Dangerous dichotomy in academia

Dangerous dichotomy in academia

Looking at the present political situation in South Korea, I realise again what I wrote in my book, 'the person whom you dislike is evil', one of the deep rooted biases in human nature.  In other words, when people think a certain behaviour of a person as right or not, actually their thoughts are significantly affected by their emotional judgment.

 

In South Korean politics, historically the right is believed as linked to the people who were friendly to the Japanese empire during the colonisation period while the left is believed as linked to the independence activists during the time, so many people do not like the right. Regardless of its factual verification, emotionally the right is therefore very difficult to attract people's heart in South Korea. In addition, although South Korean people are good at merchandising, they distrust the mechanism of the market and always prefer governmental redistributive projects. The country has not had a chance to seriously contend within its society about the philosophical importance of economic liberalism, probably because of the reaction against the imperialistic rule by Japanese government and the authoritarian leadership by former soldier politicians, both of whom were hostile to socialism and partial to big companies. 

 

In such a situation, the right is naturally unpopular, but the left had also been unpopular among older people particularly until the last president election, mainly due to their suspicious link to North Korea. However, since the last presidential election, the left seems to have overcome the stigma (or emotional judgment) on themselves regarding their link to North Korea. That means South Koreans are no longer dissuaded from voting for the left by the national security issues related to North Korean threats. Rather, South Korea has now become one of the countries that are most neutral in the attitude towards North Korean nuclear weapons. 

 

Therefore, the present South Korean political geography is completely inclined towards the left. Besides, while the main stigma on the left has been weakened, the stigma on the right that is globally seen in many countries in the world has become significantly powerful. This stigma is based on the link between the right and the rich. Especially this global stigma has been strengthened recently in South Korea as its economic gap between rich and poor has been widened. This phenomenon is also seen in developed countries that have recently been struggling with low economic activity. 

 

However, in countries like the US, the UK and Japan, the right parties seem to be trying to overcome such increasing stigma on themselves by proving that their policies have brought higher economic growth and thus more effectively supported their extensive (and expensive) social welfare systems than left policies have. One of the most impressive scenes to me of such attempts by the right was the parliamentary announcement of George Osborne, former British Chancellor of the Exchequer, which I heard from the BBC radio one day last winter. His economic report vividly showed that the market-oriented economic policies successfully improved the economic state of the UK during the last several years of Conservative party leadership. Those achievements seemed to me to be a result of the combination of multi-factors, such as the practicality of British culture, which has enabled its nation extremely skillful in sensing economic profits (not to be outdone by its strong competitors including the Dutch and the Nordic), and its academic and social traditions of liberal economic philosophy.

 

I am skeptical about a possibility to see such an announcement of economic report in South Korean national assembly, where even the right party has had to promote the so called economic democracy as their major economic policy. It seems quite obvious that South Korean people do not like the market, given that a nation's politics is a reflection of the desires of the population. They seem ignorant that their dislike of the market leads to an inevitable governmental expansion, which indeed has been happening since the outset of this century. As a result, varied socialist policies have enjoyed a high popularity in South Korea. However, I do not deny that social welfare systems are important. Actually nobody in any society can object to the social welfare policies for the poor. Every social welfare policy is apparently righteous and humanistic. What I object is the simplistic dichotomy related to social welfare with the so called social justice (In a more fundamental level, I do not particularly like the word 'social justice', especially when it is used by politicians). Many people, especially in South Korea, seem to feel that supporting social welfare should automatically mean supporting social justice. Under such a circumstance, it is difficult to freely discuss methodological aspects of social welfare policies, because if you seem even a bit too concerned with the economic aspects of social welfare policies, you would highly likely be presumed almost as the enemy of social justice (and even of democracy, which is seemingly an almighty rhetoric in South Korea, but is being openly rejected in some countries like China, which ironically South Korean leftists seem eager to befriend.)

