Audi Ali
Our society is characterized by two sentiments. First, noting the inequality that was made manifest by the conduct of the state and its apparatus recently, we are enraged. The guise of formal and legalistic notion of “equality” enshrined in the constitution is shorn apart, revealing instead the material gulf that separates the haves and the have-nots.
Second, we simultaneously have been moulded to cordon off the political from our lives and whatever rage we feel quickly leads to apathy. The crisis is not a catalyst for radicalisation but may bring about the opposite – backed by the state, capital advances on and we remain fragmented. Our quiet rage alone could not break the inertia.
But we shouldn’t make the mistake of diagnosing the present condition as being engendered by the pandemic. To offer some banalities, our society has always been designed around inequality and exploitation – with minor concessions made along the way to stave off radical anger.
Growth was predicated on disposable labour and the conditions that made this disposability possible was orchestrated by the state that saw no alternative other than the pursuit for investment that promises the greatest possible value to shareholders. Work is extractive, both in the sense that it saps life from the environment and from ourselves.
Sustaining this alliance between the state and capital is our persistent enfeeblement. Workers stopped winning concessions beyond what was necessary to sustain this alliance. We dove headlong into the pandemonium that began in 2020 with this arrangement intact. It is no surprise that the Malaysian government spends a dismal 5% of GDP for fiscal stimulus; there was no need for power to be persuaded to change its ways in the absence of a countervailing force.
The pandemic is a disruption, yes, but it is also a natural and almost foreseeable occurrence given our ecological trajectory; the crisis, as manifested in the number of dead, starving and unemployed, is long engineered by the state.
Against Depoliticisation
“The ideas of the ruling class are the ruling ideas” – Karl Marx
Though they should be taken with a pinch of salt, the surveys done by Invoke and Merdeka Centre are indicative of the languor we are in. Despite disastrous handling of the pandemic, the prime minister is still well-regarded and negative public opinions that abound will not necessarily be translated into a yearning for an alternative to the status quo.
There is something to be said here about racial and communal capitalism at play and how it limits the “space for imagining alternatives”. To re-open the space for that imagination we need to resist depoliticisation.
The agreement among most is that our political situation is volatile. It is true that the ruinous game that our politicians play at the expense of the people is political. But to assess our politics through the viewpoint of electoralism and political parties alone is to fail to see the tentacles of power that cling to the fabric of our society.
Capital exerts its power through the state machinery and moulded us in such a way to make acts of solidarity against it almost impossible. Viewed more holistically, our political establishment is as stable as ever: regardless of who is in power (from the menu of candidates we currently have), the dominance of state and capital is assured. Depoliticisation partly explains how we came to narrowly construe what counts as politics.
Depoliticised space
- Depoliticisation came about as we allowed the terms of politics to be set wholly by the state itself.
By now, we are hopefully familiar with the fact that the left in Malaysia were the earliest agitators for independence from the British colonists. The agitation was underpinned by the understanding that the political dominance of the oppressors was inseparable from the economic interests that they held.
Strikes and slow-downs at workplaces were readily understood as being part of the struggle for independence. They understood that power is a function of affluence and this perspective compelled them to simultaneously struggle for emancipation of the nation and of the working class.
This view of the political economy came to be diluted as Merdeka was achieved. The program of universal suffrage was rolled out yet at the same time, class interest of the workers and the marhaen continued to be suppressed.
The repressive acts of the state against the left back then diffused their energy and the lack of transmission of ideas and methods for organising resulted in the malaise that grips us currently.
The development agenda and poverty alleviation were constructed almost entirely by the autocratically-inclined state. The energy for democratisation was lost to the air – decision-making at almost all levels was left to the bureaucratic elites. Local elections – historically a sort of creche for the left – were eliminated and local councillors were transformed into mere appendages of the state.
Politics came to be increasingly defined by electoral gains and losses with further emphasis on the persona rather than the economic interests that these political parties or individuals represent.
- Depoliticisation was entrenched through the co-optation of the workers’ movement.
The construction of the political was further circumscribed by the establishment of various bureaucracies that, on the surface, are intended to deal with the workers’ grievances. Industrial courts and the ministry for labour (currently the Ministry of Human Resources) were instituted but rarely do these institutions empower us; our more radical options are swept off the table by that oft-repeated incantation that we should always use the “proper channels” to air out our grievances. It is more likely that these labyrinthian mazes only serve to divert our energy and attention away from our only means of emancipation: solidarity.
- Depoliticisation as a result of commodification of life
The recent episode involving Better Malaysia Foundation and its suggestion for inter-generational debt slavery in exchange for housing illustrates the intrinsic tendency within capitalism to commodify aspects of our lives. Our fundamental needs are construed as market demand. Viewed from this perspective, it is no surprise that our lives are deemed as vessels for creating long-term liquidity for holders of capital.
But this turn did not materialise out of nowhere; it emanated from political actors – the state and its tributaries of GLCs and private firms – who have successfully moulded our economy to a point that this suggestion is possible.
Jalil Rasheed and Vincent Tan are at pains to insist that their venture is a social enterprise. By that, they mean that what they are doing offers no advantage for them as economic actors. Never mind that in doing so they are essentially propping up an entire industry in which they are major players.
Philanthropy as a strategy of buttressing power is all too common. Depoliticisation creates room for philanthropic organisations to pass themselves off as something innocuous when in fact they are political organisations.
Solidarity as Political Act
When I stated above that our only means of emancipation is solidarity, I mean in earnest that our hope lies in the collective struggle in all aspects of our lives. There are reasons to be pessimistic of course: the promise of individual advancement under neoliberalism is seductive; the working class in Malaysia and across the globe is incoherent and disorganised; and the ruling class’ ideas about our society seem immoveable. But I am reminded of what E.P Thompson, the historian, wrote: “class happens when some men, as a result of common experiences (inherited or shared), feel and articulate the identity of their interests as between themselves, and as against other men whose interests are different from (and usually opposed to) theirs.”
Depoliticisation is essentially an obfuscation of our class interest that leads us to narrowly define the boundary of our collectivity. The most radical political act that we could do now is to reach out to each other as human beings and recognise that we are similarly oppressed by the forces of capital.