Pedagogies of the Revolution: A Comparative Study on the Role of Intellectuals and Decolonial Education between Tan Malaka and Antonio Gramsci

Education is a key site of ideological struggle in colonial and capitalist systems. Set against the backdrop of the Dutch East Indies and fascist Italy, Tan Malaka and Antonio Gramsci operated in vastly different contexts yet each championed education as a tool of emancipation and of radical political transformation. Both rejected the elitism of traditional intelligentsia, instead placing importance in cultivating class consciousness among the most marginalised and oppressed. Employing key concepts from Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Quijano's theory of coloniality of knowledge, and Mignolo's notion of epistemic disobedience, this thesis seeks to investigate the relationship between pedagogy and political consciousness as a prerequisite for revolutionary change and liberation. Through close textual analysis of selected writings of both thinkers, it examines the conceptual frameworks and principles of Tan Malaka's and Gramsci's revolutionary pedagogies within their respective socio-political contexts. By mapping their convergences and divergences, this thesis then aims to move beyond recovering Tan Malaka as a revolutionary intellectual of equal standing to Gramsci. It argues for a decolonial reimagining of revolutionary pedagogy that recognises both men as contemporaries whose contributions are of equal value and expands the horizons of Marxist thought and pedagogical philosophy. This thesis seeks to contribute to the limited scholarship of comparative work between Tan Malaka and Gramsci, while also introducing Tan Malaka, a largely overlooked Marxist revolutionary, into a broader discussion of Global South intellectuals in Western academia.