Author Archives: Agus S Efendi

Last weekend, the world celebrates Book Day. Unfortunately, I realized the day a couple of days later. I feel bad because as a person with literature enthusiasm how can I forget that important day. To restore my feeling, I decide to punish myself to write a kind of reflection about my literature experiences. I hope in this article the reader would enjoy it.

First of all, I must confess that when I was young literature have not already on my part of life. Someday, a friend told me an interesting story. It attracts my curiosity to read the full version of the story. Then, my friend lends her novel to me. When the novel is in my hand, I check the initial author. There is a name: Pramoedya Ananta Toer. At the time that name is strange to me. But from the beginning of his work, the first sentence instead, I fell in love with the story because enabling my imagination to cultivate. It is made my reading power unleashed. I do not believe I finished five hundred pages in one day.

Previously, we have been discussing the problems faced by Muslim countries with a different approach such as discourse, cultural, socio-technology and political. In this article, I would like to elaborate on the possibility of developing Muslim countries through what social scientists call institutional approach.

The prominent scientist that encourages this approach and gain influential attention was Daron Acemoglu and Richard Robinson. They wrote Why Nations Fail in order to explain the phenomena of why some counties advance and some others do not. To handle this problem, they criticize other explanations that insisted the geographical and cultural factors. They provide another explanation that in history the decisive factor why Western countries relatively more advanced than the rest of the world is because they have been established a vast array of the political and economic institutions that govern society.

From this point, we can draw attention to what kind of social institutions that established within Muslim countries. It means that we have to trace the history of structural transformation in most Muslim countries. But in this article, we tend to focus on the current institutional structure that is already established in Muslim countries.

Maybe someone expects that the current institutional structure in Muslim countries was the result of modernization that necessarily differentiate the societal organization. It’s true since almost all Muslim countries adopted the modern type of nation-state formulated by Western philosophers and thinkers. Contrasted with traditional institutions, which gain their legitimacy through military power and sustain it with divinity, the nation-state idealized the societal structure that its legitimate power has achieved through social contract. And the essence of this political institution model is that inclusive participation.

I think this critical feature influences the ability of the political authority to accommodate the social interests of their people. In the other words, the cost of social conflict is reduced, and social cohesion is stronger.

Read also: Underdeveloped Muslim Countries: A Political Interrogation

Recently, Muslim counties across the world enforced themselves to build an inclusive institutions. But we must notice that an inclusive institution is never accomplished without common ground or at least a conceptual framework that unites the people. It is the necessary condition for the modern nation-state. However, that is not sufficient to sustain an inclusive institution.

The former we usually call united identity can be based on ethnicity, imagined nationality or religious tradition. This is modal to building political institutions inclusively. But to sustain political institutions what we need is complex regulation. This rule of the game must be set out according to equal principles. And the problem that most Muslim countries handle is they hardly broadened equal principles for their people.

I suppose political parties within Muslim countries seem to disregard and delimit equal principles because they think that political struggle is to dominate the other with their values. Consequently, the politics of Islam tend to be trapped with never-ending costly social conflict. And the approach to handling social conflict is not with democratic participation but coercive power enforcement.

That condition shows that the degree of civility within Muslim countries can be said weak or not well developed. And obviously, it must be tackled with cultural strategies that promoted egalitarian principles and toleration. I believe this is the finest way to build an inclusive institution. In turn, this institution would be expected to increase state capacity through eligible regulations.

But we must recognize that inclusive institutions are likely two sides of the same coin. Despite political institutions state also must develop inclusive economic institutions. It means that the design of economic structure does not advantage narrow business groups but is oriented toward the prosperity of a wide range of the population. To achieve this goal economic institutions must build a kind of distributive mechanism of wealth. But the major economic problems within Muslim countries lie in the concentrated and extractive economy to the unregulated informal economy. In the former elite business tend to monopolize vital sectors and in the latter, the rest population struggle with each other without any incentive and protection. How do we handle these problems? I suggest economic reform must be encouraged to set out a new economic rule of the game. But I also warn that the cost of reform is very high, especially without adequate and prudent planning consideration.

