Javanese Mystical and Marxist Dialectics - Paul Stange

Javanese Mystical and Marxist DialecticsPaul Stange, 1970Time was when man had a heaven, decked and fitted out with endless wealth ofthoughts and pictures. The significance of all that is lay in the thread of light bywhich it was attached to heaven; instead of dwelling in the present as it is here andnow, the eye glanced away over the present to the Divine, away, so to say, to apresent that lies beyond ... Now we have apparently the need for the opposite of allthis; man's mind and interest are so deeply rooted in the earthly that we require a likepower to have them raised above that level. His spirit shows such poverty of naturethat it seems to long for the mere pitiful feeling of the divine in the abstract, and toget refreshment from that, like a wanderer in the desert craving for the merestmouthful of water. By the little which can thus satisfy the need of the human spiritwe can measure the extent of its loss. Hegel, The Phenomenology of Mind, p 73To link oneself with the masses, one must act in accordance with the needs andwishes of the masses. All work done for the masses must start from their needs andnot from the desire of any individual, however well intentioned. It often happens thatobjectively the masses need a certain change, but subjectively they are not yetconscious of the need, not yet willing or determined to make the change. In suchcases, we should wait patiently. We should not make the change until, through ourwork, most of the masses have become conscious of the need and are willing anddetermined to carry it out. Otherwise, we shall isolate ourselves from the masses.Unless they are conscious and willing, any kind of work that requires theirparticipation will turn out to be a mere formality and will fail ... There are twoprinciples here: one is the actual needs of the masses rather than what we fancy theyneed, and the other is the wishes of the masses, who must make up their own mindsinstead of our making up their minds for them. Mao, Quotations, pp 124-125

KEYSITUATION “UNITY IN DIVERSITY”Introduction to the thesis and discussion of the limits imposed on the PKI by thehistorical and social setting of modern IndonesiaMYSTICISM “THE NAIL OF GOD”Discussion of the classical Javanese notion of power underlying Sukarno's GuidedDemocracy and its political and ideological limits on the PKIMARXISM “THE MASS LINE”The place of the peasantry in the Aidit PKI theory and practice and an evaluation ofthe PKI as a new link between peasantry and politicsSYNTHESIS “ALL THINGS ARE ONE”Exploration of the relationship between Marxist and mystical traditions andimplications to this history and to historical methodology

UNITY IN DIVERSITYPossessed of transcendent truth, both mystics and Marxists deny apparent reality. Atthe same time, the mystic chooses the path of Being and the Marxist its converse ofBecoming. To the mystic the millennium is now and the dimension of time gone - theannihilated ego released for union with a cosmos in which it has always been anunconscious part. The liberation is a return to the primordial purity of the gardenwith a free spirit which is spontaneous and in tune rather than self-conscious and outof joint. Suffering and evil dissolve along with all dualities; everything makes sensethrough its relation to everything else. Mind is suspended eternally in a joyful void.Death is faced as an integral part of rather than antithesis to life; it becomes simplyone more dissolution of the boundaries between self and other. Time is wiped outsince it exists only as a reflex of the human pretention to egoistic immortality, theeffort to deny the reality of death. Life is then accepted as merely an eddy in theprocess of cosmic entropy. With death, suffering, and evil integral to life there is nolonger anything to lose and there is everything to gain - then full life is to taste Beingas sheer magnificence.For the Marxist the millennium is not now. It is very much a collective experience ofthe future rather than an individual vision of the present. The task is to take themystic awareness that the existing state of reality is not final and to turn that into atool in the struggle to hurry natural process. History is seen as a mammothconvolution or folding back of being into itself; dialectical materialism as a mentalprocess equivalent to and revealing the natural process. The object of awarenessbecomes active transformation rather than passive comprehension. All personalenergy is dedicated to the revolution through an ascetic ethic demanding submissionof the ego to a humanistic vision of the universal. The religious man, and to theradical the mystic seems one, is seen as a tool of power interests of stasis since hisefforts apparently reconcile men to their condition rather than leading them totransform it. So there is a profound divergence of paths despite similar negations ofthe present reality.In practice the contrasting tendencies boil down to tactics of unity or conflict, tocontrary notions of power and purpose. On the one hand the archetypal hippiewhose disregard for the existing state of affairs results in disengagement; on theother hand the radical whose thrust is toward power struggle and an identificationwith the oppressed.

In Indonesia the difference is essential to understanding the communist attempt topoliticize the most mystically suffused portions of the population. My argument hereis that the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) in effect functioned in terms ofJavanese mystical rather than Western Marxist notions of power. More specifically,the suggestion is that the Javanization of the PKI resulted from a confluence of socioeconomicand ideological factors rather than simply from the limits of the politicalsituation. The effect was to unite the most traditional and most revolutionarycurrents in common opposition to modern Islam and Western capitalism. At thesame time, there was a split within the party between an elite which identified withthe last stand of the traditional aristocracy and a mass base which in effectconstituted the shattered remnants of that same order. The point is that the elite andmass shared a vocabulary having different implications depending on theperspective taken. This helps explain the tensions leading to the coups and killings of1965 and 1966.In making the case, I begin with a sketch of the main historical and social forcesbefore moving into discussion of the classical tradition and its relevance to Sukarno'sGuided Democracy. From there to evaluation of the Aidit phase of the PKI andfinally to a summation of the relationships between the various traditions. A numberof critical conclusions follow. In the first place, I argue that both Javanese andpeasant perspectives are fundamental to vision of this history and that those becomeclear through a dialectical image which simultaneously clarifies structure andprocess. Then in terms of scholarly method, my suggestion is that an interweaving ofsubject matter and researcher is essential to insight - in opposition to standardnotions of academic neutrality and objective disengagement. From first to last, Istand with the Javanese mystic in his awareness that at base “all things are one” andwith the Marxist in arguing that no particular makes sense apart from the whole.Suharto’s current military regime emerged in Indonesia in the wake of obscure coupsin Djakarta and the virtually unopposed slaughter of hundreds of thousands in thevillages. While the details of the October 1965 coup are incidental here, the scope andease of subsequent killings suggested previously unsuspected rural tensions andcommunist weakness. Even perceptive academic estimates of PKI power failed toaccount for the rapidity of disintegration in the early months of 1966. 1

