Yet think for a minute about these categories.Within the ostensibly homogeneous group ‘Catholic’, we have both the ultra-conservative Opus Dei movement, which has become well-known through Dan Brown’s bestselling novel, The Da Vinci Code, and left-wing liberation theology, epitomized in the famous saying by the Brazilian archbishop of Olinda and Recife, Dom Hélder Câmara: ‘When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.’ These two ‘Catholic’ sub-cultures produce people with very different attitudes towards wealth accumulation, income redistribution and social obligations.
Or, to take another example, there are ultra-conservative Muslim societies that seriously limit women’s public participation. Yet more than half the professional staff at the Malaysian central bank are women – a much higher proportion than at any central bank in the supposedly more ‘feminist’ Christian countries. And here is another example: some people believe that Japan succeeded economically because of its unique variety of Confucianism, which emphasizes loyalty rather than the personal edification stressed in the Chinese and Korean varieties.[22] Whether or not one agrees with this particular generalization (more on this later), it shows that there isn’t just one kind of Confucianism.
If categories like Confucian or Muslim are too broad, how about taking countries as cultural units? Unfortunately, this does not solve the problem. As the culturalists themselves would be prepared to acknowledge, a country often contains different cultural groups, especially in large and culturally diverse ones, like India and China. But even in a country like Korea, one of the most culturally homogeneous societies in the world, there are significant cultural differences between regions. In particular, people from the south-east (Kyungsang) think of those from the south-west (Cholla) as clever but totally untrustworthy double-dealers. South-westerners return the compliment by regarding the south-easterners as a crude and aggressive, albeit determined and well-organized, bunch of people. It wouldn’t be too far-fetched to say that the stereotypes of these two Korean regions are similar to the stereotypes the French and the Germans have of each other. The cultural animosity between the two regions of Korea is so intense that some families won’t even allow their children to marry into families from the other region. So is there a single ‘Korean’ culture or not? And, if things are as complicated as that for Korea, do we even need to talk about other countries?
I could go on, but I think I have made the point that broad categories, like ‘Catholic’ or ‘Chinese’, are simply too crude to be analytically meaningful, and that even a country is too big a cultural unit to generalize about. The culturalists may well retort that all we have to do is work with finer categories like Mormon or Japanese Confucian, rather than broader ones like Christian or Confucian. If only matters were that simple. There are more fundamental problems with cultur-alist theories, to which I turn now.
Ever since the East Asian economic ‘miracle’, it has become very popular to argue that it was Confucian culture that was responsible, at least partly, for the region’s economic successes. Confucian culture, it was pointed out, emphasizes hard work, education, frugality, co-operation and obedience to authority. It seemed obvious that a culture that encourages the accumulation of human capital (with its emphasis on education) and physical capital (with its emphasis on thrift), while encouraging co-operation and discipline, must be good for economic development.
But, before the East Asian economic ‘miracle’, people used to blame Confucianism for the region’s underdevelopment.And they were right. For Confucianism does have a lot of aspects that are inimical to economic development. Let me mention the most important ones.
Confucianism discourages people from taking up professions like business and engineering that are necessary for economic development. At the pinnacle of the traditional Confucian social system were scholar-bureaucrats. They formed the ruling class, together with the professional soldiers, who were second-class rulers. This ruling class presides over a hierarchy of commoners made up of peasants, artisans and merchants, in that order (below them were slaves). But there was a fundamental divide between the peasantry and the other subordinate classes. At least in theory, individual peasants could gain entry into the ruling class if they passed the competitive civil service examination (and they occasionally did). Artisans and merchants, however, were not even allowed to sit for the examination.
To make matters worse, the civil service examination only tested people for their scholastic knowledge of the Confucian classics, which made the ruling class scornful of practical knowledge. In the 18th century, Korean Confucian politicians slaughtered rival factions in a row over how long the king should wear mourning following his mother’s death (one year or three years?). Scholar-bureaucrats were supposed to live in ‘clean poverty’ (although the practice was often different) and thus they actively looked down upon money-making. In the modern setting, Confucian culture encourages talented people to study law or economics in order to become bureaucrats, rather than engineers (artisans) or businessmen (merchants) – occupations that contribute much more directly to economic development.
Confucianism also discourages creativity and entrepreneurship. It has a rigid social hierarchy and, as I have noted, prevents certain segments of society (artisans, merchants) from moving upwards. This rigid hierarchy is sustained by an emphasis on loyalty to superiors and deference to authority, which breeds conformism and stifles creativity. The cultural stereotype of East Asians being good at mechanical things that do not need much creativity has a basis in this aspect of Confucianism.
Confucianism, it can also be argued, hampers the rule of law.Many people, particularly neo-liberals, believe that the rule of law is crucial for economic development, because it is the ultimate guarantor against arbitrary expropriation of property by rulers.Without the rule of law, it is said, there can be no security of property rights, which, in turn, will make people reluctant to invest and create wealth. Confucianism may not encourage arbitrary rule, but it is true that it does not like the rule of law, which it regards as ineffectual, as seen in the following famous passage from Confucius: ‘If the people be led by laws, and uniformity sought to be given them by punishments, they will try to avoid the punishment, but have no sense of shame. If they be led by virtue, and uniformity sought to be given them by the rules of propriety, they will have the sense of shame, and moreover will become good.’ I agree.With strict legal sanctions, people will abide by the law out of fear of punishment, but too much emphasis on law can make them feel that they are not trusted as moral actors.Without that trust, people will not go that extra mile that makes their behaviour moral and not just law-abiding. Having said all this, however, it cannot be denied that Confucian denigration of the rule of law makes the system vulnerable to arbitrary rule – for what do you do when your ruler is not virtuous?
22
M. Morishima (1982),