NATIONALISM, ISLAM AND MARXISM
SOEKARNO
Translated by Karel H. Warouw and Peter D. Weldon
With an Introduction by Ruth T. McVey
TRANSLATION SERIES
Modem Indonesia Project
Southeast Asia Program
Cornell University
Ithaca, New York
1969NATIONALISM, ISLAM AND MARXISM
Soekarno
Translated by Karel H. Warouw and Peter D. Weldon
With an Introduction by Ruth T. McVey
TRANSLATION SERIES
Modern Indonesia Project
Southeast Asia Program
Department of Asian Studies
Cornell University
Ithaca, New York
1970©	1970 by Cornell Modern Indonesia ProjectTABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
NATIONALISM, ISLAM, AND MARXISM:
THE MANAGEMENT OF IDEOLOGICAL CONFLICT
IN INDONESIA, by Ruth T. McVey	1
Unity and the Elite	2
Aliran	9
Verzuiling	18
Secularization and Interest	Orientation	26
NATIONALISM, ISLAM AND MARXISM, by	Soekarno	35
Nationalism, Islam and Marxism	37
Nationalism! Nationhood!	38
Islam	44
Marxism	53
iiiNATIONALISM, ISLAM, AND MARXISM:
THE MANAGEMENT OF IDEOLOGICAL CONFLICT IN INDONESIA
In 1927, the year after Sukarno published the essay
translated here, an analysis of political developments in the
Netherlands East Indies appeared from the hand of M. W. F.
Treub, political advisor to major Dutch economic interests
in the colony and ideologue of the arch-conservative response
to Indonesia's national awakening. It began as follows:
There is ferment in the Indies. Various move-
ments among the native and Chinese population are
mingling and seeking contact with each other. The
one is impelled by the urge to independence, the
other by religious zeal, a third by hatred for
authority. The inner motives of the leaders differ
fundamentally, but this need not and does not pre-
vent them from working with each other for the
achievement of one common goal:	the overthrow of
Netherlands rule.1
In this process, Treub declared, the "native movement" had
become "a melange of three tendencies and ambitions,"2 which
he defined as Nationalism, Communism, and Islam. He devoted
the rest of his study to the exposition of the dangers pre-
sented by these ideological currents and the need to repress
and, above all, to separate them.
The three ideological streams which Treub perceived were
those which Sukarno also saw and which he made the subject of
Nationalism, Islam, and Marxism. In choosing this common
frame, the two showed that, however opposed their interests
were, they both recognized the importance of the divisions
which were one day to dominate Indonesian politics.
Circumstances favored their prescience, to be sure. Had
they written a few years earlier, they might have found the
Nationalist element in Indonesian politics so undefined as to
1.	M. W. F. Treub, Het gist in Indie (Haarlem: H. D. Tjeenk)
Willink § Zoon, 1927), p. Tl
2.	Ibid., p. 13.
12
warrant a division of the independence movement into reli-
gious and secular parts rather than into three distinct
streams; a few years later, and they might have found the
Marxist element so thoroughly suppressed as a separate tend-
ency as to merit consideration as a radical aspect of Nation-
alism rather than as an ideological current in itself. But
the particular circumstances of 1926-1927--which saw a Com-
munist-led uprising against colonial rule, the formation of
the Indonesian National Party, and the bifurcation of organ-
ized Islam into traditionalist and modernist wings--gave
prominence to the role of all three major divisions and made
the question of their interrelationship a matter of active
concern both for the leaders of the independence movement and
for those who sought to destroy it. During the revolution
of 1945-1949, with the removal of Dutch and Japanese colonial
repression, these three ideological currents were to emerge
as the principal orientations of the Republic’s leaders and
of the political movements which they headed.
Unity and the Elite
Sukarno's discussion of Nationalism, Islam, and Marxism,
we should first observe, was aimed at his fellow leaders of
the independence movement. He did not speak in this appeal
to the frustrated rural and proletarian radicals who had set
off the Communist rebellion the year before, nor to the pious
santri champions of Islam, nor to the common folk in and near
the cities who turned to his own Indonesian National Party
(PNI) in their search for a point of orientation in a detra-
ditionalized world. He saw well enough that these larger
groups existed, but he viewed them here essentially as poten-
tial or actual clienteles of the metropolitan elite to which
he addressed his appeal. This audience consisted roughly of
those who shared the "metropolitan superculture"3 4 that was
then establishing itself as a modern pan-Indonesian way of
life. A Western-style education was the usual basis for par-
ticipation in this group, and as the opportunities to secure
this were limited, it implied an advantaged social origin--
most frequently descent from that part of the traditional
bureaucratic elite that had been drawn into the colonial
administrative service.1’
3.	I have taken the term and concept from Hildred Geertz,
"Indonesian Cultures and Communities," in McVey (ed.),
Indonesia (New Haven: HRAF Press, 1963), pp. 33-38.
4.	For discussions of the origins and development of the
Western-educated elite, see Robert Van Niel, The Emergence3
In the 1920’s, this national elite, while growing, was
very small indeed; it centered naturally in the capital and
formed a discernible social element elsewhere only in the
relatively Europeanized cities of Bandung, Surabaja, and
Medan. The new metropolitan culture was essentially mestizo,
and its members displayed the ambivalence of those balancing
psychologically between two worlds. Moreover, the culture
contained the seeds of political rebellion, for colonial rule
justified itself by its possession of modern administrative
and technical expertise:	those Indonesians who had been
introduced into these Western mysteries and who also had
traditional claims to a ruling position inevitably felt they
could and should take the Europeans' place. Hence the new
group formed a counter-elite; its members had a relatively
high degree of political consciousness and, as a rising
social class, they tended to view their position as one of
upward struggle against the forces of ignorance and blind
traditionalism on the one hand and those of alien power and
prejudice on the other. This reinforced and politicized
their cultural ambivalence:	for on the one hand Indonesia's
traditions and the mass of its people represented their most
forceful support against alien domination, yet on the other
prevented what they saw as a necessary leap into a modern
future. Similarly, the Dutch represented both foreign op-
pression and a goal--in terms of modern culture and ruling
position--which the members of the metropolitan elite sought
to attain for themselves.
Sukarno's reference in Nationalism, Islam, and Marxism
was selective, even in terms of this emergent national elite.
He was not speaking to the more conservative element: the
questions of regionalism and cooperation with the colonial
authorities, which so engaged the older and more cautious
members of the Indonesian elite, were not raised here. Su-
karno's essay was turned instead to the politically involved
men of his own generation--young, committed to the struggle
for independence, and already thinking of themselves over-
whelmingly in terms of national rather than regional identity.
In this small audience, he rightly saw the source of the
country's future leadership; he also saw its weakness and
the dissipation of its energies in continual quarrels, in
which personal and ideological differences reinforced each
other to fatal effect.
of the Modern Indonesian Elite (The Hague/Bandung: Van
Hoeve, i960), and Akira Nagazumi, "The Origin and Early
Years of the Budi Utomo, 1908-1916" (Cornell University,
Ph.D. diss., 1967). For some related views on the sub-
ject, see my "Taman Siswa and the Indonesian National
Awakening," Indonesia, IV (October 1967), pp. 128-133.4
To a leader inclined by temperament to seek mass strength
rather than sectarian discipline, the marked disunity of the
independence movement in 1926 was little short of disastrous.
Even without the quarreling, "Indonesia" was little more than
a project in the minds of a handful of men who had been lib-
erated from the shackles of cultural parochialism and, by the
same token, isolated from the main body of their society.
This was the harder to bear because the proponents of national
awakening had not always found their position so weak. A
decade before, when the independence movement had appeared
relatively united under the leadership of the Sarekat Islam,
the Dutch had feared the power of that organization and had
hesitated to move sharply against it; people had flocked to
the movement, revealing thereby the vast energies that could
be harnessed to the revolutionary cause if only they were
given unified and purposeful leadership. But since that
time, the forces of radical anticolonialism had lost their
cohesion; unable to provide a convincing display of internal
solidarity or popular support, they found their demands ig-
nored and their leaders prey to harassment and arrest. By
the time Sukarno wrote, the task of building a new solidarity
within the movement seemed Sisyphean, for whenever some mea-
sure of agreement was reached in principle among the chief
members, it collapsed on exposure to practice.
The unity of Indonesia's political leadership was gener-
ally appreciated to be of critical importance to the prosecu-
tion of the independence struggle, as is demonstrated by
Treub's concern, from the colonialist side, to prevent its
achievement. But for Sukarno and others of his generation
and mind, the achievement of unity became even more than the
key to political effectiveness. For them, frustration at
continual discord in their own ranks combined with tradition-
al political concepts and socialist borrowings to give "unity"
a most particular interpretation. It acquired a quasi-magi-
cal value; only through unity could there be political
strength--but once the People were united there was nothing
they could not overcome. "People" here meant the entire
mass of Indonesians, the mystical embodiment of all the na-
tion. Sukarno and his fellows therefore rejected the intel-
lectual's natural distrust of the common man as an opponent
of modernist enlightenment and instead argued that the folk
possessed a progressive general will which would respond to
those who summoned it in the name of freedom and the future.
The Rakjat--the People--became the messianic equivalent of
Marx's proletarian, deprived and powerless now, but destined
to change the world when mobilized in the revolutionary
cause.5
5. For a discussion of the concept of the Rakjat and an il-
lustration of the difference between the Indonesian5
Unlike the class-defined proletarian, however, the People
represented a general mass, both undifferentiated as against
the ruling elite and at the same time divided within itself
into myriad linguistic, religious, cultural, and economic
groupings which coalesced on broad lines of ideological iden-
tification. Nationalists of Sukarno's type believed the uni-
fication of society was to be accomplished by amalgamating
these components rather than, in the Leninist manner, by ex-
cluding incompatible elements from a coherent core. Union
would occur most completely at the top of the hierarchy; in
the Sukarnoist vision of the 1920's, it was to be achieved
among the politically active members of the emergent national
elite, who, fired by their vision of a common Indonesian pur-
pose, would both represent the major forces within the soci-
ety and channel their energies to the service of the national
cause. It was to convince Indonesia's prospective political
leadership of the need to assume this role that Sukarno wrote
Nationalism, Islamy and Marxism.
This emphasis on the persuasion of the elite remained
characteristic of Sukarno's political activity in later years
in spite of his role as mass leader. There was, in fact, a
fundamental ambiguity in Sukarno's political style, one that
has been fairly characteristic of the populist leaders of
newly independent countries and which probably springs from
similar contradictions between revolutionary commitment and
social conservatism. As supreme leader in the Guided Democ-
racy period, Sukarno was to stress his role as the Voice of
the People* * * * * 6 and to encourage the image of a spiritual union
between himself and the Rakjat arching over a degenerate and
self-seeking elite. But this union was never given substance:
romantic nationalist view of the common man and the Marx-
ist idea of the proletariat, see Sukarno, Marhaen and
Proletarian (Ithaca: Cornell Modern Indonesia Project,
1960), a translation by Claire Holt of a speech given by
Sukarno to a PNI congress in 1957.
6. One of his titles, Penjambung Lidah Rakjat, literally
means "Extension of the People's Tongue." When used in
the mystical-political sense, the word rakjat was commonly
capitalized, and I have followed this practice in refer-
ring to the "people," in this meaning, to indicate the
extra dimension. This concept of Rakjat (which is not
its original meaning--it derives from an Arabic word mean-
ing "subject") is somewhat similar in resonance to the
German romantic nationalist notion of Volk, though the
difference between Indonesian and German worlds of thought
is such that one cannot press the analogy far.6
neither through organization nor through an appeal for mass
action was the People called on to move against the support-
ers of a corrupted status quo in the name of the Leader and
the Revolution. The support of the People, in spite of its
vast symbolic importance and its political potential, was
used by Sukarno in practice as a lever for dealings which re-
mained within the intimate sphere of capital politics and
which aimed at balancing off and pacifying rival leaders and
factions--the symbols of the larger forces in society rather
than those forces themselves. In part, this was the result
of long habit and the relative practical helplessness of a
leader who had never created an effective apparat of his own.
But it also reflected more conscious considerations--above
all, the feeling that a social breakdown and chaos could only
be prevented by the negotiation of communal differences, and
that for this a cohesive, representative, and authoritative
elite was necessary.
This reasoning reflects a view of Indonesia as possess-
ing an identifiable and relatively homogeneous political
elite. It was a vision which may have derived in part from
the traditional two-class division of society into ruling
hierarchy and subject mass; in part from the relative homo-
geneity and isolation of the colonial metropolitan counter-
elite, so many of whose members later filled the upper ranks
of Indonesia’s national leadership; and in part, I suspect,
from observation of the Netherlands experience, which I shall
discuss later. In fact, however, twentieth-century Indonesia
did not possess a ruling class--the Dutch aside--that was
cohesive and authoritative enough to provide a basis for this
kind of control.
The social-political group that derived from the metro-
politan superculture and peopled the post-Independence nation-
alist leadership was homogeneous enough, in spite of its
factional quarrels, but this coherence derived in good part
from its isolation and its ambivalent relationship to the
larger society. In one sense it was a pioneering element,
the spearhead of a change which would inexorably involve all
of Indonesian society; but in another it was a hybrid, born
of a brief and violent relationship between European and
Indonesian cultures, insufficiently rooted in the general
society. In the colonial period, the presence of a clear,
alien opponent to all but the most "feudal" elements in Indo-
nesia provided it with a clear leadership role, but the decay
of national governmental authority after the revolution re-
flected its weakness in the role of ruling class. It suffered
both from its members’ own ambivalence toward the larger
society and from the feeling of large portions of the provin-
cial public that those in Djakarta represented them feebly
or not at all. War and revolution had shaken broad layers7
of the society and brought them, however briefly, into polit-
ical action; new sources of leadership appeared, more local
and less Westernized, forming new counter-elites that chal-
lenged the authority of the postcolonial national Establish-
ment .
In the first years after the revolution, Djakarta's
political leaders argued the matter of holding elections:
they were anxious on the one hand to put down deeper roots
into the society, to establish a real relationship with the
mass clienteles they claimed to represent, and to link to
themselves those lower-level leaders who might otherwise com-
pete for the loyalties of the mass; at the same time, they
were unsure of the extent of their public support, uncertain
of how to go about securing it, and uncomfortable with the
idea of sharing power with leaders who did not come from
their own cultural milieu. The holding of the 1955 general
elections was in this sense something of an act of despera-
tion, in which elite hesitation was overcome by an even
greater alarm at political stagnation and a rapid decline in
the Djakarta leadership's authority. The elections did not
provide clarity but did demonstrate growing support for a
movement that was essentially anti-Establishment through the
strong showing made by the PKI--Communist Party--in the 1955
vote and by the rapid rise in its,strength in the 1957-1958
regional elections. They were thus a failure from Djakarta's
point of view in spite of their contribution to identifying
and organizing mass clienteles for the various factions of
the national elite. Perhaps, if the economic situation had
been easier or if independence had been achieved without a
disruptive war, the metropolitan elite that dominated post-
revolutionary politics would have been able to consolidate
and institutionalize its power; but as it was, the mid-1950's
saw its authority ebbing by the day. In the regions, locally
based leaderships challenged its right to command, while at
the center it was threatened by two rising hierarchies, the
army and the Communist party.
In this situation, Sukarno moved in a direction that was
at once radical and conservative. He sought to neutralize
the two new contenders by establishing a stalemate between
them, and he also attempted to revive the nation's sense of
unity and momentum by assuming a greater role as leader and
by reviving the symbols of the revolution. In the process,
the parliamentary system was abandoned, but not the dominant
role of the metropolitan elite. On the contrary, that group'
political position was assured by the absence of elections
during Guided Democracy. The creation of a plethora of offi-
cially-sponsored fronts increased its sphere of formal activ-
ity and membership but did not change its essential character
and the widely-publicized "retoolings" of politically unmalle8
able individuals produced only a mild reshuffling of the
bureaucratic deck.
