Pages

Saturday, August 12, 2023

Despatch from Singapore (1973)

From issue number 4 (1973) of The Western Socialist

Edit. Comm. note:
The new little nation of Singapore has been (and will continue to be) more and more in the international news. A former member of our Companion Party in Great Britain has been living in Singapore for the last four years.  The Western Socialist takes pleasure in presenting to its readers the following despatch which has much of interest for those who would [like to] know what goes on in that sparkling city-state (as it is often designated) of 2.5 millions.
"In Singapore, we are trying to modernise and industrialise ourselves by stimulating men's natural desire for material gratification . . ."
This statement by a government minister expresses with typical bluntness. the no-nonsense pragmatism of which the ruling People’s Action Party are so proud. Singapore, small by any standards, is experiencing capitalist development at a hectic pace and the socialist, with his historical perspective, can find a very close duplication of British capitalist development.

For the greater part of its 150-year history, Singapore has been a colonial outpost. With few natural resources its revenue has been derived from trading, carried out with a largely immigrant work force, mostly Chinese and Indian. Since 1965 the stress has been on manufacturing Industries.

Poorly paid work force 
As in all capitalist states the chief concern of the government Is to expand industrially. With a large, poorly paid work force the pickings are profitable and capital from a host of countries is avidly solicited by Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew and is just as avidly forthcoming. mostly through multinational companies. At home, the PAP theoretician, Rajaratnam, justifies the exploitation — “Let them come to exploit us now with superprofit on their part" — with an aplomb that indicates the degree of political apathy of a working class as yet little aware of its powers either as a value-producing or a revolutionary force.

The appallingly low wages are a result both of the lack of trade union action and the surplus labour force. The government’s self righteous declaration of intention to absorb this surplus with labour-intensive industries has suffered a reversal, owing partly to the importation of ready made machine processes and the need for fewer skilled as against many unskilled workers. As in mid-19th Century Britain, capital-intensive industry is developing, with the stress on greater worker productivity. Henceforth it is to be expected that trade union struggle will centre increasingly around the problem of machine made redundancies.

One-third of the population is housed on gigantic estates. At Jurong, one of the largest industrial complexes in Southeast Asia outside Japan has been constructed, and also a number of council estates of high-rise flats, including one incredible jungle housing 130,000 persons. These flats, one unit of which is completed every 14 minutes, are inferior to those in Britain, but the social amenities are vastly better.

New image needed
One of the most pressing problems faced by the PAP government is the creation of a national ideology. This must grow, not as in Britain, from centuries of history strengthened by tradition and education, but from the dire, immediate need for a viable work-force owing allegiance to none but the new republic of 1965. Chinese, Indians. Malays — all are being enjoined to dissociate themselves from their cultural background and develop loyalty to the state only. The once derided figure of the colonialist Raffles now has an honoured place in the mythology as the founder of Singapore, a combination of St. George and King Arthur! The government has stated that he has been rehabilitated, as, being a European, no racial jealousies are likely to arise among the work-force. It has justified its multi-racial policy in hard-headed economic terms. Preference and prejudice on a racial basis is seen as being likely to misuse the full range of workers’ talents. The role of the mass media in this process is blatant and naive in the extreme and is the cause for some embarassment to the more sophisticated Singaporeans concerned for their national image.

Weak dissent
The political situation is ambiguous. Opposition parties can legally start up, although members of the Barisan Socialist and others with Communist Party sympathies are arrested and held without trial. It is declared PAP policy to imprison them until they recant, relent and make abject confession, whereupon they are rehabilitated in the ex-political detainees Association’s shoe factory set up by the government in order to more effectively supervise them.

Most people take the ’practical’ approach. “As an efficient business unit it works so leave the government alone” — an attitude that is encouraged by the PAP. Nevertheless, political discontent exists, but most of this simply consists of claims to be able to run Singapore capitalism more smoothly than the government.

These attempts to forge, in hothouse fashion, a nation with a loyal working class out of disparate cultural elements have resulted in problems in many aspects of social life.

On the industrial field strikes have been few — but the penalties are great. A go-slow by a group of port workers in protest against provisions of the Employment Act limiting overtime working brought vicious reaction. Dismissal, deprivation of citizenship and deportation were threatened by Lew Kuan Yew. This was in sharp contrast to his recent plea to employers to give a little of the extra profits made by the increased exploitation of the workers back to them. The legislation on overtime was itself a recognition of the unemployment problem, which in some fields is very high and likely to increase with the British rundown.

