(1) The United Secretariat of the Fourth International vigorously condemns the barbaric repression of the leaders, members and sympathisers of the Indonesian Communist party unleashed by the reactionary Indonesian army, the comprador and ‘bureaucratic’ bourgeoisie and the clerical wing of the petty bourgeoisie. In this repression, the lives of more than 100,000 Communists have been taken and tens of thousands of Communists and other left wingers have been imprisoned or fired from their jobs, which is often equivalent to condemnation to starvation in face of the current mass unemployment. The Communist party press and mass organisations, including the largest trade-union federation in the country (SOBSI), have been officially banned. Many leading Communist party cadres have been murdered, and Njono, the general secretary of the SO BSI and a member of the Political Bureau of the Indonesian Communist party, has been executed after a farcical trial. All this was capped on March 12 with the official banning of the Communist party [PKI] throughout Indonesia. 


The United Secretariat of the Fourth International asks the working-class organisations in all countries to start a mass protest campaign, demanding the immediate release of all political prisoners, the immediate legalisation of all working-class parties, including the PKI, the Partai Acoma and the Partai Murbah. It calls for establishment of an international working-class Commission of Inquiry to investigate the fate of the top PKI leaders, Aidit, Lukman and Njoto, who, according to many sources, have been murdered by the military.

Out of solidarity, the international working class must be mobilised to the fullest extent to stop the dirty war being waged by the reactionary forces against the left in Indonesia!

(2) If it is now an elementary duty to defend the victims of reaction in Indonesia, this by no means signifies that there is less need to analyze the debacle suffered by the biggest Communist party in any capitalist country, a party with three million members and millions of sympathisers in various ‘front’ organisations, and to draw the proper lessons from it. The main reasons for the tremendous defeat are as follows:

(a) The leadership of the Indonesian Communist party granted leadership of the Indonesian revolution to Sukarno, questioning that the state apparatus on which he stood was bourgeois in character; and, in contradiction to the Marxist-Leninist theory of the state, presented this apparatus as a ‘people’s state’, a ‘national democracy’ having ‘two sides’ - ‘one for the people, one against the people.’ The PKI accepted the theory of ‘revolution in stages,’ limiting the ‘first stage’ in reality to the anti-imperialist and anti-feudal struggle; and in practice even abandoning the fight for a proletarian, Communist leadership during this stage although it is declared necessary, in theory at least, by the leaders of the Chinese Communist party and even by Aidit himself in some of his writings.


In fact, the leadership of the Indonesian CP went so far as to boast about its close collaboration with the Indonesian bourgeoisie, and to openly express its support for Sukarno’s ideology of the ‘Pantja Sila’ (five principles), although one of the five is ‘belief in a single god.’ The Aidit leadership stressed its position that the ‘union’ of the ideology of the ‘revolutionary classes’ (including the ‘national’ bourgeoisie!) was needed by the Indonesian revolution as long as Communism was not ‘eliminated’ from the union!

(b) For these reasons, the Indonesian CP, concentrating on ‘mass recruitment,’ and failing to provide adequate ideological education and revolutionary training for most of its members, bowed to Sukarno’s initiatives for many years, abstaining from any appeal to mass struggles that could decisively change the relationship of social forces in the country. Sukarno arbitrarily suspended the constitution and reduced the Communist party to thirty seats in his new ‘appointed parliament’ of 260 members; when he suspended democratic freedoms and ordered all parties to register for government authorisation, the PKI accepted these infringements of its rights and even agreed to participate in the various cabinets which Sukarno subsequently formed. Included in these governments were such reactionaries as General A. H. Nasution, Hamengku Buwono, the sultan of Jogjakarta and the leading bourgeois politician Ruslan Abdulgani. Today they are the main political brains behind the counter-revolution and members of the counter-revolutionary Suharto cabinet. Yesterday the PKI leadership treated them as ‘brother revolutionists’ and ‘allies’ inside NASAKOM and Sukarno’s cabinets. They even tried to use these arbitrary forms of Bonapartist government to eliminate some of their own competitors in the labour movement. But these very same rules and regulations have been used since October 1, 1965, to suppress the PKI itself. Discerning bourgeois observers have noted that the logic of the PKI policy was to leave the initiative with the anti-Communist forces.