This preservation of the position of the national elite
was in good part the purpose of Guided Democracy. The system
can be seen in a sense as an effort by Sukarno to rescue that
elite from an otherwise imminent loss of its power to region-
al, Communist, or military counter-elites. All of the latter
were too particularistic to play a consensual role; they
could only dominate the country through the application of
force, through the dispersion of central power, or through
social upheaval. This fact, together with Sukarno's natural
affinity for the cultural and political group from which he
himself derived, led him to attempt to shore up the waning
authority of the metropolitan elite by providing a new, popu-
list setting for its rule and by working to neutralize and
absorb the leading elements among the counter-elite contend-
ers .
From this point of view, the flaw in the Guided Democracy
effort lay in the fact that the measures taken to preserve
the cohesion and authority of the metropolitan elite also
protected it from the need to root itself more firmly in the
society as a whole. In the absence of elections, it was only
natural that the always tenuous and ambivalent relationship
between the national elite and its mass clientele would decay
and that the distance between central and local leaderships
would grow greater. Djakarta leaders came to represent groups
in the society at large not because of any demonstrated abil-
ity to move them but because it was proclaimed--at the center,
and ultimately by Sukarno--that this or that leader spoke for
this or that segment of the population.
In the latter years of Guided Democracy, this led to an
entourage politics which in some ways resembled the palace
politics of traditional Java.7 Sukarno assumed more and more
openly the classical role of the ruler, who was conceived as
drawing strength from the fact that he could fuse in his own
person the forces contending among his people, concentrating
them into a focused energy that was much more than the sum
of its kinetic parts.8 This extreme development served to
7.	For ideas concerning the resemblance of latter-day Guided
Democracy to Javanese court politics, I am indebted to
conversations with Professor G. J. Resink in Djakarta,
1964-1965.
8.	For a discussion of traditional Javanese ideas of power
and unity, see Benedict R. O'G. Anderson, "The Idea of
Power in Javanese Culture," in Claire Holt (ed.), Culture9
illuminate some of the traditional elements that had gone
into radical nationalist thinking--most notably, for our pur-
pose, the older source of the idea of unity as all-inclusive
and dynamic. The fact that unity was conceived as necessari-
ly inclusive and as the essential source of social energy
probably helps to explain Sukarno's great reluctance to break
completely with any element of his entourage. Only for
reasons of extreme pique did he permanently exclude any mem-
ber of the "in" group of national politicians from his coun-
cils, and no faction, once recognized, was completely denied
a voice. His preferred reaction to changing times was not
to exclude the old or disfavored but rather to coopt and give
prominence to the new--making it a part of the entourage,
which thereby changed in mood if not in fundamental substance.
There is some reason to think that as Indonesia's social
and economic crisis deepened, Sukarno realized the limits of
a leadership oriented toward securing the consensus of the
elite and that his increasing attention to the Communist
Party in the final year of Guided Democracy represented an
attempt to find a more dynamic alternative even at the possi-
ble cost of social upheaval. If so, it is likely he thought
of this essentially in terms of a post-Sukarno era, when
there would be no ruler capable of containing all Indonesia's
diverse elements within himself and when, therefore, the
country's leadership would have to be based on less inclu-
sive sources of power. In any event, he showed himself un-
able to abandon his accustomed style when the crisis came in
his own lifetime:	confronted in the immediate postcoup
period with the need to decide whether to stake all on an
appeal beyond the national elite to his mass following or to
try to recoup his fortunes by maneuvering the familiar en-
tourage, he persevered in the latter course, with results
fatal to his rule.
Aliran
In the light of Sukarno's ultimate reliance on the upper
crust of national life, it is not surprising to observe that
the idea of class struggle was missing from his vision of
Indonesian politics, as it was for so many other radical
nationalists who otherwise borrowed heavily from Marx. As
members of an aspiring elite, linked by ties of family and
cultural background to traditional officialdom and by reason
of education and ambition to Dutch colonial style, such
and Politics in Indonesia (forthcoming), which the author
graciously allowed me to see in manuscript form.10
leaders had little interest in promoting an overturn that
would go much farther than replacing Netherlands rule with
their own. Moreover, the idea of a conflict of interest be-
tween ruler and ruled went against the grain of older politi-
cal thought. For in this view the leader was able to unite
disparate social forces within himself, mobilizing their
energies and holding them in balance, because he was at the
same time above these forces and the incarnation of all of
them, standing for no single interest himself. Consequently,
the idea of permanent vertical cleavages in the society,
capable of arbitration at the top, could be accepted as
natural at the same time that class division, in which the
ruler played a necessarily one-sided role, was rejected as a
concept suitable for the West but disruptive and dangerous
in the Indonesian context.
For Sukarno to have adopted the Marxist concept of class
struggle would have meant to deny the general representative
and ameliorative role of the metropolitan elite and thus of
the post-revolutionary ruling class. This elite served not
only as the chief executor of public policy--the vital first
link in the chain downward between leader and mass--but also
as the representative and pacifying agent of the vertical
cleavages in the society.9 These larger divisions included
a rich variety of religious, ethnic, linguistic, and regional
differentiations; but the principal cleavages, in terms of
which nearly all the others had to operate politically, were
the Javanese divisions between prijaji high culture, abangan
folk culture, and santri pious Islam. As soon as the revolu-
tion extended politics beyond the narrow confines of the
Western-educated elite and the constructions of a colonial
environment, these cleavages assumed a dominant public place,
becoming ideologically incarnate as the three streams of
Nationalism, Islam, and Marxism. This attachment of mass
loyalties to modern centrally-led parties on the basis of
pre-existing patterns of social and cultural cleavage pro-
vided the political groupings in the capital with a vital
link to the larger society; but at the same time, it set
limits to the parties' appeal and colored their modes of
public action. Eventually, these cultural-ideological
9. This fits with the traditional role of the bureaucratic
elite, for the good official was seen as being a father
to the people placed in his care, balancing conflicting
social elements against each other and thus, by providing
each group with its allotted part and no more, preserving
the general harmony. See Donald Fagg, "Authority and
Social Structure: a Study of Javanese Bureaucracy" (Har-
vard University, Ph.D. diss., 1958), especially pp. 379-
382.11
divisions were to win formal recognition in the ill-fated
NASAKOM union of Nationalist, Religious, and Communist forces
urged in the period of Guided Democracy.10
The mass clientele of the Islamic political leaders was
present from the start in the modernist and traditionalist
santri communities. The clienteles of the Nationalist and
Communist politicians were not so immediately available, and
the process by which links were forged between those ideolo-
gies and mass followings is one that still needs investiga-
tion. There is, however, a broad social correspondence in
these attachments, in that the abangan, as the peasant vari-
ant of traditional Javanese culture, found political repre-
sentation in the Communist party, whose counter-elite leader-
ship implied an attack on the status quo at the same time
that it participated in Djakarta politics; while the prijaji,
the bearers of the high culture, found a socially more con-
servative reflection for their outlook in the Nationalism of
the PNI. Indeed, all three streams reflect different economic
as well as cultural orientations, for the commercial attach-
ment of the santri gave that group a very different set of
interests from the bureaucratic prijaji, which in turn looked
on the abangan not only as its bucolic cultural relative but
also as a peasant class that must be kept in its place.
Clashes of interest could thus very easily be translated
into cultural terms and in the process become emotionally
deepened and generalized.* 11
10.	For an analysis of the setting of Guided Democracy poli-
tics, see Herbert Feith, "Indonesia's Political Symbols
and Their Wielders," World Politics, XVI, 1 (October,
1963), pp. 79-97. For an elaboration of the NASAKOM
idea, see Sukarno, Nasakom Bersatu--Nasakom DjiwakuS
(Djakarta: Departemen Penerangan, 1965), a speech to the
Peasants' Conference of July 20, 1965. The title--United
in Nasakom, Nasakom My Soul!--was a slogan of the time
and the title of one of the official songs taught to
schoolchildren as part of their ideological upbringing.
11.	For a study of interaction between the aliran in one
setting, see Robert Jay, Religion and Politics in Rural
Central Java (New Haven: Yale Southeast Asia Studies,
1963). For a general discussion of prijaji, abangan and
santri values, see Clifford Geertz, The Religion of Java
(New York: The Free Press of Glencoe"^ 1960) . Geertz'
The Social History of an Indonesian Town (Cambridge,
Mass.: MtT Press, 1965), pp. 153-208, provides a detailed
study of the relationship between political parties,
interest groups, and cultural orientation at the village
level in an election in post-Independence Java.12
In spite of general agreement on the broad definition
of the prijaji-abangan-santri division, it is in practice
extremely difficult to state the content of the Indonesian
aliran--"streams" or "currents" of fundamental allegiance--
beyond these crude cultural-political cum economic identifi-
cations. This is partly because the boundaries of the aliran
allegiances have shifted and settled over time, and partly
because the ideological labels attached to them are generally
used loosely to refer to several different and not entirely
overlapping types of cleavage. We thus observe them rather
as images in a bad mirror--clearly present, but with per-
versely altering forms.
Seen from one political angle, the aliran divisions
apply to an ongoing ideological argument in national politics
--essentially a debate among factions of the Djakarta elite.
From another, they refer to the political expression of ver-
tical cleavages in the wider Indonesian society, based on
cultural variation. Finally, they apply as well to horizon-
tal social divisions reflecting class differences. Sometimes
these aspects connect with and reinforce each other, but they
do not necessarily do so; and hence the aliran change their
scope and quality according to the context in which they are
being discussed.
In this manner, the Marxist label (as used in Sukarno's
essay; or Communist, in terms of Treub's analysis and the
NASAKOM triad) has a certain meaning when attached to one
party in the debate among national political strategists; it
has a different quality when applied to the political expres-
sion of the third element in the cleavage between santri,
prijaji, and abangan in Javanese society; and it has still
another significance when it connotes the politically aroused
urban and rural poor as against merchant, landowner, and
bureaucratic interests. In the first incarnation, "Commu-
nism" appears as the factional allegiance of a leadership
operating in the context of a metropolitan elite into which
its hierarchs had been partially adopted. In the second, it
appears as the expression of communal sentiment in a highly
deferential and conservative folk culture. In the third, it
becomes a movement of class struggle, led by a hierarchy
essentially outside of and opposed to the national elite.
Similar shifts occur when the Nationalist label is ap-
plied to the prijaji cultural group or to "feudal" or bureau-
cratic interests; and when Islam is taken to denote elite
politicians who appeal to a religious clientele, or to refer
to the santri cultural community, or to encompass the com-
mercial and landowning interests commonly identified with
pious adherence to the faith. Indeed, the case of Islam is
complicated by the fact that it is itself divided into two13
wings, representing, like the major aliran divisions, a dif-
ference in both philosophical orientation and social role.12
One is the kolot (old-fashioned) style, which represents the
rural conservatism of an Islam long exposed to the influence
of pre-Muslim culture. The second is the moderen (modern)
mode, which was inspired by the Muslim reform movement of
the nineteenth-century Near East and aimed at meeting the
challenge of European hegemony by theological purification
and by the modernization of social and economic practice.
The pattern of adherence to these styles differs greatly from
one area to the next, and reflects above all the historical
course of the penetration into the archipelago first of Islam
itself and then of attempts to renew it.
We must bear in mind that the kolot and modbren styles
appear in several incarnations--theological, social, and
political--and that these represent overlapping but not com-
pletely identical groups of people. Politically, the kolot
position is represented archetypically by the Nahdatul Ulama
Party, the leading element of which has consisted of the
moneylenders and landholders of hinterland Java, together
with traditionalist religious teachers and scholars. Hence,
the kolot position has come to be identified with rural and
small-town wealth as well as with theological conservatism,
though in fact the overwhelming majority of those who adhere
to it are poor and a considerable number are urban. Similar-
ly, the modbren position has been most visible socially as
the "Protestant ethic" of an emergent urban entrepreneurial
class. This image was stamped on the Masjumi party of the
1950’s, even though that group drew its greatest popular
strength from anti-Javanese sentiment rather than from theo-
logically or socially modbren enthusiasm.13
12.	There was, in fact, some tendency to refer to the aliran
division as a quadripartite one, particularly in the
late 1950’s, when the Masjumi-Nahdatul Ulama relation-
ship was of crucial political importance and when it was
therefore useful (at least from the secularist viewpoint)
to avoid treating Islam as a single entity. Thus, Su-
karno used the metaphor of the "four-legged horse" in
urging the inclusion of the Communists in the government
in his initial call for Guided Democracy rather than the
original Nationalism-Islam-Marxism trinity or the later
NASAKOM. See Daniel S. Lev, The Transition to Guided
Democracy (Ithaca: Cornell Modern Indonesian Project,
1966), pp. 16-17.
13.	It should be borne in mind that the contrast described
here is essentially a Javanese one:	outside the ethnic
Javanese area the Masjumi appealed, for a variety of14
Neither of these santri wings has been able to achieve
cultural dominance over its fellow. Moreover, the concern
of Islam with doctrinal correctness has made the theological
differences between them loom large. Consequently, religious
contrasts between the two branches have found easy articula-
tion, and their organized cooperation has been difficult.
But this division has not been of the same emotional order
as that separating the santri from the non-santri cultural
communities.14 Though the members of the latter may be Islam
statistik (nominal Muslims) they see militant Islam of both
branches as a danger, an aggression against their accustomed
way of life; and its advance threatens to rob them of their
identity. On the other hand, to the devout Muslims, the
abangan-prijaji cultural mode appears as heathen at heart, a
style which, though it has long claimed surrender to Islam,
has yet persisted in dominating Indonesia politically and
socially, preventing Islam and the groups identified with it
from finding their rightful place in the sun.
In reality, the prijaji-santri-abangan triad is based
on two divisions of a different order. In cultural terms,
the main schism has been between Islam and the prijaji-
abangan "Javanese religion,"15 which incorporated pre-Islamic
reasons, to a broader clientele, while the Nahdatul
Ulama*s place was taken by various other Muslim parties.
For a description of kolot-mod&ren and Masjumi-Nahdatul
Ulama rivalries in one Javanese area, see Lance Castles,
Religion, Politics, and Economic Behavior in Java (New
Haven: Yale Southeast Asia Studies, 1967), pp. 61-68.
14.	This is not disproved by the fact that during the parlia-
mentary period the Nahdatul Ulama found it easier to
ally with the Nationalist PNI than with the Masjumi
party. On the contrary, as politicians, the NU leaders
felt particularly threatened by the Masjumi because they
were competing with it for broadly the same clientele;
they were aware that they possessed less in the way of
organizational and leadership skills than the Masjumi
leaders and that the historical drift within the santri
community was from kolot to mod&ren adherence. Hence
they saw the preservation of distance as necessary to
their continued political power.
15.	Agama Djawa, the Javanese religion, is one of the terms
used to refer to this world view. Its adherents are
nominal Muslims but are commonly considered heathen by
orthodox santri and themselves refer to Islam, when con-
sidering it in its santri form, as an alien force.15
thought and represented the rural and court culture of in-
terior Java in defense against the historically advancing
power of Islam. From this point of view, Javanese society
divides into two and not three cultural parts; and indeed, a
bifurcation into Santri and Abangan--the latter being under-
stood to incorporate both high and folk variants of the
"Javanese religion"-- is frequently used in Java to refer to
its basic cultural schism.16 The Abangan grouping can then
be seen as composed of two subdivisions, prijaji and abangan
proper, much as the Santri consists of kolot and modbren
modes.
But the prijaji-abangan relationship is as much one of
two classes as it is one of cultural variants. It thus has
a dimension which the kolot-modbren contrast does not pos-
sess, for though the intra-santri dichotomy involves groups
with different orientations towards economic activity, both
wings are led by a moneyed and commercially active class--
rural landholders and usurers on the one and urban traders
and entrepreneurs on the other. The division within the
Abangan, on the other hand, represents the contrast between
elite and mass, between prijaji as ruling class and abangan
as populace. This division is easily as deep as that between
Santri and Abangan, but it has been largely inarticulate.
