{"id":5,"date":"2020-03-22T03:39:07","date_gmt":"2020-03-22T03:39:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/review.imagined.my\/wordpress-5.3.2\/wordpress\/?p=5"},"modified":"2020-08-03T01:46:42","modified_gmt":"2020-08-03T01:46:42","slug":"traditionalism-and-the-passive-revolution-of-capital-in-malaya","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/review.imagined.my\/?p=5","title":{"rendered":"Traditionalism and the Passive Revolution of Capital in Malaya"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/drive.google.com\/file\/d\/1fEnZy2_vyaWEMGScA-HqoTrwocyniAtg\/preview\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\"><\/iframe>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"donation\">\n<h3><ion-icon name=\"card-outline\" size=\"large\"><\/ion-icon> Enjoyed this article? Want to tip the author?<\/h3>\nFollow the instructions below:\n<br><br>\nStep 1: Bank in to our account Persatuan Sejarah Anak Muda, Maybank, 512316642160\n<br><br>\nStep 2: In the reference section name the author you&#8217;re tipping.\n<br><br>\nStep 3: Please email details of your tip to jeremy@imagined.my\n<br><br>\nThanks!\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Donna Amoroso\u2019s Traditionalism and the Ascendancy of the Malay Ruling Class in Colonial Malaya has formed one of the most influential analyses of the conservative political development of colonial and post-colonial Malaya. Central to her work was the category of \u201ctraditionalism\u201d, through which she exposed the way in which the invention and reinvention of traditions by the British colonial state laid the groundwork for the reproduction of monarchical and aristocratic power under colonial rule, creating the foundations for the \u201ctraditional\u201d nature of the subsequent nationalist movement.\nIn this piece I wish to argue that the process described by Amoroso can be best understood in terms of Antonio Gramsci\u2019s notion of the passive revolution of capital, a theory of conservative political, social and economic transformation under conditions of capitalist development.  Expanded in the Indian (and post-colonial) case by theorists such as Partha Chatterjee and Sudipta Kaviraj, I will argue that this concept can, in the context of Malaya, form the basis for understanding Malaya\u2019s model of conservative nation-state formation, in particular highlighting the importance of three elements which Gramsci saw as central to the process of passive revolution: the state as an institution above class conflict, the coalition as a mediation between classes, and a molecular or gradualist theory of political and economic change.\n\n\n\nGramsci on Passive Revolution\nGramsci\u2019s understanding of the concept of passive revolution was formed through his study of the Italian Risorgimento, the process through which the Italian nation was unified under a single state. Italian nationalist unification was markedly different from the French model that had defined the early era of bourgeois revolution. The French model had entailed bourgeois leadership over subordinate classes, control of the state apparatus and transformation of this apparatus, entailing significant legal and economic change, and producing the conditions for a modern capitalist society. In Italy on the other hand unification was a long drawn out process which entailed neither the mobilisation of the masses, nor transformative changes to the state apparatus or economic structure, Risorgimento was a top-down and reformist process of national unification. One prominent thinker of this process was Vincenzo Cuoco who, in the aftermath of the 1799 Neapolitan Revolution advocated for the concept of \u201cpassive revolution\u201d, which he understood in terms of delivering bourgeois political goals without the destruction of tradition and the disruption of mass mobilisation.\nFor Gramsci passive revolution was not only a political programme, but also a \u201ccriterion of interpretation\u201d for understanding forms of capitalist development outside of the French revolutionary tradition. This experience he would argue was central to 19th century bourgeois politics, and it was for this reason that he declared it a \u201cnecessary critical corollary to the Introduction to the Critique of Political Economy\u201d, in which Marx had outlined the materialist conception of history and the relationship between the economic base and politico-legal superstructure, a relationship central to the theory of bourgeois revolution.\nThis entailed recognising that within the context of capitalist development there had emerged another practice of bourgeois politics which, in the aftermath of the Napoleonic conquest of Europe, took the form of a bourgeois-aristocratic alliance, bypassing the need for an alliance between the bourgeoisie, workers and peasantry. This model of bourgeois revolution operated for Gramsci through \u201csuccessive small waves of reform rather than by revolutionary explosions\u201d, in which as against the active mobilisation of the masses, there was a reformist process in which bourgeois revolution \n\ncoincided with the preservation of significant elements of the traditional order. As Gramsci would argue:\nThe \u201csuccessive waves\u201d were made up of a combination of social struggles, interventions from above of the enlightened monarchy type, and national wars\u2014with the two latter phenomena predominating. The period of the \u201cRestoration\u201d is the richest in developments of this kind; restoration becomes the first policy whereby social struggles find sufficiently elastic frameworks to allow the bourgeoisie to gain power without dramatic upheavals, without the French machinery of terror. The old feudal classes are demoted from their dominant position to a \u201cgoverning\u201d one, but are not eliminated, nor is there any attempt to liquidate them as an organic whole; instead of a class they become a \u201ccaste\u201d with specific cultural and psychological characteristics, but no longer with predominant economic functions.