Thank you Mike, for posting.

I would like to wholeheartedly endorse the recent book by John Roosa, <a href="/http://www.wisc.edu/wisconsinpress/books/3938.htm" rel="nofollow">Pretext for Mass Murder</a> for those who are looking to study further into the workings of the 65-66 period in Indonesia.

For comrades of the modern day, there are a number of lessons that I feel have yet to be summed up due to both lack of information, but more importantly, the lack of a solid analysis of the totality of the Cold War in Southeast Asia. While the Philippines and Vietnam tend to be studied (and rightfully so), the effect of defeats of the Left in Malaysia (from which Singapore had not yet severed itself) as well as Indonesia have not been fully analyzed. As in: we in the U.S., however much we have broken with anti-communism, still tend to take on an anti-communist analysis of history there -- i.e., that the dominoes were beginning to fall with Vietnam. A more all-sided look reveals that the dominoes were falling in the opposite direction.

Just as important, there was a certain twist in the historical dialectic of imperialism/anti-imperialism represented by the Nasution-Suharto coup, which is that America's Cold Warriors effectively learned by negative example about the necessity of fortifying the "weakest links" in imperialism. That is to say, Sukarno's Indonesia -- for all its errors in being a sort of model-nation for Three Worlds Theory -- had been set upon a solid internationalist mission, representing what was by 65 the weakest link in the imperialist sphere. Had the PKI succeeded in creating a proper Red Guard among the peasantry, and had not been "forced" to rely upon the relatively small core of leftist junior officers still left in the country in the midst of the Confrontation to carry out an abortive putsch against the right-wing senior officers, they would have certainly become the successors to the Sukarno regime.

What should also be noted is that for whatever bluster there has been in the international communist movement regarding the errors of Chile (peaceful coexistence, electoralism, etc.) those errors were by no means simply matters of pro-Soviet stance. Chairman Aidit and the PKI were actually quite partial to the Chinese side of the post-56 events, and (as I believe Roosa's "Pretext" establishes) was an anti-revisionist of sorts, in that one of his aims was to effectively kick Sukarno out of Moscow's sphere into China's. There is much more complexity to the ICM than has been in the Maoist discourse; it is past due to acknowledge this and try to tease that out, however torturous.

As I understand it, Aidit's line was more or less that taken by Kim Il Sung, Che Guevara and Ho Chi Minh (I think Angela Davis had a similar line, too), that it was "all in the family." That is, the Soviets could be <i>massive assholes</i> on the world scale, but that they still were basically a socialist country internally and could be persuaded to "do the right thing."

It's a bit like Chris Rock's own bourgeois-democratic summation of Black views on America: that it's like the creepy uncle who paid your way through college, but molested you on the side. "Ya gotta forgive, right?"

Not exactly a Marxist-Leninist position, but at least its slightly better than "communism is twentieth century dishwashers" or whatever Khrushchev's reinterpretation of that Browderite garbage was.

Incidentally enough, this line kind of reminds me of August Thalheimer, a member of the USPD and later KPD who was apparently expelled because of his opposition to the transformation of the Comintern into a directorate of the NKID (Foreign Affairs), but who thought that the proletariat still controlled Soviet domestic policy overall:

http://www.marxists.org/archive/thalheimer/intro.htm

A proto-"Conquer the World/Advancing the World Rev. Movement" critique perhaps? I was planning on reading some of his essays posted there in the future...

Well when Soviet Revisionism was consolidated, Mao Zeodng and the CPC didn't take a clear stance as Soviet Union becomign a clear cut case of Social-Imperialism. In fact, at the time initially after the 20th Congress the only Party that was coming out strongly at Khruschev and CPSU was the PLA of Albania (qualificationut of their own dogmatic Stalinist reasons perhaps). In fact the CPC was initially well recieving of the 20TH Congress, and Mao himself wasn't publically attacking I think people should put into context that period and the resulting thinking coming out of it.

Brezhnev and Kosygin were actually at first thought to be GOOD in the CPC opinion because they ousted Khruschev, that opinion only changed after Zhou Enlai's visit to Moscow in 1964.

