How the PKI weakened itself facing the military
By James Balowski
The Indonesian Communist Party's (PKI) shift in the 1950s from a strategy of independently organising and mobilising its working-class and rural supporters to one of trying to achieve socialism without revolutionary struggle, through "parliamentary struggle", meant that it increasingly subordinated itself to the bourgeois nationalists.
This began with the "coalition cabinet" in 1955, then the "cooperation cabinet" in 1959 and finally the "Nasakom cabinet" in 1963. The PKI sought to gain power by "working together" with its class enemies.
The PKI adopted a similar strategy towards the armed forces. Instead of attempting to recruit rank and file soldiers in a pro-democracy alliance directed against their officers, the PKI chose to win over or replace particular officers. Although the PKI was able to find some supporters — particularly in the air force — the structure and the class interests of the military were never seriously challenged.
The party leadership began to place more emphasis on its links with progressive and left elements in the armed forces, submerging itself in an attempt to "out-coup" the right wing.
The result could have been quite different if such manoeuvres had been carried out while also stimulating independent mobilisations of workers and peasants for basic demands, as part of a struggle for a worker-peasant government, and building the party as a revolutionary political organisation.
Armed struggle
The view that socialism could be won peacefully also impacted on the PKI's approach to armed struggle.
In Forty Years of the PKI, published in 1961, PKI leader Dipa Nusantara Aidit wrote: "The development of the party, besides depending greatly on the united front, also greatly depends on armed struggle. The advance or decline of armed struggle greatly influences the advance or decline of the united front and the party."
However, following the disbanding of the Communist units of the national army by the government after independence and the crushing of the 1948 Madiun uprising by pro-PKI soldiers, there were a number of occasions when opportunities arose for the PKI to mobilise workers and peasants into an armed force, but these were ignored.
When voluntary units were formed to fight the Dutch in West Papua, the PKI limited their work to the "liberation" of West Papua. When this was achieved, the party allowed them to be disarmed.
In the campaign against newly formed Malaysia, the PKI was an important force in mobilising the masses, but again it did not use this opportunity to develop the idea of armed struggle for a socialist revolution.
Reflecting the fear that a confrontation with the military would lead to another Madiun-type defeat, the PKI sought to counteract the reactionary forces' propaganda — that the Communists were "terrorists" or "monsters" — by appearing to be responsible and reasonable. Not only was this a reformist position, but it also lulled the PKI membership and supporters into a false sense of security. If anything, it revealed the PKI's weakness to the reactionaries.
As the struggle — between the PKI and Sukarno on the one hand and the armed forces, conservative Islam and landowner interests on the other — heightened, the PKI also neglected to build itself organisationally. It emphasised building mass mobilisations around the slogans and rhetoric of Sukarno. There was virtually no political education of its rapidly expanding membership.
The PKI found itself without a highly organised, worker-based revolutionary cadre. Its base was more and more rural, peasant and traditional. While the party could mobilise hundreds of thousands to rallies, with the blessing of the state through Sukarno, it did not have the tightly organised, factory and workplace units needed to defend itself against the armed forces.
The cadres of the party stood at a distance from the mass of the membership. This led to an atmosphere of distrust, a general lack of democracy and reinforcement of the bureaucratic character of the party.
When the military began to move against the party in October 1965, it was unable to defend itself in a coordinated way. Almost immediately, the leadership scurried for safety (some to Sukarno's palace). Instead of mobilising the party's millions of members to fight back, the leadership continued to foster the illusion that Sukarno would protect them.
Growing tensions
Nasakom [Sukarno's concept of the unity of nationalism, communism and religion] signalled a shift to the left by Sukarno and the Sukarnoist Indonesian Nationalist Party (PNI). Land reform was passed by parliament, although it was moderated in the process, and between 1962 and 1965, 800,000 peasants received redistributed land.
Dutch, Belgian, British and US enterprises were nationalised, except for the oil companies, which had 100% of their profits appropriated. There were also big increases in expenditure on social welfare and education.
By 1964, there were mass rallies being held in the villages, towns and cities; hundreds of thousands filled the sports stadiums in Jakarta. There was competition between all parties to hold bigger rallies and form more branches as millions of people were drawn into the political process.
These conditions were very conducive to left political activity. From around 2 million members in 1962, the PKI had grown to more than 3.5 million members, with 10 million more in affiliated mass organisations, by 1965. Trade unions, women's organisations, artists' organisations and peasant organisations expanded enormously.
After making a left turn in 1964 and expelling members who had business or bureaucratic backgrounds, the PNI also grew rapidly.
Sukarno and the PNI found themselves in an alliance with the PKI against the military. With the military controlling the key sectors of the economy and increasingly dominating the civilian bureaucracy at all levels, the only real political competitor the armed forces faced was the PKI.
Many of the PKI's campaigns were targeted at the military. It accused army managers of embezzling state property, charged that the military leadership was "power crazy", that it neglected the welfare of the troops and lived a life of luxury and degraded women.
There was further conflict between the army and the PKI over land. From 1964, the PKI supported unilateral attempts by peasants to enforce the delayed implementation of the land reform laws. Army intervention on behalf of landowners precipitated violent clashes between PKI supporters and the army.
These clashes were in many cases so violent that Sukarno was forced to issue a "revolutionary command" to stop unilateral actions, ordering, "Every conflict or difference should be solved by consultation and agreement". The PKI immediately stopped the campaign.
All this was accompanied by a steadily worsening economic crisis. Mismanagement and corruption in government and industry — particularly in those companies run by the military — combined with Sukarno's costly "confrontation" campaign to "crush" the fledgling state of Malaysia, resulted in an inflation rate that topped 600% by 1965.
Anti-imperialist axis
In January 1965, Sukarno withdrew Indonesia from the United Nations and the World Bank. On August 17, Sukarno declared Indonesia part of an "anti-imperialist axis" established between Jakarta, Vietnam, China, North Korea, Laos and other emerging forces against imperialism. The victory of the Cuban Revolution had added to this climate and provided a strong symbol for the struggle against colonialism and imperialism.
The West responded by refusing to grant further credits and, despite hollow calls for berdikari (standing on our own feet), Indonesia's budget deficit reached huge proportions.
The question of armed struggle to defend the Indonesian revolution was becoming more urgent. Following increasing demands by the PKI, Sukarno in January 1965 announced that Indonesia would form an armed "Fifth Force" of 21 million armed peasants and workers independent of army control (the Indonesian armed forces had four wings — the army, navy, air force and police).
This announcement heightened tensions between the military and Sukarno, and led to a bitter rift between Sukarno and key army leaders, particularly the minister of the army, General Achmad Yani and the minister of defence, General A.H. Nasution.
In this tense atmosphere, Sukarno fell temporarily ill in August. With all sides wondering whether Sukarno would be able to continue in office, coup rumours abounded. The concentration of some 20,000 troops in Jakarta for Armed Forces Day, October 5, added to the tensions.
In this atmosphere, the 30 September Movement led by Lieutenant Colonel Untung made its move and, in doing so, precipitated the inevitable showdown between the military and the PKI.
[This article is the fifth in a series on the Indonesian Communist Party. James Balowski is a researcher in Indonesian politics and history and a member of the Democratic Socialist Party. He is Action in Solidarity with Indonesia and East Timor's publications and information officer and a member of the coordinating committee of the Bangkok- and Jakarta-based human rights organisation Asian Network for Democracy in Indonesia.]