The limits of liberalism and of Theosophy:
colonial Indonesia and the German Weimar republic, 1918-1933

In this essay, I aim to explore somewhat the limits of liberalism: boundaries with other tendencies, and limits in potential. This I will do, looking at a time when liberalism's optimist nineteenth century heyday was over: 1918-1933, in a Germany, heading towards the Third Reich, and an Indonesia, heading towards a showdown between colonialism and nationalism.

I will not write about political liberalism as an isolated phenomenon. I will write about parallels and links to, and differences with, the religio-philosophical tendency of Theosophy. It faced similar dilemmas in these days.

My definition of ‘Theosophy' is the ideas of the Theosophical Society, founded in New York in 1875, and headquartered, since 1882, in Adyar near Madras in India; and ideas which this Society clearly influenced. So, I will not use a wide definition of Theosophy, which might include, for instance, all Sufism in Indonesian Islam. The zenith of Theosophy's influence was in 1916-1929; so, later than the climax of political liberalism.

In principle, the Theosophical Society (TS) might attract some liberals, because of its roughly intermediate position in religion, somewhat comparable to theirs' in politics. Quite some liberals were sceptical on the one hand to established religion, linked to conservative political opponents. On the other hand, they opposed atheism, which they saw as linked to socially revolutionary opponents. The TS offered them a way out of established religion, without breaking with religion as such.

Rationalist optimist liberals, however, might object to irrational occultism and elitist pessimism on ‘the masses' in Theosophists' views.

One may argue that Theosophists had not only a religiously, but also a politically intermediate position. On the one hand, their tenet of Universal Brotherhood of humanity might have linked them strongly to the political Left. However, Theosophists often explained brotherhood as implying inequality; as in a family, their model for society as a whole, there were elder, younger, and youngest brothers. In this vein, they defended caste differences in India, class hierarchies in Europe, and doctrines about profound occult cosmic differences between ‘Aryans' and other ‘races'. These theories were closer to the political Right.

Let us now first look at liberalism, especially in Germany and Indonesia.

First, splits. In Germany during the Weimar Republic, liberals were divided into the rightist Deutsche Volkspartei (DVP) and the leftist Deutsche Demokratische Partei (DDP). This was a relic from a split in the nineteenth century, as liberalism became squeezed between imperial authoritarianism and the rising labour movement.

In The Netherlands, at the 1918 elections, three major and many minor (e.g., the Economische Bond) liberal factions competed. Later, these regrouped as two medium size parties: the Vrijheidsbond and the Vrijzinnig-Democratische Bond. Jointly, these remained weaker than earlier Dutch liberalism.

In the Netherlands Indies, as Indonesia's official name was then, 1918 marked the first meeting of the Volksraad, a council for advising the colonial government. It had far less power than, say, the Reichstag in Germany. Some of the members in this ‘mock parliament' were elected by a limited franchise, some were government appointees.

However divided Dutch liberals were in 1918, in the colony they all supported the NIVB, the Nederlandsch-Indische Vrijzinnige Bond. It won most ‘European' seats in the first Volksraad election. Dutch in the Indies were far less likely than Dutch in The Netherlands to support a party linked to a Christian church. This relative weakness of churches also helped the rise of the Theosophical Society in Indonesia.

The unity within the NIVB did not last long. Soon, most of its Dutch business supporters left, after the founding of the more right wing PEB, the Politiek-Economische Bond. This party became proportionally much larger than the Dutch Economische Bond, its model. It also overtook the NIVB as major party in the Volksraad.

Now, let us look at voters drifting away to the Left. This might move liberal parties Rightward in two ways. First, because the remaining, Right wing, supporters now could become more influential. Second, because the rising Left was seen as more of a threat.

One might expect liberals' attraction to ideas like the TS' to increase, as liberals lost their rationalist optimism and became afraid of, for instance, the labour movement; to which, e.g. in England, they lost many of their working class or otherwise leftist voters. In Germany, Eduard Bernstein in the 1870s left the liberal Fortschrittspartei to join the Social Democrats.

