Why Write?
Why am I writing? For Fun? No, I have genuine complaints about the global system and its functions.
It baffles me how much people don't actually know what they are talking about, the only honest people today are usually the most chastised. It seems as though anyone who opposes the status quo but dares to question the existing anti-establishment movements, especially ones that look back at the enemies that we defeated or even just ask basic questions is always chastised. Where freedom is sacrificed for Abstract ideas and goals.
We always say we are advocates for freedom, but I say that's bullshit. If freedom is what you want then why do you still cling to some of the bits and bobs of the existing system?
Capitalism: The One who shook the Earth and its Kingdoms.
“How you are fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How you are cut down to the ground, you who weakened the nations! For you have said in your heart: ‘I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God; I will also sit on the mount of the congregation on the farthest sides of the north; I will ascend above the heights of the clouds, I will be like the Most High.’ yet you shall be brought down to Sheol, to the lowest depths of the Pit.
Those who see you will gaze at you, and consider you, saying: ‘Is this the man who made the earth tremble, who shook kingdoms, who made the world as a wilderness and destroyed its cities, who did not open the house of his prisoners?’
All the kings of the nations, all of them, sleep in glory, everyone in his own house; But you are cast out of your grave like an abominable branch, like the garment of those who are slain, thrust through with a sword, who go down to the stones of the pit, like a corpse trodden underfoot. You will not be joined with them in burial, because you have destroyed your land and slain your people. The brood of evildoers shall never be named. Prepare slaughter for his children because of the iniquity of their fathers, lest they rise up and possess the land, and fill the face of the world with cities.”
Is what we will say when we look down on Capitalism and its Systems of Control and Obedience. The Tyrants of Babylon, the Patricians of Old, the Ningrats, the Caesars, the Lords, and the Bourgeoisie have taken form and created the systems that control us today. The Law of Private Property ought to be respected, that this factory, this farm, and so on is his possession. This is all well and good but if only he did not need workers to work it, if he did not need a disciplined and eager workforce to plough his farmland, to work heavy machinery, to make buildings and so on. These tyrants know well that they need to control the population, to instill obedience and discipline towards their masters.
For this, they make Modern Schools, the myth of the Nuclear Family, institutionalise religion not as a belief of the volksgeist to explain the world but as an authority one must obey, and turned the nation from a collective of similar cultures to a puppet that the people must serve rather than create. Culture is no longer a phenomena of the people but a phenomena of capital.
Capitalism has transformed, shifted, and modified the cultures of all the nations, all the peoples, and the period of postmodernity has dissolved any semblance of "truth" in this world, replaced by a spectacular mess of immitations and simulacras of real life. Real life then immitates the spectacle and the spectacle records that and the cycle continues.
There is no longer a "National Logos" in much of the nations of the world, in the era after the Cold War, only Liberal Democracy exists. Originally, there were only ethnic faiths: Roman, Chinese, Slavic, Indian, Mesopotamian, Greek, Judaism, and so on. Then came Universalism in the form of Christianity, Buddhism, and Islam of whom then broke apart into different sects which transcended old ethnic boundaries, the creation of the Feudal State and Kings who all justified their existence by God's name at the same time despite going to war with each other a lot. The King was also the centerpiece of the National Logos at the time as his will is considered the nation's will.
Cut to the American and French Revolutions and the National Logos is embedded in the population themselves again, a return to what we can deem as the "volksprinzip" ("People's Principle" in German) with the introduction of the system of Liberal Democracy. Old Liberalism also coincided with Nationalism; the overthrow of the principle of "Vox Regi, Vox Patriae" and replaced with "Vox Populi, Vox Patriae".
Liberalism here is pretty revolutionary as it shows that the people needs no Master, but themselves and their faith in the volksprinzip. Soon, the Nation will be transcended again with the development of Capitalism, Industrialisation and the World Market which brought us the International Proletariat.
The Proletariat is 100% Nationless, his will is no longer the nation's will, it is the elite's will. This then requires a reaction to this development and thus birthed Socialism. Socialism aims to create an International Proletarian State as an exercise of the nationless proletariat's will over his own life.