Since 9/11, the politics of Islam have been perceived by the West as trouble. This lies from the campaign that terrorist organizations threatened the established of our current world. When we trace back, the seed of extremist ideology actually has been flourishing since the Islamic world was able to build a resistance platform against colonialism. Today, that platform is called ‘Islamic revivalism’. As a political movement, that platform has a dream to make Islam great again. However, the problem of this movement is that they are relatively exclusive because they believe Islam is a solution and do not need other things beyond itself.

But as an ideology, Islamic revivalism seems to attract a huge audience. Some of them notice that the guardian army was needed to defend Islam from Western bad influences. Clearly, they rearticulate the Crusade War to burn religious solidarity. And in the early until mid-twentieth century this movement meet the nationalist movement that brought Muslim countries to achieve independence.

The established national-state model in Muslim countries was a big challenge for Muslim communities to organize themselves. This challenge lies around whether the foundation of the nation-state is secular or not. This debate about the structure of the state thus brings the political atmosphere heated and it never growing constructive societal development. In other words, Muslim countries are relatively immature to take inclusive politics that base on national consensus. I suppose that the priority of Islamic ideology over national community building was one of the reasons behind the underdeveloped Muslim countries.

Read also: Why are Muslim Countries Underdeveloped? A Socio-technological Investigation

Unfortunately, in history, political consensus is easy to fade away when the society feels dissatisfied with the authority. Iran Revolution was a good example. In short, the corrupted Shah regime and the low living standard push the Iranian people to seek new hope. And this hope will never be accomplished without throwing away the regime.

At the same time, their hope was fulfilled by Khomeini with their optimism about the Islamic state. After the Islamic State of Iran has established, we witnessed Islamic revivalists’ growth and gain influence. This optimism about the future of Islam then manifests vary within Muslim countries. But the initial character still privileges ideology over reality.

In Afghanistan, that optimism about Islam must handle miserable reality. In the 80s era, the Afghan people were in battle against the Russian invasion. This Afghan War involves global power such as the USA which supplies military armament. It is mean that this War was a proxy battle between Russia and America to gain political influence across the world. Interestingly, this War also grew a certain kind of political movement that frame Islam as the core ideology.

In the era of 90s, the collapse of Afghanistan’s political system made the fraction of military groups fight each other. In other words, Civil War has taken place in Afghanistan. But one militant group called Taliban try to unite them and take legitimate authority to stabilize political tensions.

In 1996 they successes took Kabul and to be the dominant power in Afghanistan. Sadly, because of the Taliban’s exclusive political ideology, Afghan people tend to be restricted according to Islamic normative law. And as consequence, societal development was relatively slow and the standard of living never improved.

We do not know precisely what kind of connections about the Taliban regime with Al Qaeda. It is also beyond our concern. But at least we can make an indication that the regime does not have the capacity to restrict or relatively permissive to what Al Qaeda struggle for. And it results in the bird of terrorist networks within Muslim countries. I think the essential problem of terrorist is that they have prisoned within a certain kind of image representation of the Muslim community that need suicidal sacrifice. It is a dangerous fatalistic cum nihilistic political ideology.

Terrorism thus has sedimented Islamophobia because most people are unable to draw distinctions ranging from Islamic norms, extreme or radical interpretation, and terror commitments. Within Muslim countries, this tendency made the Islamic political discourse emphasise the dichotomy of who is radical and who are moderate. This type of discourse then leaves the real conditions of the Muslim community as well as its education, its health, its productivity, and its cultures. And more importantly, Islam is never derived to a concrete political platform that is oriented toward the improvement of material conditions.

Maybe one defies that Islam is a system of values that guide Muslims. True, but beyond the normative prescription we handle a bounce of problems of material life that needed not only to comprehend but also to manage socially. I think the effective way to handle material problems within the Muslim community is through a political platform with specific goals.

In this article, we will continue our discussion about the problem of development in Muslim counties through a sociological lens. In the previous article, I have pointed out its discourse and economic aspects. However, our concern clearly cannot be better understood without a certain kind of sociological investigation.

Read also: The Underdeveloped of Muslim Countries: An Economical Reasoning

What we mean by sociological inquiry is the effort to explain the social structure and its parts across historical times. In the other world, we try to describe the different trajectories of modernization and industrialization within Muslim countries. It is a huge process of social transformation that affects the whole of social life. But, in this article, I tend to focus on the role of production technology and the function of energy. These two are important because modern social life never works without them.