In contrast to the doctrinal exclusiveness of Islam, the
older "Javanese religion" is highly syncretic and provides
little opportunity for schism; on the contrary, it places
very great value on the absorption of deviant thought. More-
over, the prijaji bearers of the Javanese high culture, who
were naturally uninterested in aiding the formulation of a
subversive viewpoint, achieved such an ideological domination
of the larger Abangan cultural grouping that no anti-Estab-
lishment position developed, save on the local level, until
the quite recent penetration of Communist ideas.17
16.	The usual criticism of Geertz' study of The Religion of
Java that I have heard from Javanese was that it treated
prijaji and abangan as two distinct cultural entities
instead of subsuming them into one larger Abangan group-
ing. Actually, Geertz does point out the close rela-
tionship between the two; but because his study is
sociological rather than theological and is much con-
cerned with the political and economic expression of
aliran affinities, he comes in the end to a de facto
reliance on the tripartite prijaji-abangan-santri divi-
sion, as many Indonesians do in referring to the politi-
cal expression of Indonesian social relationships.
17.	We might see the elements of such a tradition, however,
in the role of the punakawan clowns of the wayang plays,16
It is possible that one reason why popular resentment
was not more readily directed at the traditional ruling class
is that it could be turned against other, more clearly alien
exploiting groups--the foreign colonizers and the santri and
Chinese merchant-moneylenders. The prijaji, of course, were
open servants of the Dutch in colonial days; nonetheless,
their position as collaborators was ambivalent, for they also
represented a defeated indigenous leadership, which served
unwillingly and which embodied a local culture and sense of
identity opposed to the Dutch. This ambivalence was preserved
with the rise of nationalism, for the prijaji split politi-
cally, its lower ranks--participants in the new metropolitan
superculture--providing a major source of recruits to the
independence movement. On the one hand, these members of the
emergent national elite took pride in their birth and cher-
ished older ideas as legitimation for their claims to rule;
on the other hand, they condemned traditional attitudes as
"feudal" and welcomed commoners as brothers-in-arms. By and
large, those of the populace with enough education and initia-
tive to become politically active entered into the broader
but still prijaji-dominated world of the independence move-
ment. They were drawn to the towns, to the new culture, and
to the chance of being taken up into a metamorphosed ruling
class. As a result, those who formulated grievances were
little inclined to make the indigenous elite a principal ob-
ject of their attack, and they found ample targets in the
alien exploiting groups. Even the post-revolutionary Commu-
nists, who among the major political groupings came closest
to speaking for the common folk, talked and acted in terms
of the elite, according it equivocal status in their ideology
by declaring that it contained progressive as well as reac-
tionary elements.18
and in the ideas of some of the Javanese rural mystical
groups. For a discussion of one of the better-known of
the latter, see Harry J. Benda and Lance Castles, "The
Samin Movement," Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volken-
kunde, 125, 2 (1969), pp. 207-240. Studies of the de-
velopment of the punakawan roles and of rural mystical
movements in the course of the past century might aid
greatly in determining the course and extent of Javanese
peasant alienation from the prijaji-dominated tradition.
18. The failure of the political activists to stress social
revolutionary themes does not necessarily reflect an ab-
sence of such sentiment among the populace. During the
revolution, local breakdowns of order were accompanied
by violence directed against the traditional elites in
various areas, most notably in the "social revolutions"
of Atjeh and East Sumatra, where there was a slaughter17
One result of the inarticulateness of prijaji-abangan
differences is that when conflict between the two did occur
it was perceived as culturally unnatural and therefore the
result of abnormal behavior. Indignation at such deviation
from proper conduct gave way rather easily, once normalcy
was restored, to a concern for uniting forces against the
more "natural" enemy of militant Islam. This seems a prin-
cipal reason why the Communist party was able to recover so
quickly from its defeat in the Madiun Affair of 1948. That
conflict with government forces became, at the local level,
a clash between santri and abangan communities, and this
helped prijaji officials to perceive the PKI position more
tolerantly than they otherwise would. Moreover, it encour-
aged the prijaji-led PNI to see in the Communists an anti-
santri ally, which it felt need of in its early post-revolu-
tionary rivalry with the Masjumi. It was thus psychologically
easy and politically convenient for the Nationalists to label
the Affair a "tragic event" and refuse to apportion blame
further, in spite of their anti-PKI stand at the time of the
clash itself.
Similarly, Nationalist leaders in Central and East Java
who were active in the anti-Communist campaign following the
October 1965 coup tended to change their position to a pro-
tective one as it appeared that the Communists' abangan
clientele was not about to undertake class warfare and that
it was suffering a massive santri attack. However, this
time there was no rehabilitation of the PKI but, on the con-
trary, a banning also of the Rakjat-oriented left wing of
the PNI. This seems to reflect both the lessening importance
of political parties and mass clienteles and an increasing
weight of class as against aliran considerations in the cal-
culations of those in authority. For already in the period
immediately following the revolution, the perceived differ-
ence between prijaji and abangan social groups had become
sufficiently great to give prijaji, abangan, and santri equal
of the old ruling class. The "Tiga Daerah" Affair was
the most prominent incident to arise from these senti-
ments in Java. The whole pemuda (youth) involvement in
the early revolution was suffused with social revolu-
tionary impulse, and a principal concern of the Repub-
lic's leaders was how to keep such emotions in check.
See Benedict R. O'G. Anderson, "The Pemuda Revolution"
(Cornell University, Ph.D. diss., 1967), pp. 499-539 and
passim. Whether such feeling was widespread or deep
enough to fuel a successful social revolution in Java
or across the nation is another matter; the point is
that political activists of any education and extra-local
experience did not find it worthwhile to take up the
theme.18
weight as ideological-political orientations alongside the
historical santri-abangan cultural cleavage. As we shall
see, powerful forces in the post-revolutionary period mili-
tated against continuing abangan acceptance of prijaji lead-
ership and increased a general consciousness of diverging
interests between mass and elite.
Verzuiling
The effect of elemental allegiances cutting across the
ties based on the calculation of material interest has been
the subject of much theoretical comment.19 Commonly, these
loyalties have been conceived as forming vertical cleavages
which bisect the horizontal divisions based on class--an
image which I have also used here. Human nature is not so
geometrically orderly, however, and in real life such rela-
tionships are infinitely more complex. It is quite possible,
therefore, for "primordial" loyalties to lie in such a rela-
tionship to divisions of interest that their overall effect
is to deepen rather than to break across the lines of material
strain in the society.
This is the case in the Netherlands, for example. The
population of that country is sharply divided ideologically
between Catholic, Protestant, and secular loyalties. The
relationship of these "vertical" cleavages to the divisions
based on interest had such a resonance within Dutch society
that the country's stability was endangered once the exten-
sion of the franchise made possible the political articula-
tion and mobilization of mass sentiment. The eventual solu-
tion was an arrangement known as verzuiling.20 In its
19.	The most useful of these for our purpose is Clifford
Geertz, "The Integrative Revolution," in Geertz (ed.),
Old Societies and New States (New York: Free Press,
1963) , pp. 105-157 . The term "primordial loyalties,"
which I have used, is his. We should bear in mind, how-
ever, that aliran-based communalism differs from that
based on language, ethnic, and regional distinctions in
that it is purely ideological and hence less fixed.
Moreover, it occurs within the same formal religion, so
that it is not limited by professed faith.
20.	For a good discussion of Dutch politics and the ver-
zuiling phenomenon, see Arend Lijphart, The Politics of
Accommodation: Pluralism and Democracy in the Netherlands
(Berkeley: University of California, 1968). A comparison
between the Indonesian aliran and the Dutch zuilen has19
extreme formulation, this envisaged the three ideological
communities as pillars united only at the top by a self-
conscious elite whose members would not allow their communal
commitments to overshadow their role as preservers of the
general peace. Friction was avoided in this system by re-
ducing inter-aliran contact to a minimum at the mass level
and by adhering to strict equity in parceling out patronage
and power among the communities via their representatives in
the elite. The object was to pacify but not in the first
instance to overcome popular ideological differences--indeed,
the obliteration of contrasts was not necessarily seen as
desirable by the communal leaders, whose power rested in the
end on their existence.
The Dutch system--now beginning to erode under the
homogenizing and secularizing impact of industrialization--
is of interest to the Indonesian experience for two reasons.
First of all, since the Netherlands was the Western demo-
cratic model presented to Indonesians in the colonial period,
much of the Dutch approach to politics was absorbed by the
Indonesian nationalists even as they reacted against colonial
rule and European ways. Quite likely, the Dutch example also
helped prevent any inclination on the nationalists' part to
question the validity of aliran orientation in a modern
Indonesia. Finally, the Dutch solution to the problem of
been made earlier, in Basuki Gunawan and 0. D. van den
Muijzenberg, "Verzuilingstendenties en sociale stratifi-
catie in Indonesia," Sociologische Gids, XIV, 3 (May-
June 1967), pp. 145-158. W. F. Wertheim, "From Aliran
Towards Class Struggle in the Countryside of Java" (Mimeo
paper prepared for the International Conference on Asian
History, Kuala Lumpur, August 1968), has criticized this
on the grounds that "it is dangerous to draw sociological
parallels between a pre-industrial and a highly indus-
trialized society" (p. 7), and he suggests an approach
based on patron-client relationships. It seems to me
that, while patronage relations are very important in
Indonesia, as in most pre-industrial countries, they do
not explain the aliran phenomenon. For the reasons given
above in the text, I think a comparison with verzuiling
continues to be useful, provided one is well aware that
Dutch and Indonesian societies are in very many ways
quite dissimilar. The Netherlands is, of course, not
the only other country where such a phenomenon occurs--
we might take Austria or for that matter Malaysia, where
the existence of political-economic-cultural competition
between the major ethnic groups was codified and (at
least until early 1969) managed in a verzuiling-type
arrangement.20
ideological communalism resembles in certain respects the
approach outlined in Sukarno's 1926 essay and later attempted
in the NASAKOM formulation. If we look more closely at the
Indonesian effort in the light of the Dutch experience, we
may be able to gain a clearer notion of the assumptions
underlying Sukarno's reasoning and, at the same time, to dis-
cern some of the weaknesses that were to prove fatal to the
attempts to implement it.
The management of aliran conflict as it was undertaken
in the Netherlands required a relatively homogeneous and
self-conscious ruling group and also mass clienteles which
were sufficiently contented and loyal to their elite spokes-
men that they were willing to give those leaders considerable
leeway in bargaining on matters of communal interest. These
were quite special conditions, and they demanded considerable
social and economic resources to be able to maintain equi-
librium even under conditions of relatively gradual change.
In a limited sense, the first of these requirements was
met in Indonesia. The Western-educated prijaji, and thus
the Nationalist stream, set the style for the independence
movement and then for the politics of postrevolutionary Dja-
karta; by and large those who represented the other two
aliran in national politics were themselves of prijaji or
equivalent origin or had adapted to the metropolitan version
of that mode. But the fact that the governing style was
closely identified with one aliran meant that the others were
never really satisfied that they were being given equal con-
sideration in public affairs--as indeed they often were not.
This meant that in times when the Nationalist aliran was in
a politically vulnerable position (as against Communism in
the immediate pre-coup period and Islam thereafter), leaders
from other aliran were easily able to arouse their mass
followings and use the threat of civil violence to support
their efforts for a more favorable political arrangement.
But because of the strong hold of the prijaji on the bureau-
cracy and the modern prijaji mode of the whole of the metro-
politan elite, this did not in fact result in more than
superficial changes in the style at the top, no matter how
extreme the aliran resentments expressed at the mass level.
The end result maintained the general cultural homogeneity
of the elite (if not the unity of its individual members)
while exacerbating mass communal tensions, contributing
neither to the general pacification of communal differences
nor to the maintenance of the mass clienteles' confidence in
their elite spokesmen.
In a broader sense, the Indonesian ruling elite was
homogeneous at the cost of being representative, for (in
contrast to Dutch cultural uniformity outside the ideological21
divisions) Indonesian society was highly heterogeneous in its
culture. The aliran division was, after all, based on Java-
nese contrasts; non-Javanese social divisions were expressed
in these terms only because of Java's weight in national
politics and culture. "Vertical" divisions existed outside
Java, sometimes quite analogous to those of the Javanese
aliran, but the alignment of Outer Island communities in
national politics depended more on their leaders' calcula-
tions of interest and advantage than on any real aliran ties
to the national parties. The strongest bonds thus tended to
be based on the "horizontal"--i.e., class--aspect of the
national parties' appeal, with bureaucratic and administra-
tive elements looking to the Nationalist PNI, urban and plan-
tation workers and politically aroused poorer peasants turn-
ing to the Communist PKI, and commercial and moneyed interests
gravitating to the Masjumi or the rural NU. Under Guided
Democracy, the Masjumi's initial domination of Outer Island
political activity declined with the banning of the party's
legal activities, the growing PNI hold on the non-Java
bureaucracy, and the PKI's industrious proselytization of
the lower classes; in the same period, the PNI and PKI be-
came less entirely Javanese organizations and thus less
capable of undertaking the settlement of their differences
on a Java-oriented verzuiling basis. Economic decline in
Java itself added to this pressure for a more "horizontal,"
class-oriented content to the parties, as people became in-
creasingly concerned to protect their economic positions.
Thus, although the overt trend of Guided Democracy politics
was towards increasing Javanization and NASAKOM-based
verzuiling, strong pressures developed underneath in quite
the opposite direction. The tension between the public and
the covert but massive tendencies of Indonesian politics in
this period may help to explain some of the violence of the
swing away from the Guided Democracy system accompanying
Sukarno's fall.
Indonesia did not possess the strong ties between elite
leadership and mass clientele which were important to the
maintenance of the verzuiling system in the Netherlands.
Tension resulted in the first place from the vast difference
between Indonesia's urban and rural cultural styles. The
metropolitan superculture, as we have seen, was a hybrid; it
did not possess the organic links with the folk culture which
the traditional high culture had had, and the new elite
assumed an ambivalent attitude towards the traditional world
which surrounded it.
The postrevolutionary ruling class held the initial
advantage that the great part of the Indonesian population
was politically inert, that the major cultural tradition was
highly deferential, and that the natural source of alternative22
leadership for the populace--the "feudal" regional elite--
was too sclerosed and discredited to offer an effective
challenge. But these factors helped to cover over the gap
between the capital-based leadership and the countryside;
they did not repair it. The emergence of modern provincial
elites presented a more positive means for linkage with the
mass of the population, but it also contained the threat of
a possible counter-elite challenge. In this, much depended
on whether such new sources of leadership could be brought
satisfactorily into a social chain headed by the metropolitan
elite, which would provide sufficient communication and
mobility to keep the members of the secondary leaderships
functioning as mediators rather than as saboteurs of metro-
politan elite rule. The mass political parties of the 1950's
attempted to create such a linkage, but, except for the PKI,
they decayed rapidly as effective hierarchies after the elec-
tions of the mid-1950's. Thereafter, there was very little
organized communication from below:	members of secondary
elites were bought off with the posts and perquisites of
Guided Democracy, were suppressed for having sympathized
with the 1958 rebellion, or were left to find their own way
in a period of general bureaucratic decay. The moods of the
population were apprehended and addressed by Sukarno, but
through a direct, emotional contact that bypassed all other
levels of leadership.
The Indonesian masses thus remained something of an un-
certain quantity to the leaders who represented them in the
capital:	there was generally little possibility for national
politicians to test the degree to which their prestige as
aliran spokesmen outweighed their clients' impatience with
their social distance and their inter-aliran compromising.
