Ernest Handel
(The following article has been translated from the May 14 issue of the
Belgian left-soclalist weekly, La Gauche. }
At the same tine tha we were reporting the terrible defeat of the Communist and workers movement in Indonesis, both the pro-Boviet and pro- Chinese Communist parties tried to minimise the affair. Our conclusions were said to be “premature” and information “ineomplete".
The Chinese preas servios, Heinhua (New China), has just published two reports, However, one on dipril 20, and mother on April 24 ( in the English edition), which completely confirm our version of the catastrophe suffered by the Indonesian masses.
The first of these articles is signed by the oditor-in-chief of Hainhua himself. It is entitled,"Rightest reactionaries plunga Indonesia into a bloodbath," and it reports that tha Indonesian reactionaries have tranaforned "this magnificent and fertile nation of three thousand islands into 4 hell of White terror. They have cassacred hundreds of thousands cf patriots and innocent people in Indonesia.” (Bephasis added. )
The article contains a long series of quotations from tha reports of bourgeois journalists that have appeared in Asahi Shimbun, on the wires of Agence France Presse, on the wirea of the Asseciated Presa, in the London Sunday Timeg,in the Manchestar Guardian and in the New York Times giving the horrible details of the massacres in Indonesis. Thea editor of Heinhua correctly charseterises these measures as fascist.
The April 26 article quoted extensively fron the Weahington Post in tha same general Fuine .
It seems to be an established fact thet the Communist Party, the trade unions, tie youth and women's organizations have bean decimated, the cajority of their Loaders and cadres murdered and a largo part of their netbers killed or imprisoned.
Rarely in its history has the workers! sovrenent suffered such a vast and terrible defeat. The only two historical pracedants that can be cited in this commection ars the massacres of the Chinese Communista in Shanghai and Canton in 1927 and the terror sgainst the German workers' movement after the Nazis tock powor:
The crimes against humanity thd have been sonmmitted in Indonestea ory out for venedance.
Onee again we must denounce the hypocrisy of those who - in the name
of the “righta of the human individual" - loudly protest the slightest violation of democratic rights in the countries that have abolished capitalism but stand silent and approving before the massacres of hundreds of thousands of human beings, including women, children and old people in Indonesia.
But having said this, we must repeat with insistence the questions that We posed in a previous article on this subjeat, which appeared in tha Fob. 26 issue of Le Gauche (see World Outlook,March 11.) Medther Drapeau Rouge (Red Flag, the organ of the pro-Hoscew Belgian CP,) nor Voix du Peuple (Voice of the People, organ of the Pro-Peking CF) have been able to say a word in reply to the following!
(1) How sould the "“rightest reactionaries” take power in a country where the CP had three million members and a mass base of more than ten million men,women and youth?
(2) Why was there no real mass resistanca to the fasciat coup fron the millions of Communist Farty mombers and sympathizers?
(3) Why did the arms with which the reaction was able to inflict a bloodbath on the Indonesian people come largely from the Soviet Union and to a less extent from China?
(4) Why 44a ¢he Communist Party of Indonesia ait for many yoars, and even after thea fascist coup, in a ooglition goverment beside the erinoipal planners and organizers of the coup, including the three present "“yice presidents of the couneil" who are tha real rulers of Indonesia today?
(5) Why have nedthor Moscow nor Peking undertakon the least oritioal analysis of a political course which ended in such a catastrophic defeat?
(6) Why does tho Soviet government continue to officially ignore the fascist massaore in Indonesia and maintain “excellent relations" with the fazclat regime of Djakarta? It ia organizing - what irony! - "sn exposition devoted to the life of Lenin," while the prisons are bursting with prisenors who olaim Allegiance to his ideas and tha rivers end streams ere ohoked with thousands of bodies of those who considered themselves hia adherenta.
The argument that a workers party under attack by the class enemy cannot be orltioised 14 demagogio and unworthy of Marxian. The terrible repression of the Paris Commune did not prevent Marx from condemning what he considered to be errora or weaknesses in the policies of the Commune. Immedq iately after the vietory of Hitler, all the parties snd all the political tendencies in the international workers’ movement carried on an sxtensive analysis of the causes of a setastrophe of such magnituds- aA party or politic= al tendency that does not dare eonfrant a public criticism cf the errors that led to a disaster as terrible as that suffered by the Indonesian Communists is a party incapable of correcting its errors and incapable of setting itself on the path to victory.
4s for us, we have sade our analysis.
The victory of reaction in Indonesia was the result of the faleo and disastrous policy of subordinating the workers’ movemant to the so-called "national" bourgeoisie in the underdeveloped world.
Instead of maintaining strict independence with reapect to this bourgevisie - which is inoapable of carrying out the taska of political independence, and even less those of national economic independence - ard limiting itself to critical support of its periodic enti-imperialist moods, the leadership of the Indonesian CP, with the approval first of Moscow and then of Peking, completely subordinated itself to Sukarno and the group around him and abdicated leadership of the Indonesian revolution, handing it over to the bourgeoisis.
Instead of fighting for the conquest of power by the workere and poor peasants as the solution for the urgent social and economic problexs faced by Indonesia (decline in production, raging inflation, millions without jobs and housing, the state resources plundered by the “bureaucratic bourgecisie”", millions of amall peasants orushed by the moneylendera and landlords;, the leaders of the Indonesian CP formed a national front with the "national" bourgeclsie and the heads of the army - today the laaders of the fascist resotién- They contented thenselves with a policy of pressuring Sukerno to achieve their ends-
Thay left the initiative to the right, which struck hard blots, although it could have been isolated and eliminated by an increasing mobilization of the broad moases in revolt against the misery to which they are atill doomed almost twanty years after the independence of Indonesia.
4s long aa the workers" parties follow this oourse of subordination to the "national" bourgecisie in the underdeveloped world, defeats like that in Indonesia are inevitsble.