IN PERSPECTIVE
Communism and Stalinism in Indonesia
Workers' Liberty #61
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Suharto, Indonesia's military dictator toppled in 1998, came to power
in 1965 after organising one of the bloodiest massacres of the twentieth
century, destroying the Communist Party of Indonesia (the PKI). The PKI
was the oldest communist party in Asia, and the largest outside of Russia
and China. To many observers in the sixties, Indonesia seemed to be the
country most likely to "go communist". As radical politics revive today in
Indonesia, activists will have to learn the lessons from the PKI's
history.
By Paul Hampton
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The origins of the Communist Party of Indonesia date
from the arrival of Henk Sneevliet in 1913. Under his guidance, in May 1914, the
Indies Social Democratic Organisation (ISDV) was founded. It had 85 members in
1915 and 134 a year later. It was especially strong in the railworkers union,
the VSTP. In October 1915, the ISDV established a paper, Het Vrije Woord (The
Free Word), edited by Adolf Baars and published in Dutch. In 1917 they set up
the first Indonesian-language socialist journal, Soeara Merdika (The Free Voice)
and, more successfully, from 1918, a new organ, Soeara Rakyat (The People's
Voice).
At the beginning of the twentieth century, the Dutch
East Indies was one of the most profitable colonies in the world. Its population
had grown from 4 million in 1815 to 50 million people and included 150,000
Europeans and one million Chinese. The Netherlands had one third of its capital
assets invested in the colony by the turn of the century. Huge profits flowed
out of the colony to the Netherlands, the result of good business in sugar,
cocoa and coffee. On Java alone there were 200 large sugar mills, and a
significant proletariat of one million. Between 30-50% of peasants were
landless, approximately 95% were illiterate and only 10% went to school.
(Riddell, 1991: 254-258).
Serikat Islam
The first nationalist organisation had been the Budi
Utomo ('Noble Endeavour'), founded by intellectuals in 1908, but more
significant was the Serikat Islam (SI, Islamic Union), founded in 1911 to
protect Javan batik merchants, which soon became much more militant.
By 1916, Serikat Islam (SI) had hundreds of
thousands of members, and cautiously raised the question of self-government, and
so the ISDV sought to work within it.
Work within SI transformed the ISDV from a small
group of Dutch expatriates into an overwhelmingly Indonesian organisation that
led workers' struggles. The most prominent figure of these early Indonesian
Marxists was Semaun, a railworker who led the Semarang branch of the SI, which
in 1916-17 grew from 1,700 members to 20,000. Where in 1915 the ISDV had 100
Dutch members and only three Indonesians, by 1919 it had 25 Dutch members, a
handful of Chinese and some 300 Indonesians. (McVey, 1965: 396).
In 1917 the ISDV split over the February revolution
in Russia. Sneevliet wrote an article which argued that Dutch rule in the Indies
would go the way of the Tsar if only the Indonesians set their minds to it. The
authorities tried to prosecute him. After a nine-hour anti-colonial speech in
court, he won his case. Moderates in the party resigned, and in May 1918 Baars
announced that the ISDV were ardent followers of the Bolsheviks. After a
soldiers' and sailors' revolt in Surabaja, the major naval base in the Indies,
in late 1917, the authorities expelled the Dutch ISDV leaders - starting with
Sneevliet - and gave the soldiers' leaders 40 years imprisonment. Yet the ISDV
did not dissolve.
Membership of Serikat Islam peaked at over two
million in 1919. Together the ISDV and SI united the unions when the first
labour federation was established in December 1919, consisting of 22 unions and
70,000 workers, and known as the Concentration of Labour Movements (the PPKB).
By mid-1920 the PPKB had 150,000 members.
The ISDV congress in May 1920 decided to change its
name to the Communist Party of the Indies (Perserikatan Kommunist di India,
PKI). At the second congress of the Comintern, which Sneevliet attended as the
PKI representative, communists in the East were advised to support
bourgeois-nationalist movements who were fighting imperialism, while retaining
their independence. This was the strategy Marx had advocated in Germany during
the 1848 revolution, which he dubbed 'the revolution in permanence'. The
Comintern congress also condemned pan-Islamism, to the disquiet of some PKI
leaders.
Nationalism in the sense of an independent Indonesia
was viewed by the Indonesian socialists as the ideology of the aspiring
bourgeoisie. They believed their position was unique because Indonesia lacked a
native bourgeois class strong enough to play a real political role in forming a
nationalist movement, so the Indonesian revolution would combine liberation from
the Dutch with socialist revolution. Yet as Ruth McVey explained, "In 1922 the
word 'Indonesia' began to replace the colonial 'Indies' in political
discussions; in intellectual circles people began to talk seriously about an
Indonesian state, and Indies Malay - the future Bahasa Indonesia - began to be
spoken instead of Dutch by Indonesian delegates to the Volksraad [People's
Congress]." (1965: 112).
A split between the left (communist influenced) and
right wing of the Serikat Islam developed after 1920. Polarisation began in the
trade union federation, the PPKB, over the sugar workers strike, led by the
right wing of the SI. In June 1921, the PPKB excluded the communists.
SI declined. Only 36 of its 196 branches were
represented at its October 1921 congress, down from 57 branches out of 200 in
March. Although the alliance between the PKI and the leadership of Serikat Islam
had ended, the communists were not finished with SI as a whole, and within its
local structure they battled away for a further eighteen months. The PKI had
also declined, claiming 208 members in 1921, down from 269 in 1920. The 1921 PKI
congress resolved to campaign for the unification of the Indonesian mass
movement, to hold a united labour conference, and to establish a "Red Serikat
Islam" for branches of the SI which had left when the PKI was expelled. In
January 1922, the first large-scale union-sponsored work stoppage was organised
by the pawnshop workers. The government was unmoved and sacked one fifth of
pawnshop employees in Java. Although the PKI won considerable popular sympathy
through its strong support for the strike, the union collapsed after the strike.