To explain: The effects of the post-56 events in Indonesia had a character particular to them. First: the PKI had split in the 1920's, with the Comintern's chosen agent (Tan Malaka) having broken from them around that time and founding the Murba Party in a right-opportunist split.

Murba would become the party of Adam Malik -- who would also be Indonesia's ambassador to the Soviet Union and Poland. In the meantime, the PKI itself was building up better relations with the PRC -- Zhou's charm offensive in the Bandung Conference being something of a prelude.

Roosa's book puts forward the case that Aidit in '65 was looking at events in Algeria (with Ben Bella's pro-Soviet government being driven out by Boumédienne's coup) as a model -- a housecleaning putsch within the military, and sidelining Murba and the right-wing/revisionist Sukarnoists. This is reflected in the PKI's official summation -- published, of course, by Foreign Languages Press -- which has a heavy anti-revisionist flavoring: http://www.massline.info/Indonesia/PKIscrit.htm

The point I am alluding to here is that the PKI very badly misjudged the situation, and to some extent were wearing their own dogma-goggles in devising strategy. The full version of the PKI's self-criticism/summation devotes inordinate space to attacking the Murba Party and its opportunism. But by 1966-67, Murba as a Party was irrelevant -- Adam Malik allowed it to be dissolved and just joined the Suharto New Order government. All too relevant, on the other hand, was Suharto, who by Roosa's account and many others, was ignored by the PKI. You'll notice, for instance, in the condemnation of the fascist generals, General Nasution (the nominal head of the military) gets top billing. General Suharto, it seems, is just an appendage to Nasution. As things went, Suharto, Sukarno and Nasution were something of a right-wing troika and Suharto eventually managed to elbow out Nasution -- something that seems unimaginable from the PKI's perspective.

The 1965 events in Indonesia are worthy of study by a new generation of revolutionaries worldwide not only because they demonstrate the utter ruthlessness of the US imperialists and their monstrous offspring like Suharto, but to dig more deeply into the political line and practice of the PKI. This is the focus of the MLM Revolutionary Study Group's paper (which has just been posted at www.mlmrsg.com) from the anti-Dutch struggle of the 1920s and 40s through the post-independence Sukarno years.

After an abortive uprising in 1948 (which took the form of a putsch), the PKI leadership set a new policy of supporting Sukarno and the post-independence Indonesian state. For the next 15 years, every step the PKI took along the peaceful road to socialism--every joint appearance with Sukarno, every PKI member appointed to a government position--made it more difficult to change course. By the early 1960s, PKI Chairman D.N. Aidit raised this approach to the level of the theory of "a state with two aspects."

According to Aidit, the "pro-people's aspect" was composed of "the progressive stands and policies of President Sukarno supported by the PKI and other groups of the people....The second
(anti-people's) aspect represents the enemies of the people manifested by the stands and policies of the right-wing forces and diehards."

In early 1965, the PKI estimated the balance of forces as follows: "The strength of the pro-people's aspect is already becoming steadily greater and holds the initiative and the offensive, while the anti-people's aspect, although moderately strong, is being relentlessly pressed into a tight corner. The PKI is struggling so that the pro-people's aspect will become still more powerful and finally dominate, and the anti-people's aspect will be driven out of state power."

With this line in command, the PKI leadership drove the party headlong down a dead-end street in the early 1960s, when it was at the height of its strength and political influence. When the showdown came with the pro-US reactionaries in October 1965, the PKI was a sitting duck.

The PKI had not built an independent military force, and instead sought to build one among the "progressive sections" of the armed forces. This strategy was bound to fail. There could be no last minute solution to the fact that the PKI had not developed a people's army with a mass base in the countryside, where the vast majority of the Indonesian people lived. This was the only way the revolutionary movement could have stood up to military suppression, and advance towards the conquest of political power. (While the PKI publicly sided with the CCP against the CPSU in the 1960s, it basically endorsed armed struggle as applicable to everyone but itself.)

