The Militant(logo) 
    Vol.62/No.23           June 15, 1998 
 
 
Indonesia 1965-66: Lessons Of The Defeat -- Subordination by Stalinists to national bourgeoisie paved way for slaughter  
in Indonesia today, we reprint below two articles, published in the weekly socialist magazine World Outlook, on the events that unfolded there in 1965-66, when the working class internationally suffered its worst defeat since the fascist victory in Germany in 1933. The first article was written in the Oct. 15, 1965, issue, immediately following the military coup in Indonesia that led to a slaughter of half a million people. The second was written in the March 18, 1966, issue, after Gen. Suharto deposed President Sukarno and began his 32-year-long dictatorial rule. World Outlook, which can be obtained on microfilm in some libraries, was edited at the time by Socialist Workers Party leader Joseph Hansen. The subheads have been added by the Militant.

*****

The Indonesian revolution has suffered a grave setback. The bourgeois army, while still maintaining Sukarno in nominal power, has taken over control and launched a nationwide witch-hunt. Communist party members are being hounded and arrested. Communist party papers are being suppressed, its leaders forced underground.

The brunt of this stinging defeat has been suffered by the biggest Communist party in the capitalist world. It claims 3,000,000 regular members, a People's Youth wing of 3,000,000, and a following of 20,000,000 in mass organizations of the workers, peasants, women, students and people working for the government. How could such a massive political force undergo a mauling at the hands of armed forces totaling 350,000?

CP bloc with `national bourgeoisie'

It is due to the strategic line of "revolution by stages," of forming blocs and coalitions with the "national bourgeoisie." The Stalinist-educated leadership of the Communist movement in the colonial and semicolonial countries has applied this line again and again since the second Chinese revolution of 1925-27, notwithstanding its tragic results.

In Indonesia, the masses have surged forward repeatedly. Industrial and agricultural wage earners and poor peasants have occupied factories and plantations, seized the holdings of the big land owners, and poured into the streets in great throngs urging a decisive struggle against inflation, exploitation and imperialism. Several times the situation has been propitious for a government of the workers and poor peasants to take power.

But each time, the leadership of the Indonesian Communist party, headed by the group of Chairman D.N. Aidit, has put the brakes on the mass movement and held the masses prisoner to "Nasakom" - the "national front" of the three main political groupings, the Sukarno Nationalists, the Religious Teachers, a Moslem group, and the Communist Party.

Each time the masses surged forward, the Communist party sought to channel their militancy against the single target of foreign imperialism, failing to organize systematic, nationwide struggles against the semifeudal landowners, the money lenders, rich merchants, and corrupt administrators of enterprises that serve as seed beds of a new industrialist bourgeois class.

In this way the fighting energy of the masses was not concentrated on the central task of winning power, but was split up and dispersed into numerous partial actions.

Meanwhile the bourgeois army, the center of the counterrevolutionary forces, quietly strengthened by American imperialism and beefed up with shipments of armaments sent by the Soviet bureaucracy, sought to increase its popularity and its political standing by staging easy "successes" against imperialism, as in West Irian and North Kalimantan, biding its time to turn against the revolutionary mass movement.

It is true that in recent months the Aidit leadership made a shift to the left, radicalizing its orientation somewhat. Aidit even called for arming of the workers and peasants.

But he did not call upon the masses to arm themselves. He asked Sukarno to arm them. Sukarno, of course, gave this appeal the brush off.

Finally, on September 25, only a few days before the attempted coup of the "September 30 Movement" which precipitated the present situation, Aidit told the masses to act boldly against the "bureaucratic capitalists," and to take control of the former imperialist enterprises which had been confiscated or nationalized.

The shift came too late. "Bung (Brother) Karno" cannot be praised day in and day out without sowing immense confusion among the masses and disorienting them in the problem of winning power. It is impossible to remain silent year after year about the reactionary danger represented by the army without paving the way for the masses to be taken by surprise when the reactionary generals finally decide that the time has come to strike.

