Class, Race and Colonialism in West Malaysia : The Indian Case

The key to the evolution of Malaysian society according to these perceptions is to be found not so much in the cultural dynamics of the Malay, Chinese or Indian communities as in the evolution of the world capitalist economy and the class structure of Malaysian society. [...] Even as the separatist allegiances of clan, dialect and region were undermined by a rising sense of national consciousness, from the early 1920s the Chinese in Malaya were fundamentally divided between supporters of the con servative nationalism of the Kuomintang and the radical nationalism of the Communists. [...] These two sections of the local branch of the European ruling class were linked through the social intercourse of the exclusive European clubs and by the practice of appointing leading members of the European business “community” to official councils. [...] This was motivated, in part at least, by the desire of the Malay section of the ruling class to prevent the strengthening of the Chinese towkays, the majority of whom were merchant rather than industrial capitalists.21 The structural distortions of the Malaysian developmental pattern require emphasis because they have been so little examined. [...] The very failures of capitalist development in West Malaysia have inhibited the emergence of a socialist alternative, because of the persistence of the colonial division of labour and the stunting of class formation.