\nDialectically for Gramsci this entailed the fact that under conditions of passive revolution, struggle, the \u201cmotor of history\u201d, didn\u2019t lead to the supersession of existing social forces, but their reproduction. What emerged then through passive revolution was a \u201cblocked dialectic\u201d in which class struggle was disconnected from a possibility of resolution in a new or higher form. This entailed for Gramsci the need to think dialectics away from the problem of force and supersession and towards categories such as absorption, neutralisation and incorporation, such that, in the context of the blocked dialectic, the advantage lay not with the more powerful party but with that party with the ability to appropriate the force of others. Expressed in dialectical terms Gramsci would see this as the process allowing:\nthe \u201cthesis\u201d to achieve its full development, up to the point where it would even succeed in incorporating a part of the antithesis itself\u2014in order, that is, not to allow itself to be \u201ctranscended\u201d in the dialectical opposition. The thesis alone in fact develops to the full its potential for struggle, up to the point where it absorbs even the so-called representatives of the antithesis: it is precisely in this that the passive revolution or revolution\/restoration consists.\n\nThrough such a dialectical understanding of passive revolution Gramsci came to animate the notion of passivity itself. Passivity didn\u2019t imply for Gramsci a purely negative force, but rather an active force which through its very activity disguises itself. It would be for this reason that he would see the passive revolution of capital as operating through \u201cmolecular\u201d social transformation, taking place \u201cas it were beneath the surface of society, in situations where the progressive class cannot advance openly\u201d. Gramsci understood this as a \u201c\u2018revolution\u2019 without a \u2018revolution\u2019\u201d, or a revolution which disguises its revolutionary nature whilst able to \u201cprogressively modify the pre-existing composition of forces\u201d. In the context then of the hegemony of the Moderates in the Italian Risorgimento Gramsci would see their hegemonic success \u201cthrough individual, \u201cmolecular\u201d, private enterprise\u201d, which he opposed to an organised party programme of action.\nSuch a logic also informed Gramsci\u2019s understanding of the process of history. History was for Gramsci a continuous relation between revolution and restoration which played out \u201cbeneath the surface of society\u201d. It is in this sense that Gramsci would argue for the need to understand restoration, and thus tradition, \u201cdynamically\u201d, not as an archaic presence but as an outcome of a process of passive revolution which at the same time revolutionises and restores. \u201cIt is certain\u201d, Gramsci argues, \u201cthat in the movement of history there is never any turning back and that restorations in toto do not exist.\u201d Rather what is taking place is a passive struggle between forces \u201cbeneath the surface of society\u201d, which on the one hand develops the forces of capitalist modernity and on the other hand reproduces pre-capitalist and non-capitalist forms of power, a process Gramsci would see at work in transition from feudalism as well as the development of fascism and Fordism.\n\nPassive Revolution in India\nIn the case of India, Gramsci\u2019s thesis on passive revolution became a starting point to reflect on India\u2019s anti-colonial nationalist struggle. In particular on the relationship between anti-colonial nationalism and the category of bourgeois revolution. Both Partha Chatterjee and Sudipta Kaviraj have in various works read Indian nationalist politics through the framework of passive revolution in which the Indian bourgeoisie attained ascendancy in the independence movement, and in the post-colonial state, without \nclear supremacy over the pre-capitalist classes, a wholesale transformation of the state apparatus or a need to actively mobilise the Indian masses.\nBoth Chatterjee and Kaviraj have identified the basis for the nationalist mobilisation of passive revolution in two aspects of colonial rule.  Firstly the limitation on the growth of a national bourgeoisie under colonial domination and secondly the production through colonial rule of a state-form already suited (through its bureaucracy and legal institutions) to capitalist rule. From the perspective of bourgeois revolution these facts led the nationalist movement to assume two forms, on the one hand a broad alliance between different groups and classes in order to overthrow British colonial rule, on the other hand the ability to lay hold of the colonial state with modifications for the requirements of national capitalist use but without the transformation of the state and the overthrow of all ruling elites. Thus as Chatterjee would argue:\nThe project [of nationalist passive revolution] is a reorganisation of the political order, but it is moderated in two quite fundamental ways. On the one hand, it does not attempt to break up or transform in any radical way the institutional structure of \u201crational\u201d authority set up in the period of colonial rule. On the other hand, it also does not undertake a full-scale assault on all precapitalist dominant classes; rather, it seeks to limit their former power, neutralise them where necessary, attack them only selectively, and in general bring them around to a position of subsidiary allies within a reformed state structure.