Liberalism in Indonesia: Between Authoritarian Statism and Islamism

ABSTRACT

It is hardly surprising that liberalism has been neglected in studies of Indonesian political thought, with most scholars focusing on nationalism, communism, conservatism, populism, and Islamism. The term ‘liberal’ has long been a byword for the kind of naked individualism and dog-eat-dog capitalism against which mainstream Indonesian nationalism has contrasted itself. This article argues that liberalism has, nevertheless, been present as a counter-narrative throughout Indonesia’s modern history and should be considered as a distinct political tradition. Liberal ideas inform Indonesia’s legal, economic, and political structures and have thrived in sections of the media, the professions, academia, and civil society organisations, reaching their apogee in the unique circumstances of the immediate post-Soeharto period. Repeated efforts to establish overtly liberal political vehicles, though, have gained little traction in a political environment dominated by nationalist and Islamist parties. This article argues that despite the rapid growth of the economy, Indonesia’s middle classes are still relatively weak and dependent, and have repeatedly demonstrated a willingness to ally with authoritarian statism when their interests are threatened by populist movements from the left or the right.

KEYWORDS:

• Liberalism
• ideology
• Indonesia
• politics
• political thought
• liberal Islam

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Michael Connors, Mark Thompson, and the panellists who took part in the City University of Hong Kong workshop on Asian Liberalisms in May 2019, as well as the two anonymous reviewers for Asian Studies Review for their helpful comments.

Disclosure Statement

The authors report there are no potential conflicts of interest to note.

Notes

¹ Evi Sutrisno (2015) details the active support of some liberals, including Todung Mulya Lubis, for the International People’s Tribunal for Crimes against Humanity in Indonesia in 1965 and 1966.

² According to Sjahrir, for instance, ‘Our socialism is for the greater good of humanity, not merely for one group, the proletariat, the workers’ (1982, 79).

³ This development paralleled German revisionism exemplified by Bernstein (whom Sjahrir followed), but also, more importantly, Russian ‘Legal Marxism’ represented by Pyotr Struve, Sergei Bulgakov, Mikhail Tugan-Baranovsky, and others. In the 1890s, Legal Marxists argued that the development of capitalism in Russia was necessary and beneficial as it would modernise the Russian economy (Howard & King, 1989). These Legal Marxists, in the words of one chronicler of the Russian Revolution, ‘often find in their Marxism a roundabout way to be liberals, their focus shifting from workers’ concerns to the necessity of the capitalist “modernisation” that Russia’s cowardly bourgeoisie cannot bring forth’ (Miéville, 2017, 14).

⁴ As Robison observed (1986, 39), ‘The softening of the approach to private capital also partly reflected the growing connections between political parties and powerful families with business interests, as well as the temporary ascendancy of political planners holding a “gradualist” approach to the question of economic development’.