PKI chair Tan Malaka was deported soon afterwards, and the PKI newspaper, Het
Vrije Woord, ceased publication in May 1922.
In November 1922, the PKI tried to reconstruct a
nationalist movement, called the Radical Concentration, but the initiative
failed. In February 1923, the right wing began to transform Serikat Islam into a
political party. The communists were permanently excluded. However SI faded
rapidly. In March 1923 a special congress of the PKI and the Red SI was
convened, attended by over two thousand people, including delegates from fifteen
PKI branches, thirteen Red SI branches and thirteen unions. The communists
agreed to establish rival branches for supporters of the Red SI, taking the name
Serikat Rakyat (People's Union). By 1924, the PKI claimed between 1000 and 1300
members organised in sixteen branches, comparing favourably with the Chinese
Communist Party, which had fewer than one thousand members at that time. The Red
SI/SR sections had between 30 and 50,000 members. In June 1924, the party was
renamed the Partai Kommunis Indonesia, retaining the initials PKI.
The first debacle - the 1926-27 putsch
AT a special conference in December in 1924,
attended by 96 delegates from 38 PKI sections, representing 1,140 members and
from 46 SR branches representing 31,000 members, a new policy was finally agreed
- to focus on union work and replace SR secctions with PKI branches.
The Comintern was not responsible for this lurch by
the PKI. In fact it was moving in the opposite direction towards dissolving
working-class socialist politics into broad nationalist or "worker-peasant"
movements. At the fifth Comintern congress in 1924, Manuilsky endorsed the
"workers' and peasants' party in the Dutch East Indies", and the Comintern
plenary soon after claimed, "The Indonesian Communist Party is already following
a correct policy". For McVey, "The PKI executive seems to have adopted its stand
on the SR independently; it did so, moreover, knowing that the Comintern
approved the Serikat Rakyat... Although the party executive certainly did not
state it as such, its program in effect rejected the Comintern line, and it was
accordingly a step of the gravest importance." (1965: 270). The new PKI policy
was condemned at a Comintern plenary in March-April 1925. The PKI was told to
establish Serikat Rakyat as a mass organisation, with communists retaining
overall control. Stalin criticised the PKI policy as a "left deviation". PKI
leaders simply ignored the Comintern.
The December also decided to prepare the party for
rebellion. The PKI set up an illegal organisation and adopted a new structure
based on cells of ten members (benih), under an experienced party member. The
party also abandoned its theoretical organ, the Soeara Rakyat. The slogan of the
conference was, "Devote yourselves with all your strength to the labour
movement".
By 1925 the Dutch authorities' repression had
reduced the communists' legal role to the vanishing point. It was almost
impossible for the PKI to hold public meetings without being dispersed by the
police. In several parts of Java, notably in Priangan, the government encouraged
anti-communist strong-arm groups. They broke up party and SR meetings, disrupted
SR schools, beat up communist followers, destroyed communist property, and where
possible drove PKI adherents from their villages.
In 1925 the PKI created an agrarian organisation,
the Serikat Tani (Peasant Union). In Silungkang, West Sumatra, it was impossible
to buy rice at the market without a red card, because the rice merchants
belonged to the PKI. Around 10,000 cards were bought, by almost the entire
population in the local area. The police estimated that the PKI had 4,000
members.
But as the movement waxed in rebelliousness, it
waned in strength. Union leaders were arrested during strikes, and a round up of
PKI leaders was begun, with several experienced leaders either driven into exile
or prison. The PKI paper Api, which depended heavily on subscriptions from civil
servants, was virtually bankrupted by a ban on purchasing communist literature
by state employees.
A conference of PKI leaders made plans for an
insurrection in May-June 1926. The decision was taken to set up a secret party
structure, the Double or Dictatorial Organisation (DO). Tan Malaka, the exiled
PKI leader working for the Comintern, was opposed to these new developments. In
1924 he had criticised the PKI plan to abandon the Serikat Rakyat. He believed
that the SR should be transformed into a national party nominally separate from
the PKI. In 1925, he warned that the party was heading for a putsch and not a
rebellion, and urged it to change its course before it was too late. He wrote
that, "until now Indonesia has not had a revolutionary party; it has only had
associations of people of assorted views and political activities". Tan Malaka
proposed a conference in Singapore to reconsider: the PKI could then reorganise
itself and the SR in accordance with the April 1925 Comintern resolution. But
elements of the PKI pressed on. PKI leaders Musso and Alimin went to Moscow, met
with Stalin, and were ordered to return to Indonesia to denounce the new
programme, restore the party's legal status and make radical nationalist
agitation. However, they had already decided that if Moscow opposed them they
would launch guerrilla warfare.
Eventually revolt did break out in West Java. In
Batavia in November 1926, armed bands appeared on the streets, clashed with
police, attacked a prison and seized the telephone exchange. In Bantam a series
of raids took place and in Priangan, communications were sabotaged. Mass arrests
followed, and movement was effectively over by December. The revolt in Sumatra
took place in 1927, with heavy fighting in Silungkang for the first two weeks of
the year. Musso and Alimin were arrested, carrying just $2,500 from the
Comintern. With this, the adventure on which the PKI had embarked was brought to
an inglorious end.
13,000 people were arrested. A few were shot. 5000
were placed in preventative detention of which 4500 were sentenced to prison.
Eventually some 3000 were banished to the Boven Digul penal colony in the
malaria-infested swamplands of West Papua (Dutch New Guinea). None managed to
escape, and only a few survived to take part in the fall of the Dutch regime.
This action put an effective end to communist
activity in the Indies for the remaining period of Dutch rule and the removal of
the communists from the scene allowed a new generation of secular nationalists
to occupy centre stage.
