Draft:Murbaism
Indonesian left-wing political ideology
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Murbaism (Indonesian: Murbaisme) refers to a distinct nationalist-Marxist current based on the political beliefs and writings of Tan Malaka within the Indonesian independence struggle. In academic literature, it is characterized as Tan Malaka’s own interpretation of Marxism, developed independently and in opposition to the mainstream line of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI).[1] Murbaism is described to be in a combined Marxist analysis with strong nationalist commitments under Indonesian circumstance, positioning itself as anti-colonial, revolutionary, and independent from both Western liberalism and Soviet-aligned communism whilst also rejecting orthodox proletarian internationalism.[2] It is rooted in Marx’s method of dialectical materialism while maintaining that European socialist doctrines cannot be superficially replicated; rather, they must be critically adapted to Indonesia’s specific socio-economic structures and historical development.[3]
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The term is closely connected to Tan Malaka’s demand for "100% independence" adhering to the cause of national liberation and to his philosophical framework known as Madilog (Materialism, Dialectics, Logic). His approach sought complete freedom from foreign, political, and economic dependence instead of strictly formal political sovereignty. It also included a sharp critique of diplomatic compromises that, in his view, risked diluting genuine independence.[4][5] At the time, Murbaism is associated with the Partai Murba (Musyawarah Rakyat Banyak Party), founded in 1948 by Tan Malaka and his associates.
Murbaism was noted for being the only left-wing ideology to survive the mass killings of 1965–66 and allowed to operate within Suharto's New Order era, with the continued electoral listing of the Murba Party until the late 1970s.[6] Members of the Murba Party even to retain small pockets of considerable influence,[2][7] with Murbaist members such like Adam Malik to gain office as Foreign Minister under the New Order. Today, the political teachings of Tan Malaka are popular current among segments of the Indonesian intelligentsia, youth, and within progressive movements.[8]
Etymology and definition
In standard Indonesian usage murba denotes something "low; very ordinary; plebeian (not noble and not wealthy)". To Murbainists, Murba refers to the largest social stratum in Indonesian society, consisting of those who possess nothing other than their own intellectual capacity and labour power. The term is intended to correspond, in broad terms, to the concept of the proletariat. However, the historical development and social character of the Indonesian Murba are described as differing from those of the Western proletariat. It is further stated that the Indonesian Murba remains embedded in kinship-based relations to a degree not found among the proletariat in Western societies (Europe and America). In addition, the forms of struggle and the principal adversaries associated with the Indonesian Murba are described as differing from those of the Western proletariat. [9] According to a speech delivered to the party council (Dewan Partai) in Yogyakarta on 7 November 1948, the Murba in general can be divided into several groups. Among them are:[9]
- Industrial Murba (in factories, workshops, and mines)
- Land-based Murba (in plantations and rice fields)
- Transport Murba (railways, ships, automobiles, and so forth)
- Commercial Murba (firms, shops, banks, and so forth)
- Urban Murba (various wage-earners) and
- intellectual Murba (wage-earning intellectuals)
The Murba stratum is described as living on wages obtained through the use of labour and intellectual effort, and as distinct from strata that derive income by exploiting the labour of others. In this formulation, it is portrayed as a historical product of exploitation and repression associated with capitalism and Dutch (and other foreign) imperialism, affecting peasants and artisans and, in some accounts, extending to segments of Indonesian landlords and employers from the period of colonial penetration onward. The Murba is further presented as representing a substantial portion of the Indonesian population that underwent a long-term process of dispossession over approximately 350 years, shaped by successive political-economic regimes and coercive systems, including monopolistic arrangements, the cultuurstelsel, Dutch colonial capitalism, and Japanese wartime repression under the Kempeitai. On this basis, and drawing on dialectical materialist theory, the Murba is positioned as the social group expected to hold the most explicit and uncompromising commitment to genuine independence and collective prosperity within anti-imperialist politics; accordingly, it is characterized as the principal "motive force" of the independence struggle against fascism, imperialism, and capitalism, with the further claim that such a theoretical role becomes historically meaningful only insofar as it is realized through effective organization and mobilization of revolutionary forces directed at resisting capitalist-imperialist aggression and establishing the initial foundations of a socialist society in Indonesia, thereby enabling the Murba to be regarded as leading the political and economic struggle for national independence and, by extension, situating the Indonesian Republic as a leading case within the wider anti-colonial struggle of colonies and semi-colonies.[9]