In the long run, the tendency of the postrevolutionary polit-
ical leaders was to place decreasing emphasis on cultivating
their mass following and more on maneuver in the insular
world of Djakarta politics. There, after all, the decisions
were made that could make or break careers, and as long as a
politician was recognized as an aliran leader by his col-
leagues in the national political elite, and especially by
Sukarno, it was nearly impossible for his position to be
challenged effectively by the aliran clientele below. As a
result, aliran representation in the Djakarta elite gradually
became something of a humbug; and since the members of that
elite were quite aware of this, their uncertainty of the
loyalty of their presumed followings outside the capital be-
came greater than ever, and their adherence to the tight
little world of Djakarta politics and to the central figure
of Sukarno became all the stronger. In the Guided Democracy
period, the claims of these leaders for popular approval came
to rest almost completely on their identification with
Sukarno, and their roles as direct representatives and23
pacifiers of the aliran atrophied in favor of their roles as
members of his entourage.
At the same time, the claims of the elite to authority
were undermined from two different directions. The very
powerful traditional sense of hierarchy and deference was
slowly being eroded by revolutionary rhetoric and the decay
of custom, while the modern claim of the elite to power--its
mastery of the expertise needed to run the country--was
brought into question by Indonesia’s economic and administra-
tive deterioration. Moreover, the reality and relevance of
representational elite power were challenged both by Sukarno's
personal ascendancy and by the increasing importance of two
political forces--the army and the Communist party--whose
leaders were only partially accepted into the politics of
the capital and whose ideological inclinations were hostile
to government based on elite-arranged communal compromise.
In the end, Djakarta politics and the metropolitan elite
world on which it was based became encapsulated, with only
tenuous and ambivalent links to Indonesian society outside;
and though efforts have been made after Sukarno's fall to
restore the representative and meliorative role of the elite,
they have so far done little more than illustrate its isola-
tion.
Although Guided Democracy was in one sense an attempt
to preserve the national elite, in another sense it under-
mined its support. Under that system, as we have seen,
Sukarno's rhetoric became the link between the political
center and the mass of the population, and that rhetoric
maintained the need for a continuing revolution, attacked
the corruption of the Western-educated and the Western-
thinking, and affirmed the ultimate power of the People as
the arbiter of legitimacy. As time went on, the members of
the postrevolutionary ruling class became increasingly un-
comfortable with the ultimate consequences of this appeal,
especially with an ageing President and an advancing PKI.
Furthermore, the Sukarnoist rhetoric was one-sided in terms
of its aliran appeal:	From the beginning, Islam found itself
rather in the position of an unwanted stepchild. In the
latter years of Guided Democracy, the public favor granted
by Sukarno to the PKI-abangan end of the Javanese spectrum
was sufficiently great that members of the Nationalist-
prijaji stream (and thus of the dominant element in the
metropolitan elite) began to ask themselves whether their
aliran sympathies for the abangan over against the santri
should be allowed to outweigh the growing threat of lower-
class unrest posed by the advance of the Rakjat under24
Communist aegis.21
Adding to these problems of elite-mass linkage was the
fact that--again in contrast to the experience of the Nether-
lands under verzuiling-- the socio-economic situation in post-
revolutionary Indonesia was quite unstable, so that it was
very hard for any lasting accommodation to be reached between
aliran spokesmen. Because available resources declined
steadily, political negotiations within the national elite
tended to be reduced to haggling over the division of shrink-
ing spoils, which did little to aid its effectiveness or
prestige as a ruling group. Within the mass, deprived of
any real sense of representation or means to vest frustra-
tion, the long-term deterioration caused tensions to build
up along economic and communal lines to the point where it
became problematic how long they could be controlled. The
Communist Party, which was better equipped than the others
for a dynamic social role by reason of its ideology, organi-
zation, and the incomplete acceptance of its leadership into
the MinM group of the Djakarta elite, was able to use these
circumstances to appeal on a class basis across aliran lines,
drawing first of all those from the Nationalist category,
culturally the closest to its abangan base, but also and
increasingly from groups to which it had no ties except on a
basis of class struggle.
Needless to say, this extension was perceived by the
representatives of the other aliran as a threat to their
interests; it was, in their eyes, a violation of the ethics
of communal politics and reflected ambition-bred indifference
to the need for maintaining the delicate aliran balance. The
isolation of the Djakarta elite from the masses of all aliran
made this roiling of the lower depths seem doubly dangerous.
21. The events proceeding from the land-reform campaign of
1964 provide a good illustration of this ambivalence on
the PNI-prijaji part, for on the one hand members of
that group were most anxious to deal the Communists a
blow for fomenting class unrest and on the other hand
they were disturbed by the emergence in East Java of
santri bands, under the quiet sponsorship of army and
religious leaders, which engaged in attacks on PKI--
i.e., abangan--villages. In traveling about Central
and East Java at the end of 1964 and beginning of 1965,
when the Muslim backlash was under way, I repeatedly
found Nationalists shifting in conversation from violent
class attack on the PKI to insistence that they must
ally with it against militant Islam, depending on whether
the land reform action or the Muslim reaction was men-
tioned at the moment.25
It was nearly impossible to accept the Communists’ argument
that a victory for the left would mean not social upheaval
but a more stable and prosperous life for all, and members
of the Indonesian "Establishment" therefore generally looked
dimly on Sukarno's increasing efforts to grant the Communist
leadership a place in the sun.
There was thus reason enough for the metropolitan elite
to feel uneasy--indeed, alarmed--for its position by 1965,
and even those who did not have the Westernizing orientation
that was the open target of the Guided Democracy campaigns
could ponder whether they might not better detach themselves
from Sukarno and his system. When the October 1965 coup
came, it was therefore not difficult for the great part of
the national elite to back the army's bid for power. Indeed,
the months following the affair saw the elite assume a posi-
tion that reversed its normal meliorative role, for, tacitly
or actively, its members lent encouragement to the aliran
massacres which formed a major element in the anti-PKI cam-
paign. In the heat of the time, this rousing of communal
emotions probably appeared a price worth paying for the sake
of dealing the gravest possible blow to the political move-
ment that, having acquired an aliran base, had gone on to
organize the forces at the bottom of society against the
ruling class.
Social, economic, and political concessions were of
course demanded by the military as the price of its support
for the metropolitan elite, to which its leaders only par-
tially belonged;22 but many of these had already been granted
22. A few postrevolutionary army leaders --mostly top staff
officers--came from families with high social positions.
By and large, however, officers generally came from a
somewhat lower social and educational background than
their equivalents in the civil service. This difference,
which was the cause of some feelings of antagonism be-
tween the two groups, began to be mended by the end of
the 1950's, when it became apparent that the military
was going to play a major role in Indonesian affairs
and when therefore elite families at all levels began,
in traditional fashion, to secure their position by
entering into business and marriage arrangements with
military officers. The rapid spread of the army's role
in the country's economy and administration also pro-
vided the wealth and power for officers to become in-
creasingly absorbed into the social elite. But they re-
mained, at least throughout the Guided Democracy period,
parvenus in civilian elite eyes, and traditional prijaji
feelings against men of violence were reinforced by the26
in the process of securing the army’s cooperation under
Guided Democracy. Furthermore, army rule (at least under
the conservative style represented by Suharto) required the
civilian elite to function as a source of legitimation, ex-
pertise, and responsibility, so that there was little ques-
tion of its being pushed entirely aside. In return the army
could protect the national elite from the possible conse-
quences of its inadequate rooting in the larger society by
the physical suppression of any real challenge. The country
was accordingly depoliticized and entrusted to the hands of
elite managers in the hopes that under their guidance econom-
ic and social development would be favorable enough to make
possible, in the long run, a stable consensual government.
This, however far it was from the more populist ideals of
the revolution, met one main ambition of the national elite--
to achieve the position once held by the colonial Dutch, free
to administer without undue concern for the ambitions of
lesser leaders and for the susceptibilities of the unfamiliar
mass.
Secularization and Interest Orientation
One question that has been asked in connection with the
post-coup political changes and the long-term impact of cul-
tural modernization and economic pressure is whether com-
munally-based political allegiance is not giving way to
interest orientation and specifically to class struggle.23
This raises a fundamental question about the relation-
ship between the aliran and the political movements:	If the
cultural sources of aliran identification existed prior to
the parties and represent fundamental points of identifica-
tion, is it possible for a political movement to attract sub
stantial popular allegiance without at the same time appeal-
ing along aliran lines? If it is possible, does this mean
that the communal identification has become less important
in the society as a whole or that other factors have become
so urgent as to temporarily overshadow the continuing aliran
alignments? How fixed are the existing aliran? Is an
consciousness that the power and positions they normally
monopolized were passing, perhaps necessarily, but none-
theless regrettably, to outsiders.
23. See W. F. Wertheim, ’’From Aliran Towards Class Struggle
in the Countryside of Java"; and also his "Indonesia
Before and After the Untung Coup," Pacific Affairs,
XXXIX, nos. 1 and 2 (Spring-Summer 1966), pp. 115-127.27
expansion or contraction of their number possible, or a major
shift in the manner in which cultural and ideological cleav-
ages are linked?
These questions can only be answered by history, but
there are a few things we may keep in mind in considering
the various possibilities. In the first place, it seems un-
likely that new aliran of any importance will arise, simply'
because these allegiances are based on primary identifica-
tions, which are now challenged by a purer interest orienta-
tion rather than by new modes of primordial loyalty. The
major new political force is the army, but unlike its Com-
munist rival it has been incapable of making itself into a
mass spokesman for either aliran or other kinds of civilian
groups. During the late 1950's, at the time of its first
major penetration into civilian politics, and again at the
time of Sukarno's overthrow a substantial number of civilians,
seeing protection, salvation, or opportunity in army-promoted
mass organizations, shifted allegiance to them. There thus
seemed at least briefly to be a basis for the establishment
of a permanent army-oriented complex of civilian organiza-
tions.2** In fact, however, this did not evolve; such civil-
ian support as the army has been able to muster has been
temporary and opportunistic. The reason for this would seem
to be that no civilian aliran or substantial interest group
finds a natural expression in the military.
24. In one study, Clifford Geertz suggested that the army
was emerging as "yet one more aliran." "The Javanese
Village," in G. William Skinner (ed.), Local, Ethnic and
National Loyalties in Village Indonesia (New Haven:
Yale Southeast Asia Studies^ 1959), p. 40. This seems
to be in part the product of the somewhat unclear defi-
nition of aliran used by Geertz at that point:	He de-
clared it to consist of "a political party surrounded
by a set of voluntary social organizations formally or
informally linked to it," but also--more sweepingly and
I think more accurately--stated it to be "more than a
mere political party, certainly more than a mere ideolo-
gy; it is a comprehensive pattern of social integration"
(p. 37). At the time Geertz wrote, the army was emerg-
ing as a distinct force in Indonesian civilian politics
and was promoting a range of mass organizations and
fronts; its leaders were buoyed by the conviction that
they could clean up the mess made by the party system,
and they had not yet been demoralized by the realization
that their forces did not possess expertise of the kind
needed to solve government problems and that their
strength could be sapped by corruption as easily as
could the civilians'.28
Because of its profession, the army tends to be some-
thing of a closed corporation. It has its own style and set
of interests, which are not open to civilian participation,
and both military esprit de corps and the knowledge that guns
mean power make for a condescending attitude toward those in
civilian life. The army's desire to play a broad political
role has been countered by its concern to insulate its mem-
bers from civilian influence, while its emphasis on hierarchy
makes it peculiarly insensitive to voices from below. It
has little ideological appeal for members of the existing
aliran. Its role as supporter of the status quo recommends
it to the elite, but prijaji values are strongly opposed to
military ones, and moreover army men appear as competitors
of the prijaji for bureaucratic office. Though many Javanese
officers are strongly oriented toward the Abangan cultural
world, the army's persecution of the Communists, which in-
volved a santri attack on the abangan population, compromised
the army as such with the abangan mass; moreover, in its
present role as enforcer of the status quo the military can-
not also appear believably as the spokesman for peasant
grievances. The army made use of santri discontent immedi-
ately before and during Sukarno's overthrow, but its officers
are overwhelmingly secular or abangan; they have had long
experience fighting Muslim rebellions and distrust militant
Islam; and the army, as the most modern and technologically
oriented institution in Indonesia, appears as a strongly
secularizing element.
Such ideological appeal as the army has had has been to
quite small groups who have looked to it as providing a mana-
gerial elite (a position taken by some of the Westernized
PSI socialists) or a millenary force preparing the way for
the rule of a tough-minded technocratic younger generation
(as in the student support for the New Order militarists of
the initial post-coup period). The army's position has be-
come intertwined with that of secular conservatism, and its
main function has become the support of the social order;
its power is dominant, but it has not been able to become
the ideological heart of any segment of Indonesian society.
In spite of assiduous efforts at developing and inculcating
a distinctive army ideology, it has not even been able to
perform the aliran function of representing a cultural world
to its own members.
What seems more likely than the formation of new aliran
--and what indeed is already taking place--is a shift of
emphasis within the existing streams, leading to a blurring
of the earlier distinctions between cultural variants. Thus
we find that identification with Islam as an aliran is af-
fected not only by the drain of secularization but also by a
shift from traditionalist to modernist interpretations of29
the religion.25 Similarly, one reason for the substantial
loss of Nationalist strength to the Communists was a declin-
ing tendency on the part of peasant Javanese to follow the
prijaji (and thus the Nationalist) lead in favor of identifi-
cation with a movement which more directly represented their
abangan peers. Such shifts as these are linked to an overall
process of detraditionalization and social change, but they
do not in themselves represent a decline in communal identi-
fication:	it is altogether possible, for example, for the
new-made Islamic modernist to be more fervent in his reli-
gious identification than he was as a somewhat disoriented
Muslim traditionalist.
At the same time, a general trend toward secularization
and interest identification effects the political-cultural
relationship within each aliran in the direction of making
the aliran more ’’horizontal"--giving it more the aspect of a
class rather than communal representative. Of course, this
process need not take place with equal speed and results
within the individual aliran. Moreover, the Dutch example
shows that it is possible for communalism to remain a viable
basis for politics well into a society’s modern history.
Perhaps the key to the ability for communal politics to en-
dure in Indonesia lies not so much in detraditionalization
per se as in the way in which economic pressures and anomie
combine with trends toward cultural secularization.
It is evident, for example, that increased consciousness
of interest has not so far been accompanied by a decline in
tension between Santri and Abangan. Anomie has led to a
grasping for tradition, particularly in the post-Sukarno era
of ideological drift. Moreover, the identification of Islam
with commercial and landed wealth gives an economic connota-
tion to anti-santri feeling, so that growing secularization
does not necessarily make the santri-abangan dichotomy seem
irrelevant. Finally, aliran differences are still politi-
cally useful, and so have found their spokesmen. Would-be
leaders from the lower ranks, perceiving their chances for
automatic acceptance into the ruling elite to be small, have
found roles as militant representatives of santri aliran
demands. Prijaji politicians, for their part, have sought
to renew their loosening hold on the abangan peasantry by
stressing the common danger from aggressive Islam. As a
result, the Santri-Abangan dichotomy has been strongly
25. For discussions of this development, see Lance Castles,
"Notes on the Islamic School at Gontor," Indonesia, I
(April 1966), pp. 30-45; and also James Siegel, TKe
Rope of God (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1969), especially pp. 81-133.30
expressed in post-Sukarno Indonesia in spite of official
attempts to pacify it; antagonism between the prijaji and
abangan groups, on the other hand, has been driven under-
ground as expressing impermissible class conflict. Whether
the lack of open articulation of prijaji-abangan differences
means that consciousness of them has ceased to spread or has
been channeled effectively into Santri-Abangan hostility is
another question:	we have seen how in the Guided Democracy
period the subterranean flow of political consciousness was
in quite another direction from the official ideological
course.
As for the permanence of the political-cultural combina-
tion reflected in the major aliran, we should note first of
all that these have been remarkably persistent in postrevolu-
tionary Indonesia. Nothing has really replaced the Masjumi
as the political representative of the modernist santri since
that party's dissolution in 1960, and nothing so far appears
likely to substitute for the Communist Party as the repre-
sentative of the abangan folk of Java, though members of
both these banned groups have sought shelter in other organi-
zations for protective or careerist reasons. In part, this
reflects the encapsulation of national politics:	if mass
loyalties were not given to a group in the 1950's, that group
is not conceived as a major force now, and it is unlikely
that this will change unless elections or some other form of
renewing the links between elite and mass are brought about.