Workers left leaderless in face of coup
The hesitant and wavering attitude of the Aidit leadership stood out starkly during the decisive week of the army coup. Not a single appeal, not a single indication of what to do, not a single list of slogans of action was issued by the Indonesian Communist party to the masses of workers and peasants. They were left leaderless in face of the enemy. Confused by the contradictions in past policies, abandoned by their leaders in the hour of greatest peril, they stood stunned as the generals brought the sword down.

The role played by the left-wing army officers under Lt. Col. Untung is not yet clear. It is possible that these officers, informed about the impending coup being prepared by the reactionary generals, sought desperately to throw it off balance by striking first. It is also possible that they actually tried to topple the Sukarno regime through a purely military conspiracy which General Abdul Haris Nasution then seized as a pretext for his own coup.

If the latter hypothesis proves to be the correct one, then it must be listed as a putschist adventure in which a handful of resolute men attempted to substitute for the power of the masses. It is quite wrong to think that an attempted coup d'état by reactionary generals cannot be blocked by a strong mass movement or that putschists can succeed whereas the masses are doomed to failure. There are many examples in history where powerful mass mobilization supported by relatively weak popular military formations, have successfully blocked reactionary army circles from taking over a country. This occurred at the time of the attempted Kapp putsch in Germany in 1920. It happened again in Spain in July 1936. The latest instance was in the Dominican Republic.

The best response is a powerful general strike which paralyzes the enemy, throws him into confusion, forces him to divide and dissipate his forces, giving the labor movement a breathing spell in which to arm the workers and peasants and thereby prepare a truly effective counterblow against the reactionary threat.

But the responsibility for the Untung putsch - if it turns out to have been a putsch - must be laid squarely on the Aidit leadership. It is the old pattern: opportunism breeds adventurism. It is probable that inside the Indonesian Communist party, a left wing became more and more impatient with the wavering, opportunist policies of the Aidit leadership. Under pressure of the constantly rising tension between classes and political forces in recent months, certain elements in this left wing might very well have thought of turning to direct action as a possible way out. Feeling that a reactionary coup d'état could occur at any time, they might have despaired of convincing the party cadres and members of the danger before it was too late. Miseducated as to the real potential of mass action, lacking confidence in their capacity to mobilize the masses - if necessary against the Aidit leadership - they might have thought that the situation could be saved through some kind of short cut.

Chinese leadership's responsibility
Whatever the facts - and these are not easy to determine as yet - the opportunism of the Aidit leadership stands at the center of the setback dealt to the Indonesian revolution. And the leadership of the Chinese Communist party and the pro-Mao tendency in the world Communist movement likewise bear heavy co-responsibility.

In several documents, the Chinese Communist party leadership has correctly criticized the opportunist policy of the Thorez and Togliatti leaderships in the French and Italian Communist parties, the servile subservience to the "national" bourgeoisie which led the Iraqi Communist party and the Dange leadership of the Indian Communist party to heavy defeats.

But in gross contradiction to these criticisms, the Mao leadership placed a rubber stamp of approval on the opportunist policies of the Aidit group inside the Indonesian Communist party.

This course was linked to the diplomatic maneuvers with which the Chinese government sought to counter the blockade of American imperialism and the hostile moves of the Soviet bureaucracy against the Chinese revolution. To seek friendly relations with bourgeois governments like those headed by Sukarno or Ayub Khan in Pakistan is not at all wrong in and of itself. A workers state has a perfect right and even duty to seek to maneuver among its bourgeois enemies and to take advantage of their differences. The Soviet government in the days of Lenin and Trotsky did this at the time of the Rapallo treaty.

What is impermissible - it is one of the products of Stalinist miseducation and degeneration - is to identify the needs and prerogatives of the government of a workers state with the political needs of the world revolution which are expressed on a party level. To confuse the two, converts the party into a mere instrument of the government with its passing diplomatic needs and tears the heart and brains out of Marxist political policy. Even Marxist theory becomes reduced to the role of apologizing for each twist and turn in the field of governmental diplomacy.

