Professional Documents
Culture Documents
To cite this article: Ernst Utrecht (1972): Class struggle and politics in Java, Journal
of Contemporary Asia, 2:3, 274-282
This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes.
Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan,
sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is
expressly forbidden.
The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any
representation that the contents will be complete or accurate or up to
date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae, and drug doses should be
independently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liable
for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings, demand, or costs or damages
whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection
with or arising out of the use of this material.
Downloaded by [Ohio State University Libraries] at 23:23 20 April 2013
Ernst U t r e c h t
that is, groups of persons each having their own place in the process of produc-
tion. In the early sixties, preparing the implementation of the 1960-62 land
reform regulations,tthe PKI (Communist Party of Indonesia) carried out
scientific research into social stratification and landownership in a number of
villages in West Java.2 In 1964 the party's chairman, the late D.N. Aidit,
published the results of this research.3 Based on the (economic) role each
group plays in the process of production one will find in every Javanese
village the following strata:
The upper stratum of village society, qualified by Aidit as "the class of the
exploiters" and called " the seven devils (satan) in the village", is formed by
(a) Indonesian landlords (tuantanah Indonesia), (b) foreign landlords (tuan-
tanah asing), (c) rich farmers (tanikaja), (d) usurers (lintahdarat), (e) money-
lenders who claim repayment in kind, sometimes the whole crop (tukang-
idjon), (f) brokers who purchase crops at lowest prices (tengkulak), and
(g) so-called "capitalistic bureaucrats", the village's functionaries who misuse
their authority in order to benefit themselves and the other six "devils in the
village".
The middle stratum consists of (a) owners of small plots of land (0.7 - 1ha),
who are able to maintain a rather independent economic position (tanisedang),
and (b) the village's artisans (tukang keradjinan tangan), such as the village
blacksmith who repairs the tools used by the peasants, the village carpenter,
the bicycle repairer, and others.
At the bottom we find the village proletariat. This lowest stratum is
formed by (a) owners of land plots too small (0.1 - 0.5 ha) to enable them
to maintain an independent economic position (tanimiskin), (b) landless
peasants who work on another person's land as sharecropper (penjakap) or
labourer (buruh, tukang), and (c) vagabonds (getandangan).
According to Eric Wolf's qualifications for peasantry,5 we find the
peasants, that is, those who "raise crops and livestock in the countryside"
(and "not in greenhouses in the midst of cities or in aspidistra boxes on the
w i n d o w s i l l . . , or agricultural entrepreneurs", the farmers), in the two lowest
Ernst Utrecht: former member of the Indonesian Supreme Advisory Council and the
Provisional People'sCongress; Lecturer and professor at the universitities of Indonesia,
Ojakarta; "Brawidjaja", Malang; Sydney; Monash; and Amsterdam; political prisoner
in Indonesia 1965-66 and banished 1969; author of Indonesia's Nieuwe Orde - Ontbinding
en Neo-koloni~arie and other books and articles.
274
strata in the village community. We may distinguish the Javanese peasants
in three categories: (a) peasants who own enough land to maintain their
economic independence, (b) peasants whose plots of land are too small to
keep them economically independent, and (c) landless peasants.
The rich farmers and the landlords, that is, those who own land larger
than 3 ha, belong to the upper stratum in the village. A distinction has to be
made between the rich farmer and the landlord. The first still cultivates the
land himself and guides an agricultural enterprise by employing wage-earning
labourers, whereas the landlord does not cultivata the land himself but has it
cultivated by sharecroppers who, after each harvest, deliver to him half of the
crop. Both peasants and farmers are real rural cultivators; but this cannot be
Downloaded by [Ohio State University Libraries] at 23:23 20 April 2013
Java, the Javanese peasants were compelled to produce for the European
markets. For instance, in the Priangan region of West Java the peasants had to
cultivate coffee - a crop new to the Indonesians and introduced by the Dutch -
and to deliver it up to the Company for exportation and sale.
In 1830 Governor-General Van den Bosch introduced his so-called Cultuurstel-
se/, a system of forced cultivation. Again the Javanese peasants were compelled
to grow crops for exportation on part of their lands, or to devote part of their
labour to the cultivation of government crops grown on wastelands. The two
main staples of the Cultuurstelsel were sugar, a crop grown on peasant land, and
coffee, a crop grown on wasteland. Demands on the peasantry for forced labour
in the fields, in the processing factories, and in the transport and delivery of the
produce, passed all reasonable levels. So little time was left to the peasant for
the cultivation of his own food crops that serious famines occurred in the
eighteen-forties. Java had become a "forced labour camp".t 0
The deepening Western economic penetration set afoot by the Company's
system of forced cultivation and later, in the 19th century, the Cultuurstelsel 11
hastened the destruction of Java's indigenous commercial and industrial sectors.