The Proletariat owns nothing, and he has nothing. All he has is his labour and his body to which he sells his labour-power to earn a wage, the price of his labour-power to which labour-power is transformed into a commodity to be sold in the market. The Proletariat is alienated from the exercise of his will, and the ownership of what he uses to make things, the labour he used to make the commodity.
Naturally, the worker would be pretty pissed about this which is not what the bourgeoisie wants and thus he created institutions to regulate the development of the proletarian will. The soon-to-be proletariat must be obedient to authority, to follow certain guidelines and to restrict his access into the outside world. If he could not do this then too bad, he is left to be on the streets as a reserved army of labour. Thus he is left as a dilemma: be obedient or be a bum.
Naturally, most prefer to be good little boys and girls and sell their souls to the devil in exchange for money.
Now, this all comes back to bite us in the ass. As Indonesians, we affirm Pancasila as our volksprinzip. Alright, fair, but what is Pancasila?
1. Ketuha- No, I don't mean what each Sila says, I mean what they mean. PPKN, taught in schools tells us exactly what we need to do, "be obedient!", "don't cheat!", "respect each other!", "be loyal!", "respect those higher up!" and so on. Meanwhile, the elites do the exact opposite whilst selling our country off to foreign merchants like China and America.
Pancasila not only has been bribed to look the other way, but also doesn't even know what exactly it is.
During Liberal Democracy, Pancasila was nominally the volksprinzip. Inside there was a multitude of factions fighting for power; the PKI, PNI, Masyumi, Nahdlatul Ulama, Murba, and so on. In 1959, Guided Democracy was established under the authoritarian rule of President Soekarno. From this, he has created his own version of the furherprinzip and Pancasila is what he says it is. And Pancasila is Nasakom (Nationalism, Religionism, Communism) in order to unify the interests of the Military, the Religious Fundamentalists, and the Proletariat. Then came the 30th September Movement and the Supersemar which put Soeharto as the next Fuhrer of Indonesia.
He massacred all communists in the country and created a right wing version og Nasakom by reducing the number of parties to 3: PDI, PPP and Golkar. Now, I am not here to detest his legacy, he certainly helped built this country from scratch and I respect him for giving Pancasila guidance still.
But after his fall, it is Liberal Democracy 2.0.
The descent of Soeharto and the legalisation of multi-party democracy in Indonesia recreated the ideological confusion and indecisiveness which turned Pancasila into a vague Paternalism.
Once a Tiger of the people has now turned into a Paper Tiger held up by the Elites to keep the people subordinate. Pancasila, in order to appear as though it still had real principles has stopped being a tree and turned into a dome in which all development of thought could not go further beyond the dome. Any seed planted in the pot known as "Indonesia" could not grow into a large tree with juicy fruits ready to be harvested and used however one wants.
This however requires that we even have a basis and clear ideas that we can draw the 5 Sila of Pancasila from. However, we cannot do that as Capitalism, yet again, is afraid of Tigers. Why exactly do you think they feared the Soviet Union for and desperately tried to sabotage and dissolve all socialist revolutions?
The Unradicalism of the Revolutionaries.
As a socialist, I must understand that the revolutions from the Parisian Commune to the revolutionaries of the 21st century and the roleplayers of the internet are not radical enough.
Why? Because they're still dragged down by bourgeois and petit bourgeois mentality that still sees control over life as a necessity for revolution. They still hold on to the conception that if we give the state total control over our lives and guide our development towards "proletarian culture" it will be all well and good.
Many justified this as necessary citing the striving for the future utopia as necessary, or that we need a hyper-centralised bureaucracy to guide the relations of socialist society rather than a decentralisation of it. Our fight is against exploitation and the alienation of the worker from his life, why must we desire to do so even further by centralising all economic, cultural, and political processes? Why is the socialist movement still riddled with paternalism?