\nThis process was premised on what Chatterjee would term a \u201csynthetic hegemony\u201d in which the nationalist movement would, through a process of mediation via the production of a national-state, achieve legitimacy both within modern capitalist society and pre-capitalist society. The nation emerges then for Chatterjee as the means through which these competing class groups could be represented, whilst the state emerges as an independent tool of mediation through which the modern capitalist sector could pursue expanded reproduction whilst remaining legitimate in the pre-capitalist sphere.\nThis process entailed the fact then that in the Indian context, the power of the bourgeoisie and of capital, couldn\u2019t be realised on its own terms, but required a structure \nof power which could provide it with a foundation for its rule and expansion. This would also be realised in Sudipta Kaviraj\u2019s coalitional theory of power,\ncapital is not independently dominant in Indian society and state; and, for a series of other historical and sociological reasons, single-handed and unaided dominance in society is also ruled out for the other propertied classes. It is a political, long-term coalition which ensures their joint dominance over the state. So the coalition is not an effect or an accidental attribute of a dominance which is otherwise adequate; it is its condition.\nAs Chatterjee would argue, the form that this mediation would take would be economic planning, a top-down model of capitalist development which could legitimise capitalist expansion in the name of the nation. Thus in the post-colonial era Chatterjee would argue that the \u201cpolitical logic of passive revolution\u201d called for \u201cpromoting industrialisation without taking the risk of agrarian political mobilisation. This was an essential aspect of the hegemonic construct of the postcolonial state: combining accumulation with legitimation while avoiding the \u2018unnecessary rigors\u2019 of social conflict\u201d. As such Chatterjee could argue that the fundamental aim of nationalist passive revolution was to \u201ccontain class conflicts within manageable dimensions, to control and manipulate the many dispersed power relations in society to further as best as possible the thrust towards accumulation.\u201d \n\nPassive Revolution in Malaya\nIn the case of Malaya I want to argue that the modern capitalist nation-state was formed, as in the case of Italy and India, through a process of passive revolution, in which interventions from above reorganised Malaya\u2019s political, economic and social life without enabling strong processes from below. In particular I want to focus on the period from 1945, the end of the Second World War, to 1948, the beginning of the Emergency, to highlight the way in which the nationalist struggles and the reorganisations of elite politics which took place in that period centred around questions of political and economic transformation of the colony and led to a series of projects of passive revolution, which in the face of popular upheavals from below and threats to disrupt capitalist accumulation coalesced to form the political basis of an elite-led Malayan nation-state.\nThe first such process was initiated by the British themselves through the Malayan Union proposal, as an attempt to overcome the earlier limitations of Malaya\u2019s political and economic structures. In doing so it pursued a policy of political reform from above, through an attempt to unite British capital, the local Chinese and Indian business class and the colony\u2019s educated middle-class professionals around the formation of a modern centralised state and bureaucracy, economic rationalisation, a reduction in the role of the Sultans and the formation of a common Malayan citizenship\u2014to be achieved by resting concessions from the Sultans and without popular constent. Economically this coalition was based upon the absence of significant contradictions between foreign and local capital, and the centrality of the colonial state to both, particularly through its role in managing labour.\nAs such the Union proposal was generally welcomed by the Chinese and Indian Chambers of Commerce, who nevertheless regretted the exclusion of Singapore. Meanwhile the emerging nationalist parties initially supported the proposals. Parti Kebangsaan Melayu Malaya (PKMM) welcomed the Malayan Union because it would unite the peninsular Malays in a single political entity\u2014a basic nationalist aspiration\u2014and challenge the traditional feudal state structures. The Malayan Democratic Union (MDU) equally supported the aims of the Malayan Union, welcoming the sidelining of the Sultans, but objected to the exclusion of Singapore, the Communist Party too welcomed unification but objected to the lack of popular democracy and the continued British domination it implied.