Malcolm Caldwell writes: "Centuries before, at the zenith of Madjapahit's
power, the Javanese economy had been promisingly diversified, with, in addition
to agriculture, a wide range of specialised activities, including shipbuilding, iron-
working, the founding of brass and copper cannon, and all kinds of trade and
commerce. Dutch policy had from the outset interfered with and impeded
these non-agricultural pursuits, and the Culture System greatly intensified the
process. Imported English and Dutch cotton goods replaced those woven in
Java, thus depriving local weavers of their livelihood. In addition, cotton and
indigo crops grown for the Javanese textile industry lost their economic purpose.
Peasant handicrafts declined, producing rural un- and under-employment. Sea-
faring men and merchants took to piracy. Internal trade in the new manufac-
tured imports fell largely into the hands of the Chinese and other alien groups,
who accordingly flocked into the archipelago at this time. ''12
About 1870 the Cultuurstelsel was replaced by a process of "liberalisation";
the Netherlands Indies lay open for foreign private capital investment. During
the period of the big private capital investments part of the peasants were ex-
ploited by foreign companies which ran large plantations.
278
Involution
But the most serious problem was, and still is, formed by the land fragmenta-
tion, which commenced in the first part of the 19th century, and is continuing.
In most parts of Java the average size of landholding has fallen to only 0.3 -- 0.5
ha. This land fragmentation, which created a new class, that of the 6 million
Javanese landless peasants, was the result partly of the rapid increase of popula-
tion, partly of the Javanese inheritance system, and partly of the Dutch agrarian
policy of preventing concentration of landownership in the hands of the Javanese
nobility, the gentry and a rising new class of small traders and peddlers, and also
in the hands of non-lndonesians (Vervreemdingsverbod of 1875). The serious
shortage of land and overpopulation led to impoverishment of the peasants and
Downloaded by [Ohio State University Libraries] at 23:23 20 April 2013
Political pillarization
Although the class differences became more and more pressing, the
impoverished peasants were not fully aware of their being exploited by their
village elites, the foreign entrepreneurs, and the colonial government. They
had no political outlook, no class consciousness.
Since the war the situation has changed much. In order to attract voters, the
political parties introduced the modern party system also in the villages. Conse-
quently, the villagers joined the various political factions or "pillars" -- also
Downloaded by [Ohio State University Libraries] at 23:23 20 April 2013
called a/irans in some areas -- set up by the political parties in the villages. In
most villages there existed two or three political pillars. There were usually a
PNI (National (ist) Party of Indonesia) pillar or "aliran PNI", a Moslem pillar
which was either NU (Orthodox Moslems) or Masjumi (modernist Moslems), the
"aliran NU" or "aliran Masjumi", and a PKI pillar or "aliran komunis". In Bali
one could find in many villages the pillars of the PNI and the PSI (Socialist Party
of Indonesia). There were also villages that were "kompak PNI'" or "kompak
NU". That means, that the whole village was completely controlled by the
PNI or the NU. In such a village there was only one pillar, t7
While the political parties started developing political pillarization, Clifford
Geertz carried out his scientific field work in the area of Pare, in the East Java
Residency of Kediri. He not only rediscovered the dichotomy of santri-abangan,
one could even say that he was obsessed by it. 18 He also got the opportunity to
observe how the abangan in the area joined the PNI or the PKI and the santri
became member of the NU or the Masjumi. Then he put two and two together:
"An aliran consists of a political party surrounded by a set of voluntary social
organisations formally or informally linked to it. In Java there are only four
such alirans of importance: the PNI or Nationalist; the PKI or Communist; the
Masjumi or Modernist Moslem; and the NU or Orthodox Moslem. With one or
another of these parties as the nucleus, an aliran is a cluster of nationally-based
organisations - women's clubs, youth groups, religious societies. There is a
PNI peasant organisation, a PKI peasant organisation, a Masjumipeasant
organisation, and an NU peasant organisation; there is a PNI, a PKI, a Masjumi,
and an NU boy scouts, and so on; in the towns, even the kindergartens divide
up this way". 19
But for the Indonesians who participate actively in the political party system
this analysis, in which aliran is explained both as a political organisation and as
an "ideological orientation"ri O is only confusing. Because political pillarization
in the villages is based neither on alirans nor on political party ideologies such as
the Moslem creed, the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church, Sukarno's
marhaenism, or Marxism. In many a village in East Java, particularly in the
Regencies of Malang, Pasuruan, Probolinggo, Situbondo, Bondowoso, and
Djember, abangan sharecroppers and santri landowners joined the same political
party, the NU.