Although the pogroms of 1966 were unparalleled in extent, the PKI had faced similarannihilation twice before, in 1927 and in 1948. Founded in 1920 as the first Asiancommunist party, the PKI began with a Comintern approved strategy of creating a“block within” the “bourgeois nationalist” party, the Sarekat Islam. 2 That alliancecrumbled early and the radical fragment which became the independent PKI focusedon peasant and labor organizing which culminated in the poorly coordinated andconsequently abortive uprisings of 1926 and 1927. The ripple of violence was enoughto frighten the Dutch colonialists into severe and successful repression - those tied tothe outbreaks either fled into exile or languished in the concentration camp of BovenDigul in Dutch New Guinea. Tightened restrictions confined remaining nationaliststo a club type organizing and divorced the new leaders like Hatta, Sukarno, andSjahrir from their mass base.PKI mystique implies activism of an underground party during the depression andJapanese occupation, but if there was one it was inconsequential. The party surfacedagain in the confusing aftermath to the Second World War and the declaration ofindependence. Tan Malaka, one of the exiles from the fiasco of the twenties, returnedto test his charisma against Sukarno's in a tour of the Javanese countryside - itproved lacking and his heretical splinter of the party disappeared. The party tookclearest shape under the more orthodox guidance of the Moscow trained Musso, alsoan old leader of the twenties. Fresh disaster struck the party through the Madiunaffair of 1948. East Javanese military groups sympathetic to the PKI refused todisband out of fear that the less friendly Islamic and liberal nationalists would closein on the PKI. Here again it matters less who started the conflict than that the partyleadership cast its lot with the recalcitrants and was wiped out in the process.Popular imagination branded the PKI a traitor to the cause and mass killingsfollowed as they would again in 1966.With a black mark on the record and the entire old guard of the party dead ordiscredited by Madiun, reorganization was cautious. The fragmented party emergedagain as a whole under the Aidit leadership in 1951 and he was to remain in controlof a remarkably unified and increasingly massive party until the coup of 1965.Success first became obvious with surprise polling among the top four parties in thenational elections of 1955 and further gains in the regional elections of 1957. Supportcame primarily from the most thoroughly Javanese and least seriously Islamicportions of the Javanese population and led to some voice in local rule but littledirect power over national policy. 3 The PKI sought not only to acquire voting

support, but also to cultivate alliance with President Sukarno and the NationalistParty (PNI) he had founded.At the same time, the parliamentary structure of this early period after independencehad been shaky from its inception and declined in the face of internal conflicts whichemerged to replace the uneasy truces of nationalism. Cabinets rose and fell withunsettling rapidity as public support for liberal rule had never been secure. 4 Hatta,Sjahrir, and the conservative Islamic Masjumi were the earliest powers; their imageof “humdrum” bureaucratic organization and piecemeal progress failed to capturethe imagination of a romantic pemuda (youth) whose emotions had been fired by arevolutionary struggle which seemed to promise more dramatic and immediategratification. 5 Then the elections of 1955 served not so much to dampen factionalismas to extend it into the villages by magnifying traditional tensions and translatingthem into national politics.Further crisis burst with the outbreak of regional rebellion in Sumatra and theCelebes and the resurgence in West Java and the North Celebes of the Darul Islamguerrillas. 6 The PRRI-Permesta rebellion was short lived despite support from theCIA, some regional army leaders, and an assortment of national political leaders.Support had been wavering from all quarters but final collapse owed a great deal tothe failure of the rebels to enlist the formal support of Hatta and Masjumi. The DarulIslam movement scarcely passed the bandit stage, but like the regional revolt serveda dual function. On the one hand, the regional and religious interests werediscredited and temporarily eliminated; on the other, the act of elimination gave ahealthy boost to army involvement in civilian administration and politics. 7 In theemerging order of Guided Democracy those powers were replaced by a newbalancing act including Sukarno, the military, and the PKI.Radical nationalism and domestic confusion became characteristic as Sukarnoattempted to counteract increasing army power through reliance on the PKI massorganization. The rationalistic ideology of development gave way to a ferventnationalism served in a feast of symbols drawn from the Javanese tradition.Parliament became increasingly peripheral. Ushering in the new images of politicalform, Sukarno sought return to the more flexible constitution of 1945 and cried forreinstatement of the Pantjasila (Five Principles). It was to have been a politics ofconsensus and cooperation based on a romantic conception of rural Javanesepractice. Sukarno saw his own function as reconciliation of divergent opinions