Felix Guattari, a French Psychoanalyst and Philosopher wrote an excellent article titled "Everybody Wants to be a Fascist" where he discusses why such developments occur. The development of the fascist mindset, the totalitarian mindset occurs when revolutions develop towards the delegation of "will" to someone else; that being the Party. The Party is made as the sole representative of your will, as we've discussed earlier, the capitalist alienates you of your will, and so why would you do the same with the party?
Most often, the excuse is that the revolution necessitates a party of the most advanced sections of the proletariat which will guide the uneducated proletarian masses into socialism. Surely we see the problem, right?
We proclaim that only the select few "enlightened" individuals represent the real and true interests of the proletariat, and that in order to establish a proletarian state there needs to be a "proletarian elite" separated from the rest of the proletariat.
In all honesty, I do not oppose the party form, I believe that it is necessary for a proletarian party to form in order to give ideological, tactical, and structural unity to the movement. However, there is a difference between that and Totalitarianism.
So-called "Anti-Revisionism" parade themselves as being the most "revolutionary" and "enlightened" people, that anyone who doesn't follow their specific tendency, no matter what class is a fool and doesn't actually know what the proletariat needs. This is the fascist mindset, the mindset of the furherprinzip or the parteiprinzip as opposed to a true volksprinzip or arbeiterprinzip.
The thing we need to understand is that the proletariat is alienated, they are stripped of their will and freedom, they have sold their soul (labour power) to the devil, and yet we demand that they do the same to this red star bearing organisation??? Absurd!
Ever wonder why whenever free speech is allowed in socialist states, they always fall? It's because, once the people realise that they have been oppressed and told what to think, they resent anybody who told them what to think. To instill "right-think" into the masses and to "wipe away the remnants of the old society", surely this won't bloat itself up, right? Surely the people will thank us (the party) for achieving socialism by repressing their freedom of expression and thought!
Here's the catch, what if the future utopia will never happen? The future utopia requires hyper-specific conditions to abolish monetary relations in its entirety. Will the party just continue suppressing thought? Is it stupid? No! No! That can't be it! It has to be because the proletariat is stupid! That's why they need someone else to think! Surely the will and thought of a small group of workers reflects the entire will and thought of the whole proletariat, right???
Right???
Sure, keep telling yourself that and soon you'll find yourself in Fascism. Fascism at least is honest in their desire for totalitarianism, their manifestos express their desire to centralise mass will under something similar to the vanguard party. The fact that the party demands the proletariat to "follow their interests", as if what they believe in right now is not their interests already is proof enough that the party is not really "of" the proletariat.
What I want to do is to convince the proletariat to join my cause, the cause towards the expression of the volksprinzip and the volkswille (people's will), I do not proclaim the future party as a party that is the "guiding hand" of the proletariat, but a party that is the full expression of the proletariat's frustrations, their desires, their concerns, and so forth.
Same goes with Pancasila, above all things; No Fuhrers, No Prophets, only the people's will.
To Define Pancasila.
One asked to define Pancasila, every answer is the same:
- Ketuhanan yang Maha Esa (Belief in the one and only God)
- Kemanusiaan yang adil dan beradab (Just and civilized humanity)
- Persatuan Indonesia (The unity of Indonesia)
- Kerakyatan yang dipimpin oleh hikmat kebijaksanaan dalam permusyawaratan/perwakilan (Democracy guided by the inner wisdom in the unanimity arising out of deliberations among representatives)
- Keadilan sosial bagi seluruh rakyat Indonesia (Social justice for all the people of Indonesia)
Now, I can assure that these do sound good and sound, but what do they actually mean? Who is this for exactly within the Indonesian nation? What is the application of these principles in the structure of the state and the economy?
Surely, with principles as vague as these, anyone adjacent to Joseph Stalin (Communists), to Adolf Hitler (Fascists), and to John Locke (Liberals) can adapt it to their niche, right? Matter of fact, when we learn about PPKN at school, we are taught that Pancasila is flexible but yet is "neither left nor right".
This is true... because Pancasila doesn't know what it is. Pancasila as it exists is timid and doesn't know what it is or what it wants to be. All that it knows for sure is that it wants Indonesian independence and the unity of Indonesia.
