Javanese Mystical and Marxist Dialectics - Paul Stange

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undertook to carry out were too limited, or the pace too slow, they mightforfeit their popular backing; and those more disposed to employ moreauthoritarian techniques might displace them at the helm of government. 45Thus the challenge to the PKI, as to the rest of the elite, was to create organizationslinking the structural levels of Indonesian society and in the process transforming thevery nature of the peasantry. For the essence of that social grouping is pre-modern -peasants by definition being geared mainly toward subsistence and only marginallyto meet the demands of some “Great Tradition”. 46 At the same time, the conditionsto which peasant social structures are appropriate have passed. Overpopulation,starvation, inaction, and poverty have not been mere creatures of the imaginationand continuous deterioration has borne ample witness to the contention thattraditional responses to ageless social needs are no longer adequate. For thepeasantry at least, the revolution clearly remained in the future.Hobsbawm has argued convincingly that peasant response to social deterioration ischaracteristically conservative in that it is aimed not so much at transforming socialstructure as at rectifying excesses within a system that is basically accepted. The taskfor modern movements is the translation of reactionary and millennial unrest intoideological terms which help peasants understand that their condition is aconsequence of social structures they have the power to change. If the Chineserevolution and the continuing Vietnamese struggle prove nothing else, they clearlydemonstrate that agrarian unrest can he politicized.The Javanese peasantry are concentrated in East and Central Java and numberedaround forty million by I961. For virtually all of them the central ritual has been theselametan, a feast held with neighbors to mark major events and rites of passage. Forthe most part, the beliefs tied to rituals are rooted in the oldest layer of Javanesespirit worship rather than in the later accretions of Hindu and Islamic belief. Still,perhaps a third of the population, mainly merchants and petty traders, belong to thesantri segment of the population which takes its Muslim identification seriously. Byindependence practically all villages were at least loosely tied into the expandingmoney economy through trading connections centering on regularly interspersedtowns. Urban culture flowing through those towns and down to the smaller villageshas been important for centuries. Within village society there has been only minimalsocial stratification and a strong feeling of egalitarianism - balanced by extremeforms of deference to those with authority from outside the village. The basic social
structure has always been simple and vague with more importance in socialinteractions vested in geographical proximity than in kinship. 48All of this has been changing. Villages have been strained by extreme shortages ofland resulting from the growing population. In most areas the shortage has led to aparceling of land into smaller and smaller lots, but the portion of landless had grownto about 50% by 1964. 49 Hildred Geertz has suggested thatThe Javanese peasants are what might be called “post traditional”, for thecombined impact of Islam and the colonial commercial development broke thetight integration of its traditional social structure but did not produce amodern institutional system ... 50In the recent period a pattern of aliran politics has emerged and there has been a shiftfrom geographical proximity to ideological belief as a basis of social relations - evencore rituals of communal solidarity such as the selametan have been politicized untilthey create more tension than they dissolve. 51 As Geertz describes itAn aliran is more than a more political party, certainly more than a mereideology it is a comprehensive pattern of social integration. The intensity withwhich the Javanese peasantry has fastened on to political and quasi-politicalorganizations in the last decade ... is primarily an index of the degree to whichnew social structures are needed in the reconstruction of vigorous village life.52By far the most critical social contrast related to this growth of new forms is thedichotomy between abangan and santri, between those still rooted in predominatelyJavanese and those moving into more strictly Islamic lifestyles. 53The Islamic “stream” of social and political life was tied in with trade and the moneyeconomy, that is capitalism. Islamic modernism centered in urban and tradingsociety and involved a Weberian work ethic highly conducive to commercial success.54 From the beginning Islam had been tied to the cosmopolitan trade world whichhad brought it to the islands - it was a progressive and dynamic influence and itliberated islanders from parochial ethnic cosmologies and introduced them to aworld-wide community of Islam. 55 So on Java Islam penetrated through the tradingcities of the north coast and on into the interior. Early conversion had been nominal,
Page 1 and 2: Javanese Mystical and Marxist Diale
Page 3 and 4: UNITY IN DIVERSITYPossessed of tran
Page 5 and 6: Although the pogroms of 1966 were u
Page 7 and 8: through a process of musjawarah-muf
Page 9 and 10: The contrast is rooted profoundly i
Page 11: entrepreneurship remained confined
Page 16 and 17: ut even in the earliest phases Isla
Page 18: THE NAIL OF GODFrom this sketch of
Page 21 and 22: egarded as the path to spiritual st
Page 23 and 24: The real and the really real are cl
Page 25 and 26: evolutionary fervor rather than pro
Page 27 and 28: Permai, an active mystical-politica
Page 29 and 30: doctrines themselves did not change
Page 31 and 32: is a release for the whole body and
Page 33 and 34: THE MASS LINEIdeas have no meaning
Page 35 and 36: communism, began to turn toward the
Page 37 and 38: Without the image of the PKI as pat
Page 39 and 40: The Party presented itself as a syn
Page 41 and 42: Sukarno's role in protecting the Pa
Page 43 and 44: argued that the nationalist revolut
Page 45 and 46: By this time the PKI had already ca
Page 47 and 48: the application of principles, to b
Page 49 and 50: some tendency for class and religio
Page 51 and 52: only a very few really understood t
Page 53 and 54: The main effect of Indonesia's Basi
Page 55 and 56: Trompet Masjarakat, the main Suraba
Page 57 and 58: eported the incident as the Kanigor
Page 59 and 60: Out of this third “white terror
Page 61 and 62: The test for PKI strategy came with
Page 63 and 64: In outlining the fundamental cleava
Page 65 and 66:
the strategy of the PKI in the peri
Page 67 and 68:
enough that the public accepted equ
Page 69 and 70:
progress. That conclusion might app
Page 71 and 72:
contradictory things are actually s
Page 73 and 74:
Measured by rational utility and re
Page 75 and 76:
forms without a sense of the underl
Page 77 and 78:
of academic work by fleshing out un
Page 79 and 80:
In the years before the coup the PK
Page 81 and 82:
18. Hans Schmitt, "Post Colonial Po
Page 83 and 84:
36. Legge, Indonesia, p 143. The di
Page 85 and 86:
48. Hildred Geertz, "Indonesian Cul
Page 87 and 88:
NOTES: THE NAIL OF GOD1. Clifford G
Page 89 and 90:
18. Benedict Anderson, "The Languag
Page 91 and 92:
the masses, and the development of
Page 93 and 94:
4. Ibid. p 298.5. George Lichtheim,
Page 95 and 96:
this point, Aidit 's defense was th
Page 97 and 98:
39. Aidit, Problems, "Indonesian So
Page 99 and 100:
52. Alimin, "Orang Tani dan Proleta
Page 101 and 102:
75. Aidit, "Main Conclusions" (.TPR
Page 103 and 104:
100. Selosoemardjan, Social Changes
Page 105 and 106:
129. Obor Revolusi February 15, 196
Page 107 and 108:
conservative in that they only reac
Page 109 and 110:
32. Hegel, Phenomenology, p 11633.
Page 111 and 112:
--. "The Key to Food and Clothing:
Page 113 and 114:
--. "Peasant Movements in Colonial
Page 115 and 116:
--. The Religion of Java. New York,
Page 117 and 118:
Kartodirdjo, Sartono. The Peasant's
Page 119 and 120:
Levi-Strauss, Claude. Structural An
Page 121 and 122:
Pauker, Guy. "Current Communist Tac
Page 123 and 124:
Smail, John RW. "On the Possibility
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Javanese Mystical and Marxist Dialectics - Paul Stange

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