Rex Mortimer's book, "Indonesian Communism Under Sukarno: Ideology and Politics, 1959-1965" (1974), is the best book available in English on the PKI's thinking and practice during this period. Mortimer was a leading member of the pro-Soviet Communist Party of Australia, and during the early 60s he was the principal liaison between the CPA and the PKI. While critical of the PKI for supporting Sukarno uncritically, Mortimer believes that it was not "realistic" for the party to take the road of armed struggle, and he gives short shrift to the Self-Criticism of the remaining PKI leadership in 1966. His book brings out valuable information about the inner workings of the party, but downplays the decisive character of the revisionist line set by the PKI leadership and its role in disarming the party's mass base politically and militarily.

Modern Pitung refers to John Roosa's new book, "Pretext for Mass Murder: The September 30th Movement and Suharto's Coup d'Etat in Indonesia" (2006). This is a carefully researched study of the origins and actions of this movement of junior officers, which attempted to pre-empt a right-wing military coup by arresting several top generals. This plan backfired on every conceivable level, including the fact that the generals were killed instead of captured. This provided the U.S. and its stable of generals with a pretext to suppress the PKI and eventually remove Sukarno from power.

Just how this pretext was created has been a long-standing subject of debate among scholars and political activists. The following is the MLMRSG's summation of the terms of that debate:

"The official line of the Indonesian reactionaries and the U.S. government is that the PKI and President Sukarno organized the Movement in order to decapitate the army leadership and stage a leftist coup d’etat that would pave the way for PKI domination of the Sukarno government. This view is represented by Helen Louise-Hunter’s "Sukarno and the Indonesian Coup: The Untold Story", 2007, a recycled version of a 1968 CIA book on these events.

"In Pretext for Mass Murder, John Roosa argues that PKI Chairman Aidit and the head of the PKI Special Bureau (Sjam), but not the party leadership as a whole, were involved in organizing the Movement in order to head off a coup by a right-wing 'generals council.' Roosa points to the presence of Aidit at Halim air force base on October 1 where he was in contact with Lt. Col. Untung and the other officers leading the Movement. Roosa also credits the trial statement by Political Bureau member Sudisman and the Self-Criticism of the remaining PKI leadership in 1966 that point to involvement by Aidit. In this view, Aidit had the limited aim of pre-empting a right-wing coup, bringing the PKI into the Sukarno government, and creating new political space for the PKI in its peaceful road to power.

"Another position, argued by Wim Wertheim, Peter Dale Scott and others, is that the September 30 Movement was a “false flag” operation orchestrated by the CIA and the Suharto forces. They assert that the PKI Special Bureau--which was tasked with developing contacts within the armed forces--was led by a double agent (Sjam) who manipulated Aidit and the military officers into forming the Movement. They point to several actions that indicate that the Movement was set up for failure, including killing the generals instead of capturing them. Thus, the Movement’s actions provided Suharto with the desired “evidence” to hold the PKI responsible for the murder of the generals and the daughter of a general (Nasution) who escaped.

"A definitive answer to the question of who organized the September 30 Movement may never emerge, since key figures (Aidit and Sjam) are dead, and the covert action files of the CIA and the Indonesian Army are closely guarded secrets. Our research has also been limited to English language-only sources. Those with access to materials in Indonesian and Dutch, and with first-hand knowledge of these events, will be able to explore this subject more thoroughly. However, one thing is clear. The PKI was not responsible for the executions of the generals. The U.S. imperialists and their Indonesian henchmen must be held criminally and morally responsible for the mass murder of up to three million members of the PKI and its mass organizations."

Roosa's analysis is the most persuasive of these. The involvement of Aidit and the PKI Special Bureau with the junior officers who led the September 30th Movement was a direct outgrowth of the PKI's doomed strategy of relying on "progressive" officers to neutralize the "reactionaries" in the armed forces.

To its credit, the remaining PKI leadership publicly broke with "Aiditism" and made at least two attempts to start up armed struggle in 1967 and 1968, which are described in the MLMRSG paper. In recent years, Indonesian revolutionaries have begun the process of summing up the history of the PKI and have started to reorganize. In a May 2007 article, "Notes on People's War in Southeast Asia," Jose Maria Sison, founding chairman of the Communist Party of the Philippines, wrote:

"If protracted people's war is viable in a country like the Philippines, it should be even more viable in a country like Indonesia, with a bigger number of people suffering from semicolonial and semifeudal oppression and exploitation, and with an archipelagic and rough terrain of a scale far larger than that of the Philippines...We are gratified to know that proletarian revolutionaries here are determined to pursue the people's democratic revolution through protracted people's war."