We know that Muslim countries are relatively late to modernising themselves. Whatever the reason behind this, the condition of Muslim countries can be said to lack technological innovation and energy utilization.

In the agriculture sector, we rarely found new techniques to improve production. Sure, we do not reject the fact that irrigation and fertilization have been enacted but we must realize we just import it and not try to develop further technology. Therefore, our agricultural sector is underperformance when compared with other countries. This condition brings the peasant relatively hard to improve their life. And it also lies in the rise of disparity between rural and urban areas. We can see it in the degree of the income gap between them.

In the 21st century, the ICT revolution drove the world to arrive in unprecedented conditions. Manuel Castell coined “Informational society” to call this condition. Unfortunately, Muslim countries still have limited option to take opportunity to build their society.

I think this is happening partially because of the lack of our vision about the future of Muslim society. And the consequence is we tend to feel satisfied with being technological followers. We do not have a passion to be a technological leader in the world. Maybe one called it a utopia but at least we have the intention to develop our technology.

I must assert that the foundation of the information era is electric energy utilization. It is mean that we hardly refute to live in a social structure that is mostly dependent on energy utilization. In this era, the portion of physical tasks no longer dominated. And the management task is accomplished with hi-tech devices that consume a lot of electricity. Reflecting on that fact we can emphasize that when the energy cost is cheap so we can advance social management.

Finally, the main reason why Muslim countries underdeveloped is because we do not hold modern power called technological advantage. But obviously, we do not embrace technological determinism. We tend to provide the cruciality of technology to shape modern society more eligible and the effect of the absence of this factor made Muslim society throw backwards.

In this article, I would like to discuss from an economical perspective why Muslim majority counties around the world are not developed enough. First of all, we must realize that to achieve prosperity in society we must tackle the fundamental aspect called organizing the market effectively and efficiently.

In this vein, someone who is interested in making society level up needs a broad range of ideas about organizing society. But these ideas necessarily are accompanied by what we know about reality. At the institutional level, this idea manifested in governmental policies because they have the legitimate power to organize society.

When we look back at historical books, the fact tells us that society is a change or at least transforming into a new one. If in the past times economy has been driven by agricultural production, right now we see mass production take place not only in the factory but also within informational technology. Obviously, it is brought a lot of challenges and problems regarding how we organize economic dimensions of society.

I suppose that why Muslim majority countries relatively backward in an economical sense is because they don’t pay enough attention to these challenges. In the other words, they have nothing to know about how to build standards of living. And this problem worsening since structural transformation encourages people to fulfil and compete in living standards.

For example, the ICT revolution made the smartphone function enormous within our daily life. The question is what do the Muslim majority countries do to take advantage of this revolution? Nothing at all. All of them tend to adapt to this new circumstance. Consequently, Muslims are nothing other than consumers par excellence.

Nevertheless, I believe that Muslims have ability to lead the world’s future more equal and fairer. But it pre requires a bounce of things to do. The matter that I think is basic is that we must learn historically from the advanced country’s experiences that are able to perform effective and efficient economic organization.

This is matter because it provided knowledge about a kind of way to improve revenue and manage the market. This is what classical economists such as Adam Smith try to comprehend. Interestingly, this spirit to coup economic knowledge has been inherited by generations after them.

Consequently, Western Europe gradually build a more organized society structurally as well as culturally. This do not what we find in Muslim majority counties.

Someone may argue that colonialism is the reason behind the advance of Western countries because they extract a lot of material resources from the global south to gain financial abundance. Then, this finance surplus supports society to transform itself through policies, development, and a broad range of incentives. Sure, I don’t deny that.

Indeed, I am also aware of the time advantage of Western countries to build their society. But I must stress that Muslim countries have a different kind of advantage called the power of late development. The path of Muslim counties to build society can be leapt forward without following but considering the trajectory of the other countries. This is the big project that Muslim countries must handle right now.

When we get demographic data the population of Muslims in the world is around 1.9 billion. Despite Muslim spread around the world, most of the population is in Asia and North Africa. Unfortunately, countries in this region tend to organize their economy with extractive production and their fix global commodity is crude oil, palm oil, and raw material. This condition made the state policy seems heavy and concentrated.

Read also: Why are Muslim Societies Underdeveloped?