For the majority of the villagers political ideologies are only too vague and too
278
abstract matters. And usually, as long as a landowner does not interfere with his
sharecropper's belief - and most landowners are tolerant in this respect - a l i r a n
does not count much either.
According to the author's own experience as an active politician for 17 succes-
sive years, 21 it is the patron-client relationship, ethnic loyalty, and personal pres-
tige that play the most decisive part in political pillarization. These three pheno-
mena force the santri-abangan dichotomy to the background.
political leaders, including Sukarno and the military elite, were, and still are,
populists.22 As members of the bourgeoisie they reject the Marxist class struggle
and hold to the concept of national unity. The only enemy of the people is
imperialism. By unifying the people and defeating imperialism, they assume,
economic conditions will improve automatically. And consequently, they
believe, also the class differences will be minimised automatically. So. their con-
clusion is, there is no need for "creating a class struggle, something that the
communists always like to havel" Social conflicts will only hamper the develop-
ment of a society to a stage in which there will be more welfare for all its mem-
bers, is their final statement.
Hence the poor lower strata of the Indonesian society witnessed or experienced
class struggle during only a very short period, between 1963 and 1966, when the
1960-62 land reform regulations were implemented, and during the mass killings
that immediately followed the abortive military coup of 1 October 1965.
Except for the PKI, none of the political parties has ever tried to arouse class
consciousness. The communists have tried several times. The first two efforts
were carried out during the election campaigns of 1952-55 and 1956-57. But the
results were poor. Rex Mortimer writes in his excellent Ph.D thesis: "Only
among the squatters on government and foreign estate lands did the PKI obtain
militant following in the wake of official efforts to remove the interlopers from
their illegally acquired lands. Class was not to become a perceptible basis of
orientation and action among the villagers generally until the unilateral actions
around land reform broke out in 1964. ''23
Although before land reform there was never any real class struggle, and among
the great majority of I ndonesia's very poor, even class consciousness was not
palpable, since 1950 important shifts in the social stratification have taken place.
Indonesian politicians and also some Indonesian scholars like Professor Djojodig-
uno have observed a so-called "revolusi desa", "village revolution", which has
occurred in many villages. Since the money economy and the political parties
have penetrated into the villages, landownership is no longer restricted to the
descendants of the founders of the village or those who were the first cultivators
of the village lands. As a result of land fragmentation, in East Java, for instance,
the plots of land possessed by the greater part of the gogol$, that is, the land-
owner-descendants of the founders of the village, became too small to have them
cultivated profitably. The average size of the plots was, and still is, about 0.3 ha.
Some of the gogol$ sold their land to other gogo/s who still kept landed property
279
of reasonable size, or to rich inhabitants of the village, or, as mostly happened,
to business men and high officials in the cities. The last group of persons bought
land in the villages mainly in the hope of profiting by changes in its market value,
because in a situation of land shortage the prices of land go up drastically. Land
fell also into the hands of many a religious leader. The new type of landowners,
who usually stay out of the villages, have now their land in the villages cultivated
by the millions of landless peasants. And all these new landowners are now
exploiting the sharecroppers, often in a way that is far more commercial and cruel
than was the case in the old patron-client relationship.
The greater part of the gogols who sold their land moved to the cities, where
they have become pedicab (betjak) drivers, street-vendors selling cigarettes, news-
papers and magazines, food, fruit, etc., coolies, servants in restaurants, etc. But
Downloaded by [Ohio State University Libraries] at 23:23 20 April 2013
quite a large number of them are still displaced persons, roving along the streets
and sleeping under trees, bridges, at railways stations and bus terminals. A much
smaller number ofgogols who lost their land are still in the villages, now working
as sharecroppers on other people's land.
Another important development of the last two decades was that, as a result
of political pillarization, now every village inhabitant, regardless of his social
group, has a right to participate fully in the decision-making process. With the
support of one of the political parties, in quite a number of villages landless in-
habitants have become village heads. It was in particular this °'revolusi" that the
politicians and some scholars have observed. But all these shifts in the social
stratification, that is, individuals moved up and down, did not change the nature
or innate character of the class structure in the villages. Although other persons
have taken the place of the gogols and the political pillarization has given to the
lower strata the right to vote, still in all villages there exists a class of landowners
that exploits a part of the poor landless peasants. The "revolusi desa" was, and
is, not a revolution in the true sense of the word. In some villages it has even
worsened the situation, that is, the poor landless peasants are now being exploited
in a more ruthless way by people in the cities. After the abortive military coup of
1 October 1965 many plots of land fell into the hands of the military. There is
again a rising class of landowners!