Whoops, if you go to the MLM RSG website, a draft version of the article on the PKI is posted.
Please don't download or circulate it. The final version of the article will be posted by Thursday afternoon.

The MLMRSG's document is necessary, and certainly a proper step, there are some nuances that I think are a bit lacking in the MLMRSG analysis. Primarily, the maxim that to "know the enemy and know oneself" is heavy on the "know oneself" side of things, and the study of the enemy seems a bit rough. This is curious, given that good documentation exists of Suharto (and the military's) preparations for their own coup.

The lack of nuance is evident when we get into the portions setting the scene that was set for Sept. 30, 1965. To fill in the blanks:

1) The description of the Council of Generals as though they were merely a boogieman that was raised by the G30S perpetrators ignores much evidence that this council did in fact exist. The military had for decades been known for disobedience to the civilian government. Particularly, Sukarno telling the U.S. "to hell with your aid!" (in reference to the neocolonial aid packages) was from the start being subverted by the generals, who formed their own parallel government, buying peasant loyalty with smuggled USAID packages. Lt. Gen. Suharto was documented in one such scheme (smuggling sugar in the area of West Java) -- which is why he was why he was kept in the capital and not dispatched to fight in the Konfrontasi.

Viewed in this light, the failure of the PKI in the field of the peasantry has to be seen in its overall political strategy, and not the military aspect. The PKI did not pursue a thoroughgoing enough strategy to unite with the peasantry; they had a large presence among them, had made some headway with rent reductions, but had not pursued land-to-the-tiller in a deep enough manner. As a result, when the PKI coup happened, the peasantry -- which was becoming lumpen and dependent upon the military for handouts -- either ended up being used in militia by the right-wing military or were executed by the aforementioned militia.

2) One of the critical insights of Roosa's book has been overlooked, which is that far from acts of volition, many of the political-military matters of the G30S were matters of bumbling both by the PKI Special Bureau and the conspirators themselves. That is to say, in the aftermath of the execution of the generals, the PKI *was* broad enough to mobilize on a mass basis against the White Terror. The PKI had its people in the rail unions -- yet the military went unmolested via train to the capital. The PKI had a women's wing that could have sheltered and fed the conspirators -- but they weren't even mobilized. The PKI's youth wing was supposed to converge upon the conspirators holed up in the national radio station -- and they didn't.

As the case of Venezuela with the attempted coup against Chavez should demonstrate, it could have been possible -- had the PKI leadership sent a simple telegram -- to stop the right-wing military and regroup. The principal error here is that the PKI had oscillated so much on its direction, between adventurism (with Madiun) and tailism, that it seems they were completely indecisive at one of the most decisive moments in Indonesian history. The initiative was lost, and with the right-wing military receiving logistical support (primarily through communications and intelligence support), the right-wing military was able to move quickly throughout the country and crush the PKI.

Modern Pitung raises a number of important questions, but his answers miss the target.

(1) The main thing that crippled the PKI's work among the peasantry was NOT limiting its demands to rent reduction instead of land to the tiller, but its view that the Indonesian state did not need to be directly confronted since it had "two aspects." In 1963 and 1964, when the PKI's agrarian work encountered stiff resistance from the landlords, the party called on the police to stop right-wing attacks on their organizers.

This was in direct opposition to a line of waging self-reliant struggle and arming the PKI's large peasant base to defend themselves against the reactionaries, and to start building a people's army that could take on the Indonesian state--with the US backed army at its core--as a whole. As experience in Nepal, India and the Philippines has demonstrated since then, land to the tiller only becomes possible when the power of the landlords and the state has been broken and peasants' rights are guaranteed by their own arms.