Ideology
Materialisme, Dialektika, Logika
Denouncement of Parliament
Tan Malaka viewed revolution as a product of structural conditions rather than individual initiative. He rejected the idea that revolution could be brought about through the command of an extraordinary leader or through the personal capacity of a single figure to move the masses. Instead, he understood revolution as emerging from class conflict and social inequality, shaped by four principal dimensions of social life: the economic, social, political, and psychological. Within this framework, revolution aimed not only at resisting cruelty, deceit, and tyranny, but also at correcting injustice in material and institutional terms.[10] This position was closely tied to his reading of Indonesian society, which he regarded as still deeply marked by feudalism. For Tan Malaka, such a system of feudalism sustained hierarchical authority and encouraged nepotistic political arrangements.[10]
The government is ruled by a king and his cronies. After making a name for himself as a ‘strongman,’ he crowns himself sovereign king. His son, more foolish than a buffalo or a mere pleasure-seeker, later succeeds his father as ruler of the country. This hereditary order ‘vanishes’ when a new ‘strongman’ arrives, overthrows the old one, and in turn elevates himself as king. There is no constitution that clearly regulates the coronation or deposition of a king together with his ministers. All power, and the extent of its reach, rests on force and the will of the king, as well as on the trust and servitude of the masses.
— Tan Malaka, Massa Actie (1926)
He therefore argued that politics under feudal conditions could not truly represent popular interests, because power remained dependent on the will of a ruler, backed by coercion and demanding obedience from the population. Given those conditions, and given the predominance of labouring classes in Indonesia, Tan Malaka advanced the idea of a soviet form of government as a political alternative.[10] In Tan Malaka’s view, a soviet-council government offered a better alternative to parliamentarianism. He drew this conclusion from his interpretation of the historical development of Western political systems, where parliamentarianism emerged out of conflict between the bourgeoisie and the monarchy. In Massa Actie, the bourgeoisie believed that state policies and taxation harmed their commercial interests, while they lacked the political rights necessary to register their objections. This conflict, in turn, gave rise to major revolutions, among the most prominent being the French Revolution of 1789 to 1799. During that upheaval, the bourgeoisie, sections of the nobility, and the clergy aligned themselves with the revolutionary masses, particularly workers and peasants.[10]
Through this process, the bourgeoisie succeeded in overthrowing the feudal order for democracy, liberalism, and parliamentarism. For Tan Malaka, however, this victory did not bring prosperity to workers and peasants. Instead, these classes were marginalized and treated merely as the "cannon fodder of revolution." He also viewed the democratic system proclaimed by the bourgeoisie through parliament as fundamentally deceptive. In his view, members of parliament held office for three or four years, while the relationship between the people as voters and parliamentarians as the elected remained transactional. Representatives, he argued, confronted the people only during elections and otherwise differed little from career bureaucrats. Even where everyone could vote under formal suffrage, workers and the poor still faced bourgeois control over schools, churches, newspapers, and the expensive means of propaganda.[10] Accordingly, Tan Malaka regarded the soviet as a form of government capable of redirecting society away from a capitalist orientation and toward a socialist one. He also saw it as a means of dismantling the bureaucratic structures produced by parliamentarianism. One of its central features was the closer relationship it would establish between the people and their representatives, bringing them together in collective bodies that would formulate and implement laws jointly.[10]
Pan-Islamism
Pan-Islamism is the struggle for national liberation, for to Muslims Islam is everything: not only religion, but also the state, the economy, bread, and the whole order of life. Pan-Islamism today therefore signifies brotherhood among Muslims and the struggle for independence, not only for the Arabs, but for India, Java, and all oppressed Muslim peoples. This brotherhood signifies a practical war for freedom, not only against Dutch capitalism, but also against British, French, and Italian capitalism, and thus against capitalism in its entirety. That is what Pan-Islamism means today in Indonesia among a colonized and oppressed people.
