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The Rise of Patriotic-Capitalism

The Rise of Patriotic-Capitalism

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.”

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Editor: Erniyati Khalida

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