> The point is that from a distance, this place looks either great or
> terrible. And so some would hold it up as an example which,
> unfortunately, has rubbed off on Mahathir with some NGO circles,
> while others see only racism and persecution, etc.
This thread was never an attack on Malaysia in general. It began as a discussion of Mahathir and discrimination, something which has been instrumental to his politics over the last 30 years. In fact I see the development of Malaysia over the last 30 years as remarkable, relative not only to the rest of SE Asia, but also to the developing world in general. Mahathir deserves much of the credit for this.
Perhaps institutional discrimination against ethnic minority capitalist classes did make this possible --- after all, the history of the modern era is the history of sub-classes/layers of capital (often organised along ethnic lines) overthrowing each another. Nevertheless, if I were a Chinese Malaysian capitalist, I would be concerned about what might happen in the event of a serious economic downturn (and they do come more serious than 1998).
> Incidentally, that incoming prime minister flirted with the fabians
> as a young student in England, and recruited as his advisers others
> who were of the left in their youth
> one of those who had a significant input into the
> NEP was one, James Puthucheary, who wrote a book on Ownership and
> Control in the Malayan Economy in the early 1950s while under
> detention by the British, and was helped in this by Goh Keng Swee,
> the person who went on to become the unsung architect of Singapore's
> economic growth,
Yes, the Fabian influence on Malaysian and Singaporean policy is a neglected aspect of SE Asian history, at least outside the region:
"Lee Kuan Yew and the middle class, English-educated PAP members, by contrast, needed the left and its mass links, but had a very different world-view. One in which they would inherit the Raj, with all its security and other trappings, so that they could use these to push through the sort of Fabian (Socialist), logical planning needed to lead Singapore to a brave new world ... For this middle class group - as for most wealthy middle class anywhere - strikes and methods outside the debating chamber smacked of danger and chaos, of communist-orchestrated chaos. For them, the advantage of these forces from below was that they could be harnessed as a threat, to persuade Britain to make timely concessions to themselves, as self-proclaimed moderates. They could also be a route to working-class Chinese votes." http://www.arts.nie.edu.sg/his/Singapore%20cc%2012%20(postwar%20pap).doc
> They were aware there was no pain-free road, nor straightforwardly
> easy solutions. And Puthucheary in particular recognised in that
> early work the need to address the ethnic issue head on,
I would still ask if there is ever an absolute "need" to pander to bigotry amongst an ethnic majority. Even if it _was_ the only practical route to development, but let's at least call a spade a spade.
> and not try
> to subsume it under some class analysis;
Instead the reverse happened --- the subsuming of class under race. In which respect, I suppose, Malaysia is no different to any other multicultural capitalist society.
> although he also warned then
> that the solution was not to hot-house the creation of Malay
> capitalists.
The "solution" depends on how the problem is conceived in precise class terms; for the elite within ethnic Malay society, this was a "solution".
Regards,
Grant.