Javanese Mystical and Marxist Dialectics - Paul Stange

As the bulk of the Javanese peasants moved toward agricultural involution,shared poverty, social elasticity, and cultural vagueness, a small minority ofthe Outer Island peasants moved toward agricultural specialization, frankindividualism, social conflict, and cultural rationalization ... at least it did notforedoom the future. 32By mid-century and with independence the involutional capacities of the Javaneseeconomy were straining to an extreme: Java's tenth of Indonesia's land area wassupporting two thirds of her population of almost one hundred million.Independence, rather than heralding solution to crisis, merely marked more rapiddeterioration. The main problem was that political sovereignty did not implyeconomic independence. This central contradiction emerged from the Round Tableagreements since that transfer of power had involved a guarantee of alien propertyrights, a guarantee which in Schmitt's words ensured that the “Indonesian politicalleadership was virtually restricted to performing administrative and policefunctions.” 23 With the economy remaining essentially alien, the political incentivesto development were undercut. As Schmitt arguesTo champion accumulation without structural change meant to foster anexpansion of the power of aliens, a consequence diametrically opposed to thedynamic of the independence movement. 24At the same time, there was an internal conflict of interest between inland tradersand agriculturalists who lost out through inflationary governmental policy andimporters and bureaucrats who could gain through the black market. Even beyondthis, it was both difficult and politically dangerous to tax importers due to theirimportance to the “foreign managerial groups that controlled the bulk of theeconomy.” 25 Under these circumstances of early independence, in which the Dutchretained about two billion dollars worth of investments in Indonesia, the most thenew government could do was encourage the growth of small-scale indigenousmanufacturing. Yet, that manufacturing was strictly marginal to the central economicfacts of Western control in the mining and estate sectors responsible for externaltrade. 26 The possible industrialization of Java was cross-cut by continued Westernextraction of the abundant raw materials from the outer Islands. 27 With trade,banking, distribution, and transportation still in foreign hands, indigenous