The state of disorder: Non-state violence in post-authoritarian Indonesia

Abstract

This thesis examines the proliferation of non-state violence groups in post-authoritarian Indonesia. It argues that non-state violence characterises the workings of predatory forms of capitalism in the way understood by Marx as primitive accumulation. The persistence of non-state violence in different political settings is due to the significance of predatory capitalism, characterised by the use of extra-economic means in the accumulation of power and wealth. Within this context, non-state violence is not an obstruction, but instrumental for accumulation process, constituting the state of disorder. This argument criticises Weberian notions of the state in which it is defined as an entity that monopolises the legitimate use of violence. The existence of non-state violence is neither an indicator of the weak capacity of the state, thus enabling militias, gangsters or vigilante groups to take up certain state functions, as argued within institutionalist perspectives, nor the result of the fragmentation of power, as argued in the Migdalian state-in-society approach. As shown in the Indonesian case, non-state violence is endemic to predatory states as part of their purpose of facilitating capital accumulation.