The Comintern under Stalin's direction simply used
the Indonesian revolt as a justification for its China policy, in which the
Chinese communists were bound to the Nationalist Party, the Guomindang. Emphasis
on the continuing Indonesian revolution was maintained in Comintern publications
months after it became clear that the rebellion was dead. Despite is earlier
protestations, the Comintern did not say that the rebellion should not have been
undertaken - merely that it should have been better prepared and coordinated.
(This became the official PKI view in the fifties). When it emerged again
illegally in the thirties, the PKI was firmly under the control of Moscow.
What are the lessons from the first period of the
PKI? The ISDV from its inception rightly tried to find a way to the Indonesian
working class and principally build up its basic defence organisations, the
trade unions, although there were differences over such an orientation. The
alliance with Serikat Islam was not wrong in principle, given the size and state
of the working class and the peculiar relationship of the (expatriate)
revolutionaries to the working class. The ISDV kept its independence and was
able to openly criticise the SI leaders. But the dressing up of Serikat Islam as
a workers' and peasants' movement, when its subsequent evolution showed it was
at best an embryonic bourgeois nationalist movement, was a significant marker in
evolution of this policy. A similar mistake, of representing the Guomindang as a
"bloc of four classes", proved to be fatal in the real revolutionary situation
in China between 1925-27.
After 1924, the PKI indulged in its own home-grown
adventurism. The working class movement had plainly withered after the defeat of
strikes by pawnshop and rail workers in 1922. The Red SI/Serikat Rakjat was a
substitute for a bourgeois nationalist movement, blurring the difference between
communists and their potential allies, and hardly consistent with the policy
laid down by the Comintern in 1920. The PKI had barely developed a relationship
with its largest potential allies, the peasantry. In the absence of a sizable
and militant working class, and the decline of their bourgeois allies, the
events of 1926-27 were a putsch, carried out against the advice of both the
Comintern and more senior party figures such as Semaun and Tan Malaka.
The missed opportunity of 1945-49
Under Dutch rule industrial development was limited.
By 1940 only 200,000 people in Java worked in industry using modern machinery,
and 2.5 million in small-scale industry, mainly in small towns and villages. A
survey in 1955 found just over 400,000 workers in Java employed in workplaces
with over 50 workers and only 140,000 workers were employed in workplaces with
over 250 workers. About 35 per cent of those employed were women. (Hindley,
1964: 15).
The PKI worked illegally and through other
organisations after its defeat in the twenties. Musso returned from Moscow in
1935 to enforce the 'popular front' line decreed by the seventh Comintern
congress, but was forced to leave the country soon after that, so PKI members
worked without central direction during World War 2. The "popular front" meant
that socialism was off the agenda, and communists had to subordinate themselves
to bourgeois nationalists and the democratic imperialist powers for the fight
against fascism. In Indonesia this meant allying with the Dutch! Six hundred PKI
prisoners from Boven Digul, who were transferred to Australia to work for the
Allies in 1942, were advised by the Australian Communist Party to sport the
Dutch army uniform, despite the sixteen years spent in their concentration camp.
However the Japanese invasion destroyed the image of
Dutch invincibility and brought an organisational and ideological revolution to
Indonesia during the occupation (1942-45). Perhaps two million Indonesians died
at the hands of the Japanese, who brought industry to a halt, except for a
regime of forced labour in rice production. The bourgeois nationalist leader
Sukarno fronted a number of organisations set up with Japanese approval,
justifying his actions because of the prominence it gave him to make nationalist
propaganda - at the expense of helping to organise forced labour. Other
nationalists (including Hatta and Suharto), as well as some PKI members, were
involved in youth training programmes put on the Japanese. Illegal PKI members
also participated in underground resistance activities against the Japanese.
On August 17, 1945, three days after Japan's
surrender, Sukarno declared Indonesia's independence.
The PKI played only a modest role in the struggle
against the Dutch. Tan Malaka's supporters were more prominent, and he emerged
as an alternative leader to both Sukarno and the PKI. He set up the PP (Struggle
Front) which argued for an all-out fight for independence (perjuangan) and was
opposed to the diplomatic strategy of the mainstream nationalists like Hatta. In
this early phase after the declaration of independence, these forces posed a
serious challenge to the government. In June 1946 Tan Malaka was imprisoned
without a trial. (Jarvis, 1991: xlvii).
The PKI was re-established openly during the 45-day
hiatus between the Japanese surrender and the arrival of the British. Some of
its leaders apparently collaborated with Tan Malaka. However in May 1946
Sardjono, who had been PKI chairman in 1926, spent sixteen years in Boven Digul
and then donned the Dutch uniform during the war, took control of the PKI with
Alimin who returned after a lengthy stay with Mao Zedong in Yenan. The PKI was
already a thoroughly Stalinised party, no longer the vanguard party of the
working class.
Initially the PKI supported negotiations with the
Dutch, and ratified government agreements with them - in other words it
continued the popular front line of passively following the "national
bourgeoisie". They established a 'united front', known as the Sajap Kiri (Left
Wing), with the Socialist Party, Labour Party, and Pesindo (armed wing). By 1947
they had manoeuvred themselves into a more favourable position. The new
government in July 1947 included, as premier, Amir Sjarifuddin and three others
who all later declared that they were communists. The PKI's parliamentary
representation was increased. Although this cabinet fell in January 1948 with
another Dutch offensive, it was an indication of the growing influence of the
PKI despite its dubious record.
In 1948 the revitalised PKI underwent a change of
direction, following a new line from Moscow. With the Cold War Communists were
ordered to go on the offensive to help Stalin in his conflict with
"imperialism". Communists in Vietnam, Malaya and the Philippines took part in
guerrilla struggles. In Indonesia the turn was signalled by Musso's return from
Moscow. His resolution, the "New Road for the Indonesian Republic", formally
called for a "national coalition government", which would include the PKI, but
the communists also began their own plans for an armed uprising. The Sajap Kiri
was collapsed and its constituent parts dissolved into the PKI in August 1948.