In part, too, Indonesia's postcolonial experience has
tended to reinforce the original identification of political
and cultural cleavages in such a way as to make the separa-
tion of party and aliran difficult. If a person was con-
sidered to belong to a particular aliran for any one of a
number of reasons, he was more or less automatically held to
be a follower of the political movement which generally
represented it, and he shared willy-nilly in that party's
gains and losses. The party thus came to be the representa-
tive of the cultural community in a very immediate sense; an
attack on it meant an attack--spiritually and often physical-
ly- -on a way of life; and this has meant that allegiance to
the political group, though it might rest on no formal mem-
bership or programmatic loyalty, has had a stubborn if under-
ground persistence.
On the other hand, we should also bear in mind that
communal allegiances have not been the sole source of the
major parties' strength and that it has been possible to
appeal across these boundaries on grounds of interest--as
witness the Communists' rapid extension of their support be-
yond an abangan foundation following the general election of
1955. Moreover, though the identification of a particular31
community with a political party has tended to be stable in
the postcolonial period, the present pattern did not always
exist, and there is no reason to be sure it is now immutable.
Although historical accident played an important part in the
process by which aliran loyalties were formed, the identifi-
cation of culture groups with modern political ideologies
was by no means entirely arbitrary, and it is therefore at
least theoretically possible that the assumption of a radi-
cally different role by a major party might result in a shift
in its aliran sources of support.26 Militating against such
change, however, are the long period of public identification
of specific political ideologies with certain aliran and the
communal violence following the October 1965 coup, which
probably did a good deal to rigidify political-cultural
identification at the mass level.
Aliran identification, while it provides a base of sup-
port relatively impervious to persecution by the authorities,
creates an enormous problem for any political movement trying
to mobilize for social revolutionary purposes, for it is ex-
tremely likely that efforts at open class struggle will dis-
solve into communal conflict. Certainly the upholders of
the status quo, should they feel their power failing, would
have every reason to salvage their position by encouraging
communal feelings against the aliran most identified with
26. For example, the two centers of Communist rebellion in
1926-1927 were the strongly Islamic areas of West Java
and West Sumatra, which in the 1951-1965 period were
centers of opposition to Communism. Furthermore, a fair
amount of the Communist cadres in those areas came from
petty trader or rich peasant background, and a number
were religious activists. The principal reason for the
support for the PKI in those areas appears to have been
that that party represented the strongest opposition to
colonial rule--i.e., to control and taxation from Bata-
via (Djakarta). In the postrevolutionary period, these
areas continued to be foci of resistance to control by
the capital; but in the same period, the Communists ap-
peared as strong supporters of Djakarta. Since 1965,
the PKI's position has been reversed; it is now the
symbol of opposition to the government's authority.
Does this mean that it will also garner significant
anti-centralist support, which would greatly increase
its strength outside Java? There are other factors in-
volved, and many communal allegiances have now been
sealed in blood; but it is worth bearing in mind as a
caution against taking the aliran-party identifications
as eternal and inseparable.32
revolutionary challenge. On the other hand, the metropolitan
elite is both isolated politically from the rest of Indone-
sian society and represents a broadly unsatisfactory status
quo, and this presents revolutionaries with the possibility
of recruiting younger-generation activists from the econom-
ically less favored segments of the major aliran for the
pursuit of popular salvation through the destruction of the
ruling class.
This sort of "liberation front" appeal, utilizing some
more socially radical version of the Nationalism, Islam, and
Marxism arguments for unity in the revolutionary cause and
relying on the sense of social dislocation and economic
urgency to transform communal distrust into mutual hatred
for the rulers, would seem a more likely means of overcoming
the revolutionaries' disadvantage than would an approach
that relied on the probably distant day when aliran identifi-
cation no longer really matters. Whether such a movement,
assuming it could be successfully launched, would be able to
maintain both unity and discipline would presumably depend
on whether its leadership lay in fact with an effective and
noncommunal core or whether it was, as in the independence
movement, a coalition of relatively independent and ideologi-
cally diverse actors.
In terms of revolutionary strategy, the arguments of
Nationalism, Islam, and Marxism may thus still have meaning;
but the essay's assumptions as to the basis for Indonesian
political stability are probably less durable. Perhaps they
never really were relevant, given the social and economic
pressures to which Indonesia was subjected from the outset
of its independence. In any case, the elite cohesiveness,
authority, and exclusive control of politics essential to
the maintenance of a successful verzuiling were severely
eroded in the postrevolutionary period, until, as we have
seen, the elite grew to be a political appendage first of
Sukarno and then of the army. To revive the role of the
ruling class as an effective representative and negotiator
of aliran differences would almost certainly require an ex-
tensive injection of new blood from below--thus reducing the
level of elite cohesiveness--and would bring with it all the
destabilizing factors inherent in popular politics in a time
of transition and hardship. The potential for destabilization
has already been illustrated in the difficulty experienced
in containing militant Islam since the 1965 coup:	although
that aliran has been prevented from making more than minor
political gains at the center against the prijaji-oriented
civilian bureaucrats and the secularly-inclined military
elite, it has been a source of constant pressure on them and
a sometimes violent pursuer of power in the outlying regions.
It is unlikely, given this experience, that the elite will33
summon up communal passions again, save, in extremis, as a
desperate maneuver to divide the forces of social revolution.
Aliran political activity also poses an intrinsic threat
to the unity of the army, on whose monolithic quality the
state's stability now largely depends. Aliran affections
form a tie between the military and civilian worlds, for the
ranks particularly, but also for many of the more culturally
parochial officers; they form a means of subverting loyalties
from military to civilian ends, and they also are a basis on
which discontented military men can quickly gain a civilian
following to back their bids for power. Consequently, the
military leadership as well as the metropolitan civilian
elite has every reason to attempt to divert politics away
from too strong an emphasis on aliran orientation. A con-
servative regime may strive to maintain a constricted form
of aliran representation in order to prevent the total
estrangement of the elite from the masses and to preserve an
alternative to class-based solidarity. A radical government
might seek to replace both communal and interest representa-
tion by the monolithic organization of the populace. But
when elite consensus no longer exists, or carries insuffi-
cient weight to recommend its compromises to the mass of the
population, a nondisruptive communal politics cannot be
maintained.
London
November 1969
Ruth T. McVeyNATIONALISM, ISLAM AND MARXISM
Like the son of Bima,1 who was born in an age of strug-
gle, Young Indonesia2 now sees the light of day, at a time
when the peoples of Asia are deeply dissatisfied with their
lot--dissatisfied with their economic lot, dissatisfied with
their political lot and dissatisfied with their lot in every
other respect!
The age of being satisfied with conditions as they are
has passed.
A new age, a youthful age has arrived, like the dawn of
a clear morning.
The conservative theory that "the little man must be
satisfied with his lot, content to sit in the background of
historical events and offer himself and his possessions in
the service of those who stand out in front," is no longer
accepted by the people of Asia. Their faith that the men
who rule them today are true "guardians" who will one day
relinquish their "guardianship" is also wearing thin. Less
and less do they believe that those who rule them today are
really "elder brothers" who will voluntarily let them go free
when they are "mature" and have "come of age."
This disbelief is based on the knowledge, is based on
the conviction that the primary cause of colonization is not
the desire for fame nor the wish to see the world; nor is it
the longing for freedom, nor population pressures faced by
the colonizers in their own countries, as Gustav Klemm would
have it.3 The prime cause of colonization is the search for
gain.
1.	The popular hero of the wajang shadow-play, Raden
Gatutkatja.
2.	The magazine in which this article originally appeared
was called Suluh Indonesia Muda (The Torch of Young Indo-
nesia) .
3.	Gustav Klemm (1802-1867) was a German historian whose ten-
volume Culturgeschichte der Menschheit (Cultural History
of Mankind) had a considerable reputation in its time.
3536
"Colonization is primarily the result of shortages of
goods in the home country," according to Dietrich Schafer.1*
It was these shortages which caused the Europeans to seek
their fortunes abroad, and explains why they colonized those
countries which would yield them a profitable livelihood.
And this is the reason, of course, why it is very difficult
to believe in the emancipation of these colonies by their
colonizers. A man does not readily give up his source of
livelihood, since in doing so he signs his own death warrant.
So it is that year after year, decade after decade, the
peoples of Europe have held dominion over the countries of
Asia. For decades, profits from Asia have found their way
back to Europe, especially to Western Europe, which has
thereby amassed untold wealth.
Such is the tragic history of the colonies! It is the
realization of this tragedy which has awakened the colonized
peoples. For, even though outwardly defeated and submissive,
the Spirit of Asia is eternal. The Spirit of Asia is still
alive, like an inextinguishable flame. It is the realization
of this tragedy that has now become the inner spirit of the
people’s movement in Indonesia, a movement with a single
common goal, yet with three aspects--Nationalist, Islamic
and Marxist.
It is the responsibility of each and every one of us to
study these three aspects, to determine the relationship be-
tween them, to prove that in a colonial situation hostility
between them is pointless, and to show that these three
"waves" can work together to form a single, gigantic and
irresistible tidal wave.
Whether or not we will succeed in carrying out this
heavy and glorious responsibility is not for us to determine.
Nevertheless, we must never abandon our efforts, we must
never stop trying to fulfill our obligation to help unite
these forces into a single movement. I am convinced that it
is only this unity which will bring us to the realization of
our dreams:	a Free Indonesia.
I do not know how this unity will be achieved or what
form it will take. But of one thing I am certain:	the ship
that will take us to a Free Indonesia is the Ship of Unity!
Perhaps we have as yet no Mahatma, a helmsman who can build
4. Dietrich Schafer (1845-1929) was a German historian
noted for his Weltgeschichte der Neuzeit (Modern World
History).37
and steer this Ship of Unity.5 Yet I am convinced that even-
tually the day will come when a Mahatma will appear in our
midst. That is why I am proud to do my part in searching
for and smoothing the way toward this unity. That indeed is
the purpose of this short article.
Nationalism, Islam and Marxism
These are the principles embraced by the peoples' move-
ments all over Asia. These are the concepts which have be-
come the spirit of the movements in Asia as well as of the
movements here in Indonesia.
The Budi Utomo, the "late" Nationaal Indische Partij--
which is still "alive"--the Partai Sarekat Islam, the Per-
serikatan Minahasa, the Partai Komunis Indonesia, and many
other parties each have their own spirit of Nationalism,
Islam or Marxism.6 Can these spirits work together in a
5.	Sukarno is clearly alluding to Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
(1869-1948), and the central role that he played in the
Indian nationalist movement of the time. The honorific
title of Mahatma (Great Soul) was given to Gandhi by his
fellow nationalists because of his extraordinary personal
qualities and his unifying leadership.
6.	Budi Utomo, founded on May 20, 1908, is usually regarded
as the first modern nationalist organization in Indone-
sian history. Javanese in orientation, it was cautious
and cooperative in its attitude towards the colonial
authorities. The Nationaal Indische Partij (National
Indies Party) was the new name given in July 1919 to the
older Indische Partij. The objective of the party was
the independence of the Netherlands Indies, on the basis
of cooperation between all racial groups residing there.
It drew its main strength from the Eurasian community.
Sukarno here alludes to the fact that most of its top
leaders were exiled or imprisoned by the Dutch colonial
government. The Partai Sarekat Islam (Islamic Associa-
tion Party) was established in February 1923 by anti-
communist leaders of the Sarekat Islam, which was in the
process of disintegrating due to the conflict between
its Marxist and Islamic wings. The Perserikatan Minahasa
(Minahassan Association) was founded on Java in August
1912, to represent the interests of migrant Menadonese
from North Sulawesi. The Partai Komunis Indonesia (Indo-
nesian Communist Party) was formed on May 23, 1920.38
colonial system to form one Great Spirit, the Spirit of
Unity? A Spirit of Unity that will lead us to the arena of
Greatness?
In colonial territories can the Nationalist movement be
joined with the Islamic movement, which essentially denies
the nation? Can it be allied with Marxism, which proclaims
an international struggle?
Under colonial systems can Islam, as a religion, coop-
erate with Nationalism, which stresses the nation, and with
Marxism, which teaches materialism?
Will we be successful in our efforts to bring together
the Budi Utomo, which is so patient, gentle and moderate,
with the PKI whose thrust is so forceful and whose struggle
is so militant and radical? The Budi Utomo, which is so
evolutionary by nature, and the PKI, which, though very
small, has been hounded and repressed by its enemies, who
have apparently taken to heart Al. Carthill's warning that
"rebellions are usually the work of minorities, indeed of
tiny minorities."7
Nationalism! Nationhood!
In 1882 Ernest Renan expressed his views on the concept
of the nation.8 A nation, he said, has a soul, an intellec-
tual foundation, which consists of two things:	first of all,
a people must have shared a common history; secondly, a
people must possess the will and desire to live as one.
Neither race, language, religion, common needs nor state
boundaries make a nation.
In recent years, aside from such writers as Karl Kautsky
and Karl Radek, it has been Otto Bauer above all who has
studied the concept of the nation.9
7.	Al. Carthill was the pseudonym of Bennet Christian Hunt-
ington Calcraft Kennedy (d. 1935), a writer and critic
of conditions in India under British Imperial rule.
8.	Ernest Renan (1823-1892)--the celebrated French historian
and philosopher.
9.	Karl Radek (1885-1939)--the well-known Bolshevik journal-
ist and Comintern luminary. Karl Kautsky (1854-1938)--
the prominent revisionist theoretician of the German
Social Democratic Party, and editor of the influential39
"A nation is a unity of attitudes which derives from a
unity of historical experience," he says.
Nationalism is the conviction, the consciousness of a
people, that they are united in one group, one nation.
Whatever the explanations advanced by these master
theorists, it is certain that nationalist feeling creates a
sense of self-confidence, and this is something absolutely
essential if we are to defend ourselves in the struggle to
overcome conditions that would defeat us.
It was this self-confidence which made the Budi Utomo
people steadfast and determined in their efforts to achieve
a Greater Java; it is this self-confidence which endows the
revolutionary nationalists with the will to seek a Greater
Indies or a Free Indonesia.
Can the feeling of nationalism--which, because of this
very self-confidence so easily turns into national arrogance
and no less easily takes the further step of becoming racial
arrogance, even though the concept of race is utterly differ-
ent from the concept of nation, since race is a biological,
while nationalist is a sociological concept--in the struggle
of the colonized peoples can Nationalism be coupled with
Islam, which in its essence knows no nation and which in
fact has been embraced by a variety of nations and races?
Under colonial systems, can Nationalism ally itself with
Marxism, which is international and inter-racial?
With full conviction, I answer:	"Yes!"
Although Nationalism by its very nature excludes all
parties who do not share the "desire to live as one"; al-
though Nationalism actually belittles all groups which do not
feel that they are "one group, one nation" with the people;
although Nationalism in principle rejects all attitudes
which do not stem from a "unity of historical experience,"
we should not forget that the men who built the Islamic and
Marxist movements here in Indonesia, as well as those who
guide the Nationalist movement, all share the "desire to
live as one," and that, along with the Nationalists, these
Die Neue Zeit (New Times). Otto Bauer (1881-1938)--a
leading theoretician of the Austrian Social Democratic
Party, whose book, Die Nationalitatenfrage und die
osterreichische Sozialdemokratie (The Nationalities Ques-
tion and Austrian Social Democracy), first published in
1906, was very influential in the European socialist
movement of the time.40
people feel they are members of "one group, one nation." We
must also not forget that all elements in our movement,
whether they are Nationalist, Islamic or Marxist, have shared
for hundreds of years a "unity of historical experience."