through a process of musjawarah-mufakat, the method of village lurahs (chiefs)through which all opinions are aired until the leader can articulate a genuinelycommunal decision reflecting an implicit common conclusion. The new cabinet wasto have been a gotong-rojong (cooperative) body in which all major factions wouldfind representation—-in contrast to the squabbles and mud-slinging of partycompetition which had been a slap in the face of Javanese sensibilities.External relations became a series of confrontations. First a vigorous anti-Dutchcampaign to nationalize remaining Dutch business and gain control over west NewGuinea. With those aims achieved in 1958 and 1962, attention turned toward thenewly created federation of Malaysia, an object of confrontation lasting through theend of Guided Democracy.In this ongoing crisis which has been independent Indonesia, the dilemma has beenthat of trying to transform a conglomerate of traditional cultures so that they cansurvive in the modern world while at the same time retaining a sense of indigenousidentity. Crisis stems from imbalanced penetration of modern forms which hasamplified already profound diversity. 8 It reflects the absence of a single network ofnationally rather than regionally integrating institutions and reminds us that thenational motto of “Unity in Diversity” has remained an expression of sentimentrather than social reality. 9 The real unity underlying Indonesian experience is thecommon agony of a world out of balance: in the arts it has been the “Great Debate”,to intellectuals the protracted identity crisis of those stranded between ethnic rootsand Western ideals, and to peasants the confusion of a world their traditionalcosmology cannot explain. 10 Grasping this thread of unity requires a plungebeneath the surface of different forms to the social forces which have pushed them tothe surface of national politics and economic crisis.This is not to question the intentions of individuals at the surface of political life, it issimply to subject them to more than descriptive analysis and to argue that intentionsmean little apart from the conditions that have generated them and the situations towhich they apply. It is like the study of linguistic structures - they areunquestionably real no matter how far removed from the consciousness of commonspeech. The method lies in the tradition of Marx and Lévi-Strauss as it is to probebeneath phenomena to levels of unconscious relationship. 11 Jacques Ellul makes thepoint in his book on The Technological Society by stressing that systems involve aconvergence of specific views such that none can individually explain the process. In

fact, he argues that individual scientists and technocrats contribute to systems withoverall directions frequently opposed to their individual convictions or awareness.So with all systems it happens that understanding of particulars is dependent onclarification of their relation to the whole.At the surface of Indonesian politics, political alignments and elite tensionscrystallized in the early phase of Parliamentary Democracy. While real power restedin the hands of party oligarchies rather than with either the parties or the populace,the election competitions of 1955 and 1957 served all too well by exacerbating latentconflicts and taking them all the way down to the village level. 13 The multitude oftiny parties which had appeared with the introduction of liberal government gaveway after the elections to four major parties-Masjumi, the Nahdatul Ulama, theNationalist Party, and the PKI. 14 Masjumi was rooted in modernistic Islam andurban based trading interests - geographically to the coastal cities of Java, to WestJava, and to the Outer Islands generally. The Nahdatul Ulama (NU) was based onrural East and Central Javanese syncretic Islam through the kijaji and pesantren(religious teachers and schools). The Nationalist Party (PNI) drew most heavily onthe Java centered bureaucracy, the partially transformed remnants of a prijaji (oldaristocracy) who had become bureaucrats under the Dutch. The PKI created its basefrom among the poorer and more traditional sectors of the Javanese peasantry, theabangan, and from estate and mine workers throughout the archipelago. 15The basic tensions coming out through the elections and clear in the constitution ofthe national elite focused on the split between Javanese and Outer Island interests -three parties were fundamentally Javanese and only the Masjumi represented thevery different world of the Outer Islands. 16 Feith has suggested that this basictension has been evident in the make-up of the elite since there has been an “Islamicentrepreneurial” group of more rationally oriented bureaucratic planners and a“Javanese aristocratic” group of less pragmatic and more traditional solidaritymakers. 17 As description, Feith's distinction is valuable, but as analysis it takes onfar greater significance when tied to Schmitt's contention that the differing policyinterests of the two groups have been rooted in fairly immediate economic concerns.Then the surface politics of parties and elites only makes sense when it is related tothe vastly different social worlds and historical experiences of the Outer Islands onthe one hand and Java on the other.

The contrast is rooted profoundly in the basic ecological facts of the island world.Through soil and climate Java and neighboring Bali happen to have been suited forintensive wet- rice cultivation capable of supporting dense populations while in theOuter Islands the pattern has been one of shifting cultivation with pockets ofintensive agriculture. As a result, the Javanese and Balinese created heavilyelaborated kingdoms with sophisticated court traditions while the Outer Islandersturned toward inter-island and international trade which focused on petty riverinestates. Successive waves of Indian, Islamic, and now Western influence have merelyamplified the initial contrast between patterns: Java has faced consistently inwardand the islanders outward. The early Hindu-Buddhist influences spread through thewhole area but took deepest roots in the probably already complex inland kingdoms- it was their formative era. Conversely, the later Islamic incursion spread throughthe same area but had much more profound impact on the Outer Islanders.Subsequent colonialism served again to intensify the split: in Java it led to adangerously static “involution” of existing agricultural patterns and in the OuterIslands to tentative experiment with new forms of agriculture and mining. The era isperhaps best summarized with Geertz's much noted conclusion that it was “one longattempt to bring Indonesia's crops into the modern world, but not her people.” 19His point is that the effect of Dutch policy, consistent despite some wavering, was toprevent qualitative structural changes in the Javanese ecosystem since a changemight have threatened the carefully arranged “symbiosis” of rice and sugar. Theconsequence for peasant agriculture was fantastic elaboration of the existing systemfirstexpansion into available lands and finally more and more intense cultivation ofrice and marginal crops. The economic situation remained precarious enough todiscourage innovation since the subsistence orientation increased reluctance togamble. 20Outside the area of ethnic Javanese concentration, the role of Indonesians in themodern economy was considerably more active. These less intensely elaboratedsystems provided a setting for more innovative response so that coffee, tea, andtobacco were grown largely by indigenous small-holders in the Outer Islands andWest Java while plantations among the Javanese were almost exclusively in Dutchhands. 21 Thus a further contrast in which the Javanese continued to turn inwardwhile some of the Outer Islanders began to link themselves with the internationaleconomy. Geertz concludes that

