Capitalism, primitive accumulation and the 1960s' massacres: revisiting the New Order and its violent genesis

Abstract

Abstract: This article offers a critique of Hilmar Farid's (and to a lesser extent, Colm McNaughton's) contribution in this journal about the 1960s' anti-communist massacres, primitive accumulation and capitalist development in Indonesia. While agreeing that the massacres can be usefully tied to primitive accumulation it is argued that Farid's work displays some serious conceptual misunderstandings about the workings of capitalist development in Indonesia under the New Order as well as the social, political and economic underpinnings of that regime. As such, this paper finds that there are some major faults as well in his presentation of the logic of capitalist accumulation, the way it has b..