 

In fact, the issue of social welfare is not a matter of whether it is righteous or not, but a matter of whether a country can afford it or not. It seems that South Koreans are not seriously thinking about their economic identity and status. In my eyes, many South Koreans seem to regard their country already as affluent as the US or some European countries, most of whom have painfully managed to remain as a rich country after going through severe economic depression periods in the past. In any case, they managed to do that not least because they succeeded in securing social capital such as the rule of law, transparency and firm establishment of the market system. In those countries, social welfare systems have been able to be more firmly established by their populations who voted for the parties which held as high regard the importance of the economic function of the market. What the economic report of George Osborne that I alluded before indicated was exactly the same phenomenon. Compared with the period of the Labour party leadership, British social welfare level during the Conservative government was more satisfactory, because, as Osborne described, the government could afford such welfare policies, by the increase of the employment rate and more taxes collected due to not high tax rates but the market-driven economic growth. It was not because of the good job by Osborne. It was because of the innate economic mechanism of the market. Anyway, young British people, like young South Koreans and any nation's young students (and their professors), prefer Jeremy Corbyn to Osborne with the same reason that the left is popular in South Korea and that Birney Sanders was popular in the US. The stigma on the right that the right is linked to the rich functions as too powerful a rhetoric in any country on the planet. 

  

Singapore used to be one of the four Asian Tigers along with Tiwan, Hongkong, South Korea until the early 1990s, but now it has become a more affluent country than Japan. However, the important thing is not in the GDP per capita of Singapore that is almost twice of that of South Korea, but in its ability to provide much more extensive and powerful social welfare system and social investment than South Korean government can do. Its two universities, National University of Singapore and Nanyang Technological University, are now considered almost the same level as University of Chicago or Yale University in the US. I remember that while talking with some South Korean people I heard them shockingly ridicule Singapore of its backwardness of democracy. I feel cautious about such a historical pride that my nation holds about the so called democratic achievements through certain political events in its modern history. 

 

Although I do agree with the mainstream narrative that democracy has improved over the last half century, basically I think the achievements have been overrated due to what I would call 'blind nationalism'. Also I think there are lots of things that need further investigation regarding various factors such as its driving force and economic contexts. In historical research, it is a basic principle to avoid judging historical events from the present views. There are no evidence shown in the literature of political studies that prove the 'superiority' of professional politicians in their capability to lead a state to those who spent most of their careers as soldiers or entrepreneurs. Also I never feel it as proud that most politicians today in South Korea would hold typical professional politicians' jobs, such as the legal profession, professors and journalists, one of whose notorious commonalities is their strong self-righteousness (i.e., they look like thinking only themselves as the true guardians of 'social justice' and always keen on judging people into the categories of a good group and a bad group.)

 

It is not very comfortable to live in a society that is eager to judge its members. However, at least in academia, it seems to be quite a universal phenomenon that those who feel sympathy to right wing politicians and right wing policies are isolated as cold-hearted selfish persons. It is simply unfair to treat people who hold economic opinions that the market is more efficient than government, as a bad or immoral group. It cannot be said that Keynesian economics is good or moral economics and Hayekian economics is bad or immoral economics. They are just different and controversial opinions. Supporters of the latter most likely vote for the right in many countries including the US. 

 

I have been feeling uncomfortable even in the UK regarding conversation about the US presidential election. Whenever I said I could understand the Americans who supported Trump, I had to face cold eyes towards me by most research students regardless of their nationalities. My sympathy does not mean that I like persons like Trump. Nor am I interested in judging a person to be a racist or a misogynist. Some hypocritical people in press and academia in the UK seem to feel morally superior to American citizens by showing their contempt towards the popularity of Trump. However, in my view, such hypocrisy just reflects their ignorance of the reality about the desires of most working people, whom the leftists insist that they always try to help. Such ignorance was one of the reasons for the unexpected defeat that the Labour party led by Ed Miliband suffered from last May this year. 

 

What a majority of the working classes and small business runners really want is not the social welfare gift sets from government, but is higher wages or income that successful companies or profitable business can provide. In the long term view, wages are not decided by politicians' intentions, but are decided by demand-supply balance in the labour market, and profits come from the amount of investment in the economic market. Although I am not interested in pursuing such material values of life like higher wages or income, I do not feel comfortable to see the self-righteousness of left wing politicians who confuse what does good and what feels good. At a more fundamental level, the presidential election is not a personality contest but a policy competition particularly in countries like the US, where party politics systematically functions and each party takes its own responsibility for the results of the policies, unlike the South Korean parties who are always ready to evade such responsibility by expelling their own leader (president) at the end or simply changing their party name. 

 

© 2016 Min Bae