"Indonesia" as a nation and a concept is a relatively new one, only in the 20th century has "Indonesia" been solidified as a national idea throughout the archipelago under Dutch rule. They united because alone, they can't do anything.
Now that colonialism is gone, what do we do now?
Our political system stems from Western thought, Pancasila in its modern form is a rebrand of Western humanist principles that have been integrated into the Indonesian mind.
Similar ideas to Pancasila, i.e. a volksprinzip exist in other countries: In China, it is the "Three Principles of the People", in Korea it is "Juche", and so on. Juche and the Three Principles of the People all are very well defined and practiced in Korea and Taiwan today which impacts how their government is structured.
Juche is Communist, and the Three Principles of the People is Capitalist.
Other examples include Marxism-Leninism in Russia, Fascism in Italy, Nazism in Germany, Liberalism in America, Falangism in Spain, Maoism and Deng Xiaoping Theory in China, and Sharia in the Gulf States.
Pancasila here is about as clearly defined as Ba'athism or Zionism. I.e. not defined at all! It is defined by what world order exists today. Right now we are de facto a liberal democracy because of American Hegemony, if the USSR won (and the G30S PKI was successful) we would be under Marxism-Leninism.
None of the countries I mentioned operated the same because their volksprinzip is very clearly defined.
However, there was an attempt at defining Pancasila's volkswille: Nasakom.
I've already touched on minorly about how Soeharto's regime was a right-wing version of Nasakom so I will not go further into it but in essence: Nasakom was introduced in the 60s as a compromise between the Religious, the Communists, and the Nationalists and would give Pancasila, from then on, an actual idea of what it is, that from there, had the Economic Declaration of 1963 allowed to further develop (and had the military stepped away from the economy and political division be resolved by the 30th September movement), we would have had a functioning socialist economy.
Soeharto, after the Supersemar arguably took the Economic Declaration even further as he began the Five Year Construction Plans (REPELITA) in order to build the country from the ground up. Whilst it did take away democratic control of the economy from the people and placed it in the hands of the state and the Berkeley Mafia (for the interests of capitalism), it was for the better as it decreased poverty, started industrialising our economy, and built many infrastructure projects.
Wonderful! Nasakap (Nationalism, Religionism, Capitalism) succeeded!
Up until the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis and the 1998 protests. The students who protested haven't realised yet the chaos that they've made... the highly bureaucratic mess that they have made by introducing multi-party elections, the influx of more foreign capital into the economy, and so forth have only destroyed this country. We've sacrificed our ideological, economic, and political independence for nominal independence. No wonder Papuans want to separate! Foreigners have scooped up all the resources in their hands! The only Indonesians who have a share in it are the Indonesian elite!
It's almost as if these events were carefully orchestrated... first, establish an authoritarian capitalist regime to brainwash everyone into being anti-socialism, next, make an event to destabilise the regime, then finally only remove the authoritarianism bit.
First, we are pulled into the American Sphere by International Capitalism, next, we are castrated and made brainless, sucking off the cocks of whatever foreign country wants to invest in here of which there are two major ones: America (and its lackeys) and China. Indonesia has been neutralised from its potential as an anti-capitalist force, now that the Soviet Union is gone and that there is no longer an anti-capitalist superpower (with China becoming capitalist due to Deng Xiaoping), we are now enslaved by the yoke of international capitalism and foreigners.
There is nothing that can be done!
Unless... Unless we quit this impotent version of Pancasila and replace it with one that is potent and has a goal in mind, the mind and spirit that international capitalism has ripped out of the Garuda: Nasakom.
But we cannot do that unless we study the Indonesian mind.
The Indonesian Mind.
The Indonesian Mind, in order to liberate it, must be carefully understood to untangle it.
Firstly, we must also understand the attack of the outside world against the mind of the subject.
I've already deconstructed the true purposes of schooling, that it is an institution that shapes the mind to become uniform and conformist and to prepare the future generations to serve under a capitalist, just as they are obedient to their teachers and follow instructions.
