Javanese Mystical and Marxist Dialectics - Paul Stange

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support, but also to cultivate alliance with President Sukarno and the NationalistParty (PNI) he had founded.At the same time, the parliamentary structure of this early period after independencehad been shaky from its inception and declined in the face of internal conflicts whichemerged to replace the uneasy truces of nationalism. Cabinets rose and fell withunsettling rapidity as public support for liberal rule had never been secure. 4 Hatta,Sjahrir, and the conservative Islamic Masjumi were the earliest powers; their imageof “humdrum” bureaucratic organization and piecemeal progress failed to capturethe imagination of a romantic pemuda (youth) whose emotions had been fired by arevolutionary struggle which seemed to promise more dramatic and immediategratification. 5 Then the elections of 1955 served not so much to dampen factionalismas to extend it into the villages by magnifying traditional tensions and translatingthem into national politics.Further crisis burst with the outbreak of regional rebellion in Sumatra and theCelebes and the resurgence in West Java and the North Celebes of the Darul Islamguerrillas. 6 The PRRI-Permesta rebellion was short lived despite support from theCIA, some regional army leaders, and an assortment of national political leaders.Support had been wavering from all quarters but final collapse owed a great deal tothe failure of the rebels to enlist the formal support of Hatta and Masjumi. The DarulIslam movement scarcely passed the bandit stage, but like the regional revolt serveda dual function. On the one hand, the regional and religious interests werediscredited and temporarily eliminated; on the other, the act of elimination gave ahealthy boost to army involvement in civilian administration and politics. 7 In theemerging order of Guided Democracy those powers were replaced by a newbalancing act including Sukarno, the military, and the PKI.Radical nationalism and domestic confusion became characteristic as Sukarnoattempted to counteract increasing army power through reliance on the PKI massorganization. The rationalistic ideology of development gave way to a ferventnationalism served in a feast of symbols drawn from the Javanese tradition.Parliament became increasingly peripheral. Ushering in the new images of politicalform, Sukarno sought return to the more flexible constitution of 1945 and cried forreinstatement of the Pantjasila (Five Principles). It was to have been a politics ofconsensus and cooperation based on a romantic conception of rural Javanesepractice. Sukarno saw his own function as reconciliation of divergent opinions
through a process of musjawarah-mufakat, the method of village lurahs (chiefs)through which all opinions are aired until the leader can articulate a genuinelycommunal decision reflecting an implicit common conclusion. The new cabinet wasto have been a gotong-rojong (cooperative) body in which all major factions wouldfind representation—-in contrast to the squabbles and mud-slinging of partycompetition which had been a slap in the face of Javanese sensibilities.External relations became a series of confrontations. First a vigorous anti-Dutchcampaign to nationalize remaining Dutch business and gain control over west NewGuinea. With those aims achieved in 1958 and 1962, attention turned toward thenewly created federation of Malaysia, an object of confrontation lasting through theend of Guided Democracy.In this ongoing crisis which has been independent Indonesia, the dilemma has beenthat of trying to transform a conglomerate of traditional cultures so that they cansurvive in the modern world while at the same time retaining a sense of indigenousidentity. Crisis stems from imbalanced penetration of modern forms which hasamplified already profound diversity. 8 It reflects the absence of a single network ofnationally rather than regionally integrating institutions and reminds us that thenational motto of “Unity in Diversity” has remained an expression of sentimentrather than social reality. 9 The real unity underlying Indonesian experience is thecommon agony of a world out of balance: in the arts it has been the “Great Debate”,to intellectuals the protracted identity crisis of those stranded between ethnic rootsand Western ideals, and to peasants the confusion of a world their traditionalcosmology cannot explain. 10 Grasping this thread of unity requires a plungebeneath the surface of different forms to the social forces which have pushed them tothe surface of national politics and economic crisis.This is not to question the intentions of individuals at the surface of political life, it issimply to subject them to more than descriptive analysis and to argue that intentionsmean little apart from the conditions that have generated them and the situations towhich they apply. It is like the study of linguistic structures - they areunquestionably real no matter how far removed from the consciousness of commonspeech. The method lies in the tradition of Marx and Lévi-Strauss as it is to probebeneath phenomena to levels of unconscious relationship. 11 Jacques Ellul makes thepoint in his book on The Technological Society by stressing that systems involve aconvergence of specific views such that none can individually explain the process. In
Page 1 and 2: Javanese Mystical and Marxist Diale
Page 3 and 4: UNITY IN DIVERSITYPossessed of tran
Page 5: Although the pogroms of 1966 were u
Page 9 and 10: The contrast is rooted profoundly i
Page 11: entrepreneurship remained confined
Page 14 and 15: undertook to carry out were too lim
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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