🚀 go-pugleaf

: 	If this is what Fukuyama really said, then it is no wonder Solow
: took him to task.  Confucian values are *not* why Chinese family firms
: remain in the family. Hill Gates has traced the current practices back
: to the Sung, when merchants on the South China coast began stashing their
: wealth in family enterprises because the Confucian state was simply demanding
: too much in tribute.  In other words, Chinese family business structure is
: a negative, not positive, response to Confucianism. 
: 	Confucianism is inherently and profoundly anti-business to its core.  
: For centuries commentators complained that the state could make big buiness
: off of foreign trade but the Confucians fought to kill the Navy and stifle
: the merchants.  In Taiwan they came over and wanted to set up a Leninist
: state with all business in the hands of the bureaucrats, the period of
: economic and political tutelage. Values so often attributed to Confucianism 
: are more often simply standard peasant values common the world over.
: I encountered the same save-your-money, work-hard,value-education complex
: among African peasants.  Confucian values are about bureacracy and heirarchy,
: about the pre-eminance of the state over the individual, about the place
: of everyone in society.  The reason East Asian states cite Confucianism is
: not because they think it is good for society, but because it reinforces
: hierarchical attitudes in society which allow undemocratic governments to
: remain in power.  They well understand how vulnerable Western peoples are
: to claims that their culture is "different."  


Just a cultural footnote here.  What is most often called "confucianism" 
today is really State Confucianism.  If you look at the Confucian classics,
or the scholarly commentaries through the ages a very different picture 
emerged.  Confucian values belittle the importance of the merchant, true,
but that was a rather primitive agrarian value based on some mistaken notions
about productivity, and very different from the real reason why historically
Chinese dynasties had discouraged foreign trade.  The real reason was more
political than cultural - the state could not control foreign trade 
effectively and it was not willing to let private citizens gain too much 
power.

I agree much of the so-called Confucian values are no more than mere tradi-
tional values the world over.  Yes Confucianism is about social hierarchy,
yes it's more about responsibilities than about rights.  But it's not at all
about the "pre-eminence of the state over the individual", and its emphasis
on the bureaucracy is not some proto-socialist big-government mechanism but
rather as a mechanism to check the excesses of the emperor.  Confucianism
was adopted as the official state philosophy in the Han Dynasty and in 
the process a heavy dose of Legalism - which does stress the absolute power
of the state over the individual - was mixed in.  Throughout history orthodox
Confucianism - which stresses private inter-personal relationships, and the
perfection of the individual personality - flourishes in the private 
academies which were periodically shut down by the state.  All this 
probably doesn't make much of a difference with regards to the Confucian
heritage claimed by the East Asian states today, but I would just like to
point out that Confucianism should not be viewed as a monolithic entity 
devoid of internal tensions.  And I suppose that the bottom line is that cul-
tural factors are problematic because culture can be so easily twisted to
suit whatever practical contingencies.

David