Now, schooling can be categorised in pscyhoanalytic terms as the "Father" in the relationship (after all, we call our teachers "parents of the school"), our relationship to the teacher is that of aligning our will to the will of the teacher in anticipation to the will of the bosses who will order you around in the workplace.
We were once Kings, but then we were duped into being slaves of foreigners, duped again by the yellow skinned japanese, before then a chance to become independent by the United States and Soviet Union.
During the period of between 1959 and 1960, we fell under dictatorship, justified by Resopim (Revolusi, Sosialisme, Pimpinan) which is our equivalent of the Fuhrerprinzip of the Germans before being replaced with the dictatorship of Soeharto.
In 1998, we regained our freedoms, but this freedom is not the freedom of, by, and for the people, but the freedom of and by the people for the elites, foreign or otherwise.
Yet again, we have been duped. First, we fell for dictatorship, next an anti-communist one, destroying any chance for an alternate regime and filling the minds of the people with a form of Pancasila that is subservient to the Americans, next we overthrew that regime but stayed anti-communist.
Now that we do not have a strong leader and our people sheepishly anti-socialist, we easily become slaves to the West and China, allowing foreign capital into our country and money to be grabbed from our soil to be spent by foreigners. The Indonesian elite is also no better as the soul of the Indonesian people is stripped from them in exchange for a wage to which is needed to be paid back to the bourgeoisie in order to get what we need to survive.
Hypocritical the system is, your soul, manifested in labour power and physicalised in monetary value is taken by the bourgeoisie in exchange for an alienated form trapped in a paper prison that we give back to the bourgeoisie to pay for goods and services to replenish our bodies.
Fine at first, until you realise that part of the fruit of your labour is consumed by the elites in their mansions made by the hands of other workers.
The Indonesian mind as it stands has been made stupid, has been made into fools, falling for trap after trap.
“So let us educate ourselves!”
But we forget about how the education system is structured. Again, as I’ve explained before, it is to domesticate you to become the same as cows, ploughing the land so that it can be farmed to feed the class that is alien to you.
Who exactly owns the education system? Or the state that manages public schools? Does money just appear from thin air? Have the students have any choice in how they want to educate themselves and structure schools?
No! Of course they don’t!
We know that children are naturally curious and will move towards anything that interests them, but we cut off this access, “castrate them” in psychoanalytic terms. The Psychologists of today tries to make us conform to the existing system as opposed to analysing it and advocating to fix it.
Because we can’t, none of us can, at least, when we still adopt the mindset of the cow in the field.
The Great are only great because we are on our knees. Let us rise.
As French Philosopher, Pierre Joseph Proudhon said.
Modern Schools: A Criticism.
The Schools of the Ancients (Agora) were free and open, it was more so like an open club where people could hang out and learn in a mutual manner where "teacher" and "student" are flexible roles and we can choose what we want to learn and focus on and switch at any time.
The Schools of the Moderns follow a set curriculum, a strict timetable from 7 am to somewhere from 12 am to 3 pm. You cannot choose what you want to learn, what you wanna specialise in, or even cancel it altogether, you just have to hitch a ride from home, put on a smile, shake hands, sit, listen to the teacher's yap, hoping you don't bore yourself to sleep, do your homework, and go home. Fun, right?
Hell! There's even research that shows that "excessive" homework can induce high levels of stress and can cause depression on an Individual. (Quotations on "excessive" as it is only a prefix to soften the sentiment so that there is no real radical change if at all). Homework on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays… shouldn’t we be playing on those days instead?
From age 6 to 18 (excluding kindergarten), we are sent to fucking boot camps. Anybody who cannot be good and subservient is a "misfit" and must be sent to special facilities. Ah yes, the people who can't follow along with these artificial institutions made to instill social conformity in children and especially teenagers, the most active and yearning demographic and to make them into obedient workers.
The stuff they teach you is merely a facade, the point isn't to make you learn otherwise you'd have a choice in what you do want to learn, no the point is so that you listen carefully and follow what your future bosses will say to you. If the stuff they teach you in school were beneficial (like algebra) then we would've put it into action immediately (yes I am arguing for Child Labour).