As the bulk of the Javanese peasants moved toward agricultural involution,shared poverty, social elasticity, and cultural vagueness, a small minority ofthe Outer Island peasants moved toward agricultural specialization, frankindividualism, social conflict, and cultural rationalization ... at least it did notforedoom the future. 32By mid-century and with independence the involutional capacities of the Javaneseeconomy were straining to an extreme: Java's tenth of Indonesia's land area wassupporting two thirds of her population of almost one hundred million.Independence, rather than heralding solution to crisis, merely marked more rapiddeterioration. The main problem was that political sovereignty did not implyeconomic independence. This central contradiction emerged from the Round Tableagreements since that transfer of power had involved a guarantee of alien propertyrights, a guarantee which in Schmitt's words ensured that the “Indonesian politicalleadership was virtually restricted to performing administrative and policefunctions.” 23 With the economy remaining essentially alien, the political incentivesto development were undercut. As Schmitt arguesTo champion accumulation without structural change meant to foster anexpansion of the power of aliens, a consequence diametrically opposed to thedynamic of the independence movement. 24At the same time, there was an internal conflict of interest between inland tradersand agriculturalists who lost out through inflationary governmental policy andimporters and bureaucrats who could gain through the black market. Even beyondthis, it was both difficult and politically dangerous to tax importers due to theirimportance to the “foreign managerial groups that controlled the bulk of theeconomy.” 25 Under these circumstances of early independence, in which the Dutchretained about two billion dollars worth of investments in Indonesia, the most thenew government could do was encourage the growth of small-scale indigenousmanufacturing. Yet, that manufacturing was strictly marginal to the central economicfacts of Western control in the mining and estate sectors responsible for externaltrade. 26 The possible industrialization of Java was cross-cut by continued Westernextraction of the abundant raw materials from the outer Islands. 27 With trade,banking, distribution, and transportation still in foreign hands, indigenous

entrepreneurship remained confined to local trade, handicrafts, and smallmanufacturing. 28In the face of all this, it should be clear that there was a logic to the situation if notalso to individual intention. As events unfolded, those with vested interests did theirbest to retain them. The economic nightmare of Indonesia has not been a quirk orunfortunate accident of late development - it has been a logical part of a world-wideeconomy in which those who start behind stay there. This is to argue with Schmittand Levine that there is an active interweaving of economics and politics and thatliberal economists like Higgins and Paauw miss the point when they argue thatpolitical instability and absence of technical and managerial skills underlie economicstagnation. 29 It is rather the converse: economic subservience breeding stagnationand political instability. Not that skills are not essential to growth, but that they willemerge only when the situation allows room for application of those skills. I amarguing as Geertz does in his comments on agricultural developments... against a myopic pragmatic optimism which allows short-run gains toobscure the general trend of events, which isolates purely technicalimprovements from the historically created cultural, social, and psychologicalcontext in which they are set, and which, because of these failings exacerbatesthe ailments it sets out to cure. 30Thus the much noted “dualism” of the Indonesian economy in which the modernsector of growing Western capitalism tied in with an internal sector of export-importtraders politically, socially, and economically identified with Masjumi and the OuterIslands. Internally and politically, the conflict appeared to be between thepragmatically oriented “Islamic entrepreneurial” interests and the more symbolicallygeared “Javanese aristocratic” group.Precisely these interests surfaced in the regional rebellions of 1958 in Sumatra andthe Celebes. General sympathy and American assistance to the rebels reflected morethan ideological empathy. 31 The West shared with the rebels a growing concern atradical nationalism which had led to the expulsion of Dutch capital and the drive to“regain” Western New Guinea. The revolt crystallized competing interests ofproducers and consumers; of entrepreneurs and bureaucrats; of the center and theregions. Final action followed Outer Island concern with the heavy concentration offoreign exchange earnings on Java rather than in the Outer Islands from which they