This gave the PKI over a quarter of the seats in parliament.
In September 1948 a group of pro-Communist army
officers, with over 30,000 troops, seized the town of Madiun, during a ceasefire
between the Indonesian army and the Dutch forces. It is not clear whether the
PKI leadership had foreknowledge of this enterprise, but Musso quickly declared
himself leader of its "National Front" Government. The Communists were driven
out by the end of the month, most of their leaders were executed, and 35,000
people arrested. The Madiun affair beheaded the party, as once more it attempted
to seize power without the active intervention of the masses. The PKI
subsequently tried to brush over their defeat - writing in the fifties they
stressed their role in mobilising people against the Dutch and claimed that
Madiun was a provocation engineered by right-wing nationalists. Yet the thrust
of their propaganda, together with the new line from Moscow, suggests that they
did plan to take up the cudgels against the republican government.
One repercussion of this debacle was the release of
Tan Malaka and the formation of the Murba (Proletariat) party, founded on the
anniversary of the Russian revolution in November 1948 with 80,000 members. When
the Dutch invaded in December 1948 and Sukarno surrendered, and after the
execution of the PKI leaders, Tan Malaka helped lead the resistance and again
had the possibility of a fresh bid for power. In fact his guerrillas were
disarmed by republican forces, and he was executed by them, probably in February
1949. (Jarvis, 1991: lxix). This ended the only effective opposition to both
Sukarno and the PKI, and for some the only prospects of a "third camp" emerging
in Indonesia during this period. Of the three forces contesting the leadership
of the fight for independence in 1945-49, Sukarno, Tan Malaka and the PKI, none
represented the interests of the working class or genuine socialism. However Tan
Malaka's forces may have carried through a more thoroughgoing
bourgeois-democratic transformation of Indonesia, and offered the working class
more opportunities for developing its own party.*
The Dutch offensive petered out, under pressure from
republican guerrillas and the US government, and a ceasefire was agreed. The
Dutch finally recognised Indonesian independence in December 1949, and with both
major rivals eliminated, Sukarno became the undisputed leader of Indonesia.
From "guided democracy" to annihilation, 1951-65
What were conditions like in Indonesia after
independence? A report in 1959 found that only 30% of workers in manufacturing
ate three times a day. The average worker's calorie intake was only 70% of the
calculated minimum requirements and vitamin deficiency was widespread. In 1952,
the average Indonesian's diet was 1700 calories per day; the equivalent in India
was 2100.
The Indonesian proletariat consisted of about
500,000 workers in modern industry (transport workers, factory workers, miners,
workers in repair shops), more than 2 million workers in small industry and
handicrafts in the towns, and a large number of workers on estates, in forestry
work, and in miscellaneous occupations. Their total number was about 6 million,
or with their families, about 20 million. They therefore comprised about 25 per
cent of the total population. (Hindley, 1964: 16, 39).
In the first month after independence there were 17
major strikes, and twice as many the following month. By August 1950, the ports
and estates were paralysed - by the end of the year eight million hours had been
lost. The All-Indonesian Central Labour Organisation - the SOBSI, had grown from
200,000 members to over one million because of this militancy. The Pemuda Rakyat
(People's Youth) also grew.
The PKI was revived by the self-styled "Leninist
wing" around D N Aidit. The party had never been proscribed after the Madiun
uprising of 1948, although it suffered a loss of members and influence. In 1950
the Harian Rakyat (People's Daily) became its main organ and the Bintang Merah
(Red Flag) reappeared, its circulation jumping from 3,000 to 10,000 by the end
of the year. The PKI had three to five thousand members, but with funds from
Chinese living in Indonesia, and from the new Maoist government in China, it was
able to regroup and grow.
The PKI organised a strike wave in 1951, bringing
500,000 estate workers out at the height of the Korean war. The government
prohibited the strikes, but by June they had spread to the airways, buses,
shipping, sugar mills and oil refineries - the bulk of the foreign owned sector
of the economy. Aidit called Sukarno and his government "rotten-to-the-core
imperialist tools", although he would later deny it. In addition there were
armed disturbances and the PKI planned to organise separate independence day
celebrations to signify that the "revolution of 45" was not over. Fearing
another coup, the government arrested 15,000 communists. Sukarno threatened the
three million-strong Chinese community, claiming it was alien to the Indonesian
nation. The new PKI leaders were forced into hiding, where they undertook a
serious rethink of their strategy, coinciding with a swing to the right by
Moscow.
Stalin had indicated such a turn in response to the
stalemate of the Korean war. It would become the basis of "peaceful
coexistence", announced at the 19th congress of the Russian Communist Party.
Launched in May 1952 on Budi Utomo day, the anniversary of the first nationalist
organisation established in Indonesia, the new strategy included the national
bourgeoisie in its 'united' (popular) front. The PKI supported the new
government led by the nationalist PNI, and strikes were suspended. In October
1953 Aidit said the PKI would always defend the red-white Indonesian flag and
the Indonesia Raya national anthem.
Simultaneously the PKI organised a recruitment drive
which on their own figures saw the membership jump from under 8000 in March 1952
to 126,000 by October 1952. The PKI controlled the two million strong working
class movement, including the trade union federation (SOBSI), the petroleum
workers and dockers, and SARBUPRI, the sugar workers' union. The PKI also
maintained armed bands which fought the landlords and Muslim groups in the
countryside.