— Tan Malaka, Komunisme dan Pan-Islamisme (1922)
Tan malaka pro-islamism as a form of revolutionary strugle
Liberal-era murbaists towards secularism due to rising fears of islamism in indonesia
100% Independence
Tan Malaka conceived of "100% independence" as the condition of genuine freedom for the Indonesian nation. In his view, the proclamation of 17 August 1945 did not yet amount to a fully realised independence, since its benefits were experienced chiefly by the elite, the wealthy, and those who held power.[13] For the broader mass of the Indonesian people, independence had yet to acquire substantive meaning. Tan Malaka argued that the independence achieved in 1945 remained incomplete, as it had not yet entered the lived reality of the people as a whole. Murbaism's call for "100% independence" arose from the conviction that national liberation had to belong to all Indonesians, rather than being confined to privileged social strata or monopolised by the ruling leadership associated during the Soekarno-Hatta government.[14][15]
For Tan Malaka, independence was inseparable from sovereignty, understood as the highest authority vested in the people themselves. The essence and purpose of Indonesian independence, in this formulation, lay in placing supreme power in the hands of the rakyat.[14] Tan Malaka distinguishes sharply between the form of independence and its content. The outward form of independence may consist in the existence of a sovereign state, though a form does not by itself disclose who truly possesses freedom within that state. The content of independence lies in sovereignty, understood as effective power or authority, and it is within this sphere of power that the real rights of individuals and social groups are determined.[16] Such sovereignty had to contain two inseparable dimensions of citizenship: material rights (hak lahir) and spiritual or intellectual rights (hak batin). Material rights included the necessities of life, such as food, clothing, housing, and the means of everyday subsistence and communication. Intellectual and political rights included freedom of assembly, participation in power, freedom of expression, and fundamental human rights. "100% independence," therefore, signified a form of sovereignty in which both material welfare and intellectual freedom were enjoyed by every citizen without exception, so that Indonesians would be free from domination by foreign powers as well as from oppression arising within their own nation.[14][17] Independence, in its substantive sense, must therefore be measured by the breadth of the social body that enjoys these rights. A state may proclaim itself free and sovereign, yet where such rights are concentrated in the hands of a narrow class, independence remains partial and socially restricted.[18]
Massa Actie
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Gerpolek
Democratic centralism
Unlike the goals of the PKI, which articulated the realization of a socialist society as an explicit transitional stage toward the establishment of a communist society in Indonesia, framing its program within a structured Marxist–Leninist conception of historical development and class dictatorship, Murbaists’ formulation centered on the immediate implementation of the fundamental rights of a People’s Democracy, prioritizing national sovereignty, anti-imperialism, and democratic participation as foundational steps within Indonesia’s revolutionary process, while situating social transformation within the concrete political conditions of postcolonial state formation rather than a dictatorship of the proletariat.[2]
Anti Stalinism. Anti PKI.
He was largely influenced by marx. Though had some influence towards leninist ideals, his political thought was described as not within the lines of Marxist-Leninist. debated really.
When dragging Kautyskism, Leninism, Stalinism, Trotskyism to Indonesia, we must not just swallow their ideas, calculations or attitudes as if they were completely raw. [...] Otherwise, the confusion created by half-understood ideas will be greater than the result of not advancing those -isms and their quarrels at all. Few can measure the victims that false whispers alone can claim in a society where 93 percent are illiterate. The lucky ones are surely the enemies!
