiar comments about Japan’s aging population, the problems of India’s caste system, Europe’s difficulties with the Eurozone and the EU’s constant navel-gazing, and the folly of introducing democracy to the Middle East when the region has no democratic tradition. There are some interesting observations among his comments, one of which is that the welfare model of the Scandinavian countries is less laudable than many of its supporters in the West would think. Swedish unemployment in 2011 was at 7.5%, comparing only slightly more favourably to Italy’s (8.4%), and certainly less favourably when set against the advanced Asian economies (Japan – 4.6%; South Korea – 3.4%; Singapore – 2%). The Scandinavian countries also have much smaller and more homogeneous populations which are accordingly both more willing to pay higher taxes and less willing to abuse the system, since they feel a greater sense of belonging to the community. (pp. 106-107). Lee has a fatalistic view of the future of Taiwan vis-à-vis China and the American commitment to defend its independence in the long-term. The fatalism of his opinion is mollified only once one has come to accept its sobriety and sound judgment: Taiwan is ultimately more important to China than to the United States and when push comes to shove the United States will not defend its independence. (pp. 37-38). One might be able to say the same about the future of Ukraine vis-à-vis Russia and America.
According to Lee, what glues a nation-state together and creates a sense of community? One factor, in the case of decolonization at least, is to have an effective government in place that can take over from the colonial authority: “I had received an unforgettable lesson in decolonisation, on how crucial it was to have social cohesion and capable, effective government to take power from the colonial authority, especially in Africa. When the leader did not preserve the unity of the country by sharing power with the chiefs of the minority tribes, but excluded them, the system soon broke down. Worse, when misguided policies based on half-digested theories of socialism and redistribution of wealth were compounded by less than competent government, societies formerly held together by colonial power splintered, with appalling consequences.” (Singapore Story, pp. 538-539). And “music was a necessary part of nation-building. It uplifted the spirits of a people.” (p. 571).
Interestingly, the Communists were in some ways quite effective at creating precisely that group feeling that Lee finds essential in nation-building. The Communists were an interesting case study in the conduct of politics and mobilizing the people. They often employed mass psychology to deal with crowds effectively (p. 193), and sometimes less effectively (p. 227). They also revealed a great deal in contrast to Lee’s supporters about the fundamental differences between the revolutionary and bourgeois mentalities, and in this they are perhaps instructive even for Singapore today, whose children have no experience of the hardships that Lee lived through:
I had no doubt that as long as the Chinese middle schools were churning out bright and ambitious graduates whom the political system excluded from good jobs in the public and private sectors, the MCP would have a steady flow of recruits. This was the nub of the problem – the frustration of the able and talented among the Chinese-educated who had no outlets for their energy and idealism, and who were at the same time inspired by the example of the young communist cadres in China. It was only after news of the excesses of the Cultural Revolution percolated through in the 1970s that the communist hold on them weakened.
Meanwhile, an ostentatious display of self-sacrifice by their leading cadres added to the myth. After working the whole day running around making speeches and negotiating with wicked employers, Lim Chin Siong and Fong would sleep on top of the desks at union headquarters. Their Spartan lifestyle had a tremendous impact on their followers, who tried to emulate them, infecting each other with the same spirit of self-denial. Even wealthy young students who were not hard-core members wanted to identify themselves with Lim and Fong. One busy company owner’s son spent most of his time acting as an unpaid chauffeur for them, using his family car. It was his contribution to the cause. He was proud to be associated with revolutionary cadres who dressed simply, ate at hawker stalls and took very little salary for themselves since whatever was won from the employers was for the workers. How much they pocketed in order to feed more revolutionaries I did not know, but I did not see them take anything for themselves – they certainly did not live as if they had.
It was a competitive display of selflessness that swept a whole generation; the more selfless you were, the more you impressed the masses, and the more likely you were to be promoted within the organisation from the Anti-British League to the MCP, a communist party in the middle of a revolution. With such supporters, the communists could run elections on a shoestring – there was no shortage of workers or canvassers, and cloth for banners was donated by enthusiastic supporters. I suspect that printers, too, would either print their pamphlets for nothing or charge the cost to union accounts. There was also no shortage of girls amid all this puritanical zeal, for in the back rooms of Middle Road, supposedly revolutionary young women gave themselves up to illicit love, only too happy to have such star performers as Lim and Fong as their partners. The less attractive girls settled for the branch leaders of the various unions.
In contrast, when we had to find workers, it was a real problem. We recruited volunteers from the unions and from among friends, but they all wanted to go home in time for dinner, for some function or other, or for a private appointment. There was no total commitment, no dedication as on the other side – one of their devotees would do the work of three or four of our volunteers. I used to be quite depressed by the long-term implications of all this. I failed to realise then that they could not keep it up for long. Revolutionary zeal could only carry them thus far. In the end, they had to live and bring up families, and families required money, housing, health care, recreation and the other good things of life.
