Managing Politics and Islam in Indonesia

MANAGING POLITICS AND ISLAM IN INDONESIA 29IDEOLOGICAL AND STRUCTURALUNDERPINNINGS OF CORPORATISM IN INDONESIAThe State Philosophy of PancasilaBourchier illustrates how European-derived corporatist thought found its way toIndonesia. Mostly European-trained Indonesian law scholars adapted majorstrands of corporatist thought to local circumstances. Corporatist values of‘organic-statism’ were written into Indonesia’s Constitution of 1945 and foundstrong expression in the state philosophy of Pancasila (five principles). NewOrder strategists turned Pancasila into an ‘ideological’ project for thecontainment and exclusion of alternative ideologies deemed as threatening to thepolitical fabric and stability of the nation. Communism, Islamic ideology, andliberalism were identified as antithetical to a collectivist ideal of organicstatismas contained in Pancasila, which was to provide a single political culture tounderwrite the new corporatist arrangements. During the 1970s, state leadersintroduced Pancasila Moral Education (PMP) and Guidelines for theComprehension and Implementation of Pancasila (P4) indoctrination courses.Through these courses, the state leadership sought to instill in military personnel,civil servants, teachers, students and broader society the main values contained inthe official political culture. The courses emphasised a so-called ‘integralist’conception of state-societal relations that placed great emphasis on the familyunit as the nucleus of paternalistically guided, hierarchically ‘ordered’ and‘harmonious’ society. Like Stephn’s ‘organic-statism’, integralism was aconception of state and society constituting an organic unity with the state havinga strong role in establishing social order. The courses and ‘integralism’ stressedinter-connecting duties and obligations of citizens to their immediate family,which tied Indonesians in ever-wider concentric circles of allegiance and loyaltyto the state, itself conceived as the larger family. The ‘integralistic’ conception ofthe state became an underlying functional logic of Golkar, and ‘the whole idea ofthe collectivity of the nation’ was ‘expressed through functional groups’ of the‘Big Golkar Family’. 28 These values were also a central part of European, LatinAmerican, and East Asian corporatist thought.In Indonesia, the state and society conceived as a family meant that there waslittle room for dissent. Dissent was seen, at best, as an act of disobedience of anaughty child deserving of punishment and scorn. At worst, dissent was viewedas subversion that required heavy stricture and removal from the family(imprisonment or worse). These organicist values were used as an instrument ofideological persuasion. 29 In the mid-1980s, the state mandated Pancasila as thesole ideological foundation of all organisational life in Indonesia, effectivelyprohibiting organisations from adhering to alternative ideologies in their partyplatforms and programs. Pancasila Industrial Relations (HIP) codified the idealof harmonious relations between state, employer, and worker conceived as amutually beneficial partnership in which all parties sought industrial peace and