(c) At various times in recent years the Indonesian masses moved into action against the declining standard of living due to mass unemployment, inflation, high prices, the plunder of state property by the army high command, rampant corruption in the state administration, etc. Again and again they seized imperialist property, occupied plantations and factories, sought to divide the holdings of the big landowners. Again and again, the Sukarno regime and its stooges, with the help of the army, drove out the masses and placed the administration of the properties in their own corrupt hands. Again and again, the PKI leadership refrained from supporting these mass uprisings, refrained from educating the masses and their vanguard in the spirit of preparing to fight for power. It even refrained from systematically denouncing the dangerous reaction looming not only in the religious organisations but also in the army high command in particular. Aidit referred over and over only to the parties suppressed by Sukarno - the Masjumi and the Social Democratic party - as agents of imperialism and feudal reaction. As a result the military coup of October 1-2, 1965, caught the masses completely by surprise.

It is true that a few months before the counter-revolutionary coup, Aidit shifted his line somewhat to the left. He began to call on Sukarno to arm the workers and peasants (which the Indonesian Bonaparte, of course, carefully refrained from doing). Aidit called on the masses to ‘seize’ the imperialist properties as well as the nationalised properties administered by the ‘bureaucratic bourgeoisie’ or the army. (Speech September 25, 1965, at the closing rally of the sixth congress of the plantation workers trade unions, reported in the September 27, 1965, issue of the party’s central organ Harian Rakjat.) It is true that in the same speech he warned the masses in an obscure and indirect way: ‘History has compelled the people and the working class of the entire world to choose between being an anvil and a hammer. If they become an anvil, they will be like the Indonesian working class at present, suffering blow after blow [In his long report to the school of the Chinese CP’s Central Committee, mentioned above, not a word is said about these blows!] from the bureaucratic capitalists, embezzlers, grafters, and other exploiters and oppressors. The workers, with back-breaking toil, earn barely enough in a month to last a week, while the bureaucratic capitalists, embezzlers and grafters wallow in luxury, thanks to the blood and sweat of the working class. If they do not want to be an anvil, they should become a hammer; not an ordinary hammer but a huge hammer. Therefore the Indonesian working class should adopt the following attitude: Boldness, boldness and boldness again! Take over, take over and take over again! Act, act and act again!’

But these warnings, voiced on the very eve of the army’s counter-revolutionary coup, then already in full preparation, came without any previous or accompanying measures for broad mass mobilisations, without preparation for a general strike, without preparation for arming the masses, without concrete warnings about the impending army coup. The warnings could only heighten the determination of the counter-revolutionaries to strike immediately. They could not create adequate means to prevent or to reply to the counter-revolution. It is not surprising under these conditions that the only concrete response this belated warning evoked was the desperate action of a small group around Lieutenant Colonel Untung and not a mass uprising.

It should be added that while the PKI leadership at first expressed solidarity with this desperate attempt to stop the counter-revolutionary generals from taking over the country, they reversed their stand a few days later - after the counter-revolution won its first decisive battle - and disowned Untung’s actions, thereby increasing the general confusion among their own followers. As for the Kremlin, it denounced the September 30 events as a ‘provocation’ without mentioning by a single word the preparations of the reactionary generals to pull a coup d’etat.

According to a dispatch released February 15, 1966, by the Indonesian news agency Antara, the trade-union leader Njono, a member of the Political Bureau of the PKI, stated during his trial that the impending counter-revolutionary coup of the Indonesian generals was discussed in the Political Bureau as early as July 1965. Njono declared that opinion was divided on whether it would be better to react before the coup or immediately after it took place. In any case it was decided to leave the initiative up to the ‘progressive officers’ who were prepared to act within the army against the generals. While it is possible that Njono’s torturers falsified this report before executing him, his courageous and dignified stand during the trial, in which he publicly denounced his torturers and the counter-revolutionary generals, lends credit to this version of the facts.

(d) The strategy of the PKI was not to conquer power by mobilising the masses, but to slowly ‘transform’ the character of the state and the government by infiltrating sectors of the army and administrative cadre. Under this illusion, they gave completely uncritical support to Sukarno, hoping to take over when he died. This explains why they relied on Sukarno instead of mobilising the broad masses in defence of the revolution and the PKI, not only before the reactionary coup of October 1-2, but even after the coup.

(3) These grave political mistakes of the PKI leadership were reinforced and magnified by the opportunist policies of the Kremlin and Peking, both governments supporting Sukarno uncritically, presenting him as the prototype of the ‘non-capitalist’ leader of ‘national democracy,’ the world leader of the ‘newly emerging forces’ and similar empty, misleading formulas.