In Indonesia, the prominent politician Hadji Agoes Salim, formerly a NIVB and Theosophical Society supporter, after 1918 left to join the Indies social democrats.

Another factor which weakened liberals, was the rise of parties to their Right attracting part of their support.

Already before the First World War, Austrian liberalism had collapsed to the benefit of nationalists and anti-Semites.¹⁾ N. Goodrick-Clarke, The occult roots of nazism, Wellingborough, Aquarian Press, 1985, 31, sees the rise of Theosophy in Austria as ‘a refuge from the collapse of liberalism and the emergence of vulgar mass-movements' by ‘the Viennese bourgeoisie'.

In Germany, the Deutsche Volkspartei got 51 seats on 7 December 1924 at the Reichstag elections. As the nazi vote rose dramatically, though the total number of deputies went from 493 to 647, the DVP was reduced to two seats in 1933. No other German party had lost that much support.

Also from 1924 to 1933, the more leftist liberal Deutsche Staatspartei (the former Deutsche Demokratische Partei; in 1930, it had changed its name, in itself a sign of a rightward shift which did not help) went from 32 to 5 seats.

Very few of those lost DVP and DSP votes went to the communists and the Catholic Zentrum, the only non-nazi parties which had won seats since 1924; these gains were minor compared to the NSDAP.²⁾ So, the collapse of the German liberal electorate was a major boon to the nazis.

Dutch and Italian fascists owed much of their electorate to collapses in the vote of the Vrijheidsbond in the 1930s, respectively the Liberali in the 20s.³⁾

In the early 1930s, the PEB lost its position as biggest electoral party for ‘Europeans' in Indonesia, especially recent Dutch immigrants (totok), to the Vaderlandsche Club. This second shift to the Right, after the rise of the PEB, brought the totok political focus outside liberalism. While one might call the PEB rightist liberal, the Vaderlandsche Club was far right. It was related to Nationaal Herstel in The Netherlands. Even further right, outside the Volksraad, the Dutch Nationaal Socialistische Beweging also started winning thousands of adherents in the Indies then. It did not participate in elections there.

Last, a look at liberals, drifting to the right as parties, rather than as individuals, going over to other parties. In Germany, already in the late nineteenth century, the historian and politician of the National Liberal Party (the predecessor of the DVP), Von Treitschke, coined the infamous slogan 'Die Juden sind unses Unglück' [The Jews are the real cause of our misfortune]. We have already seen how the Deutsche Demokratische Partei in 1930 changed its name, and its views, to the right. This did not keep it alive; quite on the contrary.

The prominent Australian politician Deakin played a mayor role in merging his own Liberals with the Conservatives in the early 1900s. He was a lifelong sympathizer with, and sometimes fellow of, the Theosophical Society.

THEOSOPHISTS: RELATIONSHIPS TO LIBERALS

I have written earlier that one may expect at least some instances of mutual sympathy between theosophists and liberals. This was not always the case, however. For instance, the leading founder of the Theosophical Society, Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, as an aristocrat supporter of czarism considered the ideas of the nineteenth century Left liberal philosopher John Stuart Mill dangerous to Russia.⁴⁾

Theosophy's intermediate position in religion might especially be attractive in some Spanish-speaking countries. There, it might particularly attract sectors of the political establishment opposed to a strong position of Roman Catholic clericalism. Annie Besant, the international president of the Theosophical Society, described her Society's position as ‘Between the bigotry of Roman Catholic Spain and the wild passions of revolutionary Spain'.⁵⁾

In Honduras in 1929, the Liberal President Dr Vicente Mejía Colindres showed up at a lecture by TS leader Jinarajadasa. He opposed conservative Catholic clericalists, and suppressed a communist peasant uprising in 1931.⁶⁾

Theosophy influenced the liberal Mexican president Madero. Like Sukarno, Madero sometimes wrote under the pseudonym Bhima. Bima, and other Mahabharata characters, became well known outside Asia largely via the Theosophical Society. Indonesians had known them already much longer.⁷⁾

