Here's a very interesting albeit light-hearted look at us.
"Think about it. Life is all about living space. When one in four
is a foreigner, this means that when you go to work, every fourth
person in your bus or MRT train is a foreigner, crowding you out.
When you eat lunch, every fourth person who vies with you for a
place at the food centre is a foreigner. To put it another way,
every fourth bus along the roads is completely filled with
foreigners. Every one and a half cars in every train is completely
filled with foreigners. Every fourth car in the traffic jam is a
foreigner's car. Similarly for housing and recreation spots. Life
is about living space and on this tiny island, there isn't enough
to begin with. All because the PAP believes in high GDP growth
(probably to justify their million-dollar salaries) when the
question that can rightly be asked is, "High GDP growth for whose
benefit?" And "At what economic, social and political costs?"
the complete story -
After I died in 1883, almost half of the world came under
governments that called themselves after me -- marxist -- although
most of them misinterpreted my teachings. But that is only to be
expected. That is the nature of power. Today, however, marxism has
lost to capitalism and even in Russia and China, it is being rolled
back. My name has even become a dirty word because in 1987, Lee
Kuan Yew arrested and imprisoned under the Internal Security Act,
22 religious and social activists as "marxists" even though
everyone knew they were not. Partly because of that incident, I
decided to come to Singapore and see for myself how my philosophic
and political theories were faring.
As I began my studies and observations, I came to the startling
realisation that Singapore under Lee Kuan Yew and the PAP is far
more capitalistic than even the United States. Nowhere do I find
such unbridled profit-making given such encouragement and
incentives by the State than in Singapore. Nowhere have workers,
whom I had devoted my earthly life studying and defending, so few
rights as in Singapore.
Why do I, Karl Marx, say that?
Think about it. Which government in the world welcomes investors
(to make profits) with such a generous welcome carpet of
incentives, from decades-long tax holidays to co-investments using
State money, to cutting out all bureaucratic red tape that may have
been necessary to ensure proper compliance with safety,
environmental and workers' health matters, to providing land (that
may be better reserved for citizen use), industrial estates and
ready-made factories, to water and other utilities, etc, etc,
etc?
And what of workers' rights? I find that working hours are long,
overtime work usually cannot be turned down, pay low, Workmen's
Compensation inadequate when workers are injured, hospitalisation
and health care costs usually borne by the workers themselves
rather than by their employers, no provision for gratuity or
pension upon retiring, low retrenchment benefits, etc, etc, etc. In
short, other than the job itself, employers provide little else.
This is hardly better than the conditions I studied in the 1850s.
Conditions for the working class here are little better than in
Industrial Britain and Europe.
In other countries, there are several large mitigating factors that
ameliorate the lot of the workers. For example, workers, who form
the majority of the voters, can vote out of power, any government
that is too pro-business and anti-worker. Not so in Singapore where
Lee Kuan Yew has ensured that nobody dares to go into opposition
politics, let alone develop a party strong enough to form an
alternative government. Thus, the workers lose one major plank of
their power.
Then also, in other countries, workers have unions to help them
organise themselves against their employers, who enjoy all the
power and advantages (as I have shown in my book Das Kapital). In
Singapore, workers have only the National Trades Union Congress
which is a PAP organisation and therefore does not act for the
workers' benefit. Instead, this NTUC even calls for workers' wages
to be organised in such a way that it can easily be cut whenever a
company fails to make profits, such as in a downturn or recession,
all under the guise of saving jobs. This latest development, called
the Monthly Variable Component, can only have been dreamt up by the
employers themselves.
In other countries also, workers do enjoy some Social Security. If
they become unemployed, they can usually go on the dole. If they
become homeless, there are usually civic and charitable
organisations to help. For many of the ills that may befall a
worker and his family, there exists help. Not so in Singapore.
Under Lee Kuan Yew, this harsh "Nothing Is For Free" policy means
that the rich enjoy the best of the land while the workers, who
have only their labour to sell, are put at a tremendous
disadvantage without the usual ameliorating factors found in other
countries.
It is to fuel this 'right' to make profits by the rich (usually
foreign) investors, that Lee Kuan Yew has adopted an open door
policy to foreign workers. Today, one in four people on this tiny
island of 225 square miles, is a foreigner. I find this amazing and
in my travels all over the world since my demise, I do not find
another country so open to the inflow of foreigners, all for the
benefit of the investors here.
Think about it. Life is all about living space. When one in four is
a foreigner, this means that when you go to work, every fourth
person in your bus or MRT train is a foreigner, crowding you out.
When you eat lunch, every fourth person who vies with you for a
place at the food centre is a foreigner. To put it another way,
every fourth bus along the roads is completely filled with
foreigners. Every one and a half cars in every train is completely
filled with foreigners. Every fourth car in the traffic jam is a
foreigner's car. Similarly for housing and recreation spots. Life
is about living space and on this tiny island, there isn't enough
to begin with. All because the PAP believes in high GDP growth
(probably to justify their million-dollar salaries) when the
question that can rightly be asked is, "High GDP growth for whose
benefit?" And "At what economic, social and political costs?"
I pity the workers in Singapore. They have a government and union
totally pro-business and anti-worker. Even 36% of their salary
every month is taken away for the government to be locked up in
State coffers. Whether they get that back in one lump sum at 55 is
unsure -- the PAP, using a very senior minister, Howe Yoon Chong,
did propose locking away that sum forever until death and giving
only a small living allowance. Variations of that policy already
exist in the CPF of today. I pity the workers. Nowhere in the world
have I seen such deplorable treatment in a country that prides
itself as modern and progressive. Apparently, Lee Kuan Yew never
studied my works or if he did, never found sympathy for them or his
workers.
So I will end with my call which I made more than a century ago:
"Workers (of Singapore) unite!" Remember that you have rights and
can change the system. Be brave when you go to the polls in the
coming General Election. You have only your yokes to overthrow and
the whole country to gain!
Karl Marx
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