The Antinomies of Revolutionary Populism

The Antinomies of Revolutionary Populism

Aidit’s ideas about how a military coup could be transformed into a people’s movement can help explain the meaning of the movement’s decree about the Revolution Council. The movement was intended to

be a military operation guided by a revolutionary political program—a program over which Aidit must have had control. That was his area of expertise. Most likely, the original intention of the movement was not to decommission Sukarno’s cabinet. Both Subekti and Munir affirmed that Aidit discussed the idea of the Revolution Council with certain Po- litburo members in August and September 1965. Munir, the former Po- litburo member and head of the PKI-affiliated trade union federation (SOBSI—Sentral Organisasi Buruh Seluruh Indonesia, All-Indonesia Central Workers Organization), stated in his courtroom defense plea in 1973 that Aidit had once justified the role of the Revolution Council to him: “It should first be explained what was suggested to me by D. N. Aidit: ‘The Revolution Council forms a rival organization to the Coun- cil of Generals and simultaneously functions as a catalyst for accelerat- ing the process of forming a Nasakom cabinet.’” 64 Note that the council was not supposed to replace the existing cabinet but act as a catalyst for changing its composition. Subekti and Munir contended that the coun- cil was conceived only as a kind of pressure group on the central govern- ment. Sudisman noted that the Revolution Council did not consist of the leading pro-Sukarno figures; it consisted of “lightweight Nasakom notables.” 65 One can assume that if Aidit had planned that such a coun- cil would replace the existing cabinet and acquire all powers of the state,

he would have chosen more important people for it. It appears that the

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idea of decommissioning the cabinet emerged only on the morning of October 1 itself, once Sukarno refused to support the continuation of the movement. The text of Decree no. 1, drafted beforehand, could have been altered at the last minute.

The Revolution Council had a precedent. The military councils set up by rebel colonels in 1957–58 in Sumatra and Sulawesi initially de- manded changes in the composition of the central government (namely, the restoration of Hatta’s authority) and in relations between Jakarta and the provinces. Those councils did not at first demand independence for the provinces in which they were based. Their call for independence came later (as I will explain further in chapter 6).

In formulating the Revolution Council, Aidit was not planning to immediately establish the Communist Party as the ruling party. He wanted to continue the same Nasakom paradigm that Sukarno already had in place. Once the military power behind the anti-Communist ele- ments in the government was eliminated, the Nasakom paradigm would function more smoothly for the “kom” element, which would no longer stand in constant fear of being suppressed. The movement’s listing of the forty-five members of the national-level Revolution Council has al- ways seemed strange because it included such a great diversity of figures, everyone from the right to the left. But it was intended to represent a broad cross-section of the political spectrum. The goal of the movement was a coalition government in which the Communist Party would have greater freedom to maneuver, not a pure PKI-dominated state.

The Communist Party’s strategy since Aidit took control in 1951 had been a “united national front.” The party, in the words of the key Fifth Congress in 1954, wished to build an alliance of “the working class, the peasantry, the petty bourgeoisie and the national bourgeoisie.” This alliance would combat imperialists, the section of the bourgeoisie that collaborated with the imperialists, and feudal landlords. Whatever the Marxist-Leninist rhetoric, the party’s program was, strictly speaking, populist: it took as its revolutionary subject “the Indonesian people” as a whole. It did not promote the sectarian interests of peasants and work- ers. The ultimate objective was what it called a “people’s democracy” in which there was ample room for “national capitalism.” 66

The PKI was not very different from other postcolonial Communist parties that prioritized nationalism over socialism. Like those other parties, it faced a tension between its revolutionary rhetoric and its pop- ulist program. Such a tension was not highly pronounced before 1965 because the party’s united front program was succeeding so well: the

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membership was rising rapidly, the party leadership was staying united (even after the Sino-Soviet split), and President Sukarno was promot- ing a similar brand of populism. The emphasis on national unity in the face of imperialism was paying dividends when imperialism was a con- tinuing presence on the country’s borders (witness the West Irian cam- paign and the Confrontation against Malaysia) and a palpable threat (witness the CIA’s backing of the PRRI/Permesta rebellions; see chap- ter 6). The Communist Party’s strategy seemed neatly matched to In- donesia’s political conditions.

The tension, nevertheless, could not be transcended. By 1965 the party’s rhetoric was at times stridently sectarian, to the point that the petty bourgeoisie in the villages was being considered the enemy. The PKI promoted campaigns against “seven village devils”: bad land- lords, usurers, advance buyers of the harvest, capitalist bureaucrats, bad rich peasants, village bandits, and bad officials. 67 Although still within the logic of populism (there were good landlords and bad landlords, good officials and bad officials), the sloganeering tended to make many people worried that they would be tagged with the label devil. The cur- rent of sectarianism unnecessarily antagonized potential allies within the united front strategy.

Aidit attempted in the early 1960s to bring the party’s Marxist- Leninist theory fully in line with its populist practice. Aidit and several party ideologues developed a theory that they called the “dual aspect of the state”: one aspect was “pro-people” and the other was “anti-people.” The PKI’s task was to support the pro-people elements within the state against the anti-people elements. 68 The party thinkers contended that their theory, though it dispensed with a class analysis of the state, was a legitimate innovation within the Marxist-Leninist tradition. Sugiono, a teacher at the party’s own school of theory (the Aliarcham Academy), wrote a thesis on the “dual aspect of the state” and hoped to have an of- ficial institute of a Communist country legitimize it. He submitted it for a degree at a North Korean university but was disappointed when the Communist Party ideologues of Pyongyang rejected it as un-Marxist. 69 Although the theoretical discussions about the “dual aspect of the state” do not appear to have reached much beyond the Central Committee, Aidit often invoked it in his speeches and writings. In 1963, for instance,

a Politburo statement asserted that “the pro-people’s aspect [of state power] is already becoming steadily greater and holds the initiative and offensive, while the anti-people’s aspect, although moderately strong, is being relentlessly pressed into a tight corner.” 70

6. This cartoon appeared in the independence day issue of the PKI newspaper com- memorating the twentieth anniversary of the nation. The left-wing movement punches, kicks, and slashes its way through the years as it defeats imperialists and their local collaborators. The final image is of the people united behind Sukarno’s principles (Five Charms of the Revolution), punching the U.S. and British governments and dis- lodging Indonesian “capitalist bureaucrats” and “village devils.” The slogan is “Intensify the Revolutionary Offensive in All Fields.” Source: Harian Rakjat, August 17, 1965.

170 t Aidit, the PKI, and the Movement The “dual aspect of the state” theory can help explain why Aidit was

willing to promote an action by military troops. According to that the- ory, some soldiers and officers inside the existing Indonesian military were pro-people and some were anti-people. The task of a revolution, as Aidit saw it, was to support those pro-people military personnel and use them as a catalyst for turning the whole state pro-people. Aidit was not working under the logic of a soldiers’ mutiny or a coup d’état—the stan- dard paradigms by which observers have tried to comprehend the event. The movement was something of a hybrid: it was a partial coup meant to result, at some later stage, in a partial revolution. Aidit supported the pro-people troops so that they could both remove their anti-people commanding officers and force the creation of a new coalition cabinet. These two developments would open up a new political space for the party to expand and gain greater powers.