— Tan Malaka, Thesis (1946)
On the Murba educational compilation of his teachings, drawn from Naar de Republiek Indonesia (1924) and Massa Actie (1926), Tan Malaka’s line says that belief in independence through a "putsch" or “Anarchism” was delusional, and that the "Massa Actie" had no place for an anarchist;[10] he tied successful revolution to organized mass action, disciplined leadership, and a strong revolutionary party.[20] Even so the political teachings within Massa Actie was found to be popular among Indonesian Anarcho-Syndicalists.[21][22][23]
On Marhaenism
Despite differences in social-class categorization between Marhaenists and Murbaists, Tan Malaka briefly adopted some parts of it's beliefs during it's early years. Written in his 1946 Thesis, Tan Malaka argued that, after an initial period of political testing during the Indonesian Revolution, the social groups that remained consistently revolutionary were the industrial proletariat, the rural proletariat and poor peasantry, and the Marhaen, whom he described as small traders, lower-ranking clerical workers, teachers, and poor urban intelligentsia. He treated these groups as the principal social base of the anti-imperialist struggle and held that they were influenced by three major ideological currents in Indonesia: Islam, nationalism, and proletarian thought, including socialism and communism. On that basis, he maintained that PARI (Tan Malaka's own political party in exile) should adapt its organization, principles, tactics, and slogans to the actual balance of revolutionary forces within Indonesia and to changing political conditions. He also sets out his distinction between a minimum and a maximum programme: during the national-democratic phase of the revolution, the immediate objective was "100 percent independence" and the unity of revolutionary forces, while socialism remained a later goal to be pursued after national independence had been secured.[24] Tan Malaka's cordial relationship with Marhaenist circles contributed to the inclusion of the Indonesian Marhaen People's Union (Permai) in the Gerakan Revolusi Rakjat as one of its constituent parties.[25] At the same time, Murba politics also tried to move close to Sukarno. Such as the support for Guided Democracy, and by 1964 prominent Murba figures were involved in the Marhaenist Badan Pendukung Sukarnoisme (BPS),[26][27] a body organized around support for Sukarnoism.[28] Adam Malik once remarked that the party had supported Sukarnoism because of its similarities to Tan Malaka's ideals, much to the displeasure of the PKI newspaper Harian Rakjat.[28] He intended the creation of the BPS to prevent Sukarno from being drawn into PKI politics.[29] Sukarno would later ban the BPS accusing the organization as a CIA front. With the support of PKI, Sukarno would later ban Partai Murba,[30] accusing the party and it's members as "against communism" which had conflicted with Sukarno's Nasakom political concept.
However, sharper criticism came from Radical Murbaist (Acoma[31]) writers after Tan Malaka's passing. In Ibnu Parna’s Pengantar Oposisi Rakyat (1954), he acknowledged Sukarno’s Marhaenism originated as an anti-feudal and anti-imperialist doctrine, but criticized it as theoretically vague because it recognized the existence of several classes yet rejected class contradiction as the basis of struggle, and for that reason could slide into a comprador-bourgeois ideology. Ibnu Parna also criticised the failure in Marhaenism to designate a specific class as the leading force within a Marhaen democracy. He contrasted this with Mao Zedong’s concept of people’s democracy, which, in his view, more clearly assigned leadership to the working class. Parna further contended that this lack of class clarity made Marhaenism susceptible to appropriation by comprador-bourgeois interests, allowing it to be used to mobilize the poor while legitimizing foreign capital, and therefore concluded that it could not serve as a sufficiently firm ideological guide for Indonesia’s development.[32]
On Trotskyism
Multiple times accused of trotskyism, though he did likened to the idea. The Murbaists also had cordial ties with the Acoma, being part of the same grouping and origins to the beliefs of Tan Malaka. However, the Acoma entrusted Trotskyism as a doctrine. whilst Murbaists rejects trotskyism.
History
Inceptions of the Murba party
The organisational vehicle most associated with Murbaism is Partai Murba ("Murba Party"). The limited organizational development of the Murba Party has often been linked to structural and historical factors surrounding its founding. The party was established on 7 November 1948, a date coinciding with the anniversary of the Russian Revolution. Its formation followed the political marginalization of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) after the Madiun Affair in September 1948. In this context, Murba was frequently perceived as a new communist formation or as a potential successor to the PKI.[33]
This perception contributed to a tense and adversarial relationship between the two organizations. Earlier ideological disputes, including disagreements over the failure of the 1926–1927 PKI uprising, had long-term consequences.[35] During which, the Indonesian left had split to two camps, the Laskar Rakyat-Gerakan Revolusi Rakjat (GRR; Tan Malaka-led) faction and the Front Demokrasi Rakjat (FDR; PKI-Musso-led) faction. During the 1948 Madiun Affair, initiated by the FDR, Musso reportedly characterized Tan Malaka, Sukarno, and Hatta as Trotskyites and “criminals,” particularly in reference to Tan Malaka’s loyalty to the national government in suppressing the PKI uprising.[2] The label subsequently circulated among PKI members and affiliated splinter groups as a pejorative term directed at proponents of Murbaism, remaining in use into the 1960s.[36][37] Musso once also remarked that if he had the opportunity to work together with Tan Malaka, he would first hang him.[37]
New Order
Within the PDI
Reform Era
Legacy
Interest in Tan Malaka and his political thought has been a topic of interest within 21st century indonesian politics. Tan Malaka's ideals has since gained popularity amongst indonesian progressives, laborers, and youth.