For hundreds of years they have shared a common experience
of bondage. We must also not overlook the fact that it is
this "unity of historical experience," this common lot, which
creates the feeling of "belonging." It is of course true
that group feelings can give rise to quarrels and divisions;
it is true that till now there have never been strong feel-
ings of friendship between the different movements in Indone-
sia. But it is not the purpose of this article to prove that
quarrels cannot occur. If we want to quarrel, it is surely
not difficult to find a pretext for doing so right away!
The purpose of this article is rather to prove that
friendship can be attained.
Let Nationalists who exclude and belittle all movements
which are not confined to Nationalism be guided by the words
of Karamchand Gandhi:	"For me, my love of my country is
part of my love for all mankind. I am a patriot because I
am a human being, and act as a human being. I do not exclude
anyone." This was the secret which enabled Gandhi to unite
Moslems with Hindus, Parsis, Jains and Sikhs, all in all a
population of more than three hundred millions, six times
the population of Indonesia and almost one fifth of the human
beings on this earth.
There is nothing to prevent Nationalists from working
together with Moslems and Marxists. Look at the abiding
relationship between the Nationalist Gandhi and the Pan-
Islamicists, Maulana Mohamed Ali and Shaukat Ali!10 When
the non-cooperation movement in India was at its height,
they were virtually inseparable. Look at the Chinese Nation-
alist (Kuomintang) Party's readiness to accept the Marxist
10. Maulana Mohamed Ali (1878-1931) and Maulana Shaukat Ali
(1873-?) were the two brothers who led the ill-fated
Khalifat (Caliphate) Pan-Islamic movement in India in
the early 1920's. Gandhi supported their movement until
it collapsed with Kemal Ataturk's abolition of the Cal-
iphate. They in turn backed his Swaraj movement. On
his release from prison in 1923, Maulana Mohamed Ali
was elected President of the Indian National Congress
with Gandhi's support. By 1928, however, growing antag-
onism between their respective Islamic and Hindu con-
stituencies created a breach between them which was
never to be healed. Sukarno was writing just before
this breach became apparent.41
ideas of opposition to militarism, opposition to imperialism
and opposition to capitalism!11
I do not expect Nationalists to change their views and
become Moslems or Marxists; nor is it my intention to order
Marxists and Moslems to turn around and become Nationalists.
Rather my dream is harmony, unity between these three groups
Actually, provided we have the will, there is no lack
of ways to achieve this unity. Determination, confidence in
each other's sincerity and consciousness of the truth of the
saying "Harmony brings security" (this is the best possible
bridge to unity) are strong enough to overcome all the dif-
ferences and misgivings between the various groups within
our movement.
I repeat:	There is nothing to prevent Nationalists
from working together with Moslems and Marxists.
A true Nationalist whose love for his country is based
on a knowledge of the world economic system and of history
and does not arise from sheer national arrogance, a National
ist who is not a chauvinist, necessarily rejects all forms
of narrow-minded exclusivism. A true Nationalist whose
nationalism is not merely a copy of Western Nationalism, but
stems rather from a feeling of love for humanity and his
fellow-men, a nationalist who receives his feeling of nation
alism as an inspiration12 and who puts it into practice as a
matter of duty and service, is immune to petty and narrow
views. For him, this feeling of love for his country is
something vast and all-encompassing--like the atmosphere,
which has room for everything needed to sustain the life of
each living thing.
Alas, why is it that the love Indonesian nationalists
bear their country turns to hatred when they encounter Indo-
nesians of Moslem persuasion? Why does their love turn into
hostility when they meet Indonesian Marxists? Is there no
place in their hearts for the nationalism of Gopal Krishna
Gokhale, Mahatma Gandhi or Chitta Ranjan Das?13
11.	Once again, Sukarno was fortunate in the timing of his
article, since the bloody break between the Kuomintang
and the Chinese Communist Party took place early the
following year (April 1927) .
12.	Sukarno uses the Javanese term wahju, which carries the
connotation of divine inspiration.
13.	Gopal Krishna Gokhale (1866-1915) was a well-known42
We must at all costs avoid embracing a jingoistic
nationalism such as that of Arya-Samaj, which split and
divided the Hindus and Moslems in India.11* This type of
jingoistic nationalalism will "certainly end in its own de-
struction," since "nationalism can only achieve its goals if
it is based on higher principles."
Indeed, it is only a true Eastern nationalism which
should be embraced by true Eastern nationalists. European
nationalism--which is an aggressive nationalism, a national-
ism that only pursues its own selfish interests, a commercial
nationalism obsessed with profit and loss--will surely end
in defeat, will certainly end in its own destruction.
Is there any valid objection to true Nationalists coop-
erating with Moslems on the grounds that Islam's supra-
national and supra-territorial character transcends particu-
lar nationalities and nations? Does the international nature
of Islam constitute a hindrance to the development of nation-
alism?
Many of our nationalists forget that the nationalist
and Islamic movements in Indonesia--indeed in all of Asia--
had the same origin, as I explained at the beginning of this
article. Both originated in a strong desire to resist the
West, or, more precisely, Western capitalism and imperialism.
So they are really not enemies, but allies. How much more
noble is the nationalism of Prof. T. L. Vaswami, a non-Mos-
lem,15 who writes:	"If Islam is sick, the Spirit of Eastern
Freedom will surely suffer too, since the more the Moslem
countries lose their freedom, the more European imperialism
will stifle the Spirit of Asia. However, I have faith in
the Asia of old; I believe that her Spirit will emerge
Congress politician and moderate nationalist of the
older, pre-Gandhi generation. Chitta Ranjan Das (1870-
1925) was a more radically inclined nationalist poli-
tician and journalist, who worked with Gandhi in the
non-cooperation movement of the 1920's.
14.	Arya-Samaj (Society of Aryans) was a fundamentalist
reform sect of Hinduism established in 1875 by Swami
Dayanand Saraswati (1824-1883) in Bombay. It stressed
the Vedic tradition, opposed the caste system and the
segregation of the untouchables, and was strongly op-
posed to Christianity, Islam and Puranic Hinduism.
15.	T. L. Vaswami (1879-?) was a highly respected Hindu
philosopher and religious teacher.43
victorious. Islam is international:	and if Islam is free,
then our nationalism will be strengthened by the entire force
of this international faith."
And that is not all. Many of our nationalists forget
that a Moslem, wherever he may be in the Dar al-Islam,16 is
obliged by his religion to work for the welfare of the people
in whose country he resides. These nationalists also forget
that a Moslem who truly practices Islam, whether he is an
Arab, an Indian, an Egyptian or of any other nationality, is
bound, so long as he lives in Indonesia, to work for Indone-
sia's welfare! "Wherever a Moslem resides, however far from
his country of birth, he remains in this new country a part
of the Islamic people, a part of the union of Islam. Wher-
ever a Moslem lives, he must love, and he must work for, the
needs of that country and its people."
This is Islamic Nationalism! The nationalist who is
hostile to Islam of this kind is mean-spirited and narrow-
minded. He is mean-spirited and narrow-minded because he is
hostile to a principle which, although international and
inter-racial, obliges all its adherents in Indonesia, regard-
less of their national origin, to love and to work for the
needs of Indonesia and her people.
Is there any valid objection to true Nationalists work-
ing together with Marxists on the grounds that Marxism is
international?
A Nationalist who is reluctant to stand alongside of
and to cooperate with Marxists reveals his acute lack of
knowledge of the dynamics of world politics and history. He
forgets that the origin of the Marxist movement in Indonesia
or in Asia is the same as the origin of his own movement.
He forgets that the direction of his own movement often coin-
cides with the course of the Marxist movement. He forgets
that hostility towards his Marxist compatriots is equivalent
to rejecting a traveling-companion and to increasing the
number of his enemies. He forgets and fails to understand
the meaning of the attitude of his brothers in other parts
of Asia. For example, the late Dr. Sun Yat-sen, a very great
Nationalist leader, was delighted to cooperate with the Marx-
ists, although he was convinced that a Marxist order could
not at that time be instituted in China, because conditions
there were not yet ripe. Do I need to give further proof
that Nationalism--whether as a principle which arises from
16. Dar al-Islam, strictly speaking, means Abode of Islam,
or House of Islam. More generally, it is used to refer
to the international Moslem community.44
"the desire to live as one," or as the consciousness of a
people that they belong to a single group, a single nation-
ality, or as a unity of attitudes resulting from a common
historical experience--do I need to give further proof that
Nationalism can ally itself with Islam and Marxism, provided
that its adherents are willing to do so? Do I need to cite
further examples of the attitudes of champions of Nationalism
in other countries, who walk hand in hand with Moslems and
have close relationships with Marxists?
I think not! I believe that this article, although
brief and far from perfect, is already clear enough for those
of our Nationalists who really want unity. I believe that
all young Nationalists stand beside me. I believe, too,
that there are many old-fashioned Nationalists who also want
unity; only their lack of faith in the durability of such
unity discourages them from struggling to achieve it. It is
particularly to them that this article is addressed; it is
above all for them that it is intended.
I am not writing for Nationalists who do not want unity.
I leave this type of Nationalist to the judgment of history.
Islam
Like the break of day after the darkness of night, like
the close of the Dark Ages, two great figures lit up the
Moslem world in the nineteenth century. These two figures,
whose names will forever be inscribed in the history of
Islam, were Sheikh Mohammed 'Abduh, Rector of Al-Azhar Uni-
versity,17 and al-Sayyid Jaman al-Din al-Afghani,18 two
17.	Sheikh Mohammed 'Abduh (1849-1905), Rector of Al-Azhar
University in Cairo and Grand Mufti of Egypt, was the
spiritual father of the movement to re-interpret Islam
in the light of modern conditions. In his fatwa he con-
sistently stressed the need to abandon blind obedience
(taqlid) to mediaeval incrustations on Islamic doctrine
and toapply individual rationality to the problems
facing Islam in the modern world.
18.	Al-Sayyid Jamal al-Din al-Afghani (1838-1897), philoso-
pher, journalist and politician, was probably the most
remarkable Moslem figure of the nineteenth century. His
youth was spent in Afghanistan, but his involvement in
the Afghan civil wars forced him to flee to Constanti-
nople in 1870. After lecturing at the university there
for a while, he was accused of beeing a free-thinker and45
champions of the Pan-Islamic movement, who awakened and re-
generated the Moslem peoples all over Asia from their state
of darkness and decline. Although the views of these two
heroes differed slightly--al-Sayyid Jamal al-Din al-Afghani
was more radical than Sheikh Mohammed 'Abduh--it was they who
revived the political aspects of Islam, especially al-Sayyid
Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, who first inspired feelings of re-
sistance to the danger of Western imperialism in the hearts
of the Moslem peoples. It was these two men, again particu-
larly al-Sayyid Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, who first preached
a solid Moslem front against the peril of Western imperialism.
Right up to his death in 1896, al-Sayyid Jamal al-Din
al-Afghani, the brave lion of Pan-Islam, worked unceasingly
to sow the seeds of Islam everywhere, to sow the seeds of
resistance to Western greed, and to implace the conviction
that for successful resistance, Moslems would have to "acquire
the technique of Western progress and learn the secrets of
European power."19 Those seeds have been sown! Like a wave
growing larger and stronger, like a wave surging higher and
higher, the armies of Pan-Islam have together risen up through-
out the Islamic world, and are on the move from Turkey and
Egypt to Morocco, the Congo, Persia and Afghanistan . . .
was deported to Cairo. There he led the movement of
nationalist revival until his strongly anti-European
views led the British to exile him to India. In 1883
he appeared in Paris, where together with the exiled
'Abduh he published the famous journal al-'Urwat al-
Wuthqa (The Unbreakable Bond), in which he attacked
British policy towards the Moslem countries. In 1886
he was invited to Persia, where he rapidly built up a
large following. His attacks on the Persian government
for granting concessions to a British tobacco trust made
him many enemies. In 1892 he accepted the invitation
of the Ottoman Sultan to return to Constantinople, where
he died in 1897, a year after one of his disciples had
assassinated the Shah of Persia. He was a strong pro-
ponent of liberalism and Pan-Islam, urging the unity of
all Moslem countries under one Caliph.
19. The translation of this quotation is drawn directly from
the original phrase in Lothrop Stoddard, The New World
of Islam (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1921) , p.
65. Though Sukarno does not mention Stoddard's name,
large parts of this section on Islam are based on his
book. The incorrect date given by Sukarno for al-
Afghani 's death, for example, simply reproduces Stod-
dard's original error (p. 64).46
flooding into India and on to Indonesia .	. . the wave of
Pan-Islam is surging forward everywhere!
So it is that some of our Indonesian people, conscious
of their tragic lot, have taken shelter under the green flag,
turning their faces towards Mecca and reciting:	La haula
waZa kauwata iZZa billah and BiZZahi. fisab-iZiZ iZahi.20
At first this movement proceeded slowly, and the path
it was to take was not clear; but with time the direction be-
came clearer and more definite, and connections with Islamic
movements in other countries increased. More and more the
movement took on an international character; increasingly it
based itself on religious law. Hence we should not be sur-
prised that an American professor, Ralston Hayden, wrote that
the Sarekat Islam movement "will greatly influence future
political events, not only in Indonesia, but throughout the
Eastern world!"21 By this statement, Ralston Hayden indicated
his conviction as to the international character of Sarekat
Islam; he also showed clear insight into events which had
not yet occurred when he wrote. Has not the prospect that
he pointed to already come to pass? The Islamic movement in
Indonesia has already become a branch of the Mu'tamar-i
'Alam-i Islami (World Islamic Congress) in Mecca;22 the Indo-
nesian Islamic movement has already plunged into the sea of
the Asian Islamic struggle.
It has been the increasing emphasis on religion within
the Islamic movement that has caused Marxists to be reluctant
to align themselves with it. At the same time, the growing
prominence of the international aspect of the Islamic move-
ment is regarded by old-fashioned Nationalists as a devia-
tion. Almost all Nationalists, whether "old-fashioned" or
"modern," evolutionary or revolutionary, share the conviction
that religion should not be involved in politics. On the
other hand, "fanatical" Moslems scorn the nationalist poli-
tique of the Nationalists and despise the economic politique
of the Marxists. They regard a nationalist politique as
20.	These phrases mean:	"There is no one greater than
Allah"; and "For no other, only for the sake of Allah."
21. The reference is to Joseph Ralston Hayden, Vice Governor-
General of the Philippines from 1933-1935, and author of
the classic The Philippines (New York: Macmillan, 1942).
22.	This decision was taken at the Extraordinary Islamic
Conference sponsored by the Sarekat Islam, which took
place in Surabaja in December 1924.47
narrow and an economic politique as crudely materialist. In
short, one finds an almost "perfect" conflict of viewpoints.
Nationalists and Marxists both blame Islam for the down-
fall of the Moslem nations, their present backwardness and
the fact that most of them are under Western domination.
But they are confused! It is not Islam, but rather its
adherents who have been at fault. Seen from a nationalist
and socialist perspective, it would be hard to find a civili-
zation comparable in greatness to that of the early Islamic
world. The downfall of national greatness, the downfall of
Islamic socialism was not brought about by Islam itself, but
by the moral downfall of its leaders. Once Amir Mu'awiya in-
sisted on a worldly, dynastic basis for the Caliphate, once
the "Caliphs became Kings," the true nature of Islam was sup-
pressed.2^ As Umar Said Tjokroaminoto once said, "It is Amir
Mu'awiya who must bear the responsibility for the corruption
of the true nature of Islam, which was clearly socialist in
character."2** Furthermore, from the national point of view,
is it not true that Islam offers examples of greatness which
continue to astound the student of world history and culture?