One of the reasons is business elites that operate extractive production gain power because they control vital economic sector and source of national revenue. In turn, the character of public policy is influenced or at least not disrupt their interests. This is bad for the whole society because they don’t allow to made innovation.

When I was young, I little wondering why my teacher always toughs me about the glorification of Islamic history and not depicted the recent situation of Muslim societies. My curiosity about the contrast between the two of them some have been incrementally answered when I grow up with pieces of literature. The answer I get is almost filled with the debate around the relations between Islam and modernity.

This is a big debate that attracted so many scholars both from Islam and the West. But the debate arouses around the framework of normative defence of Islam to counter the secular world. It’s obvious when we read the work of Muslim intellects such as Jamaluddin Al-Afghani, Muhammad Abduh and Syed Qutb. The core idea of this debate is that Muslim society has to choose a different approach to achieve progressivity by encouraging Islamic ideology. But this kind of explanation or prescriptive narrative tends to eliminate the real conditions of Muslims themselves and must follow the ideal type of society.

I found another explanation from a contemporary scholar that provides a more realistic treatment. First of all, we must recognize the works by Talal Asad that contribute to the paradigm shift within Muslim society. He insists that the best way to understand the dynamic of Islam is not through the normative or interpretative point of view but through how traditions are created and circulated.

When he coined “Islam as discursive tradition” almost all Muslim intellectuals pay attention to this idea. Afterwards, the discussion about Islam and modernity is no longer stressed on the deductive mode of inquiry but more broadly accommodates the reality of tradition lived by Muslims.

In this vein, I would touch on the most current influential book that attaches fresh debate about the history of Muslim society. The book named “Islam, Authoritarian, and Underdevelopment: A Global and Historical Comparison,” was published in 2019. The Author, Ahmed T Kuru, criticize the existing explanation of why Islam is underdeveloped, especially from a colonialist and Islamic perspective.

He also tries to provide interesting explanations derived from class relations and the institutionalist approach. His main argument is that Muslim societies are not underdeveloped because of the false interpretation of Islam or the effect of colonialism but because of the alliance of the military-state with ulama that restricted the innovative power of society.

Kuru explores the historical account that captured the wane of the Islamic golden age. He argues that the militaristic model of state accompanied by the promotion of conservative ideas of religiosity thus brought Muslim society into stagnation both economically and culturally. This character of societal government persisted until now indeed. It’s true when we see the current condition of Muslim majority counties around the world.

Read also: Cultural Dimensions of Modern State and The Challenge of Muslim Countries

Pewartanusantara.com – When we read historical books, soon we would find that the national development of each country has their paths. Until now, at least 200 country established around the globe. And almost all advanced nations take place in the West. Everybody, who live not in the West may ask the question why the West more modern and prosper than the East? The common answer is because the West has been shaped their state through extracting resources from the East, in other words, they colonize the rest of the world. But someone must criticize this economic exploitation argument to address that the abundance of material is not the guarantee for society to evolve to the next level.

The other explanation about the improvement of the Western nation-state tends to stress cultural factors. This means that culture is the human product both symbolically and materially constituting to transform Western people with modern spirit. As Weber said, the spirit of capitalism is shaped by a certain kind of ethics that is derived from new interpretations about religion. This argument infers to counter rationalist argument state that human being in nature is rational, therefore they always find a way to maximize their interest. I am not amazed about this influential argument because historical accounts explain the mercantilist period arose the self-interest attitude. However, we must consider that human being never dissociates from their beliefs, morality, and normative values.

As a tool of culture, information has a decisive rule to coordinate further human conduct. Toward information effective organization dan emotional attachment is made possible. Traditional societies have a problem called the scarcity of information. Surely, this is because at the time people do not invent mass information transmitter technology yet. And the consequence is educational institution was limited capacity to absorb pupils. To maintain society the educator selected which important pieces of knowledge and skills to be learned. We can say that a traditional society with limited information inflow manages little invention and innovation.

Perhaps we must understand which traditional state that arose the most valuable innovation for modern society. Historians affirm that the Abbasid Caliphate (around 8-13 centuries) was the first advanced state with attractive knowledge discourses and have a fundamental invention legacy that establish modern science disciplines such as mathematics, astronomy, and healthcare. Why did this happen? I would answer this question with two folds.