For diplomatic reasons - Sukarno’s temporary posture against Anglo-Dutch imperialism in the West Irian and Malaysia affairs - the Kremlin gave full uncritical support to the Sukarno regime, not only internationally but even on the domestic level, supplying his army with many of the weapons now being used to kill the cadres and members of the PKI. After the October 1-2 military coup, the Kremlin leaders continued this criminal policy, even trying to blame ‘putschist’ and ‘adventurist’ elements in the PKI for the defeat and calling repeatedly for the ‘unity’ of the Indonesian ‘revolution’ around NASAKOM; ie., for ‘unity’ between the butchers and their victims. On October 12, after Sukarno had already called for a thorough purge of those involved in the ‘September 30 affair’ and had permitted PKI leaders to be arrested and murdered in Jakarta, Brezhnev, Mikoyan and Kosygin sent him a special message in which they wrote: ‘We and our colleagues learned with great joy

’ (Pravda, October 12, 1965.) Not until December 26 did the Soviet press publish a clear condemnation of the anti-Communist regime in Indonesia. Before then reporting on the events in that country was limited to reproducing short items from the bourgeois press agencies coupled with ‘regrets’ about the ‘anti-Communist measures.’ And at the Tricontinental Conference in Havana, the Soviet delegation displayed a shameful attitude, trying in every way to block public condemnation of the counter-revolutionary terror raging against the Indonesian Communists, an attitude which won public praise from the counter-revolutionists in Jakarta.

As for the Peking leaders, out of similar diplomatic considerations and maneuvers - such as supporting Sukarno’s walkout from the UN and trying to pit the ‘newly emerging forces’ against the ‘old established forces’ - they likewise gave full and uncritical support to the Indonesian regime. Even after the October 1-2 military coup, they went ahead in Jakarta with the World Conference Against Foreign Bases, and without protest stood by as their Indonesian comrades were arrested in the conference hall itself! It is true that they began to denounce the counter-revolutionary activities much sooner than the Kremlin press. But even then they carefully refrained from any open and clear-cut criticism of Sukarno, trying to present things as if Sukarno had systematically opposed the repression of the PKI, whereas in reality he covered up the repression in good part, merely trying to limit it in order to maintain his own Bonapartist position.

Today some ‘friends of Peking’ maintain that the Chinese CP leaders were in fact critical of Aidit’s policies, but they did not want to criticise his party publicly in view of the fact that they were for internal discussion among all the Communist parties that refrained from publicly attacking the Chinese CP and its friends. But this is no valid excuse for remaining silent about a problem of outstanding importance to the international Communist movement; it is only additional proof of the basically opportunist attitude of the Chinese leaders towards the Indonesian question.

(4) The events of recent weeks - the elimination of General Nasution from the government, Sukarno’s declaration that ‘the revolution is again embarking on its left-wing course,’ the public collision between Sukarno and the ultra-right-wing forces of the Islamic students organisations (more or less passively tolerated by the army) inspired new illusions in official CP circles that the pre-October 1 situation could somehow be restored. Sukarno, a typical Bonapartist figure, representing the ‘national’ and ‘bureaucratic’ bourgeois forces in Indonesia, balanced between the ‘left,’ represented mainly by the PKI and its mass proletarian and peasant organisations, and the ‘right,’ represented mainly by the army and the clerical Moslem organisations, spokesmen of the comprador bourgeoisie and semi-feudal landowners. The October 1-2 military coup delivered a shattering blow to the left, leaving them leaderless and dispersed (while far from completely destroying them), thereby fundamentally upsetting the equilibrium on which Sukarno depended for his leading position. Naturally he then tried to bolster his position by looking for ways and means to somehow reduce the strength of the army high command and to divide its ranks. These leaders preferred not to take over rule immediately after October 1-2; in the first place because they were not yet sure of the support they could muster in the countryside, where Sukarno remained very popular; and in the second place because they did not want to assume responsibility for the mismanagement of the economy, the complete failure of the so-called ‘heavy rupiah’ and the raging inflation plaguing the country. Therefore they left Sukarno in power for another six months although he retained only the shadow of his previous Bonapartist strength. When he tried in desperation to re-establish the equilibrium by ousting General Nasution from his cabinet, they permitted the students to stage mass demonstrations (paradoxically, the ultra-right-wing Islamic student associations could now appear to stand in the forefront of the fight against inflation and corruption due to the extreme weakening of the forces led by the PKI.) In conjunction with the pressure from the army high command, these demonstrations compelled Sukarno to turn over the leading role in the government to the army’s ‘strong man,’ General Suharto.