If Algebra is useful, then let us put it into practice in the real world, not just try to memorise equations in a boring classroom, let us use it in the real world so that we can get the hang of it.
Personally, I feel offended that I have been non-consensually dragged to learn or join competitions on subjects that I don’t want to. I want to focus on social science but my parents force me to partake in natural sciences or mathematics but when I protest and state that I do not like them I always get the “oh but you must like all subjects!”
This is the mentality and the answer of the rapist.
Why would I need the knowledge of plant anatomy, bacterial anatomy, How Electrons work, Chemical reactions, and so forth when I want to become a computer programmer instead? Or what if I want to become a chef? What use would understanding social science be to me? Or a taxi driver, why would I need to know ANYTHING at all?
When I slept in class during a subject I don’t care about or would not be useful to me in the future I get threatened and berated for it, threatened that I will be dragged out of school. I don’t want to be, because I will be looked down upon.
Of course! The non-intellectual jobs (which require that you also master subjects that you will not even need in many jobs) are looked down upon… until we need their services, that just makes sense! Without us Brahmins, the Shudras and the Dalit labourers would be nothing! Don’t you know that their hard labour that gave us our luxurious lifestyles as Brahmins means that we Brahmins are necessary? And that the Dalits and the Shudras must be oppressed for their idiocy? Huh? Don’t you know that they deserve to be treated like cows?
No, instead, for every job should instead need its own specialised education and that is best done through allocating learning to the Individual. So let the Individual learn it by themselves, how about we allocate teaching back to a personalised teacher, perhaps a family member or someone else that is hired to do it? If the individual wants to learn more, he can read books or watch videos on the internet, or look up info on the internet!
Children are naturally curious creatures, but instead, we ready them to become obedient workers from a young age. If we have to work in our adulthood, and have to sit in school listening to boring yapping in our childhoods, then all that's left for us to fully be free is when we are old, wrinkly, weak, frail, almost deaf, poor sighted, or in other words: when we have no more energy to be squeezed by the capitalists.
Let children play! On the internet or outside! Let them work at a young age if they want to and make them learn real life skills that will be useful for them. If they want to become even more specialised (becoming a doctor, biologist, soldier, police officer, etc.) then we shall have specialised training schools instead of standardised "cram everything from everywhere into your mind" schools and let children choose their future paths.
Reject Modernity (Western Schools), Embrace Tradition (Agora).
The Youth.
The previous essay on the criticism of the modern school system and that its goals are to instill obedience.
Now, we know that the Youth has great potential, the Youth has unlimited potential as they have not yet been shaped.
Throughout our lives, we are shaped by our surroundings. By our parents, by school, by our friends, pastors, ustadz, our extended family, and everyone and everything in between.
The Youth’s Mind is chaotic and has not yet taken form. If we influence them one way right now, they’ll soon develop in a certain way or another in the future. Be a strict parent and the child will either develop to become strict as well or become a rebellious punk.
To rebel is to take the path of the revolutionaries, to overthrow the system. The early independence movements were of this path but also seek to establish a new system to replace the old.
Me too, I want to overthrow the existing system and to replace it with what I deem as a “better” replacement.
The tendency for youth rebelliousness is embedded in the oedipus complex, in which the will of the Son must comply with the will of the Father and to give up the Son’s desire. This is the period in which the wild beast is domesticated.
Now, of course, the Father has his job to do and so allocates the job to the Mother, however she also has things to do and so allocates around 8 hours to school to raise and educate the child.
There, he will learn the subjects according to curriculum, discipline, and so forth.
However, some members of the youth (like me) dislike the idea of following authority that I could not consent to. Whilst some people’s oedipus complexes desire the repressive apparatus of the father, some like me do not. We chastise and look down on the people who’s interests could not be subverted and are stubborn.
With this, the father in the relationship whips out his belt to teach the son a lesson. Our fear of pain or the fear of our freedoms being restricted even more than they are is used by the parent and the figures of authority to keep those who are seen as “below” in check.
Once the authority of the father has been consolidated, the unruly child has been domesticated, his education has been completed its task to instill obedience, then he is ready to become the worker.