26 Jan 2024 7:29 am
Cannonpointer: "...and if you might critique the hybrid socialist/capitalist system in Singapore?"
Since I reject the notion that Singapore constitutes a hybrid socialist/capitalist system, just as I reject the idea that any nation-state embodies such a hybrid system, I cannot critique it save to say it doesn't exist. A socialist system is one in which the means of industrial/wealth production is socially owned in its totality and democratically administered by the workers who run the various industries. Cannonpointer correctly notes in a separate post, "The state [of Singapore] owns about a third of the means of production." Indeed. But it wouldn't aggregate a socialist society even if the Singaporean state owned 100% of Singapore's means of production, for state-owned industries are nationalized industries, not socialist industries.
Again, the fundamental definition of a socialist society is one in which the means of industrial production are socially owned (by society at large) and democratically managed by those who work in those industries. Singapore and China, for that matter, cannot currently claim the socialist banner. However, in this respect, the difference between Singapore and China is that the CPC uses capitalism as a pre-development formation toward re-establishing socialism, while Singapore's government is doing no such thing. The Republic of Singapore isn't a socialist state and doesn't refer to the goal of building socialism in its constitution.
Unlike socialist states, most of which are Marxist-Leninist, its constitution doesn't characterize the state's goal as "building socialism" or its character as "socialist."The constitution officially recognizes government "net investment income" from dividends and interest on state-owned (read: nationalized) assets and companies, enumerating a more vital role for government involvement in the ownership of commercial enterprises than other (non-socialist) countries. But there's no provision stating that Singapore aims to lay the groundwork for a transition to socialism or the socialization of the economy, even if the de facto single governing party (the People's Action Party) has socialist roots.
Therefore, the most accurate critique of the Singaporean economy would be a partly nationalized market economy or liberalized state capitalism rather than socialism. That doesn't make Singapore a socialist state in the sense of a Marxist-Leninist state. Concerning socialism as a post-capitalist planned economy driven by dynamics other than capital accumulation, Singapore, like nearly every other economy in the world, isn't socialist.