umbled through party bickering, a bickering destructive of the army’s prime goal ofnational unity. 39 As a result Nasution and other army leaders began to extend theirrole through rural civic action programs designed to reach the peasant massesdirectly. 40Although the army did not begin as an ideological force, its leaders had no taste forthe PKI. Relations never recovered from Madiun when important army groups hadbecome convinced that the PKI had betrayed the national cause. Then later the armyhad gained a profitable stake in rampant bureaucratic corruption which was a mainobject of PKI agitation. In general, the army stood for the status quo not only becauseof its own vested interests, but also because it had to maintain order in situationswhere PKI agitation resulted in confrontation. The train of events left the armyweakest in the areas of greatest PKI strength asThe impact of the army has been least in East and Central Java, where civilianadministrative authority is strongly established and where there has beenvirtually no rebel or bandit activity. 42So in the emerging order the main tension was between the army and the PKI.The PKI found its strength through the development of mass organizations based onappeals to a peasantry whose aims had not been achieved with the conclusion of thenationalist revolution. That revolution had been an end in itself only for theIndonesian “semi-Westernized intelligentsia” who had replaced the outgoingcolonialists. 43 As the Indonesian group empathizing most deeply with Westernvalues, they were naturally the least likely to opt for profound change. Facing thiselite was the problem of forging institutions capable of performing Geertz's“integrative revolution” - of creating a single nation by integrating the peasantmasses and diverse ethnic groups into a single structure. 44 Kahin has described thesituation immediately following independenceDespite its awakened national consciousness and the much increased vigor ofpolitical life at the village level, peasant society was still not effectively linkedwith the national government in a mutually activated and mutuallyresponsive relationship. The existing relationship was still a predominatelyone-sided affair - from the top down ... parties floated as vague shapes abovethe peasant masses ... If the scope of the program which the Republic's leaders

undertook to carry out were too limited, or the pace too slow, they mightforfeit their popular backing; and those more disposed to employ moreauthoritarian techniques might displace them at the helm of government. 45Thus the challenge to the PKI, as to the rest of the elite, was to create organizationslinking the structural levels of Indonesian society and in the process transforming thevery nature of the peasantry. For the essence of that social grouping is pre-modern -peasants by definition being geared mainly toward subsistence and only marginallyto meet the demands of some “Great Tradition”. 46 At the same time, the conditionsto which peasant social structures are appropriate have passed. Overpopulation,starvation, inaction, and poverty have not been mere creatures of the imaginationand continuous deterioration has borne ample witness to the contention thattraditional responses to ageless social needs are no longer adequate. For thepeasantry at least, the revolution clearly remained in the future.Hobsbawm has argued convincingly that peasant response to social deterioration ischaracteristically conservative in that it is aimed not so much at transforming socialstructure as at rectifying excesses within a system that is basically accepted. The taskfor modern movements is the translation of reactionary and millennial unrest intoideological terms which help peasants understand that their condition is aconsequence of social structures they have the power to change. If the Chineserevolution and the continuing Vietnamese struggle prove nothing else, they clearlydemonstrate that agrarian unrest can he politicized.The Javanese peasantry are concentrated in East and Central Java and numberedaround forty million by I961. For virtually all of them the central ritual has been theselametan, a feast held with neighbors to mark major events and rites of passage. Forthe most part, the beliefs tied to rituals are rooted in the oldest layer of Javanesespirit worship rather than in the later accretions of Hindu and Islamic belief. Still,perhaps a third of the population, mainly merchants and petty traders, belong to thesantri segment of the population which takes its Muslim identification seriously. Byindependence practically all villages were at least loosely tied into the expandingmoney economy through trading connections centering on regularly interspersedtowns. Urban culture flowing through those towns and down to the smaller villageshas been important for centuries. Within village society there has been only minimalsocial stratification and a strong feeling of egalitarianism - balanced by extremeforms of deference to those with authority from outside the village. The basic social

structure has always been simple and vague with more importance in socialinteractions vested in geographical proximity than in kinship. 48All of this has been changing. Villages have been strained by extreme shortages ofland resulting from the growing population. In most areas the shortage has led to aparceling of land into smaller and smaller lots, but the portion of landless had grownto about 50% by 1964. 49 Hildred Geertz has suggested thatThe Javanese peasants are what might be called “post traditional”, for thecombined impact of Islam and the colonial commercial development broke thetight integration of its traditional social structure but did not produce amodern institutional system ... 50In the recent period a pattern of aliran politics has emerged and there has been a shiftfrom geographical proximity to ideological belief as a basis of social relations - evencore rituals of communal solidarity such as the selametan have been politicized untilthey create more tension than they dissolve. 51 As Geertz describes itAn aliran is more than a more political party, certainly more than a mereideology it is a comprehensive pattern of social integration. The intensity withwhich the Javanese peasantry has fastened on to political and quasi-politicalorganizations in the last decade ... is primarily an index of the degree to whichnew social structures are needed in the reconstruction of vigorous village life.52By far the most critical social contrast related to this growth of new forms is thedichotomy between abangan and santri, between those still rooted in predominatelyJavanese and those moving into more strictly Islamic lifestyles. 53The Islamic “stream” of social and political life was tied in with trade and the moneyeconomy, that is capitalism. Islamic modernism centered in urban and tradingsociety and involved a Weberian work ethic highly conducive to commercial success.54 From the beginning Islam had been tied to the cosmopolitan trade world whichhad brought it to the islands - it was a progressive and dynamic influence and itliberated islanders from parochial ethnic cosmologies and introduced them to aworld-wide community of Islam. 55 So on Java Islam penetrated through the tradingcities of the north coast and on into the interior. Early conversion had been nominal,