\nThe reaction to the Union proposal formed the basis however for a second process of passive revolution. Whilst the Malay Sultans had initially agreed to the terms of the Union, the Sultans came under pressure from a rising class of Malay aristocrats and bureaucrats to intervene against them. This group\u2014who under British rule had been converted into a ruling caste in the Gramscian sense of the term, and were subordinated to colonial economic development and the capitalist state-form\u2014were in administrative terms modernisers, but faced with what they saw as threats to their interests and limitations on their future development, they mobilised a discourse of tradition and the ideology of British protection to generate mass opposition to the Proposals.  By the end of 1945 the Malay Associations began turning to mass demonstrations, and by March 1946 a Congress of Malays called for a nationwide protest and non-cooperation movement, and a boycott of the rulers\u2019 installation ceremony, a process which sought to induce popular mobilization from below\u2014within controlled limits\u2014to further elite aims. Against this the MCP was developing its own coalition of forces, the \u201cMalayan Democratic United Front\u201d, now opposing the Malayan Union and seeking through nationalist parties such as the MDU and PKMM, and through mass-based labour struggles and peasants\u2019 organisations to disrupt such elite processes through strong movements from below. \nBy May 1946, faced with opposition from all sides, the British sidelined the Union proposals and their strategy of a modernizing passive revolution from above, in favour of a more conservative passive revolution in alliance with the \u201ctraditionalist\u201d Malay Rulers and UMNO, forming the basis for a third process of passive revolution. Central to this was the proposal to replace the Union with a Federation, which still ensured a strong central state, economic centralization and a basis for Malayan citizenship\u2014which the Malay aristocrats didn\u2019t oppose as such\u2014but ensured the preservation of the state administrations, the role of the Sultans, stricter citizenship terms and the special position of the Malays.  Such a compromise allowed for the British state and British capital to benefit from administrative modernisation and economic rationalisation, but without the upheaval of traditional forms of power, which now threatened to mobilise the Malays against the British and empower the left-wing anti-colonial alliance.  This \u201ctraditionalist\u201d coalition, fundamentally subordinated to capitalist development, continued however to need the support of the Chinese and Indian business communities.\nThe Draft Proposals of the Working Committee were published in December 1946 and the British formed a Consultative Committee to hear the views of other communities in Malaya, led by Chinese and Indian businessmen and professionals such as H.S. Lee, Leong Yew Koh, M.L.R. Doraisamy Aiyer and C.P.R. Menon. The Draft Proposals were nevertheless unsatisfactory to large sections of the Chinese and Indian Chambers of Commerce because in reducing the representation of Chinese and Indian members in any future legislative assembly, increasing the powers of the Malay rulers and strengthening the requirements for citizenship, it weakened the power of Chinese and Indian business. It was then in reaction to the Federation proposals that the business elites of the Indian and Chinese communities became increasingly engaged in politics, forming the basis for a forth process of passive revolution in the colony.\nThe nature of this process of passive revolution took the form of engagement with the anti-colonial left-wing nationalist movement to push the British into reforming the Federation proposals. Yet the nature of this alliance was diverse, and often guided by the fact that no group on its own\u2014neither the anti-colonial nationalists nor the Chambers of Commerce\u2014were able to mobilise sufficient force against the Proposals, producing a tension between left-wing attempts to utilize elites for popular-nationalist ends and elite attempts to mobilisze left-wing nationalists to further elite interests. \nThe most prominent mode of opposition was the establishing of a coalition of business organisations, middle-class nationalist parties and moderate trade unions, to oppose British plans. Thus on 12 December 1946 the Council for Joint Action (CJA) was formed, to demand for the inclusion of Singapore, a central elected legislature and equal citizenship terms. The CJA was then expanded 10 days later to become the Pan-Malayan Council for Joint Action (PMCJA), adding the PMFTA, the MPAJA Ex-Service Comrades Association, the Peasants Union and other organisations. Yet with the addition of left-wing unions and a decision to boycott the Consultative Committee in favour of direct action tensions within the coalition soon played out as the Straits Chinese British Association, led by English-educated Chinese businessmen, left the PMCJA. By January 1947 the Chinese Chambers of Commerce had also decided to stay outside of the PMCJA, wary both of its domination by communists and its advocating for the principle of popular democracy, they decided to continue working through their members on the Consultative Council, continuing to submit memoranda and lobby the Union government.