Neptium

Pardon the long response, but you ask a good question that must be answered to actually understand Indonesian affairs.

To put it simply, understanding Southeast Asian relations with China requires understanding and knowing history.

It is incredibly short-sighted to restrict yourself to the Cold War period when generations of Southeast Asians have grown with learning about hundreds and thousands of years of their history, which is reflected in government officials speeches.

The first error is thus mistakenly viewing Indonesian history to something akin to US history, that of consisting only about 3 centuries of overwhelming violence and occupation. Although a unified Indonesia with it’s modern-day borders is obviously quite a recent and colonial invention, the actual people on the ground was born into a civilisation that predates the nation-state for millennia. There have been chinese settlers in Southeast Asia for about a millenium ( hat we know of), and Southeast Asia was part of vast trade networks that stretched across the entire Indian Ocean for as long as it existed. Indonesian foreign policy is guided by such history, both good and bad, and it’s reflected in the idiosyncrasies and contradictions you find today.

How we conducted trade, how we syncretised indigenous beliefs with Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam, how we socially organised ourselves, how we managed to sustain cultural diversity, how we interacted with China and India, are all woven into the social fabric of our societies. Colonialism was and continues to be awful - there are many glaring issues at hand, but just like how you can’t talk about India without understanding 4000 years of the caste system, you can’t talk about (maritime) Southeast Asia without also learning it’s history and peculiarities.

The second error is to say that after the 1965-66 mass killings Communism or any trace of socialism was wiped from Indonesian culture. We both know that isn’t possible. Dialectics tell us things continue to change and progress forward, it never remains static or goes backwards.

This can be seen from the simple fact that Indonesia is a republic - something that Malaysia and Brunei never achieved. This was directly because of the anti-colonial movements that violently retaliated against the collabarator feudal classes. Aspects of that revolutionary culture continue to live on, that even the “New Order” could never properly dislodge, like Non-Alignment, or self-guided industrialisation.

To quote an article I shared before,

58 years have gone—as dialectics tells us nothing is permanent, everything changes. Changes really have occurred, despite the wishes of those who governed Indonesia at the time. The fear and horror that once seemed to have penetrated even into the subconscious of the older generation (also called “the generation of victims”) and which, to a certain extent, still infect the younger generation, are beginning to fade little by little. We can say that, from the 2000s onwards, young people, even if they have sometimes been contaminated by fear, have increasingly wondered what they should we be afraid of and why. Who were the real “bad guys”? The PKI or those who killed, imprisoned, tortured the PKI and even non-PKI members, the innocent man in the street? And what about their own parents—often a very painful issue—what role exactly did they play in this carnage? Were they the victims or the executioners? These young people no longer see communism as a terrible thing, like a ghost. They want to understand what really happened, they want to understand their history, the history of their country and the history of their own family. Who was Bung Karno [Sukarno] and why did he need to be overthrown, and by whom? By the communists, or rather by the imperialists? What was his relationship with the Non-Aligned Movement and in particular with communist countries such as the Soviet Union, China, as well as other third world countries? What were his relations with the PKI? Why, despite great pressure from the military and Suharto himself, did Sukarno not want to ban the PKI? Finally, who exactly were the PKI members?

The third and final error is to project the specific forms of colonialism and capitalism found in the peripheral regions of Africa, West Asia and Latin America, onto Southeast Asia. There are aspects of capitalist dependency you can find in SEA, like in the Philippines, but Indonesia’s unique history meant that it was always able to chart it’s own waters.

The nature of the colonial-capitalism found in Indonesia, coupled by the aforementioned socialist movements that sought to reform the material conditions, lead them to pursue a much more independent path to modernization, riddled with it’s own contradictions.

This isn’t necessarily peculiar to Indonesia either, Malaysia also has quite a similar history. Vehemently anti-communist and yet one of the most pro-China member-states of ASEAN, even more-so than Indonesia.

This (seemingly) apparent contradiction has been utilised by many internal political factions for their own gain.

In the end, the masses are a practical bunch and they will never fall into the ideological dogmatism of individuals. If you have a neighbour that was in a similar spot as you, homeless, but now not only owns a house with the mortgage fully paid but also being completely renovated and offering you tips on how to be in the same spot as him - would you refuse?

The ruling class may have its ideologies, but they know their rule is supported in part by maintaining some legitimacy from the masses. And when the masses see their neighbour installing efficient 40% solar panels on their green roofs while theirs is falling apart leaking water into the attic, something must change.