ut even in the earliest phases Islam had made gains as a potential banner for rebelschallenging the kraton states. Later, returnees from the hadj, the pilgrimage toMecca, began bringing back a more purified version of Islam tracing its roots to theWahabite purist movement in Arabia at the close of the eighteenth century. This ledto a series of conflicts between syncretic and purified versions of Islam which hadbegun several centuries earlier and carried on into the increasingly intense conflictsbetween santri and abangan in this century. 56The expansion of Dutch control and converse emergence of the nationalist movementalso gave a boost to Islam. Colonial policy had; consistently supported adat, that iscustomary law, in opposition to Islamic innovations. Initially justification lay incommitments to the status quo since the Dutch had chosen to work through existingrulers rather than to administer directly. But at the same time the policy setadministrators against the indigenous commercial interest underlying Islam -perhaps not a co-incidence. Then with nationalism I would argue that Islam became,in effect, a tool through which commercial interests could create mass support.Again, this is not to suggest cynical manipulation and I would not argue that theleaders of Sarekat Islam saw themselves this way, but that is beside the point. Therewas a real community of interest between the urban and modern leaders of this massmovement and the rural masses they spoke to, but that was limited to commonhostility against the Dutch and the Chinese and did not extend into common visionof a projected free society. In line with the progressive flavor of modernismgenerally, the leadership was particularly interested in expanding indigenousindustry and business which was limited by both the Dutch and Chinese. 57 For thepeasants, the question was one of changing the basic conditions of their life and notsimply those who imposed those conditions on them. 58 The point is that it has beenthe commercial rooting of Islamic modernism rather than Islamic doctrine per sewhich has been hostile to the growth of communism in rural Java. 59 From thebeginning there was a symbiosis of Islam and trade, but the antagonism Muslimhave felt for communists becomes more understandable when this commercialrooting is kept in mind.At any rate, there was a budding network of organizations filtering down to thevillage level before the PKI began work. While in Vietnam and China the communistmovements managed to monopolize nationalist sentiment, the PKI had to overcomethe taint of betrayal arising from Madiun and was faced with a viable network ofcompeting organizations. Beyond this, the main social division was religious schism

ather than class conflict. In Jay’s terms, the PKI fitted neatly into a slot in the schismcomplementary to that of santri Islam. From a more positive vantage point, thesetting did offer a natural even if limited role for the PKI. Serious Muslims in ruralJava mainly supported Nahdatul Ulama; the village elites of teachers andbureaucrats supported the PKI; and, as Hindley puts it, this leftthe PKI and its mass organizations ... a virtual monopoly in channelingwhatever social protest or aspirations there have been among the poorerabangan population. 61This circumstance was no mean gift and the PKI either used it to good advantage orfell into the trap—-depending on the perspective taken. Concurrently, the decline incommunal land ownership, the growth of a landless peasantry, the increase ineconomic differentiation, and the ravages of ten years of war combined to “sharpenclass conflict” and lend support to the PKI. 62 Hindley argues that there was a veryclose relationship between the limit and nature of this support and the policy the PKIcould pursueThe nature of the social and economic conditions in Java has been the decisivefactor in the determination of the precise form of the national united frontpolicy formulated by the Aidit leadership. It is the decisive factor inunderstanding the Aidit leadership has been able to build a mass support.And it is a major factor in explaining why communist mass support is still aninadequate weapon for the seizure of power. 63These circumstances of independent Indonesia go a long way toward explaining therole of the PKI under Guided Democracy.To begin with then, I have explained the main directions of argument and have triedto establish the basic limits of the PKI's situation. In doing so I have sketched in themain phases of PKI and modern Indonesian history. Then I have explored the majorsocial forces by looking at the regional tension between Java and the Outer Islands; atthe implications of imperialistic economics; and finally, at the underpinnings ofmilitary and Muslim antagonism to and limits on the PKI.

THE NAIL OF GODFrom this sketch of social forces and historical setting I turn to a discussion of theclassical Javanese tradition and the impact of its conceptions of kingship and themillennium on modern politics. Those conceptions underlie the ideological andpolitical limits Sukarno's Guided Democracy of 1960 through 1965 imposed on thePKI. Neither the structure of that system nor its strictures on the PKI become clearapart from this heritage.Complex civilization traces its roots back over a millennium in the fertile plains ofinland Java. Rich volcanic soil led to a dense population of wet-rice cultivatingpeasants and then to the emergence of elaborate court culture drawing inspirationfrom Indian contacts. Court culture focused at kratons which in concrete termscombined royal residence with administration and in more symbolic termsfunctioned as center of the universe. Peasants remained for the most part in selfsufficientvillages, but sent occasional tribute of rice and labor for royal monumentsand wars. Massive temple complexes such as those at Borobudur and Prambananbear witness to flourishing Hindu-Buddhist kingdoms by the ninth century. Thenthis classical era culminated in the emergence of Madjapahit in the twelfth throughfourteenth centuries as a power over inland Java and inter-island trade alike. Withthe growth of the cosmopolitan trading society in the fifteenth and sixteenthcenturies, the trading states of Java's north coast, the Pasisir, began to erode inlandpower and shift the focus of complex culture away from the interior.These Pasisir principalities turned to Islam in their struggle against Madjapahit andin the process became centers for the nominal conversion of the entire island. Islamoffered conceptual justification to local traders and state regents anxious to breakaway from the constraints of custom and central control. Coastal culture peaked inthe sixteenth century, but at virtually the same time Dutch encroachment beganthreatening Pasisir control over trade and inland power reemerged with theformation of a nominally Muslim Mataram. Although professing Islam, the new statewas a natural enemy of the Pasisir and quickly began to revive Indic tradition andrely on remnants of the old Madjapahit aristocracy.Court scholars of early Mataram used the Babad Tanah Djawa not only as achronicle, but also as an attempt to reconcile ancient Indian with newer Islamic

