The Stage of Development: From Jakarta to the Remote Corners of the Nation
PELAKITA.ID – Have you ever wondered why development in Indonesia often feels like a double-edged sword? On one side, we see skyscrapers rising in Jakarta, toll roads cutting across islands, and economic growth figures proudly showcased as national achievements.
Yet on the other side, there is widening inequality, workers struggling for fair wages, and endless land conflicts. To better understand these paradoxes, we can turn to three major schools of thought: liberalism, Marxism, and post-structuralism.
Liberalism: The Main Director
Since the fall of the New Order, liberalism has served as the dominant engine driving Indonesia’s development. This paradigm rests on the belief that free markets pave the way to prosperity.
Its logic is straightforward: reduce state intervention, allow capital to flow freely, and growth will naturally follow.
Indonesia’s policies reflect this recipe—massive deregulation, privatization of state-owned enterprises like Indosat, and an open door for foreign investment. Indeed, the economic indicators did improve. But the lingering question is: who actually benefits the most?
Behind these glowing statistics lies stark inequality. The lion’s share of development has been enjoyed by capital owners and political elites, while workers, farmers, and fishers are often left behind. Liberalism promises efficiency, but all too often neglects the profound social costs it produces.
Marxism: The Dissenting Voice
While liberalism dominates the narrative, Marxism offers a persistent critique. From this perspective, development is never neutral; it is an arena of class struggle. A toll road, for instance, is not just infrastructure—it is a means of accelerating the movement of capital and commodities.
Low minimum wages are not simply about “efficiency” but rather a deliberate strategy to cut production costs and maximize profit for the capitalist class. The widespread agrarian conflicts across the country testify to how people’s land is forcibly sacrificed for corporate gain.
Marxism urges us to look beyond economic statistics and ask the fundamental question: development for whom? It reveals how celebrated growth often deepens social divides and strengthens the dominance of those who already hold power.
A vivid recent example of class struggle in Indonesia can be seen in the HOSTUM movement (Hapus Outsourcing, Tolak Upah Murah — “End Outsourcing, Reject Low Wages”). On 28 August 2025, tens of thousands of workers staged mass demonstrations in Jakarta and other major cities, rallying in front of the House of Representatives and the Presidential Palace. Spearheaded by labour organisations such as the Labour Party and KSPI, the protests demanded an end to exploitative outsourcing practices, substantial increases in regional minimum wages—by as much as 8.5 to 10.5 percent for 2026—and the establishment of stronger protections against arbitrary dismissals.
This movement reflects the sharp tension between capital interests and labour rights in contemporary Indonesia. Employers and investors benefit from cheap, flexible labour and weak enforcement of protections, while workers face growing precarity and stagnant wages. The state, meanwhile, often frames deregulation as necessary for growth and investment, echoing the liberal economic playbook. The HOSTUM protests demonstrate how Marx’s critique of capitalism remains relevant: behind the façade of national development lies an ongoing struggle over who truly benefits from Indonesia’s economic growth.
Post-Structuralism: Dismantling the Stage of Narratives
If liberalism writes the script and Marxism provides the critique, post-structuralism is the force that tears down the stage itself. This perspective is less concerned with economic figures or class struggles, and more focused on power, language, and discourse.
Take the phrase “sustainable development.” It sounds noble, but who gets to define what “sustainable” means? In practice, such terms can become instruments of power—setting standards, categories, and hierarchies about who is legitimate and who must be “managed.”
In Indonesia, we see this in the discourse of “poverty alleviation.” It is not only about helping the poor but also about creating and regulating the category of “the poor,” shaping how they are seen and controlled by the state.
Post-structuralism opens up space for marginalized voices—indigenous peoples, women, and minorities—whose lived realities rarely find a place in the grand narrative of development.
Reading Development Through Three Lenses
In truth, these three paradigms complement rather than cancel each other out.
Liberalism shows us what policies are carried out—deregulation, privatization, investment.
In practice, this means policies like the massive deregulation drive under the Omnibus Law on Job Creation, which sought to simplify licensing and reduce labour protections in the name of efficiency.
Privatization of strategic sectors, from telecommunications to energy distribution, is framed as a way to attract investment and modernize infrastructure. These steps are justified with promises of growth and competitiveness, but they also reveal how liberal logic continues to shape the blueprint of Indonesia’s development.
Marxism explains who gains and who loses from those policies.
From this lens, it becomes clear that the primary beneficiaries are large corporations and investors, both domestic and foreign, who enjoy easier access to land, cheaper labour, and reduced regulatory burdens.
The costs, however, are borne disproportionately by workers who face greater job insecurity, farmers who lose access to land, and small businesses struggling to compete. Marxism helps us see that development is not just about numbers rising on economic charts, but about a redistribution of power and resources that often tilts in favour of the capitalist class.
Post-structuralism reveals why we come to believe the official narratives surrounding them.
Here, language becomes a crucial battlefield. Terms like “investment climate,” “ease of doing business,” and “sustainable growth” are repeated so frequently in public discourse that they appear as common sense.
By framing deregulation as “simplification” and wage suppression as “competitiveness,” policymakers and media narratives normalize choices that might otherwise face public resistance. Post-structuralism shows us that development is not only about physical projects and policies, but also about the subtle power of words in shaping how society understands what is possible, desirable, or inevitable.
To view Indonesian development without these three lenses is like seeing only one side of a coin. Development is a complex process, riddled with contradictions, and constantly shaped by the clash of ideas, interests, and power.
In the end, understanding development is not just about celebrating growth figures or lamenting inequality. It also requires vigilance toward the grand narratives that shape our perception of reality.
For Indonesia, the stage of development is not only about infrastructure and economic numbers but also about whose voices are heard, whose are silenced, and how the nation’s future is ultimately defined.
Dear Readers, what do you think?
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Gowa, 24 September 2025