The downfall of Islam was the result of the moral down-
fall of its leaders. The West seized the Moslem nations
23.	Mu'awiya ibn Abi Sufyan (6027-680) was Governor of Syria
under the Caliph Othman. After Othman's murder, he re-
fused to recognize the full authority of the Caliph Ali
and, with the backing of well-trained Syrian troops,
became Caliph himself in 660. Realizing that after
years of internecine quarrels among the Prophet's sur-
viving comrades, the political unity of the Moslem com-
munity could only be assured by military means and
hereditary rule, he exacted a general oath of allegiance
to his son Yazid during his own lifetime to ensure a
smooth succession after his death. Although the heredi-
tary principle was an offense to many Moslems of the
time, Mu'awiya was able to establish securely the foun-
dations of what became the Omayyad dynasty.
24.	Raden Mas Hadji Umar Said Tjokroaminoto (1882-1934) was
the dominant figure in the Sarekat Islam from 1912 on-
wards, and was perhaps the first nationalist leader to
develop a mass popular backing. Sukarno boarded at
Tjokroaminoto's house from 1915 to 1921 while at second-
ary school in Surabaja, and the older man became both
his political mentor, and, for a short while, his
father-in-law.48
because of the Moslems' own weakened faith in God, and also
because the laws of evolution and the social system made
Western depredation a historisohe Notwendigkeit, a historical
necessity. On the other hand, it was their deep faith in God
that gave the Riffs the fortitude to resist the cannons of
Spanish and French imperialism!25
True Islam contains no anti-nationalist principles; true
Islam is not anti-socialist in character. So long as Moslems
remain hostile to the ideas of broad-minded Nationalism and
genuine Marxism, they will never stand on the Sirothol
Mustaqim26 and they will never be able to lift Islam from its
present state of humiliation and decay. I am certainly not
saying that Islam accepts Materialism; nor do I forget that
Islam transcends national boundaries and is supra-national
in character. I am only stating that true Islam is socialist
in nature and imposes obligations which are nationalist obli-
gations as well.
Is it not the case, as I have already explained, that
true Islam requires all its adherents to love and to work
for the country in which they reside, to love and to work
for the people among whom they live, so long as that country
and its people are part of the Dar al-Islam? Everywhere he
went al-Sayyid Jamal al-Din al-Afghani preached nationalism
and patriotism--which were denounced as "fanaticism" by his
enemies. Everywhere he went this champion of Pan-Islam
preached self-respect, preached a sense of pride, preached
national honor--which were all instantly labeled "chauvinism."
Everywhere, especially in Egypt, al-Sayyid Jamal al-Din sowed
the seeds of nationalism. It was he who became "the father
of every shade of Egyptian nationalism."27
Al-Sayyid Jamal al-Din was not the only one to sow the
seeds of nationalism and love of country. Arabi Pasha,28
25.	Sukarno here refers to the great uprising of the Berbers
in the Rif Mountains under the leadership of Mohammed
Abd-al-Karim al-Khattabi (1881-1963), otherwise known as
Abd-el-Krim. This uprising in Northeastern Morocco last-
ed from 1919 to 1926 and required the cooperation of
large French and Spanish armies for its final suppression.
26.	This is the bridge to Heaven in Islamic belief. This
passage is drawn from Stoddard, New World of Islam, p.
64.
27.	The translation is taken from the original in Stoddard,
New World of Islam, p. 176.
28.
Arabi Pasha--more exactly Ahmad Urabi Pasha (1839-1911)--49
Mustafa Kamil, Muhammad Farid Bey,29 Ali Pasha, Ahmed Bey
Agayeff,30 Mohamed Ali and Shaukat Ali were all great Moslem
leaders who taught love of country; all were propagandists
of nationalism in their respective countries! May these
leaders serve as examples for those Moslems amongst us who
are "fanatical," and narrow-minded, and who refuse to recog-
nize their obligation to align themselves with the national-
ist movement. Let these Moslems remember that their anti-
infidel movement will certainly give rise to a feeling of
nationalism, since the groups they call infidel are mostly
people from foreign countries, not people from Indonesia!
An Islam which opposes a genuine national movement is no true
Islam; this type of Islam is an "old-fashioned" Islam which
does not understand the trend of the times.
was the first notable leader of modern Egyptian nation-
alism. Strongly anti-Turkish and anti-European in ori-
entation, he led a quasi-coup against the Khedive Tewfik
in 1881, and as a result was appointed Minister of War
in 1882. Later that year he was overthrown by the Brit-
ish at the battle of Tall-al-Kabir, and exiled to Ceylon.
29.	Mustafa Kamil Pasha (1874-1908) was a European-trained
lawyer who founded the first Egyptian nationalist party
(the National Party) in 1907. Starting out as a Pan-
Islamicist, he later veered towards Egyptian nationalism,
to which he gave a generally anti-British and pro-French
cast. Muhammad Farid (1868-1919) was Mustafa Kamil’s
successor as leader of the National Party, and generally
took a more radical stance than his predecessor both on
relations with the British and on social questions. The
title 'Bey,' conferred on him by Sukarno, appears first
in Stoddard, New World of Islam, p. 180.
30.	Ali Pasha (1815-1871) was a prominent Turkish reformist
statesman of the middle nineteenth century. He was
largely responsible for the liberal rescript of 1856,
guaranteeing equal rights for all persons within the
Ottoman Empire. (Cf. Stoddard, New World of Islam, p.
65.) The otherwise obscure Ahmed Bey Agayeff is de-
scribed by Stoddard as a Volga Tatar, whose organ Turk
Yurdu (Turkish Home) was an important source of Pan-
Turanian propaganda in the last years before the First
World War. The Pan-Turianian movement envisioned a
Turanian (Turko-Tatar) world stretching from Finland to
Manchuria, but its main targets were the Ottomans of
Turkey, the Tatars of Russia and the Turkomans of Persia
and Central Asia. (Cf. Stoddard, New World of Islam,
pp. 196-197.)50
Thus I am convinced that we can bring Moslems and Marx-
ists together, although basically the two groups differ
widely in their principles.
My heart is sad when I remember the dark and gloomy
atmosphere in Indonesia some years ago, when I was witness
to a fratricidal struggle, when I was witness to the outbreak
of bitter hostilities between Marxists and Moslems, when I
was witness to the division of our movement's forces into two
warring factions. It is this struggle which fills the dark-
est pages of our history. It was this fratricidal struggle
that dissipated all the force of our movement, which should
otherwise have grown stronger and stronger. It was this
struggle which set back our movement several decades.31
Alas! How strong our movement would now be if this
fratricidal struggle had not occurred! Our ranks would
surely not be in their present disarray. Our movement would
surely have made progress in spite of all obstructions.
I am convinced that there is no fundamental barrier to
friendship between Moslems and Marxists. I have already ex-
plained that true Islam has a socialist quality. Even though
this socialist quality is not necessarily Marxist in orienta-
tion, even though we know that Islamic socialism does not
have the same foundation as Marxism, since Islamic socialism
is based on Spirituality, whereas Marxist socialism is based
on Materialism--nonetheless, for our purposes it is enough
to show that true Islam is essentially socialistic.
Moslems must not forget that the Marxist materialist
view of history has often served to guide them in confronting
the difficult and complicated economic and political problems
of the world. They must also not forget that the Historical-
Materialist method for explaining events which have already
occurred here on this earth is also a method for predicting
events that are to come--and thus may be very useful to their
group.
Moslems must never forget that capitalism, the enemy of
Marxism, is also the enemy of Islam, since what is called
surplus value in Marxist doctrine is essentially the same as
usury from the Islamic viewpoint. Theoretically, surplus
value is the appropriation of the product of another's labor
and denying the workers their proper share of the value they
produce. This theory of surplus value was formulated by Karl
31. Sukarno refers to the deep hostility between the Commu-
nists and Moslems in the Sarekat Islam, which eventually
broke up that organization from within.51
Marx and Friedrich Engels to explain the origins of capital-
ism. Surplus value is the inner essence of every capitalist
system; by combatting surplus value, Marxists combat the
very roots of capitalism.
The true Moslem accordingly comprehends immediately that
it is wrong for him to be hostile towards Marxism, which com-
bats the system of surplus value, since he does not forget
that true Islam combats this system too, that true Islam
strictly prohibits usury and the collection of interest. He
understands that usury is basically no different from what
the Marxists view as surplus value.
’’Devour not usury, doubled and redoubled, and fear you
God; haply so you will prosper." So it is written in the
Koran, surah A1 'Imran, verse 129.32
A broad-minded Moslem, a Moslem who understands the re-
quirements of our struggle, will certainly agree to an alli-
ance with the Marxists, since he is aware that usury and the
collection of interest are forbidden by his religion. He is
aware that this is the Moslem way of attacking the very foun-
dations of capitalism, for, as we have previously explained,
usury is the same as surplus value, the inner essence of
capitalism. He is aware that, like Marxism, Islam, with its
"belief in God," with its "recognition of the Kingdom of
God," is a protest against the evils of capitalism.
The "fanatical" Moslem, who is hostile to the Marxist
movement, is a Moslem who does not know what his own religion
forbids. Such a Moslem does not understand that true Islam,
like Marxism, forbids the capitalistic hoarding of money,
forbids the accumulation of wealth for selfish ends. He for-
gets the verse in the Koran:	"Those who treasure up gold
and silver, and do not expend them in the way of God,--give
them the good tidings of a painful chastisement!"33 He [does
not] understand that, like the Marxism he opposes, Islam
hereby attacks the existence of capitalism in the clearest
possible terms!
There are many other obligations and tenets of Islam
which are identical with the aims and purposes of Marxism.
32.	In Arberry’s version, this is verse 125. His transla-
tions have been used throughout. See A. J. Arberry,
The Koran Interpreted (New York: Macmillan, 1955), pp.
IT-W.-----
33.	Koran, surah on 'Repentance,' verse 34 (Arberry, The
Koran, p"! ZTl) .52
Doesn't the Islamic obligation to pay tithes, an obligation
on the rich to share their wealth with the poor, essentially
correspond to the sharing of wealth required by Marxism--of
course, to be carried out in the Marxist fashion? Doesn't
Islam share the principle of "liberty, equality and frater-
nity" with the Marxism that many Moslems oppose? Hasn't true
Islam already led "all mankind to the fields of liberty, e-
quality and fraternity"? Didn't the Prophet of Islam himself
teach equality with the words:	"I am only a mortal, the like
of you; it is revealed to me that your God is One God."31'
Isn't it fraternity which is commanded by verse 13 of the
surah Al-Hudjarat, which reads:	"0 mankind, We have created
you male and female, and appointed you races and tribes, that
you may know one another."35 Isn't it true that fraternity
should not remain merely "fraternity in theory," and that
this is acknowledged by non-Moslems too? Isn't it a pity
that some Moslems are hostile to a movement whose principles
are also "liberty, equality and fraternity"?
I hope that those Moslems who refuse to ally themselves
with the Marxists will remember that their movement, like the
Marxist movement, is an echo or a reverberation of the agony
of the Indonesian people, whose lives are becoming harder and
harder, whose existence is growing ever more bitter. They
should remember that there is wide congruence in the ideals
and great similarity in the demands of their movement and
that of the Marxists. They should follow the example of the
envoy of the Islamic Kingdom of Afghanistan, who, when asked
his views by a Marxist newspaper, replied that though he him-
self was not a Marxist, he admitted to being a "true friend"
of the Marxists, since he was a bitter enemy of European
capitalism in Asia!36
34.	Koran, surah on 'The Cave,' verse 110 (Arberry, The
Koran, p"! 3T8) .
35.	Koran, surah on 'Apartments,' verse 13 (Arberry, The
Koran, p"! 2T2).
36.	Cf. Stoddard, New World of Islam, p. 340:	"For example,
the head of the Afghan mission to Moscow thus frankly
expressed his reasons for friendship with Soviet Russia,
in an interview printed by the official Soviet organ,
Izvestia:	'I am neither Communist nor Socialist, but
my political programme so far is the expulsion of the
English from Asia. I am an irreconcilable enemy of
European capitalism in Asia, the chief representatives
of which are the English. On this point I coincide with
the Communists and in this respect we are your natural
allies. . . .'"53
What a pity it will be if the Islamic movement in Indo-
nesia remains hostile towards the Marxist movement. We have
never had movements in Indonesia which have been such genu-
inely people's movements as the Islamic and Marxist movements!
We have never had movements which have shaken the people to
their marrow as these two movements have done. How tremen-
dous it would be if these two movements, which have become
an essential part of the people's everyday existence, could
flow together to form one mighty torrent! Happy are those
Moslems who have seen the light and who are willing to unite!
Happy are they, for they are truly carrying out the command-
ments of their religion!
As for those Moslems who refuse to unite and who believe
that their attitude is right, alas, I only hope they can
justify it before God!
Marxism
At the sound of this word, I see in my mind's eye throngs
of suffering people from every nation and country, with wan
faces and thin bodies, clothed in rags; I see before me the
defender and champion of these suffering masses, a philoso-
pher whose steadfast heart and consciousness of his inner
strength "remind me of the invincible, superhuman heroes of
ancient German legend," a "colossal" figure who is rightly
called the "Grand Master" of the labor movement:	Heinrich
Karl Marx.
From his earliest youth until the day of his death, this
extraordinary man never ceased to defend the poor, to show
them the reasons for their misery, and to prove to them that
victory would certainly be theirs in the end. Never down-
hearted, never tired, he labored in their defense:	he was
sitting in a chair in front of his desk, when he drew his
last breath in 1883.
It is as if I can hear his voice resounding like thunder
around the world, as he made his appeal in 1847:	"Working-
men of all countries, unite!" And indeed, history offers no
example of a man whose ideas have so rapidly commanded the
acceptance of a social group as have the views of this cham-
pion of the laboring masses. From tens to hundreds, from
hundreds to thousands, from thousands to ten thousands, to
hundreds of thousands, to millions:	so his followers have
increased! For although his theories are "difficult" for
clever intellectuals, "he can easily be understood by the
wretched and oppressed, by the poor whose thoughts are full
of their misery."54
Unlike the other socialists, who believed that their
ideals could be realized through friendship between workers
and employers, unlike, for example, Ferdinand Lassalle whose
cry was a cry of peace,37 Karl Marx in his writings never
once touched on the subject of love or friendship; rather he
set forth a concept of struggle between groups, a concept of
class struggle. He taught that the liberation of the workers
would only come about through relentless struggle against the
bourgeoisie, a struggle made inevitable by the very existence
of the capitalist order.
Although my readers surely all know a little of Marx’s
teachings, it may be useful to remind them here of some of
his achievements as a philosopher:	he undertook a study of
the process of thought based on materialism (Dialectical
Materialism); he put forward the theory that the value of
commodities is determined by the quantity of work required
to produce them, in other words that work is the wertbildende
Substanz, the value-creating substance of commodities (the
labor theory of value); he developed the idea that the value
created by the workers in the production of commodities is
greater than what they receive in the form of wages (surplus
value); he carried out a study of history based on material-
ism, teaching that "it is not consciousness which determines
objective conditions; on the contrary, objective conditions
with regard to social relations determine consciousness" (the
materialist conception of history); he expounded the theory
that because surplus value is transformed into capital, over
time the concentration of capital becomes greater and greater
(accumulation of capital) as small capital holdings are con-
solidated into larger units (centralization of capital). Be-
cause of competition, small enterprises are squeezed out by
larger enterprises until ultimately only a few giant enter-
prises are left (concentration of capital); and he argued
that under the capitalist order the lot of the workers be-
comes increasingly miserable, while their hatred for this
order becomes increasingly violent (the theory of increasing
misery). These are his main theoretical achievements; lack
of space prevents me from giving any fuller explanation to
readers not yet familiar with them.