First, the state massif promotion to boost knowledge circulation through translating foreign literature into the Arabic language. We don’t know how much literature precisely had been translated and copied. But we can expect, assuming with the traditional transcription technology, that this mega project certainly involved a million scholars. Because of that literature was enormous both on the matter and the variety, the division of knowledge discipline emerge. At the time, scholars are not enforced to choose specific disciplines. They feel free to learn the knowledge they need as much as possible. This is the reason why most of the leading scholar figures are experts in a different specialty.

Second, is the relative secularization policy to liberalize Muslim society. Relative secularization refers to the separation space to build boundaries between the scope of state power exercised and the range autonomy of society. This also indicates that the state can hold legitimate political power without promoting official ideology. We must point out that when that ability vanishes the state tends to utilize their coercive power. However, persecution and restriction during the Abbasid period were rare. These conditions arouse the vitality of society to create a whole range of cultural matters that govern Muslim society according to Islamic norms. But interestingly, no one of these matters claims to be absolute and canonized.

After all, I want to point out that the establishment of the Islamic traditional state has a dissimilar essential value from the modern one. This lies in the perception of nature and the belief in human objectives. Contrasted with modern thought insist that nature is treated only for human interests, instead, Islamic traditional thought tends to preserve nature. This is why the material production technologies of the Islamic traditional state are not well developed. In other words, they cannot manage and organize the economy to achieve prosperity. I think this problem still seems obvious right now within Muslim majority countries.

When we switch our attention to the Western development progress the pattern is quite same, but the scale is tremendous. The rise of western civilization is always mentioned with Renaissance and Enlightenment. The former triggered European peoples to be aware of learning dispositions. We can say that this cultural initiative comes from people, not the state. Without incentives from the state, this initiative process works slowly. But its advantage is more persistent and influential. And the latter made Western countries entrance to the phrase of rational discourses. This scale of discourses was massif because many scholars easily spread their ideas to the public thank to the print machine. In the other words, the information within society flows smoothly. But we must keep in mind that rational discourses tend to resist religious narratives. In another world, most modern scholars displace religious values with secular humanism as foundational thought.

That evolutionary processes then construct the form of modern state. Despite the structure of modern state carrying two separations; religion from state and politics from economy, we necessarily need to consider its cultural dimensions. This cultural dimension arranges from what people believe subjectively to the normative value that governs societal institutions. But I would limit our concern on the ethics of productive work. In this term, we tend to cast unrestricted meaning.

An ideal modern state requires their citizen to be more productive. This is also the only way to gain legitimate power in modern times. The meaning of productive is not limited to the economy but also, more importantly, cultural sense. Economic productivity essentially is oriented to provide necessary basic goods to achieve well living for everyone. But as always, the improvement of economic productivity depends on the cultural process that provides educated workers, innovative technology, leaders, and strategic planners. For this reason, we can say that the power of modern state to transform society rest on the specialized division of labour. With specific tasks and skills, the effectiveness of social organization will incrementally be better. Nevertheless, the objective of modern state is to build a complex social system driven by speciality knowledge. We must notice that the ethos to achieve knowledge in an advanced modern state is strong. For them, education is a most valuable achievement. This made western people feel challenged to create and figure out knowledge. And the government support it through a systematic approach. I suppose this is the heart of the cultural dimension of modern state.

Thus, what about the Muslim majority country? They seemingly have been established a modern state to govern their societies. But I think the cultural dimension of modern state still has not concerned by Muslim majority countries yet.

Read also: The Evolve of Patriotic-Capitalism: A short reflection in Russia and Indonesia

Yogyakarta, 27 Maret 2022

www.pewartanusantara.com – In this article, I would like to address a historical change of ideology about state economic management that is called Patriotic-Capitalism. In the last article, I assert that the stagnation of economic development has made patriotic ideology convert from a socialistic approach to capitalistic models. But the evolution of capitalism to be globalized-capital drove patriotic-capitalism to adopt a certain kind of market logic to advancing economy. This logic stressed that to archive prosperity the state must participate and compete within global market economy. Consequently, the state tends to plane their economy to produce global commodities, not to self-fulfilment vital goods.