The PKI summed up the strategy and tactics it would
follow in the coming decade at its fifth congress in 1954. Aidit defined
Indonesia after independence as a semi-colonial, semi-feudal country. He argued
that Indonesia remained under Dutch control pointing to the position of the
Netherlands monarch as head of the Indonesian-Dutch Union, Dutch control of
Indonesia's financial and foreign policies, the enormous debt owed to the
Netherlands, the restoration of rights in industry, commerce, finance and
agriculture to Dutch colonialists, and control by Dutch officials in the
Indonesian state and armed forces. Imperialism was further defined by the Dutch
control of West Papua (Irian Jaya), the existence of Malaysia, the Dutch-aided
rebel movements in Indonesia, and the foreign ownership of enterprises. Aidit
argued, "The main enemy of the Indonesian people, from the viewpoint of its
domination in various spheres, particularly in the economic sphere, is Dutch
imperialism." (Mortimer, 1974: 55).
From this definition it was deduced that the
revolution in Indonesia would have two stages. In the first,
bourgeois-democratic stage, the PKI would form a bloc of four classes consisting
of the working class, the peasantry, the petty-bourgeoisie and the national
bourgeoisie. Only after imperialism had been expelled, land reform undertaken
and national economic independence achieved would the second, 'socialist' stage
be on the agenda.
Superficially, Aidit's definition seemed reasonably
accurate. Bourgeois sources indicated that in 1952 an estimated 50 per cent of
all consumer imports were still being handling by four Dutch firms, and 60 per
cent of exports by eight firms. The bank of issue was largely a Dutch-owned
corporation, controlled by Dutch officers. Private banking was largely in the
hands of seven foreign banks, three of which were Dutch. (Van der Kroef, 1965:
57).
The problem was this theory failed to grasp the
dynamics of the situation, and the way Indonesia was moving under Sukarno. In
1956 the government unilaterally severed the Hague agreement, abrogated the
Netherlands-Indonesian Union, and then cancelled its debts to the Netherlands.
The following year it took over most Dutch businesses. West Papua (Irian Jaya),
comprising 20 per cent of Indonesian territory, was incorporated in 1963. The
PKI theory clearly underestimated the significance of political independence and
the bourgeois state which developed after 1945. It mistook the evident weakness
of the Indonesian bourgeoisie for the weakness of the bourgeois state, which
plainly had the power to take control of major economic levers of power.
The PKI strategy was also wrong on the question of
agency. It conceded the leadership of the first stage of the revolution to the
national bourgeoisie - the role of the working class (and the peasantry) was
entirely subordinate. This was in stark contrast to the theory and practice of
Marx in 1848, and Lenin and Trotsky in 1917, where the working class were
central to struggles for democracy, against national oppression, for land
reform, etc., precisely to prepare this class for making the socialist
revolution. (Thomas, 1999). The contrast is further proof, if any were needed,
that the PKI did not uphold a programme of working class socialism during this
period.
The PKI tied itself in knots when Sukarno and his
governments finally carried out many of the bourgeois tasks. Instead of
recognising the errors of its theory, it cuddled up even closer to their
bourgeois allies. The PKI wheeled out the possibility of a peaceful road to
"socialism", on the model of Eastern Europe after 1945 (which of course had a
little "help" from the Russian army), and applied it to Indonesia under Sukarno.
In 1954 the balance sheet on the "allies" with which
to "complete" the national-democratic revolution was decidedly lop-sided. The
PKI did strengthen its control over Pemuda Rakyat (youth organisation), the
Gerwani (women's organisation) and the SOBSI, which were also potential sources
of rivalry. But little was achieved on the peasant front, despite claims of the
agrarian essence of the Indonesian revolution. Aidit admitted that "the alliance
with the national bourgeoisie is getting closer... [but] the alliance of workers
and peasants is still not strong" (Mortimer, 1974: 47). Not until 1959 was the
first National Peasant Conference held - a remarkable 'underestimation' of the
peasantry.
However, taking heed of Mao (and Stalin), the PKI
looked to the national bourgeoisie as its principal ally. Aidit divided the
bourgeoisie into a comprador class tied to imperialism (including the Muslim
Masyumi party) and a national bourgeoisie which, though it might vacillate, was
still considered a natural ally for the working class in the struggle against
"imperialism". Mortimer's acid comment is well worth noting: "The entire
emphasis... was on the self-abnegating role of the workers and their political
responsibilities toward other classes and the nation as a whole... It has seldom
happened that a party as large as the PKI has held a class fraction, the
'national bourgeoisie', in such high esteem, placed so many hopes on it and
accommodated to it, while knowing so little about it." (1974: 62).
Aidit, like Mao, talked much about "independence"
within the "national front", but he substituted the independent existence of his
party (as a separate organisation from the bourgeois parties) for the
independence of the class - which was subordinated to the bourgeois government
of Sukarno, at the PKI's behest. The working class was for Aidit at best a
battering ram to open up space for the PKI in Sukarno's order, or at worst a
stage army for the PKI's own ambitions. Since its resurrection after the war,
the PKI was never for the seizure of power by the working class in its own
interests. Rather, it was a Stalinist formation aiming at state power for its
top bureaucracy.
At the time the results of the PKI's reorientation
seemed thoroughly successful. In 1955, in the first national elections since the
end of Dutch rule, the PKI polled over 6 million votes, or over 16%, making it
the fourth largest party in the country after the PNI (22%), Masyumi (21%) and
the Nahdlatul Ulama (NU, with 18%. It took an ultra-nationalist line, supporting
Sukarno and his demand for Irian Jaya, as well as supporting local
peculiarities, such as cockfighting in Bali. The PKI was by far the richest
party in the elections, again funded by donations and the communist embassies.
This gave it 39/257 seats in the new national parliament, and 80/514 in the
Constituent Assembly.
Despite these results, and Sukarno's call for a
government of the four main parties (under the amusing slogan, 'who ever heard
of a three legged horse?'), the new cabinet in 1956 still excluded the
Communists. Their response was to further adapt to Sukarno. After a tour of the
Communist bloc, Sukarno declared in November 1956 that he favoured a "guided
democracy". He wanted to "bury" the parties, arguing that western democracy had
failed (he called it 'our big mistake in 1945'). In 1957 Sukarno called for a
new government of all parties including the PKI. He appointed an advisory
council which included 12 communists and representatives from the army. On the
back of such endorsement, the PKI came second to the Masyumi in the municipal
elections with over 7 million votes (27%), becoming the largest party on Java.