Thus when the Soviet government in the time of Lenin and Trotsky signed a temporary pact at Rapallo with German imperialism against "Allied" imperialism, the Communist International did not stop calling for and seeking to help organize the overthrow of German imperialism through a proletarian revolution. The Communist International did not stop calling the rulers of Germany what they actually were - ferocious capitalist exploiters of their own workers.

But in Mao's deals with Sukarno and Ayub Khan, all the radical words about "uninterrupted revolution" are forgotten. These representatives of exploiting classes and butchers of striking workers are pictured as "progressive national leaders." A veil is drawn over the class nature of their regimes; debilitating illusions are sown about the possibility of creating a "bloc of newly emerging forces" against world imperialism.

This opportunist policy is not fundamentally different from the treacherous, revisionist line of Khrushchevism in the colonial and semicolonial countries with its gross illusions about "peaceful evolution," "national democratic states" and "noncapitalist forms of development" that still cannot be said to be moving in a socialist direction.

In Indonesia Aidit appears only as a "left" variant of Khrushchevist opportunism. The Chinese Communist party leaders, who have covered up for all his opportunism and invested him with all the tremendous authority they have among the Asian workers and poor peasants as a result of the victory of the Chinese revolution, today share the responsibility for the defeat in Indonesia.

The defeat in Indonesia will not prove to be an enduring one. An important battle was lost but reaction is not definitively in the saddle. Experience since the end of the second world war has proved that the revolutionary movement in the colonial and semicolonial countries has been able to quite rapidly forge again to the forefront after suffering partial defeats.

This recuperative power is due primarily to the objective conditions; i.e., the incapacity of neocolonialism and the national bourgeoisie to assure even temporary improvements in the abysmal living conditions of the millions upon millions of exploited colonial slaves.

These slaves are learning the power of revolt; and it takes more than a temporary defeat to force them back into numbed acceptance of an intolerable existence.

The 3,000,000 adult Communists, 3,000,000 Communist youth and 20,000,000 members of mass organizations in Indonesia have not been crushed. They are only temporarily thrown off balance and left leaderless. They are certain to rally, resume their struggle and compel reaction to retreat.

Their struggle will continue until the most conscious and critical Communist militants, united with the Indonesian Trotskyist cadres, forge a revolutionary party capable of leading the working class and peasantry upon the only road to victory - the road to the conquest of power, the establishment of a workers and farmers government, the road of Fidel Castro, of Lenin and Trotsky, the road of the permanent revolution.

October 15, 1965

*****

In what amounted to a military coup d'état March 12, General Suharto deposed Sukarno from power in Indonesia while retaining the former president as a figurehead. According to the Djakarta radio, Sukarno agreed to "transfer" his powers, thus in fact ending his "lifetime" presidency. A victory parade was at once staged by the Indonesian army in token of its conquest of power. And while the parade was going on, General Suharto issued a decree in the name of Sukarno banning the Indonesian Communist party.

The reactionary nature of the military coup d'état could scarcely be made plainer. Nonetheless the decree cited alleged "underground activities" by the Communist party, including "slander, aggravation, threats, rumors and armed activity..."

Blood purge
All the evidence now points to a renewed and intensified blood purge in the unhappy archipelago where estimates of the number of victims slaughtered either directly by the army or under its instigation run as high as 200,000 to 350,000.

Thus Sukarno's desperate attempt to redress the balance on which he formerly maintained power appears to have come to an end. On February 21, Sukarno, who already seemed to hold only a semblance of power, suddenly dismissed Nasution, the general who seized the reins of power on October 1 and initiated the massive witch-hunt for "Communists." Reports from Djakarta indicated that Sukarno had succeeded in splitting the generals.

With at least some power back in his hands, Sukarno sought to strengthen his left flank. He reshuffled his cabinet, bringing in figures opposed by the generals as "soft on Communism. Among them were Foreign Minister Subandrio and Minister of Basic Education Sumardjo.

