Madilog

The Madilog by Iljas Hussein (the pen name of Tan Malaka), first published in 1943, official first edition 1951, is the magnum opus of Tan Malaka, the Indonesian national hero and is the most influential work in the history of modern Indonesian philosophy. Madilog is an Indonesian acronym that stands for Materialisme Dialektika Logika (literally, Materialism Dialectics Logics). It is a synthesis of Marxist dialectical materialism and Hegelian logic. Madilog was written in Batavia where Malaka was hiding during the Japanese occupation of Indonesia, disguised as a tailor.

If Malaka's essay "Naar de Republiek Indonesië" ("Towards a Republic of Indonesia") published in 1928, under the Dutch East Indies government, stands as a formulation of the national identity of Indonesia, then Madilog stands as an anticlimax of his ideas in the sense of building the Indonesian character in modern society. Although Madilog is based on Marxism, it neither implements the Marxist view nor tries to establish a cultural pattern based on Marxism. Madilog is purely Malaka's nationalist perspective by way of being influenced by Hegelian dialectics, Feuerbach's materialism, Marx's views of scientific reason, and logical positivism. The book is to be a new alternative to the usual Indonesian way of thinking and movement, of a people living on thousands of islands, with hundreds languages and cultures, with most believing in mystical logic (Indonesian: logika mistika). In the first three chapters, the book emphasizes that Indonesian social classes differ from those of European society, thus unmodified Marxism cannot be applied due to ontological differences.