In 1957 the United Nations again failed to vote for
the Indonesian resolution on West Papua (Irian Jaya). The government declared a
24 hour strike against Dutch firms, which was followed by a wave of strikes,
occupations and graffiti-ing of Dutch businesses, shops, offices and plants.
Workers led some of these protests, during which Dutch enterprises were declared
the property of the Indonesian Republic or adorned with a hammer and sickle in
red paint. The PKI took part. but it was the military who ultimately benefited,
taking the leading role in the management of the nationalised companies, which
were the most modern sectors of the economy.
The generals establishing their own private power
base, enriched themselves by siphoning off profits, and weakened the working
class with layoffs. Membership of the PKI leapt from 165,000 in 1954, to 1.5
million in 1959, but it grew largely because of its close identification with
Sukarno. In 1956, military commanders in Sumatra reacted to the growth of the
communists by staging local coups, eventually spreading to Sulawesi. In 1958
they announced the formation of the Revolutionary Government of Indonesia, with
the support of some ex-ministers from the Masyumi, in opposition to Sukarno. The
US government supplied weapons and equipment for these forces.
In 1959 Sukarno instituted his programme of "guided
democracy" by dissolving the Constituent Assembly, appointing a new cabinet and
establishing an advisory council which included the PKI. In August 1959, the
army ordered the PKI to cancel its congress, but Sukarno intervened, addressing
the (postponed) event. He also launched his political manifesto (MANIPOL) at the
independence day celebrations, setting out the five pillars of USDEK (1945
Constitution, Indonesian socialism, guided democracy, guided economy and
Indonesian national identity). In November 1959, a virulent campaign was
launched against the Chinese community in the country, who were scapegoated for
the economic situation. By the following year, 40,000 had been "repatriated" to
the mainland.
In March 1960 Sukarno instituted a new parliament,
excluding the Masyumi. It consisted of seats for political parties and for
functional groups, including the army. The PKI was given 30 seats, compared to
the PNI (44) and NU (36), but had at least 30 members as part of the functional
groups, making it the largest bloc. At the 16th anniversary of independence
Sukarno talked about the 'New Ordering' of Indonesia, with a 'national front' to
dissolve the old divisions. Free from parliamentary wrangling, Sukarno stepped
up agitation around West Papua (Irian Jaya). In January 1962 the first
guerrillas parachuted into the territories, and in August the US brokered a
settlement.
The road to the 1965 coup
Bourgeois commentators writing at this time were
divided in their assessment of Indonesia's evolution. Some like Pauker, who
worked for the CIA, and Van der Kroef, believed a Communist takeover was
imminent. Others, such as McVey, Brackman and Hindley, were not convinced.
Brackman argued that Sukarno had no intention of letting the PKI into power. The
PKI was limited to its base on Java and by the prevalence of Islam across the
archipelago. The army would more than likely succeed Sukarno, and it would lead
a drive against the PKI. (1963: 303-305).
Sukarno gained further momentum when he sought to
obstruct the creation of Malaysia, amid a wave of national chauvinism
orchestrated by the government. In 1963 West Papua (Irian Jaya) was handed back
to Indonesia, and British companies were taken over. Between 1962-65, 800,000
peasants received land redistributed under the land reform law. But when the
harvest failed in Java in 1963-64, one million people starved, thousands were
treated for malnutrition, and people even sold their children to get food. The
PKI initially supported peasants who tried to speed up the reform process, only
to withdraw on Sukarno's orders. As Mortimer commented afterwards, "By 1963 the
party's worship was becoming almost idolatrous. Despite the President's
notorious disdain for and ignorance of economic affairs, it declared that the
solution of economic difficulties could safely be left in his hands... A short
time later (Aidit) bestowed the final accolade by describing the President as
his first teacher in Marxist-Leninism". (1974: 88-89). The PKI supported
Sukarno's new formula of Nasakom, which meant the cooperation of Indonesia's
nationalist, religious and communist forces.
In 1961, the party had given the government a list
of party members, including their address and rank in the party. It justified
such behaviour by completely revising the Marxist theory according to which the
state represents the interests of the ruling class. In The Indonesian Revolution
and the Immediate Tasks of the Indonesian Communist Party (1965), Aidit wrote
that, "At present, the state power in the Republic of Indonesia includes two
antagonistic sides, one representing the interests of the people (in support of
the people) and the other the interests of the enemy of the people (the
opposition to the people). The side supporting the people is becoming stronger
day by day, the government of the Republic of Indonesia has even adopted
revolutionary anti-imperialist measures".
Yet none of this seemed to matter as the party's
growth continued. By mid-1964 the Communist Party was claiming 3 million
members, Pemuda Rakyat 3 million, the SOBSI more than 3.5 million members, the
Peasant Union 8.5 million and the Gerwani 1,750,000 members. At face value this
meant one-fifth of Indonesia's population of 105 million people were affiliated
to the PKI. Sukarno himself gave credence to these figures when he addressed the
PKI's forty-fifth anniversary celebrations in 1965.
In March 1964, Sukarno told the US to "go to hell
with your aid". In January 1965, Indonesia withdrew from the UN and in August
Sukarno signed up for the Jakarta-Phnom Penh-Beijing-Hanoi-Pyongyang axis. In
his Independence Day address on August 17, 1965 Sukarno argued that: "Indonesia
clearly states that its revolution is still at the national-democratic stage,
although a number of important results have been achieved at this stage. The
time will arrive when Indonesia will build socialism - namely, after imperialist
capital has been liquidated completely, after the land owned by the landlords is
redistributed among the people."
