From Jail to Jail. Tan Malaka
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Chapter 1
THE STRUGGLE BETWEEN TWO FORCES
[7] It would not be incorrect to say that this natural world of ours is a battlefield for a never-ending struggle between negative and positive forces of essentially equal strength. Seen from another angle, these equal forces appear as repulsion and attraction.
Modern science seems to concentrate all branches of knowledge into physics and chemistry, which have the same essence: electricity. Here the continuous struggle between the two forces is very clear. But this perpetual conflict between negative and positive forces is found in all things. Even the atom, the smallest body of matter known to modern science, is the product of the struggle between these forces, in the form of electron and proton. And the same is true of the largest bodies in the universe. Planets, stars, comets, and suns are formed by negative-positive forces of attraction and repulsion acting over millions of years.
Shifting our point of view, let us take a lightning glance at the history of philosophy as it reflects the movement of social history. From Heraclitus and Democritus to Hegel and from Hegel to Marx and Engels we can observe the same struggle between two forces that we saw in the realm of nature. In philosophy this continuous and never-ending struggle is one of thesis and antithesis, giving rise to synthesis.
[8] In leaping so quickly from the field of science to that of philosophy, let us not lose sight of the basic difference between the two main schools of philosophy-idealism and materialism. Hegel’s dialectic is based on the Absolute Idea, while for Heraclitus, Democritus, and Marx and Engels the dialectic is based on matter.
For Hegel the Absolute Idea was what unceasingly drove forward the thesis and antithesis, producing the synthesis. With the right wing as the thesis, the left wing as the antithesis, the synthesis is the bird soaring high into space, never falling to earth . . . Affirmation, Negation, Negation of the Negation.1
In physics Heraclitus and Democritus never took flight from the real world.2 One of their accomplishments was the hypothesis of the existence of molecules and atoms. In their lifetime this could not be proved, as they had only the naked eye to use for observation, but some 2,500 years later, their hypothesis was verified by modern science through use of the microscope.3
The main accomplishments of the dialectic based on matter have been Marx’s discovery of the theory of surplus value in economics and Marx and Engels’ development of the theories of historical and dialectical materialism in philosophy.
It is not my intention in this small book to go into my philosophy of life, or Weltanschauung,4 which has already been dealt with in Madilog.5 The brief observation presented above was intended only to set the stage for a discussion of the struggle between negative and positive forces, between repulsion and attraction, between thesis and antithesis, in the world of law. I shall be dealing not with law in its wider sense, but with several specific cases, and not with law concerning the whole of society or even one particular group, but law as it relates specifically to myself.
In brief, I shall deal with the struggle between justice and tyranny on the battleground of my own person and life. This struggle, in its legal form, was played out by Dutch, American, and British imperialism, and finally by the Republic of Indonesia, which is supposedly based on belief in God, humanism, social justice, unity, sovereignty of the people . . . and all that.6
[9] I look at these acts wrought upon me not only with personal feelings but also with the recognition that this struggle exists throughout the universe. In my view, neither society as a whole, nor any given group within society, nor even a single individual can escape the action of these two forces—thesis and antithesis—on every aspect of life.
This small book tells my personal story of the interplay of thesis and antithesis.
Chapter 2
HUMAN RIGHTS
[10] Law as it relates to human rights covers an extremely wide area.1 This is not the place, nor is it my intention here, to analyze all human rights one by one. What I shall touch on is only that part especially concerned with regulations for the self-preservation of members of society.
In order to be aware of the place held by the right to self-preservation in law, it is well to have a quick view of the whole body of law relating to human rights. This is not a difficult task if we follow the method used above in viewing the natural world, separating the positive from the negative, what attracts from what repels.
There are two great forces that move the soul of every living thing, including human beings. The first is the will to live, and the second is the will not to die. If we term the first will positive, then the second clearly is negative. If human will generally attracts and pulls towards the first, then it rejects the second. In the concrete, everyday sense, the first force serves to find the means to live—food, drink, clothing, accommodation, and so forth—while the second serves to ward off the dangers of sickness and hunger.
[11] The struggle for rights means the struggle to seize these positive and negative rights, as embodied in the Magna Carta and The Rights of Men in Anglo-Saxon law;2 in Les Droits des Hommes, the basis of French law; and finally in the right to work in Soviet Russia. The struggles to secure these rights in England, America, France, and Russia were not individual struggles, but group ones, undertaken to avoid danger and to secure well-being for the group itself.3 These struggles followed the outline sketched above—to secure the positive and reject the negative.
We would not be able to see the wood for the trees if we were to examine every right won in the victorious struggles of the bourgeoisie against the aristocracy in France and England, of the American nationalists against the British, and of the proletariat against the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie in Russia. It is sufficient for us to analyze the motto of the French revolution: liberty, equality, and fraternity, a slogan that can still move the souls of oppressed humanity.
In essence the positive aspect of the call for liberty encompassed freedom to make a living-freedom to farm, to trade, or to establish a business; freedom to possess, sell, or buy the products of such labor; freedom to elect representatives to regional and central political bodies; and, finally, freedom to hold a belief and to profess and defend it with the tongue and the pen. On the other hand, its negative meaning was freedom from the bonds of feudalism with regard to earning a living and freedom from arbitrary actions by the police, the royal court, and the nobility.
Equality was pursued by the French bourgeoisie so that these rights, in both their positive and negative aspects, could be possessed by all citizens of France: the aristocracy, the priesthood, the bourgeoisie, and even the industrial and rural proletariat.
Fraternity, in essence, was the call for equal treatment among the regions of France in regard to the import and export of goods—that is, in customs duties. One region should not be able to impose customs and duties against any other region within the state of France. It would be sufficient to pay duties in any one region of unified France and they should not, then, be levied again in other regions through which the goods might pass: this was the meaning of unity and fraternity.
[12] Perhaps it was the specter of fascism and nazism or perhaps it was the negative aspects of capitalism for the proletariat that made the late President Roosevelt formulate two of his four freedoms as freedom of fear [sic] and freedom from hunger. Actually they can be formulated as negative and positive freedoms: the first negatively as freedom from fear (arrest), and the second positively as the right to be given work by the state.
But the capitalists do not want the positive. They do not want to guarantee a livelihood to each citizen. More to the point, shorter, and more penetrating was the slogan of the Bolshevik party at the time of the revolution in 1917. The positive was the demand for bread and land. The negative was the demand for peace, that is, freedom from external attacks, from danger.
These two slogans concerning conditions of life illuminate the different positions of these two opposing groups. The slogan of the bourgeoisie, with