In this vein one thing that seems obvious is private enterprise has important role in the economy. They expected to be a magnet of innovations with their interest and capital. It’s no more than an attempt to encourage entrepreneurship to increase productivity. This mechanism raises the new bourgeois class. Unfortunately, they don’t want to promote patriotic ideology like socialists or nationalists. They have an ideology called liberalism. This ideology promises as far as the freedom to accumulate capital, to own property and to speak up about politics is guaranteed anything going to be better.

The economical success of the new class surely lies in the relative wealth they are compared with other social groups. Therefore, nationalist social groups like bureaucrats and military apparatus feel dissatisfied. This group have a high degree of dependency on the state. When the state’s economic performance is bad for example the economic growth is relatively high but low tax revenue, the distribution of the economy mostly lies to those who participate in the market. This condition brought a kind of inequity about the benefit who participate in the market and not.

That proposition seems less convincing if we do not address cases. To handle this problem, we mention the case of Indonesian and Russia in recent times. We set to discuss Russia first and then compare it to Indonesia.

As someone interested in the international affair, the conflict Russia-Ukraine absorbs my attention to coup better understanding. Since Putin declare their military operation—with the argument to eliminate Nazification—most observers and people around the world condemn that unilateral decision. Almost all western public discourses called this decision a military invasion. International pundits seem to provide a bounce analysis that made this conflict well understood and end as soon as possible. One analysis tells that the better way to enforce Russia back off their military power is not to supply weapons to Ukraine but with giving economic sanctions. This recommendation is based on how the Russian political elites (they are patriots because they were KGB agents) are involved in the national business oligarch.

According to one analysis since Uni Soviet collapse the economic development was no longer controlled by the state but monopolized by private entrepreneurs. They control most heavy sectors in Russia such as oil and gas. In the other world, they are the richest people in Russia. With their wealth, they consume high-end global commodities and possess valuable property abroad. This was be responded to by the old state actor with outrageous feelings because they still perceive themselves as the backbone of Russia. Thus, they consolidate patriotic power (or military army) within patronage that hold Russia’s politics.

Because of Russian political elite establish their power with patriotic ideology, they must convince the military army under not only a material incentive but also emotional stimulations. Certainly, the military invasion was a kind of this incentive. With real power in hand, they easily make a deal with business elites to extract Russian resources to global market. This is the weak spot of Russia’s political power led by Putin. In the other world, we can say that patriotic capitalism in Russia with market liberalization bear oligarchic power.

Indonesia’s case does not offer a quite distinct narrative. Under the Suharto regime, national economic management follows what we call ‘economic substitution market.’ This model means Indonesian products oriented both to domestic and international markets. Essential goods with government regulation are produced for the domestic market. And for extractive goods tend to sell in the international market. This difference in product orientation has a specific characteristic that is labour-intensive and capital intensive or large-scale enterprise. From this time the government prefer to increase export commodity production than domestic commodities. The reason is export commodities bring more money.

Read also: The Rise of Patriotic-Capitalism

After the 1998 financial crisis, Indonesia witnessed and experienced a new political and economical atmosphere. We can call this with neo-liberal transformation on the economy and democratic consolidation in the political sphere. In the former, the amount of raw material extraction and large-scale agriculture plantation increases significantly because privatization is the paradigm of economic regulation to develop the national economy. Consequently, those who previously have more capital become business elite. But to maintain and secure their wealth they must cooperate with military power. This is why the Indonesian high tier military frequently plays their power to serve the business interest. That alliance tied so solid. When we observe the surface of contemporary Indonesian politics, they whose trajectory carrier from the military institution and now become a politician or state administration seems to have initial business in export-oriented sector. Finally, patriotic capitalism as the embrace of people’s economy just hijacked by oligarch.

www.pewartanusantara.com – Since national movements emerge around the world, especially in Global South, the domination of the colonial state has been thrown away. We saw these phenomena in the mid-twentieth century with establishing nation-state. At that time, the battle of ideology occurred everywhere.

For new government, whether communism or liberalism is hard to choose. Because they realize had different circumstances and historical trajectories. But we can say that almost all new nation-state has a similar problem that is how to develop economy and increase standard of living. Some of them set a plan to build a self-sufficient economy or nationalistic development. Interestingly, this type of development intermingles with patriotic ideology. I do not doubt that patriotic ideology was the backbone of national movements. And this spirit ‘energy’ must be absorbed in a new kind of direction.

