The power of morality or the morality of power?

Frans Seda, Kekuasaan dan Moral (Power and Morality) Compiled and edited by L. Philip Gobang, Avanti Fontana and Djony Herfan, Introduction by Frans M. Parera, Grasindo, Jakarta, 1996, XXVI and 581 pages.

JAKARTA (JP): Power and Morality, the second volume of Frans Seda's disseminated articles and publications written since 1990, is being released to commemorate his 70th birthday. This book continues from where the first selection, which appeared in 1992 (Gramedia, 588 pages), left off. Titled Unended Symphony: The Political Economy of Indonesia's New Society, it contained mainly political and economic works.

The first striking difference between the two volumes is that while the first volume was only a selection of Frans' works, the second is a compilation of all of his intellectual writings during the 1990s.

Power and Morality is a miscellany of 74 newspaper articles, lectures and seminar papers mainly on the economic and political situation in Indonesia in the 1990s, 14 interviews on various subjects, and 28 speeches, mostly on national education and particularly on higher learning in Indonesia.

With regard to different themes, 43 of the titles are on politics, 43 cover the economy, and 30 discuss national education and higher learning. In line with the three subjects, the book is divided into three parts, which are each subdivided into ten chapters. The whole book comprises no less than 116 titles, and the main text is 557 pages long.

With regard to their origin, the pieces can be differentiated into two main categories. Firstly, making up the bulk of the volume, are articles which were written on subjects covering the author's own interests and professional expertise. Secondly, there are speeches and addresses which have been presented on specific occasions, and were motivated by the author's involvement in higher learning, as both the chairman of the Atmajaya Foundation, which runs the Jakarta-based Atmajaya Catholic University, and as the chairman of the PPM Foundation, which runs LPPM, a Jakarta-based institute known for its achievements in management training.

The basic question is: why power and why morality? The books starts from the proposition that in politics there are both power and morality. On one hand politics is nothing but power building and power wielding. Power is necessary in politics precisely because of its nature as the art of the possible. Politics is the art to envisage, to create and to make use of opportunities, in order to realize them into new political realities. On the other hand the nature of politics as the art of the possible does not allow for the inclusion of other thinkable and possible eventualities. There are limits which are set by moral principles adhered to by most politicians. This is precisely the source of the whole problem, because in a sense, it is easier to exercise power without subscribing to any moral principles, just as it is also easier to follow and to implement one's moral principles without necessarily having to deal with power. In that sense, politicians are damned to be in a permanent conflict between the morality of power and the power of morality.

The economy is treated by the author on three different levels. First, the economy is regarded as a market mechanism which is believed to be able to take care of itself. A sort of hemostatic equilibrium is assumed to exist within the market so much so that once a function of that mechanism is hindered or blocked, there will emerge corresponding responses from other functions which are able to restore the equilibrium. This is a view of an economy from the perspective of economics.

However, the author seems to doubt the assumption regarding the existence of a perfect market as there are so many non-market forces which exert a large influence on the workings of the market, be they geopolitical, cultural, ethnic, religious or otherwise. On top of these, political factors can never be overestimated. The economy is not only a matter of the market, but also a matter of power. What is at stake is not simply an exchange of goods and services, but also an exchange of a variety of social forces. In that sense, economic figures are not merely figures. They are politics which take on the form of figures, or figures which entail politics. This is the perspective of a political economy.

On the third level, the discussion focuses on the economic behavior of people involved in the economy. The responses to the market are by no means merely mechanical. They are human responses which are heavily loaded with sociocultural values. In that sense the market economy and the political economy, which are so powerful at a macro-level have to face the moral-economy at a micro-level. The significance of moral values is discernible in the increasing importance given to business ethics, corporate culture, or the entrepreneurial and managerial philosophy in modern companies.

At this juncture, the whole political and economic discussion comes to terms with educational problems. On the one hand, education in general, and higher learning in particular, are treated as a means to prepare and to produce human resources, but on the other hand, we are running the risk of forgetting the nature of education as the development, indeed, the blossoming of as many human potential energies as possible.

Besides that, the emphasis on human resources as a factor of production might easily bring us to equating human resources and human dignity. The latter, however, is a basic value which is more fundamental, albeit less perceptible than the former, because it is something every human being is endowed with, and should always be recognized regardless of whether someone is productive or unproductive, educated or illiterate, loyal or traitorous.

As a compilation, the book cannot be treated as an integrated project, which can be judged in terms of its research methods or conceptions which are used or even produced. However, there are a lot of short articles which deserve our attention, because they are the product of a serious and sincere attempt to deal with actual urgencies in the problem areas mentioned above. There are many thinking pieces which, though eclectic in nature, might be inspiring for those who are looking for a subject of their more serious and continuous studies.

Reading the book would also be enjoyable on a more simplistic level, for the author has his own stylistic flavor: he is sharp, perceptive, sometimes fairly colloquial, but always humorous. It is really an art of dealing with serious problems without becoming entwined in thoughts or bitter feelings, and of being playful with so many things while putting a real substance in them.

The book has been prepared and produced in an unbelievably short time. It took only five weeks for the editors to bring the book into being. It is therefore impossible to expect faultless editing. There are quite a number of wrong spellings of important conceptions, relating mainly to technical terms in foreign languages. Those who are familiar with the conceptions might guess where the mistakes come from, but those who come across the conceptions for the first time, might get puzzled in reading them. Some of the mistakes include: "go to heal with your aid" instead of "go to hell with your aid" (p.102), "peacemeal" instead of "piecemeal" (p.42), "liaison office" instead of "liaison office" (p.78). "Sozial Marktwirtschaft" instead of "Sociale Marktwirtschaft" (p.275), "Reine Kapitalisme" instead of "Reiner Kapitalismus", or "Historische Kapitalisme" instead of "Historischer Kapitalismus" (p.272). Those mistakes deserve serious correction in the next edition of the book.

-- Ignas Kleden