Abstract
AbstractIn the 1910s and 1920s, when Indonesian communists first seriously engaged with Marxism, they faced the questions of how to translate Marx's concepts from Dutch, the language in which they generally encountered them, into Malay, the lingua franca of the Indonesian archipelago, and how to make these ideas relevant in an Asian and largely Islamic context. Focusing on three aspects of Marxism—the ‘scientific’ nature of communism, class conflict in feudal and capitalist society, and the relationship between communism and Islam—I argue that Indonesian communists alternated between transliteration and translation in their exposition of Marxism. Transliterating ‘universal’ Marxist categories such as proletarian (proletar) and capitalism (kapitalisme) allowed Indonesian communists to speak in global terms and strengthened their claim that Marxism was a science with a universal terminology. At the same time, there was a process of ‘localization’, whereby foreign Marxist materials were translated to bring them closer to local cultural norms. Malay substitutes were found for Marx's typology of classes and historical eras, while Arabic terms associated with Islam were used to add a moral dimension to the Marxist critique of capitalism. These translations grounded Marxism in Islam and Indonesian history, but also elevated vernacular terms to universal status by eliding them with Marx's categories. The resulting style of Indonesian Marxism was multilingual. From the 1930s, however, Indonesian nationalists consciously moved away from transliteration, devising a more thoroughly Indonesian political vocabulary to replace Marx's terms, though one still clearly influenced by Marxism.
Highlights
In his tract ‘Rentjana Ekonomi’ (‘The Economic Plan’), the Indonesian Marxist and revolutionary Tan Malaka claimed that ‘Marx and Engels did not ask, and nor do we allow them, to be worshipped
In the preface to the first Malay-language edition of The Communist Manifesto, published in, the translator, Partondo, admitted that ‘the task of translating the writings of Marx is not easy, especially translating from Dutch to Malay, two languages that are extremely different. The translation of this manifesto was even harder for me, because it recounts conditions in Europe, and the words that are used will only with difficulty be translated into Malay.’[3]. As this quotation suggests, it was not immediately obvious that Marxism would make any sense in Indonesia
The Perserikatan Kommunist di India (PKI) released an introductory Padoman to communism in, again published in Semarang.[41]. These books, pamphlets, and newspapers represent the first sustained engagement with Marxism in the Malay language. Their authors were mainly Indonesians educated in the colonial school system, like Tan Malaka, whose knowledge of Marxism came from their readings of Marxist texts in Dutch
Summary
In his tract ‘Rentjana Ekonomi’ (‘The Economic Plan’), the Indonesian Marxist and revolutionary Tan Malaka claimed that ‘Marx and Engels did not ask, and nor do we allow them, to be worshipped. Be more proud if their theories were well translated [diterjemahkan], according to place and time.’[1] Concerns over translating Marx went back to the earliest days of Indonesian communism.[2] In the preface to the first Malay-language edition of The Communist Manifesto, published in , the translator, Partondo, admitted that ‘the task of translating the writings of Marx is not easy, especially translating from Dutch to Malay, two languages that are extremely different The translation of this manifesto was even harder for me, because it recounts conditions in Europe, and the words that are used will only with difficulty be translated into Malay.’[3] As this quotation suggests, it was not immediately obvious that Marxism would make any sense in Indonesia. Translating Marxism was part of a wider effort to politicize the Indonesian people, to encourage new ways of thinking and talking about politics, which the communists believed could inspire change and hasten Indonesia’s social and political development
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