(2) When the coup took place in October 1965, the PKI wasn't indecisive; it was paralysed. Party members were waiting for instructions from the leadership, and the leadership was waiting for Sukarno to intervene and call off Suharto's dogs.

This was a reflection of an unforgiving reality: the PKI had no independent armed force to stand up to the US-backed generals. Sabotage by railway workers and a few forays by lightly armed PKI youth in the cities would have had absolutely no effect on the outcome. Since the PKI had not prepared to go underground--which in a country such as Indonesia principally means integrating with communist-led sections of the peasantry--the PKI's mass base in the cities was fully exposed.

What was called for, and which the PKI leadership never envisioned, was a long-term strategy of protracted people's war. Only in this way could guerilla forces with extensive mass support have engaged the army in the countryside, where conditions were more favorable for the people to hit back and advance the revolution in the years following the coup.

Instead, the PKI was decimated. From one to three million of its members and supported were rounded up and executed. And 40 years later, revolutionaries in the Indonesia are just beginning to recover.

(3) Yes, it is important to "know the enemy." The MLM RSG article does recount and analyse the machinations of the US imperialists and the Suharto forces and their bloody reign of terror.

However, among communists and anti-imperialists, far less is known about the revisionist strategy and practice of the PKI. The same can be said about the Pinochet coup in Chile in 1973, and the role of the CP of Chile is disarming the working class. Lessons need to be drawn from these bitter experiences about how the imperialists and reactionaries organize, and especially how communists must organize in order to unite with the aspirations of the people and advance the revolutionary struggle.

Having just returned from a protest at the Indonesian consulate (where I had some spook put a camera in my face), some responses:

On 1 - I think we're disagreeing to agree here. I'd say that more at root than Aidit's "two aspects" theory, the PKI's mistake was taking the peasantry for granted as a progressive force; i.e., upon having the right-wing generals eliminated, they would naturally rally to the PKI. They made a mistake of sequence; they should have been organizing the peasantry militarily and politically *in advance of* action against the generals, not afterward.

The PKI's summation alludes somewhat to this, it's a bit disingenuous. That is, the peasantry after the movement against the generals had definitely fallen into the hands of the military and/or the Islamic parties. In part, because the military was *actually* doing what the PKI should have been doing, i.e., creating dual power at the village level.

2) I think a careful examination of the record reveals that the PKI had been totally indecisive in the direction of the actual movement. This is evident in the confusion between the first messages of the conspirators and what followed. The conspirators themselves as well as Aidit/Special Bureau didn't seem to know what they wanted out of sidelining the generals. Unseat Sukarno? Swear allegiance to him and act against the right-wing? There were motions toward each side.

Was the PKI paralyzed? I think the answer was, no. A clear line would have allowed the PKI, even without a military of its own, to have at the very least been able to survive as it did with Madiun, and live to fight another day – and its self-criticism would not take on the comical effect that it does now.

3) When I say that this document is heavy on one side versus another on the "Know the enemy, know yourself", I mean that in reference to the stance it takes on the PKI, not the document itself. That is to say, the PKI didn't just go extinct by dint of being a party with revisionist leadership (and I will contend, the use of "revisionist" is still not a satisfactory way of summing up the PKI). Lots of parties of revisionist flavor survived, and summed up their failures enough to regroup and correct themselves.

The problem was that the PKI had completely misjudged how many collaborators there were with imperialism, and they misjudged what it would actually take to win a war against them. They did not understand that their fate could have changed that quickly. In the span of a few months, their cadre were wiped out and their mass organizations crushed. They had obviously not counted on that when they launched the G30S operation.

The indonesia massacre is one of the most silenced in the world history. Over than 1 milion peoples killed by army with a list
of persons given by CIA. In the same years the world lived the attack to chinese revolution by capitalists guided by Deng,
the attack to Vietnam and Cambodian experiences, but also the repression of leftists movements in europe (as in italy).
CIA and Nato became the government of the world against each democratic or comunist experience. Indonesian victims have to be remembered. Indonesia could be a decisive experience in Asia as in the entire world.

<strong>Ubiquinol Benefits...</strong>

[...]Suharto: Monster of the CIA and U.S. Empire &laquo; Kasama[...]...