\nThe PMCJA nevertheless remained focused on gaining the support of Chinese business and elected Tan Cheng Lock to the leadership of the PMCJA in the hope of attracting important business leaders to their cause, figures such as Tan Kah Kee, Lee Kong Chian and Yong Shook Lin, yet in the short term this strategy proved unsuccessful. It was only in May 1947 with the release of the Draft Federation Agreement that this changed. The Draft Federation Agreement had only incorporated minor recommendations of the Report of the Consultative Committee, and the Chinese Chambers were unhappy with what they saw as anti-Chinese proposals. It was at this time that they agreed to join with what was now named the AMCJA-PUTERA to resist the Federation proposals,\nThis alliance was however limited in nature and spoke to the fact that the Chinese Chambers, alongside others, were seeking to mobilise a process of passive revolution of their own, allowing them to gain ascendancy over the Malay aristocracy, in alliance with the domestic middle-class professionals and in the hope of a new alliance with the British colonial state and British capital. The Chinese Chambers decisively didn\u2019t endorse the People\u2019s Constitutional Proposals published in August 1947.. They particularly objected to the idea of Melayu citizenship which underpinned the alliance between the Malay and non-Malay left, as did members of the Indian Chambers of Commerce, and objected to the reservation of 55% of seats in the legislature for Malay candidates, a proposal that Tan Cheng Lock himself claimed to have not been consulted on, and to which he was opposed. The People\u2019s Constitutional Proposals reflected therefore far more the liberal radicalism of a popular-nationalist movement led by the MDU and PKMM, than a more bourgeois-nationalist compromise between the business elites and popular classes.\nNor did the Chinese Chambers wish to criticise the British for their lack of endorsement of popular democracy, rather they sought to lobby the British on the areas they believed impinged on their business interests and collective power, and wished to use the popular movement for this end. They weren\u2019t therefore advocating a popular revolution, but a restoration of their pre-War status through a dynamic of revolution\/restoration, mobilising revolutionary forces but with restorationist ends. This was evident economically in the continued cooperation between British and Chinese capital where, aside from the rubber industry (where Chinese planters organised separately and faced declining prices) and over the question of income tax, the Chambers of Commerce didn\u2019t evidence strong economic contradictions with the British. They continued to rely on the British to maintain low wages and labour discipline, to ensure the supply of rice and to manage the trade union situation. Through organisations such as the Malayan Mining Employers Association they were directly allied with British capital, and on the issue of the income tax, they were successful in working through advisory committees to prevent its implementation. \nThe British in the meantime between May-August 1947 sought to exploit fractures between business elites and leftists in the coalition. They targeted the MIC aiming to divide the moderate unionists and businessmen and the leftists to encourage them to leave the AMCJA-PUTERA and similarly targeted the Chinese Chambers, arguing that once in place the Federation could successfully be reformed from within. Both instances failed, and the Chinese Chambers and AMCJA-PUTERA moved towards new forms of direct action to change British policy, in particular the hartal. The hartal of 20 October 1947 was significantly funded and organised by the Chinese Chambers, and was the high-point of cooperation between the two organisations, bringing the towns of Malaya to a standstill. Yet the failure of the hartal to alter British policy, and the British insistence on moving ahead with the inauguration of the Federation, began to weaken cooperation and the worth of a coalition between business elites and the Left. Debates began to emerge in the Chinese Chambers regarding the value of constitutional versus extra-constitutional political action (which might harm business interests), whilst growing conflict between the KMT and MCP in Malaya, and the significant growth in labour militancy over 1947 increased the suspicion of the Chinese Chambers with regards to cooperation with MCP-linked organisations.\nDebates raged as the inauguration of the Federation neared on 1 February 1948. In an attempt to again influence British policy Tan Cheng Lock proposed a second hartal for 1 February 1948, but the Chinese Chambers rejected this. Within the Chinese Chambers a boycott of the forthcoming legislative and state councils was passed, though it was non-binding. On 4 February the decision was reversed and members of the Chinese Chambers took their seats on the new Legislative Council and State council, of the view that they offered a more realistic prospect for political reform than leadership of the popular-nationalist movement. In the same period debates had raged in the MIC and the Indian Chambers of Commerce regarding what to do in view of the Federation, with moderate unionists and businessmen calling for a more moderate line and the party leadership under Thivy calling for fidelity to the principles of the People\u2019s Constitutional Proposals. Yet with the inauguration of the Federation many of the elite members of the Indian community decided that it was best to work within the new legislative structures and took up their seats on the state and legislative councils. This led to expulsions from the MIC in March 1948 and, in retaliation, open criticisms of the leadership by moderate unionists and members of the Indian Chambers of Commerce. For the AMCJA-PUTERA itself, the inauguration of the Federation on 1 February was marked by a series of strikes by the SFTU, but they lacked wider participation. Without the funding of the Chambers of Commerce, the AMCJA-PUTERA focused on establishing a People\u2019s Fighting Fund, to finance their own political action.