The vultures began to circle. In a memorandum to the
Rand Corporation, CIA operative Guy Pauker wrote, "Were the communists to lose
Sukarno as a protector, it seems doubtful that other national leaders, capable
of rallying Indonesia's dispersed and demoralised anti-communist forces would
emerge in the near future. Furthermore these forces lack the ruthlessness that
made it possible for the Nazis to suppress the Communist Party of Germany a few
weeks after the elections of March 5th, 1933... The enemies of the PKI,
including the remnants of various rightwing rebellions, the suppressed political
parties, and certain elements of the armed forces, are weaker than the Nazis,
not only in numbers and in mass support, but also in unity, discipline and
leadership." (Bowen, 1998: 24).
For the representatives of American imperialism, the
key question seemed to be, where are the fascists when you need them. For them,
the final straw was the PKI proposal for a political commissar system in the
army and a "fifth-force" of volunteers, which they saw as the communist bid for
an armed wing. The US Ambassador Marshall Green said afterwards, "we did what we
had to do and you'd better be glad we did because if we hadn't Asia would be a
different place today."
On September 30, 1965 a group of pro-Sukarno army
officers kidnapped and killed six right-wing generals. The rebels broadcast
their message from a Jakarta radio station, claiming that they had pre-empted a
military coup by the Council of Generals, which was backed by the CIA. On
October 1, Suharto, commander of the strategic reserve, took control of the army
and the rebels were rapidly dispersed. Suharto banned the PKI press, having been
ordered by Sukarno to restore law and order. The army, in league with Muslim
organisations such as the NU and the Muhammadiyah then proceeded to organise the
massacre of the PKI.
The CIA admitted in its 1968 report that it had
helped carry out, "one of the worst mass murders of the 20th century", supplying
5000 PKI names to the military. Time magazine, on December 17, 1965 reported
that:
"Communists, red sympathisers and their families are
being massacred by the thousands. Backlands army units are reported to have
executed thousands of communists after interrogation in remote jails. Armed with
wide bladed knives called parangs, Moslem bands crept at night into the homes of
communists, killing entire families and burying the bodies in shallow graves.
The murder campaign became so brazen in parts of rural East Java that Moslem
bands placed the heads of victims on poles and paraded them through villages.
The killings have been on such a scale that the disposal of the corpses has
created a serious sanitation problem in East Java and Northern Sumatra where the
humid air bears the reek of decaying flesh. Travellers from those areas tell of
small rivers and streams that have been literally clogged with bodies."
Sukarno was not to be left out. In December 1965 he
attacked the PKI as "rats that have eaten a part of a big cake and tried to eat
the pillar of our house. Now let us catch these rats". The PKI was banned in
March 1966. Perhaps one million militants were brutally liquidated within the
space of four months, including from other left parties not associated with the
PKI, and the leadership and cadre of the PKI itself. Although the PKI leadership
had discussed the prospects of a coup, they decided to rely on sympathetic army
officers, and once the massacre had started, were only able to organise a tiny
guerrilla force. Most of its supporters and fellow travellers were completely
unprepared, and paid for the party's complacency with their lives.
Having lost one of his props, Sukarno rapidly fell
from grace with the military, who took control in the shape of Suharto. The
massacre thus inaugurated the 32-year reign of the hated dictator, and gave a
taster as to what he would do in places like East Timor when any force
challenged his supremacy. The PKI was crushed, and has not re-emerged with any
strength since 1998.
What were the lessons of the period 1945-65?
After the war, the PKI was no longer a working class
party. The defeat in 1926-27, control from Moscow and the popular front line
meant the party played only a limited role in the downfall of colonial rule. It
had simultaneously destroyed the possibility of the Indonesian working class
playing an independent role in the overthrow of Dutch imperialism. The
subordination of the PKI to Moscow was well illustrated by the Madiun affair in
1948, where in contrast to 1926-27, the PKI attempted a putsch on the orders of,
rather than against the wishes of, its masters.
The Aidit years were a repetition of the worst
aspects of the popular front. The working class was bound hand and foot to
Sukarno, leaving it prostrate in the face of the army reaction in 1965. The
revolution by stages was nothing but a snare, and Suharto's counter-revolution
certainly did not stop for any arbitrary self-restrictions. For the PKI after
1927, the working class was a stage army at the service of their domestic
ambitions as an aspirant Stalinist ruling class, and a tool of the Stalinist
(both Kremlin and Peking) bureaucracies and their respective foreign policies in
South East Asia.
Sukarno was a bourgeois Bonaparte who balanced
between Dutch, Japanese and American imperialism during the struggle for
independence, but still emerged as the leader of Indonesia. He also played off
domestic rivals such as the PKI and Tan Malaka to maintain his leadership of the
liberation movement. He later played the Bonapartist role of balancing between
the PKI and the army (and the rival international camps) as Indonesia developed
its capitalist economy, only to be displaced by a military Bonaparte in the
shape of Suharto in 1965. It was Sukarno who stoked up racism against the
Chinese and denied rights to minorities in Indonesia. It was Sukarno who first
abolished bourgeois democracy in the country, and it was he who gave the army
its role in politics as part of his "guided democracy". His "New Ordering"
prepared the way for Suharto's New Order.
The nationalism of Sukarno was double-edged sword.
Representing the drive of the bourgeoisie for the widest possible sphere for
commodity exchange, and against the Western imperialists who divided peoples
according to their own competing interests, it was progressive. But as a means
to incorporate the working class into the new state, and as a drive for a
greater Indonesia, to include the rest of the region, it became a snare. This
was epitomised by the West Papuans, who were incorporated into Indonesia as
Irian Jaya, but whose suffering under Suharto has given rise to demands for
independence.