One odd thing about them though, was that when they abandoned communism, as some young Chinese middle school student leaders did, they often became extremely avaricious to make up for lost time. They seemed to feel that they had been robbed of the best years of their lives and had to make up for what they had missed. It was a preview of what I was to see later in China and Vietnam. When the revolution did not deliver utopia and the economy reverted to the free market, cadres, with the power to issue licences or with access to goods and services at official prices, were the first to be corrupt and exploit the masses.
The Singapore Story, pp. 254-255.
There is much foresight and wisdom concerning human nature packed into this passage. There is also an underlying question that I would put to Lee, namely, how does one maintain the discipline and resolve required to build up the amenities of an advanced society – “money, housing, health care, recreation and the other good things of life” – when the enjoyment of these very good things tends to undermine the discipline and work ethic required for their maintenance? A question of this philosophical order is not new; it has been expressed throughout history by all writers who have witnessed and lamented the corrupting influence that gentle civilization has on the rugged virtues of the barbarian. Alexander the Great found himself seduced by that very Persia that he had conquered. Horace, similarly, states that “captive Greece took captive her fierce conqueror, and introduced her arts into rude Latium”. (Epistles II, 1). Machiavelli bemoaned the loss of civic virtue in his Renaissance compatriots and longed for a return to the virtue of Rome.
Lee might respond that it is up to the statesman to lead the way in this respect. When discussing Singapore he seems to feel that the future of the country depends entirely on finding a solution to the aging and declining population, and that special leadership is required. It is, as he says, “a small country with no natural resources and in the middle of a region that has been volatile historically…the trajectory that we take will depend on the choices made by a younger generation of Singaporeans. Whatever those choices are, I am absolutely sure that if Singapore gets a dumb government, we are done for. This country will sink into nothingness.” (One Man’s View, pp. 211-212). The country is heavily dependent on the world economy with its trade to GDP ratio dwarfing that of its neighbours (Singapore – 416%; Malaysia – 167%; Indonesia – 47%). How does one effectively steer a country so dependent to survival and greatness? How does one do so especially with generational change and the change in perspective and values that accompanies it? In summing up Singapore’s success, Lee states that
[i]nternally, three qualities define the Singapore success story – making the country the safest place to live and work in, treating every citizen equally and ensuring continuing success for every generation of Singaporeans.
Without these three basic factors which we have established over the years, we would lose the advantage that we now enjoy. Investors, both local and foreign, must feel confident when they invest in Singapore. These three factors assure continued future returns on their investments. Without us being connected with the world this way, we risk irrelevance.
One Man’s View of the World, p. 9.
When Singapore was not yet independent Lee was concerned with how to build it as a nation: “I realised that a country needed more than a few dignified and able men at the top to get it moving. The people as a whole must have self-respect and the will to strive to make a nation of themselves. The task of the leaders must be to provide or create for them a strong framework within which they can learn, work hard, be productive and be rewarded accordingly. And this is not easy to achieve.” (Singapore Story, pp. 131-132). One of his proposals for maintaining Singapore’s strength is to maintain a single-party system since he believes that such a system will allow highly talented individuals to pool together at the top. However, it would seem that such a solution risks staking everything on “a few dignified and able men at the top”. This system also presupposes that there is a unity of views as to which direction the country should take.
A recent Economist article on Singapore discusses who might replace Lee Hsien Loong, who plans on stepping down ahead of his 70th birthday in 2022. The government has also placed further restrictions on freedom of speech. As Singaporeans become richer can be it expected that the only prizes they will seek out will remain economic prosperity and a secure place to invest? For an individual who was as anti-Communist as Lee Kuan Yew, his view of what drives a society is curiously Marxist in its assumption that the economy underlies absolutely everything. In an interview he cites Friedrich August von Hayek’s The Fatal Conceit with admiration for its arguments against the fallacies of socialism. What he fails to mention is that the bedrock of Hayek’s philosophy had always been that economic liberty was necessary to ensure political liberty, the liberty to speak openly without persecution, for example. Lee is correct to observe that “the US is a more attractive society than China can ever be.” (One Man’s View, p. 75). It is more attractive, in Lee’s view, because it is open to immigrants who are innovative and adventurous and willing to create new technologies and products. He omits to mention, however, that it is not just the open business culture of the United States that makes it appealing. The United States, and the West more generally, embodies ideals of freedom that make it inherently more attractive than many other societies in the world. It has an ideology that motivates its people, much as Communism could its own supporters. Not every ideology is equal in value, but ideas are just as crucial drivers of a nation as economic success. Lee Kuan Yew was not Plato’s philosopher king – he claims in one of his interviews that his policies and views were motivated purely by considerations of pragmatism, not philosophical treatises. What ideas could a Lee Kuan Yew of today give to the people of Singapore or to the people of any other country for that matter? Once we have reached our growth targets and have a thriving society of consumerism with a booming population (be it due to high birth rates or immigration) then what do we aim for?
To Lee Kuan Yew I would put some of these questions. And in his usual, direct, matter-of-fact way, I am sure this deservedly well-respected master statesman would have the answers.