The real class struggle
Only during the short period in which the 1960-62 land reform regulations
were implemented, a class struggle was carried out by the landless peasants. They
occupied their landowners' lands without awaiting the decisions of the land
reforcn committees. 24 Patron-client relationship, ethnic loyalty (in East Java,
for instance, between the Madurese, or between the Javanese in the Madiun area),
and personal prestige were completely ignored. Not only abangan sharecroppers,
but also santri sharecroppers turned against their santri landowners. They were
guided in their so-called "one-sided actions" (aksisefihak) by the cadres of the
BTI (communist peasants' organisation). In the case of the abangan sharecroppers
one may presume that they returned to their own a/iran! Of course in such a case
the abangan aliran undoubtedly contributes something, although very limitedly,
to the process of arousing class consciousness.
The mass killings that immediately followed the abortive military coup have
280
p u t an end t o this s h o r t - l i v e d class struggle. B u t the a u t h o r believes t h a t b y n o w
the n u m b e r o f peasants t h a t are class conscious is larger. T h a t gives h o p e f o r t h e
future!
Ernst U t r e c h t
FOOTNOTES
1. E. Utrecht, "Land Reform in Indonesia" Bulletin of Indonesian EconOmic Studies
(Australian National University), November t969, pp. 71-88.
2. A similar ,project set up by the communists in East Java could not be finished on
account of the bloody aftermath of the abortive military coup of 1 October 1965.
Downloaded by [Ohio State University Libraries] at 23:23 20 April 2013
281
11. For this Western economic penetration see D.H. Burger, De ontsluiting van Java's
binnenland voor hat wereldverkeer, Disseration Leiden 1939.
12. Indonesia, p. 50.
13. Clifford Geertz, Agricultural Involution: the Process o f Ecological Change in Indo-
nesia, 1963.
14. J.H. Boeke, Economie van Indonesia, 1955 (4th edition).
15. This study was done by Professor Soeripto of "Brawidjaja" University in East Java
and the author in the fall of 1964o
16. gotongrojong = mutual aid involving the whole village community;
sambat-sinambat = mutual aid restricted to relatives and naighbours. See Koentjaranin-
grat (translated by Claim Holt), Some Social-Anthropological Observations on Gotong
Rojong Practices in Two Villages in Central Java, 1961 (Monograph Series, Modern
Indonesian Project, Cornell University.)
Downloaded by [Ohio State University Libraries] at 23:23 20 April 2013
17. Basuki Gunawan and O.O. van den Muijzenberg ("Verzuitingetandenties en sociale
stratificatie in Indonesie", Sociologische Gids, 14 (1967) pp. 146-158; sea also
6asuki Gunawan, Kudeta, staatsgreep in Djakarta, 1968, pp. 25-41 ) suggest that the
aliran phenomenon basically coincides with the "politieke verzuiling" (political
pillarization) in Dutch society (sea J.F. Kruyt and Walter Goddijn, "Verzuiling en
ontzuiling als sociiologisch proces", in A.N.J. den Hollanderics ted), Drift en koers:
een halve eeuw sociale verandering in Naderland, 1962|. This society is characterised
by a division of all types of social activities according to the different ideological
"pillars" of Dutch society: calvinism, catholicism, liberalism, end a moderate form
of socialism. The author comes to a different conclusion: political pillarisation in
Indonesia is not based on ideologies, it is even not based on aliran¢
18. In his book on The Religion o f Java (1960) Geertz has even developed a trichotomy,
prijaji-=antri-abangan. But this classification does not conform to the classification
prevalent in Javanese society itself, which in general follows the santri-abangan
dichotomy or, in abangan areas the clichotomy of prijaji-wong tjilik {Koentjaraningrat,
"The Javanese of South Central Java", in George, Peter Murdok ted), Social Structure in
Southeast Asia, 1960, pp. 88-115).
19. Clifford Geertz, "The Javanese village", in G. William Skinner ted), Local, Ethnic, and
National Loyalties in Vii/age Indonesia: A Symposium 1959 (Yale Univarsiw,
Cultural Report Series, Southeast Asia Studies).
20. See also Clifford Geertz, The Social History o f an lndonesian Town, 1965, pp.27 If.
21. The author was a cadre-member of the PNI and represented his party in the Konstit-
uante (Constituent Assembly, 1956-59), the Dewan Pertimbangan Agung (Supreme
Advisory Council, 1959-66), and the Madjelis Permusjawaratan Rakjat Sementara
Provisional People's Congress, 1960-66).)
22. Sea Peter Worsley, The Third World, 1964.
23. Rex Alfred Mortimer, The Ideology of the Communist Party o f Indonesia Under
Guided Democracy, 1959-65, Monash University 1970, Chapter I II, p. 16. Important
is also W.F. Wertheim. "From Aliran towards Class Struggle in the Countryside of
Java", Pacific Viewpoint, Vol. X, No. 2, pp. 1-17.
24. See E. Utrecht, "Land Reform".
282