Truth can only be suppressed. Never eliminated.

If I ever want to feel better I just search “Nickel” and “Indonesia” online and see the massive amounts of cope from the West and the snarky responses the Indonesian government made towards the IMF and WTO.

Case in point: Indonesia's Nickel Supremacy: China's Backing and Australia's Decline

NOOOOOO you shouldn’t move away from primary raw commodity exports, you are our best mining colony!!!

Nationalisation might be one of their few good proposed policies along with land reform.

And that’s all that is needed. A complete reformation of the relations of production will have a profound effect in elevating the productive forces.

Your critique on the manifesto seems lazy because most bourgeois democracies and their parties over-inflate and exaggerate in their manifestoes. Doesn’t say much about their class character.

Many things can happen when a large mass movement built on consensus is in charge.

I am not saying the EFF is one either, but the critique you bring forward doesn’t showcase your points well.

Bringing back military conscription? For what?

It is answered in the quote you mentioned.

offering life skills and discipline.

Teaching the masses life skills is GOOD.

Military conscription (which in the cited quote doesn’t necessarily imply “conscription”) is not only about invading other countries or protecting sovereignty. That’s colonizer talk.

The army can help with a lot of people’s projects, mobilizing resources for the betterment of the country. Furthermore, most places that have conscription also have options to participate in other governmental bodies, like firefighting. It is not strictly just into the army.

Furthermore, all AES countries have mandatory military conscription.

The countries that do not have military conscription are often those tainted with liberal individualism, prioritising the rights of the “individual” rather than the service to the community especially wrt to Global South countries.

many of which have very little to do with Marxism.

May I get specific examples of which policies “are not relevant” to Marxism? And I want something that is unequivocally and undeniably for the empowerment of the comprador classes and Capital.

I want to type up a proper post that will refer to many books and articles detailing Indonesian history but I will be quite busy so I don't think I'll manage to finish it within this week's COTW.

But as for now instead I wrote a quick retrospective that can be served as the "primer" for the eventual post (whenever I'll finish it).

Many westerners has some knowledge of Southeast Asian history but it typically only focuses on Western actions in the region and it never goes deeper. "the Vietnam War", "the Phillipines recolonisation" and "the 1965-66 Indonesian Genocide" gets mentioned but it never is discussed within the 3 millenia of Southeast Asian history but especially within the last 500 years of colonization.

This is especially true for the Islamicate in Southeast Asia.

Do Westerners even know the colonial origins of the exonym of the "Malay Archipelago"? What about the Islamic and Socialist internationalist movements that sweeped across the "Malay-Islamic" civilization that consists of modern-day Singapore, Brunei, Malaysia and Indonesia? - and how Phillipines relates to this wider "civilization"?

Do westerners even know the major maddhab that most Southeast Asians muslims follow? Do they even know anything about how Islam spread across a sub-continent as wide as Lisbon to Tehran? Can they even discuss one thing about the richest company in history - the Dutch East India company? Do they even know anything about the political economy of colonial-capitalism in Southeast Asia?

This lack of knowledge stems from two faults, the rampant Orientalism and chauvinism that has penetrated the subsconcious of Western observers and even many Southeast Asians today, but also the failures of anti-imperialist and anti-colonial movements in the region. Southeast Asian history to this day is being written by the oppressors. We can't breathe nor think for ourselves.

Can you imagine that? 700 million people, with more than 1300 indigenous languages (accounting for more than 50% of all indigenous languages spoken in Asia), without any voice!

But as materialist dialectics informs us, things continue to evolve and change. Now, ASEAN is experiencing larger economic growth (relative and absolute) than Europe. Under imperial domination for 500 years (and counting) - and still growing faster. Decolonization is not over yet.

The transcription of the talk called Dialectics and Indonesian specificity at the time of imperialism's agony - Humanity (Indonesia) captures this emotional essence quite well.

And in the other way, especially accounting for costs of living.

See my comment above.

Poland, Lithuania and Estonia in the same cathegory as Switzerland or Luxembourg is like the joke about man and dog having averagely three legs.

You are merely arguing against the presentation of the data on the map, not the methodology of the data or the conclusions made from the data.