make obvious to all that “all things are one” and that thus the whole cultural systemis validated. He is the life force, he is Vishnu the creator, he is the lingam. He is thesource of sexual vitality and communes nightly with mother earth throughintercourse with wives who are the four winds - they are the directions of thecompass symbolically brought together in harmonious balance under his roof. He isthe only link between the natural and social orders and his power and legitimacy reston that contact. 4Ideally the power of the monarch rests not in control over people or resources, butthrough this contact with the divine. At the same time, the power he has is concreteand exists as a pure essence pervading the universe and remaining quite apart fromconceptions of good and evil. Power simply is. Exercise of power is then a matter ofaccumulating and concentrating through attainment of a state of mind. BenAnderson has suggested thatThis conception of the entire cosmos being suffused by a formless, constantlycreative power provides the essential link between the “animism” of theJavanese villages, and the high metaphysics of the urban Javanese syncretictheological tradition. 5The ideal of the tradition is reflected in the pervasive tension within the traditionalorder between alus or refined behavior which is controlled and smooth and is themodel for prijaji and kasar or coarse and rough behavior which is the common imageof peasants. In the wajang, daemons are emphatically kasar, they constantly dissipatepower and always lose to alus heroes who concentrate their power through mysticalmeditation. The epistemological foundation of mystical awareness lies in convictionthat knowledge, which is the source of power, is a stripping” away of veils” to reveala transcendent which is obscured by ordinary consciousness. The image of “strippingveils” is from the Islamic tradition of Sufi mysticism, but applies just as well to theJavanese. Van der Kroef states thatThe “good life” as Javanese gurus and mystics have viewed it through theages, and as they have instructed king and peasant, is the progressivedissolution of the barriers to unity between man and cosmos ... the perfectunity of the divine order in which all “contradictions” are resolved ... Athorough understanding of the antithetical elements surrounding man is

egarded as the path to spiritual stasis, the selamet condition of mind calledsemadi among the Javanese. 6And as Moertono puts itTrue to all mysticism, these syncretic ideas seek to prove that all things areonly aspects, saktis, emanations, and only integral parts of the all-embracingOne ... 7The drive behind this drive to reconcile oppositions is in belief that it is throughmystical awareness that power flows from the natural sphere of order into thehuman sphere of society. Awareness translates into social order asThe perfect state and the perfect society ... is therefore not a goal to beachieved through hard work and rational planning, but in analogy with theprogression from one mystical state to another - through the application of akey, a kuntji, the magically loaded formula. 8The knowledge sought is not in “the slightest degree heuristic or pragmatic”, butinstead emphatically intuitive and supra- rational. 9 Mystically achieved awarenessis considered a stock of techniques for maintaining cosmic equilibrium and itscorrelate of social order. 10In all of this, man is seen very much as a cipher, as an agent of “immutable cosmicforces which essentially operate through him.” 11 Even the divine ruler emerges as atool of larger purpose - his role is not to exert individual will, but to function as anode through which the universal touches society. 12 For the Javanese mystic,learning and acting are a matter of discovering the self as a mere agent of the cosmos.The ego becomes nothing, but the self is then comprehended as a specific point ofcosmic convergence.Of course all of this is idealization and social reality merely orients itself toward andnever embodies the ideal. Still, mysticism has always been profoundly alive for allstrata of Javanese society so that the ideal of oneness with God has broad appealeven though “mysticism is considered wadi (dangerously secret) and is thoughtavailable only to the selected few.” 13 In traditional villages the correspondence ofmacro-cosmos and micro-cosmos paralleled that of the state and each community

would have its own shrine marking the point of interaction. The whole economic andritual process rested on communal religious obligations. The core ritual, theselametan, has been a celebration of neighborhood solidarity and spirit worship.According to GeertzThe whole momentum of the Javanese ritual system is supposed to carry onethrough grief without severe emotional disturbance. 15This emphasis on control over emotions is part of the overall connection betweenelite alus values and peasant society. The main vehicle for the transmission of prijajivalues has been the wajang and the arts generally. 16The central themes of traditional wajang were the alus-kasar tension and the strivingfor rasa, inner control and peace, through the “appropriateness of thoughts asestablished by duties to caste and hierarchy.” 17 Anderson has gone on to probe therelationship between these themes of the wajang and the “tolerance” of the Javanese.The basic sources for wajang tales have been the classic Indian; epics, theMahabharata and Ramayana, but there has always been considerable addition andelaboration of local tales along with reference to current events. The dalang, a manwith a good deal of prestige, served not only as puppeteer and story-teller, but alsoas a source of esoteric mysticism and philosophy. While the wajang eventuallyabsorbed some Islamic ideas, it remained a fundamentally Javanese and Indianventure.The tolerance projected by the drama comes through in the plurality of acceptablemodels for behavior, a plurality contrary to Western and modern dichotomies ofgood and evil. Sanction came through the theater to all types of people at variouspositions of life and not just to a single ideal type. Along with this came the Javanesenotions of existing states of life as an interplay of levels of reality. In the drama itselfthere is an interplay of levels: the Indian epics, local mythology, the dalang'sinterpolations, the leather puppets themselves, and the shadows cast on the screen.While each level had a concrete existence of its own and was independently evidentto the audience, no one level was a final statement on what is “really real”. Neitherthe format nor underlying philosophy suggested an absolute. As a result, theJavanese demonstrate considerable tolerance of ambiguity. As Anderson puts it

