Do You Speak French?: Remembering Sumitro Djojohadikusumo
The living room at Jalan Kertanegara 4, Kebayoran Baru, was neatly arranged. The chairs were positioned with just enough space, as if allowing conversation room to breathe. I arrived at the house before nine in the morning. Shortly after, an elderly man approached slowly with a walking stick. He wore glasses, and his face was calm.
Sumitrol Djojohadikusumo. That morning, he wore a finely textured checkered suit—resembling a nailhead weave—a white shirt, and a neatly tied tie. There was something old-fashioned in his manner of dress: a sense of neatness and self-discipline. Sumitro was indeed dapper.
It was the morning of 29 March 1999. He welcomed me warmly. A few days prior, a fax had arrived from Sumitro—an unexpected invitation following a brief encounter at the LPEM-FEUI halal bi halal. I was surprised and astonished to receive his invitation. At the time, I was merely a doctoral student at ANU. A nobody. At most, someone ‘known’ only to those in certain circles.
To us economics students, Sumitro was a legend: the founder of the Faculty of Economics at the University of Indonesia (FEUI), the ‘Begawan Ekonomi’ (Great Sage of Economics)—as people called him—a fighter, a politician, and a former minister.
The conversation flowed, light yet dense. He asked about the progress of my dissertation and the Indonesian economic situation at the time, then jumped—without transition—to novels and books by French authors. Upon reaching the topic of French literature, he smiled and asked:
“Do you speak French?”
I shook my head.
“Oh, you’re not quite an intellectual yet.”
Sumitro laughed. I knew he was joking, but behind the jest, I sensed how profound the French influence was upon him. He then stood up and took a thin blue book from the shelf: Reflections on André Malraux: by a distant admirer. I still keep that book to this day.
Sumitro greatly admired Malraux—his words and actions were consistent examples of this. Malraux did not just think; he participated in the Spanish Civil War. Sumitro compared him to Sartre, noting, “Sartre spoke about Spain in the cafes of Paris.”
“Malraux joined the war, leading an air squadron for the Republican forces.” This seemed to have influenced Sumitro to also become a man of action—as seen when he joined the PRRI/Permesta movement.
For Sumitro, economics was a tool for nation-building—a branch of political economy: the study of power, morality, and human choice. Perhaps this was because he did not merely study these concepts, but witnessed firsthand colonial oppression and inequality in rural Java.
Sumitro absorbed various schools of thought while pursuing his doctorate in economics at the Nederlandsch Economische Hoogeschool (NEH) in Rotterdam, and during his years in Paris, where he obtained a diploma in history and philosophy at the Sorbonne.
In Rotterdam, he delved deeper into the classical and modern traditions of economics. From Karl Marx, he absorbed an awareness of structure and inequality; from Joseph Schumpeter, he gained an imagination of entrepreneurship as the engine of innovation and social change.
In the next stage, from Frank Knight, he learned that government policy uncertainty creates a “high-cost economy.” However, the most lasting influence came from Edward Chamberlin. Through the Theory of Monopolistic Competition, he found the vocabulary to describe what he had long observed—the dominance of the Dutch ‘Big Five’ over trade in the East Indies (Thee, 2005).