Dutch Baron W.K. van Dedem van Vosbergen (1839-1895), as a liberal MP and minister of colonies in the 1890s, had many connections to Indonesia. After visiting India, he wrote on the TS in De Gids magazine in 1895:

'its aim, religious research, fighting materialism, deserves all sympathy. Regrettably, one took refuge in charlatanism...'8)

Towards the end of the term of the first Volksraad (1918-1921) in Indonesia, five of its 39 members were theosophists. Dirk van Hinloopen Labberton, the General Secretary of the Indies Theosophists, was an active NIVB ‘MP'. He belonged to the Vrijzinnig Democraten in The Netherlands.⁹⁾

Th. Vreede, Labberton's colleague, both in Theosophical Society and in Volksraad, also became active in this liberal party after going back to The Netherlands. The Indonesian theosophists M. Amir and M. Tabrani were supporters of co-operation with Dutch authorities in the Indonesian national movement. When they came to The Netherlands, they wrote in Liberal papers as well.

Theosophy originally had strong, though minority, support in the moderate nationalist organization Boedi Oetomo. During the first Volksraad elections, they co-operated with the NIVB. Soewardi Soerianingrat calls them liberals as well. However, their social base were mainly lower ranking aristocrats and government employees. This differs from the bourgeoisie whom we wrote about in our introduction. So they are not really part of my subject here.

Theosophists had an august example for a political choice for liberalism. Annie Besant, after a conflict with Gandhi had made her leave the Indian National Congress, in 1920 became one of the founders of the Indian National Liberal party. It saw itself as the moderate alternative to the National Congress on its Left and diehard colonialism on its Right.

Not all theosophists in the Netherlands Indies liked liberalism. In the Indies TS monthly appeared articles, supporting both autocratic monarchy, and dictatorship. J. van der Leeuw was director and major shareholder of the big Van Nelle coffee and tea company, based on plantations in Indonesia. He sometimes lived there, sometimes in The Netherlands (where he became theosophical General Secretary). His Ph.D. thesis on ‘historical idealist' politics was opposed to Marxist historical materialism. In it, he also wrote:

'Liberal party ... doomed to death ... Liberalism brought false freedom.'10)

Instead of liberalism, seeing individuals as atoms, Van der Leeuw advocated a Rightist ‘organic' social philosophy. Workers going on strike were ‘cancer' cells in society, which he saw as a body.

Also other theosophists, though sometimes linked to early stages of emancipation movements, often opposed the labour movement, and other radical movements, e.g., for an independent Indonesia.

As an organization, the Theosophical Society in Germany was not anywhere as strong as in Indonesia after 1913. It suffered much more from splits, in the 1890s, just before, and during, the First World War.

However, Theosophy as a more or less diffuse ideological influence was strong in both Austria and Germany. We still need research on its relationship to German political liberalism. For instance George Mosse and N. Goodrick-Clarke did much research on the links of Theosophy and occult doctrines derived from it, to the German speaking ‘post-liberal' extreme Right.

THEORIES OF IDEOLOGICAL CHANGE

Various authors, like Hobson, Lenin, and Hilferding, pointed out the transition of earlier competitive capitalism to ‘finance' or ‘monopoly' capitalism.

There was not only a shift in economics, but also in ideas. In the early twentieth century, Van Ravesteyn, Cornélie Huygens and Pannekoek had a theory that after about 1848 the bourgeoisie, ceasing to be revolutionary, had no more use for materialism, and switched to various idealist philosophies. This Van Ravesteyn saw as the cause of the rise of spiritualism and theosophy.¹¹⁾ In 1992, the historian of ideas J. Herkless confirmed a link between ‘finance capitalism' and ‘neo-idealism' in this period.

In the 1930s, the Jewish philosopher Ernst Bloch, who had to flee from Hitler's Germany, saw a link between the rise of fascism, and of occultism and other forms of irrationalism. Then, links between fascist politics and aspects of monopoly capitalist economics were also discussed.

