(Merit Publishers,USA. 500.)
Oetober,1965, a catastrophic military fascist coup in Indonesds, backed by imperialism, overthrew a Communist Party({PEI) of three million mecbers, massacred at lasst 125,000 people and jailed 250,000. Subtitled :Three articles on the fatal consequences of Communist Party policy, this pamphlet ty SPnesat Mandel, editor of the Helgian sooialist weekly,La Gauche; the United Secretariat of the Fourth International,and T.Boedarso, himself a - i, young manber of the PEI,now in sxile,performs the vitally importent task of analysing the sauses of tha disaster and drawing the essantial leasone from it- Too often have the workers and peasanta, atrugeling for liberation, been betrayed by false theoriaa, compromise and opportunism that always play inte the hania of ferocious counter-revolution.
in his introduction,Joseph Hansen, editor of The Militant,further stresses the international coniext of the defeat. He peas it 43 a greve set-back both te the colonial revolution and te the international workers! novyenent; it magnifies the dancer to the heroic strugele of the Vietnamese; it has heightened the politicu. tenaion: ir Ghina, which is revealed as playing an opportunistic role in fetling, »o less than the Soviet Union, to orliticise the policias of the FEI in Indenesia =fathered indeed by Stalinism.
Ernest Mandel underscores the failure of the FAT leadership to prepara the workera and peasanta for the take ovar of power by arwad struggle, basing its fatal tactics on a falas assesamant of the nature of the state | in a country nominally independent, but still esonomically strangled for the profits of imperlaliam- Peasants are still landleas,workess hungry for amployment, because the real master is still imperisliam and its local agonte. These are problems that the workora and pessants must erappla with in &frica, Latin America and Asia. The Statement by the United Secretariat of the Fourth International amplifies the orroneous tactics of the PKI leadara who boasted about their clese oollaboration with the Indonesian bourgeoisie and its spokesman, the desagogue, Bukearno- Inside tho fagade of what was falsely designated a "people's atate", tha reeetionary forces: the aruy generals,the comprador bourgeoisie and semi-feudal landowners made their preparations for unleashing terrer and represaion.
T.Soedarso's anajysis of PKI policy is relentlessly forthright: it betokans the determination of the young sector to utilize the lessons of this grin misdirection that left the people oompletely unprepared.- "Tha most fundamental error,” he writes, “was that the PKI believed that socialism could be achieved by peaceful means." Agein and again they eeised prb- * perty of the foreign imperislists, or ooeupied plantations and factories, f only to be driven out by the Sukarno regine, with the halp of the ermy. i Yet tha PRI leadarship restrained this militenoy with the treacherous Slogans of "agreement through consultation" and "a United National Front" with the "national" bourgesigie. It was not 4 revolutionary front led by the workers; it was collaboration,with the initiative in the hatdsa of the enemy Hepudiation of the armed struggle of workers and peasante - he writes = was a PET policy as far bask ag 1945, when, in the newly proclaimed republic under Sukarno, the people's armed units were disbanded. Evan after the coup of October,1966, the PKI issued neo clear directives to the people.
However, “tha revolutionary movement has net been destroyed = it cannot bo," writes Socdarao. Tha present corrupt regime can solva none of the countri's problems. The workers thomselyes ara mounting armed resistence in Cantral Javea and other islands = end thay have learmed « prim Losaon-
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