This maneuver had no chance, however, of finding forces on the left strong enough to counter the army. The Communist party was shattered as an organization during the months of blood-letting. The top leadership was smashed, Aidit himself having been executed according to a number of rumors that gained in credibility as time passed. Party cadres were physically liquidated by the tens of thousands. The mass murder terrorized millions of workers and peasants, for they were totally unprepared to defend themselves. Sukarno found nothing to lean on toward his left.

The generals meanwhile held a series of secret meetings, in which they composed at least their major differences. One of their decisions, evidently was to depose Sukarno.

Moreover, they blocked Sukarno's efforts to bring the purge to an end. There appears to have been some subsidence of the mass killings, but executions still went on. [See World Outlook March 11.] In addition, demonstrations against Sukarno, organized by reactionary student organizations around such slogans as getting rid of Subandrio and Sumardjo, were not opposed by the army. In fact they appeared to be covertly encouraged and even instigated by the officer caste.

In face of this renewed assault, Sukarno gave in, and now appears to have reached the final stage of his political career - a keeper of the rubberstamp for putting his name to decrees issued by the army. How long the generals will deem this to be a profitable game remains to be seen.

As for the imperialist reaction, this is sufficiently indicated by the March 13 New York Times: "In Washington the Administration found it difficult to hide its delight with the events in Indonesia. Officials believed that both President Sukarno and the once-powerful Communist party had taken sharp setbacks."

Writing from Washington, Times correspondent Max Frankel stressed, the "delight" of the Johnson administration and indicated that the situation in Indonesia was the result of intervention in the internal affairs of that country:

"After a long period of patient diplomacy designed to help the army triumph over the Communists, and months of prudent silence while Mr. Sukarno appeared to be slipping, officials were elated to find their expectations being realized."

There appeared to be hope in Washington that General Nasution would yet emerge as the new "strongman" in Indonesia.

"The United States retained excellent contacts with the military leaders," Frankel revealed, "even after Mr. Sukarno had renounced American aid and had begun to move against American information libraries, the Peace Corps and news correspondents." Frankel added: "The Central Intelligence agency was known to have participated in some plots against him [Sukarno]. An American flier was captured by the Indonesians while flying for a rebel group."

Lessons of Sukarno's role
Of all the lessons to be drawn from the success of the counterrevolution in Indonesia, one of the most obvious is Sukarno's role. In 1961 he was reported to have told [U.S. president John] Kennedy, "I am the best bulwark in Indonesia against Communism."

This was completely true. Sukarno's greatest single success as a bourgeois politician was to attract and to hold the support of the Indonesian Communist party. Instead of mobilizing the workers and peasants to take power in Indonesia and open up the road to socialism, the Indonesian Communist party under D.N. Aidit placed political confidence in Sukarno and depended on him both to safeguard its own standing and to lead the struggle against imperialism and indigenous reaction. The result was a debacle for the Communist party on the scale of the one experienced in Germany with the rise of Hitler.

The Kremlin, of course, shares responsibility for the immense defeat in Indonesia, for Aidit was only practicing the line of "peaceful coexistence" developed by the Soviet bureaucracy.

Peking, too, helped pave the way for the counterrevolutionary victory in Indonesia. Despite the radical language and the many references to Lenin, Mao and his circle covered up Aidit's opportunist policies if they did not actively encourage them out of their own eagerness to please Sukarno as a diplomatic ally.

The end result was to weaken the world position of both the People's Republic of China and the Soviet Union, not to mention the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and all the other workers states. This was one of the big reasons for the "delight" in Washington over the turn of events.

The main victims of the defeat in Vietnam are, of course, the workers and poor peasants who placed their confidence in the capacity of the Communist party to lead them in a struggle for power. They had to pay with one of the most monstrous slaughters of modern times for the illusions sowed by Stalin's heirs in Indonesia.

How long will it take them to rebuild from the ground up, this time constructing a leadership genuinely shaped in accordance with the principles of Leninism? A precise answer cannot be given to this question. But that the Indonesian workers and poor peasants will do it, is absolutely certain.  
 
 
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