What had happened to liberalism? Its supporters had confined it to defence of capitalist private property. Freedom for property may go along well with want of freedom in other respects, and with irrationalism in philosophy. Trade unionists in concentration camps can no longer foment unrest, threatening the rate of profit of, say, IG Farben; or the ‘organism' of society as a whole. So, why, in this perspective, hold on to freedom outside the sphere of ownership, or to rationality? There is no need left, then, to subsidize the election funds of DVP, DDP, or NIVB.

LIBERALISM AND THEOSOPHY: DECLINE AND FALL IN THE 1930S; CONCLUSION

As the Vaderlandsche Club grew inside the Volksraad, and the Nationaal Socialistische Beweging outside it, De Jonge, an admirer of fascism, had become the new governor-general of the Netherlands Indies. His hard line policies sharply hurt Indonesian nationalists, and free speech in general.

In Germany, soon after Hitler seized power, the liberal political parties became illegal. So did Theosophy, four years later. In the meantime, The Theosophist monthly had published Jinarajadasa's denunciation of persecution of Jews; but also praise by the 1934-1945 President George Arundale of Hitler; and an enthusiastic paranormal description by ‘A non-German theosophist' [G. Hodson?] of the ‘purity' of the Führer's beautiful aura.¹³⁾

I conclude that both in Germany and in Indonesia, both liberalism and Theosophy ended up as victims of political shifts to the Right. They became victims without really putting up a fight. These movements themselves, and their mainly upper and middle class support, were not completely innocent of these rightward shifts.

1) See D. van Arkel, Antisemitism in Austria. Leiden, typescript, 1966, passim.

2) See: dtv-Atlas zur Weltgeschichte, München, Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1968; 150; 194.

3) See on Dutch elections H.W. von der Dunk, In de schaduw van de depressie. Alphen aan den Rijn, Sijthoff, 1982: 57; 175; 179. A. Mussert, the Dutch Nationaal Socialistische Beweging leader, was an ex-member of the Vrijheidsbond.

4) Herman de Tollenaere, The Politics of Divine Wisdom. Theosophy and labour, national and women's movements in Indonesia and South Asia, 1875-1947. Nijmegen: Uitgeverij Katholieke Universiteit, 1996; 371.

5) ‘On the Watch-Tower', The Theosophist, Nov. 1920, 107.

6) Raul d'Eça. Latin American History. N. Y., Barnes and Noble, 1963; 193. C. Jinarajadasa, ‘A year's travel in Latin America', The Theosophist, May 1930, 393f.

7) Enciclopedia de México, Mexico, Enciclopedia de México, 1974, vol. VIII, 374-375.

8) W.K. Baron van Dedem, ‘Brieven uit Britsch-Indië II', De Gids, Oct. 1895, 90-107; 103.

9) F. Tichelman, Socialisme in Indonesië. De Indische Sociaal Democratische Vereeniging, 1897-1917. Bronnenpublikatie. Vol. 1, Dordrecht, Foris, 1985, 212.

10) J. van der Leeuw, Historisch-idealistische politiek. Amsterdam, Maatschappij voor goede en goedkoope lectuur, 1920; 207.

11) W. van Ravesteyn, ‘Boekbespreking', De Nieuwe Tijd, 1917, 628-636. A. Pannekoek, ‘Twee natuuronderzoekers in de maatschappelijk-geestelijke strijd', De Nieuwe Tijd, 1917; 300-314; 375-392. Whatever the merits of this view on the social origins of theosophy, the TS would also attract European nobles, with no recent revolutionary past. Also non-Europeans like Brahmans; mostly privileged, but not identical to bankers or factory owners.

12) Regeringsalmanak voor Nederlandsch-Indië 1933, 61; 67.

13) The Theosophist, May 1936, 242. Nazi propaganda posters also often depicted Hitler with an aura around his head; Albrecht W. Thöne, Das Licht der Arier. Licht-, Feuer- und Dunkelsymbolik des Nationalsozialismus. München: Minerva, 1979, 35.