\nThe alliance between business and the Left soon became more vocally criticized by the MCP, who began to increasingly criticise the united front policy and the co-operation with bourgeois and rightist parties as a right deviationist and capitulationist line. As they would argue in a piece of self-criticism in its the MCP Review highlighting the perception of the passive nature of the existing struggle,\nWe gave our support to the People\u2019s Constitution though its basic contents were incorrect. Another mistake that we committed in connection with the constitutional campaign was the mechanical separation of the top-level activities among the various political bodies from the mass movement. Such mechanical separation rendered the activities of the top-ranking leaders of the various political parties ineffective and impotent.\nThey came then to advocate an open and proletarian-led revolution, by-passing cooperation with \u201cbourgeois\u201d parties and focusing on strike action and workers and peasants agitation, including attacks on the national bourgeoisie. With this line the middle-class left-wing elements of the MDU, MIC, and others who had pursued constitutional struggle were increasingly sidelined.\nThe decline of the AMCJA-PUTERA and the entry of the Chinese and Indian business elite into the legislative councils marked for elite politics a new process of alliance between the Anglo-Malay process of passive revolution, and the Chinese and Indian business elite\u2019s process, in which a new synthesis was gradually formed between British business, the Malay administrative and aristocratic elite, and Chinese and Indian business interests. An alliance which began to mediate the diverse interests which had led each group to pursue its own forms of political action in the period from 1945-1948.\n\nAmongst the colony\u2019s business elite this acceptance of the Federation necessitated new forms of political organisation which now explicitly avoided the politicisation or mobilisation of labour. The Chinese Chambers of Commerce coordinated to establish the Malayan Chinese Association to challenge the leadership of the MCP and to participate in the Legislative Council and later the Communities Liason Committee as an elite-led party touching on issues of popular welfare. In the MIC, splits after 1947 led to Indian businessmen and professionals, particularly those on the government councils, reviving the pre-War CIAM, under the new name of the Federal Indian Organisation (FIO), which possessed similar aims to the MCA yet without a sufficient base. In the meantime, by 1950 the MIC leadership moved to the right with the election of K. Ramanathan, Chairman of the All Malayan Chettiars Chambers of Commerce, to the party presidency, who moved the MIC towards a more conciliatory and cooperative position, breaking from the popular-nationalist politics of the AMCJA-PUTERA.\n\nConclusion\nBy June 1948, the splitting of the coalition opposing the Federation, and the MCP\u2019s turn to direct struggle, gave the British the basis for the crackdown on the Leftist movement through the Emergency. Yet at the same time, the political struggles amongst elite groups which had preceded the Emergency had also laid the basis for an independent Malayan nation-state, a Malayan nationalism from above and secured the future of Malayan capitalism, allowing for its expansion through the first Draft Development Plan of 1950. This process was realised through a cross-class alliance of elites, which through the mediating role of the state, could produce the basis for stable political rule and capitalist modernisation both between elite groups, and between those groups and the popular classes. It could do this on the one hand through a molecular process of social and economic change, \u201cbeneath the surface of society\u201d, inducing modernising socio-economic development without popular upheaval, and on the other hand through a process of revolution\/restoration in which political and economic reform remained premised upon the restoration and preservation of existing classes and forms of power.  Both tactics developed in the period from 1945-48.\nAs Amoroso would argue, these processes were in the early years of Independence strongly premised upon the category of traditionalism in which the invention and reinvention of traditional forms of political authority, culture and symbolism maintained elite Malay power at the centre of a ruling coalition. Nevertheless as Amoroso notes, with Mahathir\u2019s attacks on the Rulers and the old guard of UMNO, the use of traditionalism entered into decline. What I would like to argue however is that whilst traditionalism as a tactic has declined, the process of passive revolution from above, through the political cross-class coalition, molecular social and economic change, and the process of revolution\/restoration has continued to function, and has ensured the basis for elite political rule up to GE14 and beyond.\">\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by Charles Brophy<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"templates\/template-full-width.php","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[9,8,5,7,6],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v18.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Traditionalism and the Passive Revolution of Capital in Malaya - Imagined Malaysia Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/review.imagined.my\/?p=5\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Traditionalism and the Passive Revolution of Capital in Malaya - 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