Indonesian history and Marxism
Some bourgeois histories see the PKI largely as a
conspiracy from start to finish, rather than differentiating its healthier,
earlier period when it strove to lead the working class to power despite
mistakes. They also fail to understand how as a Stalinist party, the PKI could
mobilise, educate and organise Indonesian workers and peasants, without really
representing their interests. Some of these histories focus on the hand of
Moscow, but still misunderstand the way in which the PKI leadership carried out
these policies. Others are so blatantly bound up with the cold war that they
read like pleas to the American government to do something about the rise of
PKI, and after 1965 there is a noticeable dropping away of interest by American
academics once "the problem" had been "dealt with".
Left histories are better, especially on Suharto's
coup, but also have their limitations. Ernest Mandel's balance sheet (1966) made
a number of valid criticisms: on the PKI's view of the state; the absence of a
worker-peasant alliance; and the dependency of the communists on Sukarno.
But it was soft on the role of Chinese communists in
shaping the PKI strategy. The whole history of the PKI is inexplicable without
reference to the wider history of Communism in the twentieth century. Whereas
the Russian revolution in 1917 galvanised the party into a force for socialism,
it was Stalinism, both in Russia and in China, that first destroyed the PKI's
working class focus, and then guided it towards extinction.
The CWI pamphlet by Craig Bowen (1990) suffers from
the same weakness. Bowen, like Mandel, implies that if the PKI had come to
power, this would have been a victory for the Indonesian working class. It is
true that the defeat of the PKI was also devastating for the working class, but
the establishment of PKI rule in Indonesia in 1965 would have tied the
Indonesian working class to the state. The trade union movement would have lost
all semblance of independence, and any dissent from a ruling PKI government
would have been viciously suppressed. Their criticisms of Aidit's erroneous
conception of the bourgeois state are absolutely valid; but are not extended to
his alternative, what Bowen and Mandel both call the "deformed workers' state"
which the PKI aimed to set up. There is no Stalinist-bureaucratic road to
socialism.
Most left histories exaggerate the weakness of the
colonial bourgeoisie in order to "fit" with their versions of "permanent
revolution" or imperialism. The Indonesian bourgeoisie was weak, but bourgeois
politicians were still able to lead the fight for national independence, in the
absence of either a strong working class, or of a Stalinist movement able to
challenge for power, as in China. History did not stand still.
Even among the early nationalists there existed an
aspirant Indonesian bourgeoisie. The independence struggle after 1945 showed
that bourgeois forces could carry out reforms, however limited, and that the end
of colonial empires was 'real', within the context of an uneven world capitalist
economy. In any case, Lenin and Trotsky's theories depended crucially on the
role of an active working class movement, not on some automatic process which
inevitably locks in because of the historical obsolescence of the bourgeoisie.
The recent articles by James Balowski in Green Left
Weekly (1999) share these weaknesses, and are particularly confused on
imperialism when he writes: "The Indonesian national revolution brought formal
political but not economic independence. Indonesia was - and remains - subject
to imperialist economic control". This analysis accepts Aidit's premise that
Indonesia was a plain and simple semi-colony, and logically calls for the
'completion of the national revolution', presumably by a coalition of bourgeois
and radical forces. It downplays the very real difference between rule by Dutch
colonialism and by an indigenous bourgeois ruling class.
Sukarno and later Suharto were not simply puppets of
imperialism - their state wielded its own power and it certainly showed the
extent of its independence, in expropriating Dutch capital in the fifties and
charting its own foreign policy between the two imperialist blocs, receiving
concessions both and playing one off against the other. For Indonesian workers
and peasants, the main enemy was (and still is) at home. But the principal
weakness of most left (Trotskyist) histories is that they treat the PKI as a
genuine revolutionary Marxist party in the post-war period which with the right
advice, could have led the working class to power at some stage. To complain
that the PKI should have called for nationalisation under workers' control when
Dutch businesses were expropriated, or that they should have formed a militia in
the sixties, is to misconceive what it was, and how it related to the working
class. To repeat, the PKI was not a force for socialism after 1927 - that is the
chief conclusion from examining its history.
The current task is to map out what the workers
should do for their own interests in the current reality of Indonesia, which has
developed enormously since 1965. The need for an alliance between the working
class and the poor peasants of Indonesia was (and is) clearly important, but
working class independence (or lack of it) was fundamental in the last seventy
years. The workers of Indonesia might have found many allies in its struggle,
but only if fighting for their own interests in the first place.
Since the twenties these workers have not had a
party that defined and fought for their interests, organised their vanguard and
consciously fought for power. In the current crisis, such a party is an absolute
prerequisite for further advance.
References
- Anderson, (1999), "Indonesian Nationalism Today and in the Future", NLR 235, May-June.
- Balowski, (1999), "The Indonesian Communist Party: lessons from a defeat", Green Left Weekly (Australia), 379-384.
- Bowen, (1990), "The Rise and Fall of the PKI", in CWI (1998), Indonesia: An Unfinished Revolution.
- Brackman, (1963), Indonesian Communism, (Praeger).
- Hindley, (1964), The Communist Party of Indonesia, 1951-1963, (University of California).
- Jarvis, (ed), (1991), From Jail to Jail by Tan Malaka, (Ohio University).
- McVey, (1965), The Rise of Indonesian Communism, (Cornell University).
- Mandel, (1966), "Lessons of the Defeat in Indonesia", in Hansen (ed), The Catastrophe in Indonesia, (Merit).
- Mortimer, (1974), Indonesian Communism under Sukarno - Ideology and Politics 1959-65, (Cornell University).
- Riddell, (ed), (1991), Workers of the World and Oppressed Peoples, Unite!: Proceedings and Documents of the Second Congress, 1920, (Pathfinder).
- Thomas, (1999), "Indonesia: workers' revolution or 'democratic coalition'?", Workers' Liberty (Australia), No5.
- Van der Kroef, (1965), The Communist Party of Indonesia, (University of British Colombia).