Idea Transcript
DILEMMAS OF THIRD WORLD COMMUNISM The Destruction of the PKI in Indonesia ..
OLLE TORNQUIST
Dilemmas of Third World Communism Olle Tornquist
All royalties 011 this book have been donated by the author to TAPOL, the British Campaign for the Defence of Political Prisoners and Human Rights in Indonesia
Dilemmas of Third World Communism The Destruction of the PKI in Indonesia
Olle Tornquist
Zed Books Ltd.
Dilemmas of Third World Communism was first published by Zed Books Ltd., 57 Caledonian Road, London NI 9BU in 1984. It is a revised and expanded version of a book originally published in Swedish by Symposium Bokforlag, Stockholm Copyright
©
Olle Tornquist, 1984
Cover design by Tim Moore Printed by The Pitman Press, Bath
Brltl•h Ubruy Ca11loa:uing In Publlca1lon 0111
Tornquis1, Ollc
Oilcmma.s of third world communism : 1hc delllruction of 1hc PKI in lndonellia. I. Partai komuni• lndonellia - His1ory 2. lndonellia - Poli1ic• and govcrnmcn1 - 19S0-!966 I. Ti1lc II. Marxl$1i5k Barlu1 : varfOr miulyckadell varldcns 1rcdjc stOrsta kommunis1par1i? En1lish JQn9.A5S 324.2S98'07S ISBN 0-86232-278-2 ISBN 0-86232-279.0 Pbk
US Distributor: Biblio Distribution Center, 81, Adams Drive, Totowa, New Jersey 07512 The author wishes to express his gratitude to SAREC For its financial assistance in the preparation of this work.
Contents
Map
1.
Preface The Problem
2. The Approach
Obj ectives The Concept of Strategy How Does One Examine the Failure of a Communist Party? �mmuy Outline of This Book P A R T l:THECOMMUNIST TR A D I TION
viii ix I
4 4 5 6 9 9 II
3. Marxist Theory of Struggle in the Third World: The Communist 13 Tradition From Progressive to Parasitic Imperialism 13 The Example of Russia 15 I8 Lenin's Thesis o n the Colonies 21 Stalin's Colonial Theses Mao's Silent Revolt 25 New Fronts - Old Lines 27 Old Stalinism and Non-Capitalism 28 Mao's Walking on Two Legs and the Dependency School 31 Reappraisal? 34 From Parasitic to Progressive Imperialism? 36
4. The PKJ, the Communist Tradition and lhe Course of Events
45
in I ndonesia Colonization Modern Nationalism The Communists Isolate Themselves Communist Hothouse ( 1 952-1960/63) Communist Offensive ( 1 960/63-1965) The New Order
46 47 49 50 53 54
P A R T 2: THECO MMUNlST HOTHOUSE
57
5. The PKI in Disarray
A New Hard Line - and Setbacks The P!() Because of the defeat of 1927 in Shanghai - a fiasco for which Com intern was to blame - the Chinese Communist Party began to make its own way. II was not difficult to follow the 1928 recommendation that the party should be isolated from the national bourgeoisie. The communists had been expelled from the Kuomintang. But subsequently. with Mao as the driving force. the struggle in the rural areas involving the peasantry became central. rather than Stalin·s new fixation on the urban areas and the role of the proletariat61 It was not long before the Chinese communists had acquired a position of such strength th al they were able to co-operate with sections of the bourgeoisie. without falling back on a two-stage hypothesis in which the struggle for socialism was lost. In 1948. in fact, the Chinese advocated conditional co-operation with parts of the bourgeoisie in opposition to Stalin. something to which 1 shall later return. Nor was it difficult to follow the 1935 recommendation for the building of a broad alliance against fascism and Nazism. seeing that Japan had invaded China. At the same time important sections of the Chinese bourgeoisie and landowners joined the opposition. the Kuomintang became corrupt and Mao took the opportunity to form a broad armed liberation struggle. The struggle against fascism and Nazism. which. according lo Comintern. ougbt to unite nations at the expense of the class struggle. and bridge a gap between colonizers and nationalists. became in China a nationalism joined to class-based social demands.62 Most characteristic perhaps of what I refer to as Mao's silent revolt against Stalin and Com intern is thaL on a formal level, Mao used the same terminology as Moscow. but increasingly seldom the same conceptual and theoretical context
ll was self-evident that the proletariat would lead the revolution. But, first.
the proletariat was regarded as the equivalent of the party. which i n tum would lead the peasantry. Locally the peasants would even be able to
conduct the struggle on their own, but with the support of the party. There was a sharp contrast between Lenin's somewhat resigned view of an industrial proletariat initiating agrarian reforms from above because the peasantry would otherwise never start rebelling. and Mao's belief in agrarian reform i nitiated from below.63 Nevertheless. i n the same way as both Lenin and Stalin. Mao talked of the rural proletariat and the landless peasantry being the most important allies of the urban proletariat. Would they be prepared to lake the revolutionary initiative in China while not doing so in Russia? This was most unlikely. Mao defined the poor peasantry so generally that the concept included botb 25
The Comm1111i s1 Tradirion
the landed and the independent small and mjddle peasants. These groups had suflicient strength and independence Lo be able to start a revolt on their own if they received some suppo11 from the party.M Clearly the party ought to be Leninist. But while the Chinese retained Leninist organizational principles. and the desire for an effective and enlightened Jeadership with totally centralized control, they also tried to complement Lhe elitist cadres through good contacts and co-operation with the masses below. Towards the end of the revolution, it would not be inaccurate to say that the Chinese party was a mass party with a totalitarian leadership.65 Mao did indeed speak of the national bourgeoisie. Bue he was referring to the middle bourgeoisie. the small capitalists who. in comparison to the petty bourgeoisie, had few employees and tended to work for themselves. The Maoist concept of a national bourgeoisie was, indeed. quite far from the Stalinist one, which regarded it as virtually identical with the entire capitalist class, apart from the direct agents of foreign capitalists. From now on, it will be to Stalin's concept that I refer when I use the term "national bourgeoisie"', unless otherwise indicated. In addition to the middle bourgeoisie, Mao also talked about the big bourgeoisie, the comprador bourgeoisie. and finally. the bureaucratic capitalists. The term ··comprador'" was originally used to refer to the traders who were dependent on imperialists. Later the term was used for rhe Chinese who were employed by foreign capitalists during the invasion. In this way the concept generally came to mean "that section ofthe bourgeoisie which directly served the capitalists of Lhe imperialist countries and was nurtured by them. Countless ties linked it closely with the domestic feudal forces'".6