Virtues & suicides 
Calls for the practice of the puritan virtues of self-denial, thrift and hard work for the workers contrast with the tawdry opulence of the many new skyscraper tourist hotels and penetrate every walk of life. Schoolchildren, their paramilitary training and flag ceremonies over for the day. face a heavy homework schedule. The increase in student neuroses and drug addiction is attributed by a senior psychiatrist to the stress of modern living. Lee warns continually against "permissiveness” and drugs and warns "Bring in alien fads at your peril.” Over half of Singapore’s population is under 20, and the student population is high. Education represents a large investment in the human raw material needed for the new industrial society and the government is concerned about the economic wastage due to drug addiction. Caught between the pressures of a highly competitive educational system and the fear of losing one's acceptability (which permits of higher education) through political or cultural nonconformity, student suicides have increased. Among the young, the expression “taking a flyer” has found a sombre significance in the city’s high rise jungles; in recent months cases have occurred of mothers jumping with children in their arms. With suicide running as seventh highest cause of death throughout the age groups, Rajaratnam can say of the Singaporean with pride:
"His diseases today are those of a civilized and progressive society . . . from heart disease and a variety of neuroses. He can leave this planet in style and his choice of exits is wide.”
Perhaps. But not as wide as the gulf separating the workers' conditions from those of the Singapore capitalists and their office-boys in government.

Poverty & prostitution
The uprooting of communities for rehousing has led to much social unrest and in many cases a worsening of poverty. Inability to meet newly increased rents has resulted in many tenants quitting their flats. Particularly for the ex-village Malays this poverty has been compounded by their inability to supplement their income and diet from poultry and backyard produce. With the GNP growth of around 15%, malnutrition in Singapore is still very high. About 20% of child hospital attendees are suffering from this aspect of poverty. Increased organized prostitution in the industrial estates has drawn from one police official a condemnation of the factory girls for lowering the image of Singapore’s womanhood. Some of these same girls earn a total daily wage that would just about buy a small beer in one of the new hotels.

Government employees, even more than those of private capitalists, suffer insulting restrictions on their freedom. The maximum length of hair permitted for civil servants is gazetted (with diagrams!) and their instructions manual forbids them to speak disparagingly of the government. They were even forbidden to read on government premises the English-language newspaper, “The Herald,” before it was banned.

For all this, Singapore is an interesting and exciting city. Many traditions, languages, racial types and religions form a colourful cross-cultural complex in what must be one of the cleanest of cities, with the friendliest of people, who show, when they are not worked upon by external and internal divisive interests, how tolerantly human beings with different cultures can live together.

To watch the Singapore working class being created and then subjected to a continuous barrage of propaganda by a government intent on developing a world of capitalist values is a frightful experience for those who know something about such values. But the rapid industrialization within a newly created national ideology has obliged the government to justify its actions in a blend of plausible political theory, practical expediency and pure apologetics. In some areas such as the University, where a certain political sophistication is claimed, government policy, particularly its undemocratic actions, is severely criticised.

Prospects for Socialists
Whether diverse political opinions lie below the surface of this society, we have no way of knowing yet, but in his four years in Singapore, this writer has been struck forcibly by one thing. Unlike Britain, the workers of Singapore are not plagued by a 150-year history of reformist agitation. Apart from those who view things natlonalistlcally. and want to do the government’s job of running capitalism for them, and those who, often more for cultural reasons than political. lean towards China, discussions on socialism are fairly straightforward and generally sympathetically received. Rarely does one hear a counter-argument about “transitional demands” or reforms leading to socialism. The effects of capitalism as it impacts upon a newly formed society, and the de-humanising effects upon the working class, are perfectly plain to the workers in Singapore, unsure though they may be at present about its precise cause or solution. Short shrift would be given to those self-elected leaders of the revolution so often found in Britain, who have such a low opinion of the workers that they urge them to embrace capitalist institutions in order to demonstrate that they won’t work.

Lack of what passes for political sophistication may well be a factor In keeping the issue clear, and might well lead to readier acceptance of socialism as the only alternative to what they are forced to suffer, in spite of the retarding effects of still strong religions. Already a group of workers has expressed interest and enthusiasm for the Party’s case. Literature is being circulated under the most trying circumstances, and they have requested permission to print extracts from our publications. It may be too soon to call them socialists; perhaps they never will be. But the Party may, even so, find a lesson to be learned here.
Bill Robertson

No comments:

Post a Comment