(5) It is extremely unlikely, however, that the counter-revolutionists now in power in Jakarta will be able to stabilise the situation for any length of time. The country’s economy is stripped; and American imperialism, while able to shore up the new regime with a heavy underpinning of credits, can not move in on such a scale as to generate any real momentum in economic growth. The army leaders themselves will not readily give up their nationalist, anti-imperialist verbiage which reflects real conflicts of interest with British imperialism and the ruling comprador bourgeoisie and semi-feudal landowners of Malaysia. A large part of the budget will therefore continue to be squandered in maintaining a huge military establishment and in undertaking costly experiments like the attempt to make an Indonesian nuclear bomb. The masses, although leaderless and deeply shaken, have not lost all fighting potential, particularly in the countryside. It will prove impossible to get the thousands of squatters to evacuate the imperialist-owned or ‘nationalised’ plantations managed by corrupt army officers, or to compel the thousands of plantation and oil workers to revert to the ‘normal’ working conditions of colonial times. And without such a shift to ‘normalcy,’ the Indonesian economy will not be able to develop in accordance with the neocolonial pattern. The incapacity of the military leaders to achieve some social and economic stability will undermine the counter-revolutionary dictatorship politically. This could even occur in the near future if the military prove unable to cope with the problem of inflation.

The defeat suffered by the PKI is of such depth that certainly no quick change in the situation can be forecast. It will take years to regain revolutionary possibilities as excellent as those lost in 1964-1966 due to the opportunist policies of the PKI leadership. However, what remains of that leadership along with the surviving party cadres - especially the best educated, those steeled by the terrible experiences they went through in the past six months - will have taken the road of guerrilla war, if only out of self-defense. If they succeed in regrouping and in regaining a mass following in some regions of the countryside by calling on the peasants to immediately take over the land held by the landlords, the plantations and army administration, they could gain on a progressive scale due to the inability of Indonesian reaction to solve the country’s basic economic plight and due to the divisions in the ranks of the army which that inability will undoubtedly provoke. It will become possible to link this peasant base to the working class when, under pressure of economic necessity, the urban masses overcome the stunning effect of the defeat and once again take the road of action. Such a comeback, involving a renewal of organised influence among the workers, is still possible- provided that all the main lessons of the terrible defeat are analyzed and assimilated.

(6) The main lessons to be drawn from this tragic defeat, which the Indonesian revolutionary Marxists must continually hammer home while energetically participating in all attempts by revolutionary PKI elements to start armed resistance against the military dictatorship, are as follows:

(a) While it is correct and necessary to support all anti-imperialist mass movements, and even to critically support all concrete anti-imperialist measures taken by representatives of the colonial bourgeoisie like Sukarno, for colonial revolution to be victorious it is absolutely essential to maintain the proletarian organisations strictly independent politically and organisationally from the ‘national’ bourgeoisie, to instill among the masses a spirit of distrust towards this bourgeoisie and a spirit of self-reliance, to lead the masses towards organizing independent organs of power (committees, workers and peasants militia, etc.) as requisites for the victory of the revolution. The Indonesian events have proved once again that the theory of the capacity of the ‘progressive’ forces of the ‘national bourgeoisie’ to lead a ‘consistent’ fight against imperialism as the ‘embodiment of the whole nation’ - the theory of a ‘national democratic state’ and a ‘bloc of revolutionary classes’ - leads only to defeat.

(b) While it is correct and necessary during the first phases of the revolution in backward countries to place the main stress on the problems of winning national independence, unifying the country and solving the agrarian question (ie., the historical tasks of the bourgeois democratic revolution which constitute the most burning tasks in the eyes of eighty to ninety per cent of the population), it is indispensable to understand that the solution of these tasks is only possible when the working class, in alliance with the poor peasantry, has conquered leadership of the revolution, establishes the dictatorship of the proletariat and the poor peasantry and pushes the revolution through to its socialist phase. The Indonesian events once again confirm that theory of ‘revolution by stages’ - the first stage being a victory under a ‘national front’ led by the ‘national bourgeoisie’ - only paves the way to defeat. Either defeat under ‘national’ bourgeois leaders or victory through the conquest of power and the establishment of a workers state - this is the dilemma that faces all colonial revolutions.

(c) While it is necessary to win the broadest possible mass base in the countryside, a revolutionary party capable of applying that policy must be based upon a hardened proletarian cadre thoroughly trained in Marxist theory and revolutionary practice, without illusions about a ‘peaceful transition’ to socialism or ‘national democratic states,’ a party that relies mainly on mass mobilisations and mass struggles instead of intrigues and infiltration for achieving its historical goals.

Only by thoroughly assimilating these lessons can the Indonesian Communists and revolutionists overcome the results of the present defeat and avenge the victims of the counter-revolutionary terror by organising and leading the workers and poor peasants in their fight for power in Indonesia!

The United Secretariat of the Fourth International