PERCENTAGE OF THE NATIONAL POPULATION BELOW WORLD AVERAGE INCOME OR CONSUMPTION

In this image found in the article I sourced the map from, it is made perfectly clear that Poland, with a population of 15% earning below the world average, is obviously vastly different than that of Switzerland of around 2%. In other words, proportionally, there are 7.5x more people in Poland that live with wages below the world average.

It is purely arbitrary that the author made the cutting off point for the legend 20%, when it could easily be in 10%, which would seperate Poland and Lithuania (but not Estonia) from Switzerland. The author could also have based it on quartile ranges (which would defeat the nature of this analysis).

It doesn’t consider the subsistence farmers

I am unsure how this helps your argument.

If anything this all further reinforces the nature of unequal exchange and imperialism.

There are rarely any "true" full-time subsistence farmers in the Global South, for example, during periods of drought, or after seasonal harvests, - subsistance farming doesn't guarantee full-time job security nor does it entail that (for example) the farmer is able to pay for school or healthcare for the farmer or their family.

and people who obtain resources without the market.

That is of statistical insignificance, unless you are going to argue that Capitalism and Imperialism (what you call the "market") have not infilitrated atleast 5% of the world populace (400 million people). And if so - may I get a source? I must read about the 400 million people or more that escaped Capitalism!

Even if 80million people were not counted, 1% of the world population or the entire population of Germany, it would still not affect the conclusions made from the article and the map.

As described in the article:

To broaden the focus, we can apply the same reasoning, not only to the United States, but to the rich nations as a whole. We follow the World Bank’s classification of high-income countries:

The average national income per capita in high-income countries in 2021 is $55,225 per year (this and the following figures are in 2023 international dollars).
The total world population is 7.888 billion people.
Repaying the entire world’s population with the average income of the average citizen in high-income countries would require about $436 trillion per year.
However, the total national income of the entire world amounts to just $146 trillion annually.
If all the world’s annual income – eliminating the parasitic counterparts of labor: profit, rent, interest rates, etc. – was destined to simple reproduction, and thus distributed equally among the entire world population, it would be enough to cover barely one third of the average income of high-income countries: that is, about $18,510 per capita per year.

As long as the "proletariat" in the Global North earns more than their labour - earn more in return than their labour is entitled for - their material interests are in direct contradiction to the interests of the Global South masses.

Nor does it take into account cost of living.

It is using 2023 international dollars - so it does take into account cost of living, unless you are arguing that the World Bank's "basket of goods" is flawed.

If you think about it, people who live “on less than a dollar per day” literally wouldn’t be able to live if they faced the same cost of living as people in western societies.

There is a difference between "living" and "surviving".

The question we must ask ourselves is why is that? What makes their lives different from ours? What is considered essential, abundant or normal here that isn't in the Global South?

To quote Unequal Exchange and the Prospects of Socialism by Communist Working Group and Arghiri Emmanuel.

The commodities which represent the reproduction costs of ther working class do more or less cost the same all over the world. generally speaking, the costs of maintaining a living as a Danish worker are the same in Denmark, Tanzania, Brazil or Hong Kong. The price for one kilo of wheat, one kilo of meat, one watch, or a transistor radio varies by 10, 20, 50 percent from country to country. However, the wages are 5, 10, 20 or 50, times higher in the imperialist countries.

Truthfully, that does not need to be quoted by I did anyways because the main point is that "living costs" is defined as the level needed for basic social reproduction. It does not entail short working hours, safe working conditions, the price of buying a meal at a restaurant, strong environmental regulations, the price of consumer goods or rent, etc.

The calculations in the main article explicitly mentions that it eliminated "the parasitic counterparts of labor: profit, rent, interest rates, etc." by utilzing only data on production.

but the gap is exaggerated by the liberal worldview.

What is considered liberalism here?

It’s important to remember that a lot of this data is biased.

Yes but not necessarily for your own argument that the data is "exaggerated".

The official data is given to the World Bank by member states, in which for Third World states, due to centuries of imperialist sabatoge, is unable to provide fully accurate statistics and often overrepresent organized workers. This means the disparity may even be larger in real life.

I recommend reading this article on the Labour Aristocracy and the book I quoted prior.

There has also been other extensive works on Imperialism in the late 20th and early 21st century that I think may help you understand the arguments being conveyed here.

PKK and Imperialism https://en.rnp-f.org/2015/03/24/pkk-and-imperialism/

ASEAN headline dump and some excerpts. Most are non-paywalled non-archived links.