Perhaps most people would argue that nationalistic development with patriotic ideology tends to be more conform with socialism than liberalism. That is true as far as what we refer to socialism is not exclusively political domination but the methods to transform economy. In this vein, we made the term “patriotic-socialism” to represent a developmental ideology to transform the economy with national management in character.

Indonesian economic development in the 1950s is a good example. Under Sukarno’s regime, revolution was not finished yet. This made political dynamic on the view of some people more attractive. In contrast, economic condition was so boring. At the time most Indonesian people have little opportunity to improve their condition. These are the consequences of the colonial policy that refuse to provide mass education and tend to limit development on agricultural economy. Besides, almost all large-scale business enterprises, established in the colonial period, were controlled by the state. In government planning, enterprises are treated not only as a source of revenue but also as the leading national development.

In economic reality, one nation just cannot transform the economy in a single way. In other words, one must innovate on prioritizing economic sectors. To be more innovative we need resources such as money and technology. Therefore, the failure of Sukarno’s nationalistic development was inevitable. In the next regime, that failure cannot be tolerated and must be evaluated. Suharto’s economic team promote a new kind of development that convincingly could make the Indonesian economic take-off. We can say that promotion is the beginning of capitalistic development. One fundamental character of this development is state limited their economic control and made private enterprises as leading economic actors. However, this capitalistic development stands still with patriotic ideology. This ideology manifests in the ambition to achieve foods self-sufficient. But in another agricultural sector, the regime gave private enterprises control over land in order to plantation commodities such as rubber and palm. That made them be capitalist because they are producing this commodity to sell into global market. The combination of self-sufficient and market-oriented agricultural development is thus what I called “patriotic-capitalism.”

Read also: Military Power and Ambition

www.pewartanusantara.com – There is another world that one can imagine harmonious life but in reality, we found the opposite fact. War as the nature of human conflict always brought out a lot of misery. People die because the other intended to do so. In history, we could learn that the most noticeable reason why people killed in warfare is nothing other than the ambition of the leaders. This ambition is never more dangerous if one figure cannot centralize the power, especially military power.

In World War II, we saw how Hitler become so powerful in Germany. In the time he was able to command all national resources to invade the other near country. The popularity of Hitler in Germany cannot be separated from their ideas about “ethnic supremacy.” He believes that Germanic people were the chosen humankind with special gifts and abilities. Therefore, they think have the right to become the world leader. This ambition was supported by the socio-economic condition of Germany in the 1930s that needed innovative intervention by idealized leaders.

As the lost country in World War I, Germany has to pay all the consequences. Certainly, this has made Germanic people give up their hope. At that times Hitler was young. He thought that to encourage dishonour people one must build a new vision through political platform. Shortly, Hitler’s political activism began as an orator that burned emotional superiority. This political trajectory enabled him to be more popular not only within German political elites but also in broad public discourse. And then, he initiates to establish the Nazi as a politico-military party. This party have an astonishing vision that is to make Germany great in the world. With centralized command system, Germany had an effective economic mechanism that produced adequate essential goods for people. Interestingly, almost all surplus from the national economy transferred to the military industry. Within this industry, they produce millions of ammunition, thousands of machine guns, tanks and bombing aeroplanes. Arguably, Germany thus became the strongest military power in Europe.

However, the supremacy ideology within the national party tends to encourage what we called “genocide” or ethnic cleansing. This is why many Jewish people leave Germany because the Nazi haunted and arrested them in concentration camps. Reliable investigation informed that this mass murderer killed around six million people and a hundred thousand people seek asylum abroad. What I want to point out is that ambition with a militaristic approach never makes our world better.

Right now, we witnessed the return of militaristic ambition. People around the world condemn Russia because Putin declares a kind of militaristic operation in Ukraine. Whatever the reason behind this, Putin did not have the right to invade or attack Ukraine territory. Pundits are attracted to comment on this situation and they provide strong opinion that Putin just want to strengthen his position in Russia and establish a new geopolitical constellation. But how about the Ukrainian civilian? Surely, they feel threatened. Despite they have a courageous leader to defend their sovereignty, million Ukrainian peoples seem to leave their country to seek safety place. We don’t know when they come back to their home until the military departs from their land.