Although his enemies, among them the anarchists, deny
these achievements of Marx; although as early as 1825, Adolphe
37. Ferdinand Lassalle (1825-1864) was the main architect
of the German labor movement after 1848 and one of the
founders of the German Social Democratic Party. His
tactical support of Bismarck against the German liberals
aroused the hostility of many on the left. He was a
major antagonist of Marx.55
Blanqui38 used the historical materialist method in stating
that history "determines events," while economics "explains
the causes of events"; although the theory of surplus value
had originated earlier with such thinkers as Sismondi,
Thompson and others;39 although his theory of capital concen-
tration and the labor theory of value contain elements which
cannot be defended against the criticisms of his opponents,
who indefatigably search for weaknesses; despite all this,
it is unquestionable that the system of Karl Marx has no
little significance in its general outline, and is of vast
importance in some of its specific features. It is also un-
questionable that although these theories originated in part
with earlier thinkers, it was Marx who, despite the fact
that his language is difficult and obscure to the upper
class, elucidated these theories with great clarity, so that
they can easily be grasped by the "wretched and oppressed"
and their champions. Such people immediately comprehend his
theory of surplus value without any difficulty-- indeed they
see it as a self-evident truth. They know very well that
their employers get rich quickly because they do not turn
over to them the whole product of their labor. They immedi-
ately understand that economic conditions and structures are
the factors that determine a man's character, his intelli-
gence, his religious beliefs, etc. They know that er ist
was ex> isst. "*0 They see at once that capitalism will cer-
tainly be destroyed in the end, that it will inevitably dis-
appear and be replaced by a juster social order, and that
what "the bourgeoisie" "are producing, above all, are their
own grave-diggers."1*1
These deep and difficult theories have penetrated the
workers to the core, both in Europe and America. "Is it not
38.	Jerome Adolphe Blanqui (1798-1854) was a French econo-
mist whose History of Political Economy in Europe was
the first major study of the history of economic thought.
39.	Jean Charles Leonard de Sismondi (1773-1842), the liberal
Genevan historian and economist, was one of the founders
of modern economic thought. It is not clear which
Thompson Sukarno has in mind.
40.	The Indonesian text has er ist was er ist (man is what
he is); presumably this is a typographical error, since
the sense of the previous sentence suggests that Sukarno
is aware that Feuerbach's famous axiom (Mann ist was er
isst) means 'man is what he eats.'
41.	The phrase is quoted from The Communist Manifesto.56
miraculous indeed that this belief has now established itself
in the hearts of millions, and that there is no power on
earth which can eradicate it?M Like seeds scattered in all
directions by the wind, which sprout wherever they fall, the
seeds of Marxism have taken root and are sending up shoots;
everywhere the bourgeoisie are preparing themselves and try-
ing to crush the "proletarian threat," a plant that grows
stronger day by day. Some of the seeds scattered through
Europe have been carried by the cyclone of our times towards
the equator . . . and on to the East where they are dropping
down and sprouting up among the hills and mountains which
extend throughout the "emerald belt," the archipelago whose
name is Indonesia. Every day the air in the West quivers
with the sound of the "Internationale" and the reverberations
are so great that they echo and resound as far as the East.
The Marxist movement in Indonesia has been characterized
by hostility towards movements with a Nationalist orientation
and hostility towards movements based on Islamic principles.
Indeed some years ago this hostility broke out in a quarrel
over conflicting beliefs, a quarrel over conflicting atti-
tudes, a quarrel between brothers, a quarrel, which, as I
have previously explained, discouraged and disheartened all
those who gave first priority to harmony, all those who
understood that in this kind of conflict lies defeat. Bury
nationalism, bury the politics of love of country, abolish
the politics of religion! Such, more or less, was the battle
cry one heard. They would say:	Didn't Marx and Engels state
that "the workers have no fatherland"? Isn't it written in
The Communist Manifesto that "communism abolishes religion"?
Didn't Bebel declare that "It was not God who created man,
but rather man who created God"?1*2
On the other hand, the Nationalist and Moslem groups
never tired of abusing the Marxists, denouncing their move-
ment as being "in league" with foreigners, and as "denying"
the existence of God. They poured scorn on the movement as
taking its lead from Russia, which, in their view, was totally
bankrupt and had proved incapable of putting its utopian
ideals into effect. They ridiculed these ideals as the cause
of the anarchy, famine and disease which claimed the lives
of approximately fifteen million people, a figure greater
than the total number of persons killed in the recent world
war.
42. August Bebel (1840-1913), co-founder of the German
Social Democratic Party and its most popular leader for
forty years, was a close friend of Engels and Liebknecht
and a strong opponent of Lassalle and Bismarck.57
So the quarrel stood some years ago--with growing mutual
recriminations between the leaders of these movements, grow-
ing mutual misunderstanding and growing mutual avoidance.
But the new Marxist tactics do not reject cooperation
with Moslems and Nationalists in Asia. As a matter of fact,
they call for the support of genuine Nationalist and Islamic
movements. Those Marxists who are still hostile to militant
Nationalist and Islamic movements in Asia have not adjusted
to the new times and do not understand that Marxist tactics
have changed accordingly.
Again, however, those Nationalists and Moslems who de-
nounce the "bankruptcy" of Marxist concepts and point to
anarchy and famine as the result of "applying" Marxist con-
cepts, show that they do not understand these concepts and
that they have failed to grasp the real reasons for the set-
backs in their "application." Does not Marxism itself teach
that socialism can only be fully realized when all the major
states have been "socialized"?
Doesn't the present situation differ radically from the
pre-conditions required for the fulfillment of Marxist goals?
To be fair in judging the "application" of Marxist con-
cepts, we must remember that "bankruptcy" and "anarchy" in
Russia have been accelerated by the blockade imposed by her
enemies; that they have been aggravated by the attacks
launched against her in fourteen places by hostile powers
such as England and France, as well as by Generals Kolchak,
Denikin, Yudenitch and Wrangel;1*3 and that the situation was
further worsened by the venomous propaganda directed against
her by almost every newspaper in the world.
In my opinion, her enemies must be held equally respon-
sible for the death of fifteen million sick and starving
people, since they supported the attacks of Kolchak, Denikin,
Yudenitch and Wrangel with money and supplies. The same
England which spent millions to support attacks on her former
ally "defiled the name of England before the whole world by
refusing to give any assistance to relief-work" among the
sick and hungry. At the time this catastrophe occurred,
America, Rumania and Hungary had wheat surpluses so great
that the grain was used for fuel, while in Russia, in the
district of Samara, people were eating the flesh of their
own children to stave off famine.
43. These men were the top military leaders of the Whites
in the Russian Civil War.58
One can only respect the impartial verdict of H. G.
Wells, a distinguished British author and by no means a Com-
munist, who wrote that if the Bolsheviks "had not been in-
cessantly harassed, perhaps they would have been able to
complete an experiment of the greatest value to mankind.
. . . But they were incessantly harassed!"
I am not a Communist, I favor no side! I only favor
Unity--Indonesian Unity--and friendship between all our dif-
ferent movements.
I mentioned earlier that contemporary Marxist tactics
are different from those of the past. The old tactical
stance, which was violently anti-nationalist and anti-reli-
gious, especially in Asia, has changed radically:	what was
once bitter hostility has become friendship and support. We
can today see friendship between Marxists and Nationalists
in China, and between Marxists and Moslems in Afghanistan. ^
Marxist theory has also changed, and so it should. Marx
and Engels were not prophets who could establish systems
applicable for all time. Their theories have to be modified
with changing conditions; their concepts must be adapted to
a changing world if they are not to become bankrupt. Marx
and Engels themselves understood this very well. In their
writings they often noted changes in thei.r views in accord-
ance with the objective changes taking place at the time they
lived. Compare their views of 1847, compare, for example,
their interpretations of the term Verelendung (increasing
misery) in The Communist Manifesto and in Das Kapitall The
change in conception, or the change in emphasis is immedi-
ately obvious. The social democrat Emile Vandervelde was
perfectly correct when he stated that "revisionism did not
begin with Bernstein, but with Marx and Engels themselves ."**5
These changes in theory and tactics account for the sup-
port given to genuine nationalist movements, especially in
44.	It should perhaps be pointed out that the friendship be-
tween Marxists and Moslems in Afghanistan, to which
Sukarno here refers, was not internal political coopera-
tion between Afghan Marxist and Islamic groups, but an
external alliance between Kabul and Moscow which resulted
from the anti-British and pro-Russian policies of the
Afghan ruler Amanullah Khan after 1919.
45.	Emile Vandervelde (1866-1938), one of the best known
socialists of his day, led the Belgian Workers' Party
from 1890 onwards. He was notable for his genuine
internationalism, humanitarianism, and anti-militarism.59
Asia, by the newer Marxists, whether of the "moderate" or
"militant" variety. They understand that in the countries
of Asia, where no proletariat as yet exists in the European
or American sense, their movement must be adapted to the
characteristic features of Asian society. They understand
that the Marxist movement in Asia must employ different tac-
tics from those used by the Marxist movement in Europe or
America,1*6 and must "cooperate with the 'petty-bourgeois'
parties, because here the main objective is not power, but
the struggle against feudalism."
For the workers in Asian countries to be able to have
the freedom to build true socialist movements, these coun-
tries must be free, must possess national autonomy. "National
autonomy is an objective for which the proletarian struggle
must aim, because it is an essential precondition for pur-
suing its ultimate goals," says Otto Bauer. This is why
national autonomy constitutes one of the very first priori-
ties for the workers' movements in Asia. This is why the
workers of Asia must cooperate with and support all movements
which are fighting for national autonomy, irrespective of
the principles which they embrace. This is also why the
Marxist movement in Indonesia must support our Nationalist
and Islamic movements, which have made this autonomy their
goal.
Marxists must remember that their movement cannot help
but arouse feelings of Nationalism in the hearts of Indone-
sian workers, since most capital in Indonesia is foreign
capital. Furthermore, the very nature of their movement--
opposition to capital--stirs up feelings of discontent in
the hearts of the workers, who are "at the bottom," against
the people "at the top," and stimulates support for a poli-
tics of national power of the people themselves. Marxists
must bear in mind that the feeling of internationalism is
certainly not as strong in Indonesia as it is in Europe.
Indonesian workers have absorbed the concept of internation-
alism primarily as a matter of tactics. Moreover, the Indo-
nesian people's attachment to their native soil and their
very limited financial resources have meant that only a few
determined people have been willing to leave Indonesia in
search of work in other countries, with the conviction that
ubi benea ibi patria (where conditions are good, there is
my country)--unlike the worker in Europe who has become a
46. The text actually reads 'or Asia,' but this makes no
sense here. The translators have taken the liberty of
substituting the words 'or America,' which seem to fit
the context better.60
man without a permanent home and without a permanent father-
land.
If they keep all this in mind, the Marxists will surely
see the error of fighting the nationalist movements of their
own people. They will surely recall the examples of Marxist
leaders in other countries who have cooperated with the
nationalists; they will surely think of the Marxist leaders
in China who gladly support the efforts of the Nationalists
because they are aware that China’s prime need is for nation-
al unity and national independence.
Along this same line, it is a mistake for Marxists to
be at loggerheads with a genuine Islamic movement. It is
quite inappropriate for them to attack a movement which, as
I have already pointed out, takes an openly anti-capitalist
position. It is incorrect for them to attack a movement
which clearly condemns usury, interest and surplus value.
It is misguided of them to attack a movement which explicitly
pursues the goals of liberty, equality and fraternity, which
explicitly pursues national autonomy. And the reason why it
is a mistake to take such positions is that the new Marxist
tactics towards religion are quite different from the old.
The new Marxism is quite different from the Marxism of 1847,
which, through The Communist Manifesto, declared that reli-
gion must be abolished.
We must distinguish Historical Materialism from Philo-
sophical Materialism; and we must remind ourselves that the
purpose of the former is different from that of the latter.
Philosophical Materialism addresses the question:	what is
the relationship between thought and matter, how does thought
arise? Historical Materialism answers the question of why
thought in any given period has such and such characteristics.
Philosophical Materialism poses questions about the existence
of thought; Historical Materialism asks why thought changes.
Philosophical Materialism seeks the origin of thought; His-
torical Materialism studies its development. Philosophical
Materialism is philosophical; Historical Materialism is his-
torical.
These two concepts are constantly being confused and
confounded with each other by the enemies of Marxism in
Europe, especially by the churches. In their anti-Marxist
propaganda, they assiduously mix up these two perspectives
and accuse Marxists of teaching that thought is simply the
product of the brain, just as spittle is the product of the
mouth, and bile is the product of the spleen.. They never
stop calling Marxists worshippers of things, or people whose
God is Matter.61
This is the origin of the European Marxists' hatred for
the churches, the origin of their hostility to religious
groups. Their hostility has become all the more bitter,
their hatred has become all the more violent as the religious
groups have used their religion for the protection of capi-
talism, have exploited their religion to defend the interests
of the ruling class, and have manipulated their religion to
pursue ultra-reactionary policies.
This hatred for religious groups, which has its origins
in the reactionary attitude of the churches, has been turned
by the Marxists against the Moslems, who have a very different
attitude and completely different characteristics from the
religious groups in Europe! Here Islam is the religion of
the enslaved, here Islam is the religion of the masses "at
the bottom." By contrast, there the Christians are the free,
there the Christians are the people "on top." Inevitably a
religion that is anti-capitalist, a religion of the enslaved,
a religion of the masses "at the bottom," a religion that
demands the quest for freedom, a religion that forbids the
existence of people "at the bottom"--a religion of this kind
will unquestionably create attitudes which are not reaction-
ary, and will undoubtedly generate a struggle which in several
respects is identical with the struggle of the Marxists.
Therefore, if Marxists will remind themselves of the
differences between the churches in Europe and Islam in Indo-
nesia, they will surely stretch out their hands and say:
"Brother, let us be one." If they value the examples of
their comrades who are cooperating with Moslems in other
countries, they will surely follow these examples. And if
they also cooperate with the Nationalists, they can declare
in all serenity:	"We have done our duty."
By fulfilling the duties imposed by the new Marxism, by
taking into account all the necessary changes in basic theory,
and by carrying out all the necessary changes in tactics,
they can call themselves true and sincere defenders of the
people--they can really call themselves the salt of the earth.
But as for the Marxists who oppose unity, the Marxists
who are conservative in their theory and out of date in their
tactics, the Marxists who oppose genuine Nationalist and
Islamic movements, such Marxists should not feel insulted if
they are called the bane of the people.
This article is now almost at an end.
I have tried to show, in however imperfect a manner,
that, in the colonized countries, the concepts of Nationalism,
Islam and Marxism coincide in several respects. However62
inadequately, I have tried to point to examples of leaders
in other countries. But I am convinced that I have demon-
strated very clearly my desire for unity. I am certain that
all Indonesian leaders are aware that only Unity will lead
us to Greatness and Independence. I am further persuaded
that although my thoughts may not meet all the wishes of
every group, they do show that Unity can be attained. It
only remains now to create an organization which can realize
this Unity; it only remains to look for an organizer who can
make himself the Mahatma of this Unity. Does not Mother
Indonesia, who has such sons as Umar Said Tjokroaminoto,
Tjipto Mangunkusumo and Semaun‘*7--does not Mother Indonesia
also have a son who can become the Champion of this Unity?
We must be prepared to receive, but we must also be
ready to give. This is the secret of Unity. Unity cannot
exist if each group does not give a little.
If we keep in mind that the strength of life lies not
in receiving, but in giving; if we keep in mind that in dis-
cord lies the seed of our enslavement; if we keep in mind
that mutual hostility is the origin of our 'via dolorosa';
if we keep in mind that the Spirit of Our People is still
strong enough to lift itself up towards the One ray of Light
shining in the midst of the darkness that surrounds us--then
surely Unity will be achieved, surely the ray of Light will
be reached. For the Light is near.
Suluh Indonesia Muda, 1926
47. Dr. Tjipto Mangunkusumo (1889-1943) was among the most
eminent and respected nationalists of the pre-Sukarno
generation. He had helped found the Indische Partij in
1912, together with Douwes Dekker and Ki Hadjar Dewan-
toro. He was Sukarno's chief political mentor during
the latter's student days in Bandung (1921-1926).
Semaun (1899- ), an exact contemporary of Sukarno, was
the most prominent member of the earliest group of Indo-
nesian Marxists and was the first chairman of the Indo-
nesian Communist Party, when it was formed in May 1920.