05/02/2024 Thailand eyes pact with 4 neighbouring nations to push for Schengen visa waiver

10/02/2024 ASEAN, China to intensify South China Sea Code negotiations

09/02/2024 China warns Philippines against ‘playing with fire’ as Manila boosts military presence near Taiwan. Archive link

03/02/2024 US interfering hinders peaceful settlement of South China Sea issue: Philippine scholar

Another headline I am too lazy to make an excerpt for, 05/02/2024 GT Voice: US-led IPEF all talk, no real action, doomed to fail

Lemmygrad’s resident Worker’s Party of Belgium member might be able to explain @DankZedong@lemmygrad.ml

💯

However I'd like to add your analysis a bit. Excerpt from my other comment again:

the material harm NGOs cause to people are two-fold.

On a societal level, they aim to circumvent and build alternative structures to the current government and thus without the “democratic accountability” that these governments have to face (even if they are bourgeois dictatorships, they still have to manage the contradictions within society to remain in power). This can be seen in many colour revolutions that have occurred the past 50 years.

They also introduce and import foreign concepts, what I call “academic lib phraseology”, without the democratic consultation and “diffusion” to the masses. The masses here aren’t dumb when they realise that these NGO liberals speak the same as any other NGO liberal in other countries or those in the West. This is not a coincidence.

On a local level, despite their claim to the contrary, they actually maintain and sustain the oppression of LGBT people. Since they do not address the material basis of the oppression and are funded by foreign elements, their only justification and purpose for existing IS the existence of the oppression of LGBT people in the targeted Global South country.

Why would an LGBT rights NGO founder want to achieve LGBT liberation? The founder would lose their only source of income and their entire career!

This is similar to when the labour aristocrats in a trade union stops representing the interests of the rank-and-file.

This also means that the NGOs feature the worst of the liberal activists, who are often groomed by the West in the first place through their scholarship programmes. They are filled with opportunists and careerists, because to them, civil society is their way of climbing the corporate ladder and for their “professional development”.

If I recall correctly @Al_Sham@hexbear.net has linked an Arabic article on the role of civil societies for regime change in Lebanon. I can’t find it. It may prove to be helpful for you.

Onto my response, the material harm NGOs cause to people are two-fold.

On a societal level, they aim to circumvent and build alternative structures to the current government and thus without the “democratic accountability” that these governments have to face (even if they are bourgeois dictatorships, they still have to manage the contradictions within society to remain in power). This can be seen in many colour revolutions that have occurred the past 50 years.

They also introduce and import foreign concepts, what I call “academic lib phraseology”, without the democratic consultation and “diffusion” to the masses. The masses here aren’t dumb when they realise that these NGO liberals speak the same as any other NGO liberal in other countries or those in the West. This is not a coincidence.

On a local level, despite their claim to the contrary, they actually maintain and sustain the oppression of LGBT people. Since they do not address the material basis of the oppression and are funded by foreign elements, their only justification and purpose for existing IS the existence of the oppression of LGBT people in the targeted Global South country.

Why would an LGBT rights NGO founder want to achieve LGBT liberation? The founder would lose their only source of income and their entire career!

This is similar to when the labour aristocrats in a trade union stops representing the interests of the rank-and-file.

This also means that the NGOs feature the worst of the liberal activists, who are often groomed by the West in the first place through their scholarship programmes. They are filled with opportunists and careerists, because to them, civil society is their way of climbing the corporate ladder and for their “professional development”.

“LGBT” is in scare quotes because it is a foreign concept that has not gone “indigenization” or like I said before, “democratic consultation of the masses”. You may be surprised to find how many people reject the LGBT label because they recognise that this fundamental process has not occurred and perhaps may never occur if the West keeps interfering.

How does it hurt you to support gay people?

I hope my exposition here helps understand why I am hesitant in using “LGBT” uncritically.

And truthfully, gay people will not be affected if I claim to support them (or not support them) because I have only spewed words on a public forum. There needs to be action with theory - like you yourself recognise.

It doesn’t phase me in particular if you repeat these narratives and say you support gay and/or LGBT people. If you want to believe that I am a homophobe and transphobe that has a personal vendetta against LGBT people, believe away. If you only want to understand a country through Western opinion polls and what liberal Western-funded NGOs tell you, I can’t stop you.

But please don’t act surprised when anti-imperialists in the Global South reject this assertion.