The real and the really real are closely connected, but never identical, andtherefore it never does to be too closely committed to either. 18The same sense pervades social relations generally. Interactions are a constantinterweaving of stylized forms, proper etiquette, formal speech, hierarchy, control,and underlying motion. Living and art merged for the prijaji. 19 Then there are twospeech levels in the Javanese language-associated with alus and the prijaji on the onehand and with kasar and the natural man on the other. The formal language stressedthe prijaji ideals of smoothness and emotional control, adherence to proper form andetiquette. In contrast, the lower language more clearly reflected immediate emotionalresponses. Again an interplay of levels of reality in which all levels are real in somesense, but none are ultimate or absolute. In each case there is what I would call ametaphorical sense of reality - the ultimate reality of forms resting not in themselves,but rather in their relation to the field of forms they interact with and beyond that tothe mystical One. This is a dialectical frame of mind which became extraordinarilyrefined in the enclave kratons and which had an impact on the general populationthrough the arts.The fundamental drives toward cosmic harmony and balance and social unity tie inclosely with the Javanese concepts of power, history, and the millennium. Propersocial balance comes with periods of concentrated power at the center and history isseen as a cyclical ebb and flow of power, an oscillating concentration and dissipationThe ebb and flow is associated with the rise and fall of empires and monarchs as wellas with the more cosmic Indian doctrine of the four yugas, the four historical epochswhich are cyclically repeated and which culminate in the epoch of total destruction,the kaliyuga. 21 Periods of imbalance and chaos constantly give rise to the millennialexpectation that it is the kaliyuga, that the existing order is on the verge of totaldestruction and the regeneration of a perfect order is imminent. The millennium is tofollow the arrival of a Ratu Adil, a perfect prince or messiah whose spiritual empathywith the cosmos establishes a utopian balance of microcosm and macrocosm. 22From time to time in Javanese history, peasant revolts and general mobilization havecrystallized around this expectation.The Java War of 1825 through 1830 was a last stand of traditional Mataram againstthe Dutch. In the struggle broad popular support came from Prince Diponegoro'sappeal as a messianic figure. More commonly, peasant resistance to state intrusionsfocuses on religious leaders who appeal to messianic beliefs, beliefs which refer to

cosmic principles more than specific persona1ities. 23 In this century, millenarianconcepts played a crucial role in the nationalist movement through organizationssuch as the Sarekat Islam and PKI and individuals such as Tjokroaminoto and hisprotégé Sukarno. These Javanese conceptions of power and the millennium helpexplain the force and grip of appeals to the masses through symbols rather thanconcrete organizing.In mentioning this emphasis on symbols, Feith has noted the “intensely intellectualcharacter of Indonesian nationalism” and Geertz that Sukarno's considerable skills“were all rhetorical”. 24 Rather than limiting him to a small circle of theintelligentsia, this helps account for his mass following. Symbols have been crucial toJavanese politics since popular concern rests more with the ruler's capacity toreconcile prevailing contradictions than with his control over ameliorative massorganizations. Confidence in the ruler then becomes a guarantee of meaning to thewhole cultural world of the general population. Otherwise, there is a chaos ofuncertainty and aimlessness in society at large. So Sukarno could proclaim thatI can grasp the entire gamut between Marxism and theism. I have mademyself the meeting place of all trends and ideologies. I have blended, andblended, and blended them until finally they became the present Sukarno. 25Among the Javanese, this capacity for synthesis at the ideological level is the key tosocial balance with the natural world. So the manipulation of symbols becomes amystical juggling of keys to cosmic harmony - according to the images presented bySoedjatmoko and Anderson, power depends on the ruler's state of mind and flowsoutward from the center just as light from a lamp. Thus symbols retain anextraordinary grip on the political life of the people. This orientation towardideological synthesis and unity as a response to social deterioration marks the majorcontrast between Javanese conceptions of power from ideas at the center and Marxistconceptions of power from organization at the base.These traditionally rooted conceptions explain a great deal about polities underGuided Democracy. Soedjatmoko has pointed to a number of tendencies whichsurfaced under Sukarno: the tendency toward paternalistic authoritarianism, theinclination to seek employment in the civil service, the preoccupation with prestigeand status rather than function and performance, the unquestioned obedience toauthority, the concentration of politics in Djakarta, and the emphasis on

evolutionary fervor rather than problem solving. 26 Geertz has argued morestrongly for a kraton perspective on the Sukarno regimewhat he created, or tried to create, was a modern version of the theater state, astate from whose pageants, myths, celebrities, and monuments the smallpeasant or peddler, the enduring Marhaen, could derive a vision of hisnation's greatness and strive to realize it ... after 1960 the doctrine that thewelfare of a country proceeds from the excellence of its capitol, the excellenceof its capitol from the brilliance of its elite, and the brilliance of its elite fromthe spirituality of its rulers reemerged with full force in Indonesia ... Sukarno,less plebian than he imagined and less radical than he sounded was thehistorical heir of the Indic tradition. 27From beginning to end, Sukarno's career lends itself to this perspective. As a boy heimmersed himself in the wajang and saw himself as a Bima, the ksatriya or warrior ofthe Pendawaswho strove incessantly to grasp the meaning of all existence ... relentlessthough he was in battling the disturbers of order from outside, he wasnevertheless ready to work out a compromise with those in his ranks whowere prepared to submit to that same order. 28From early in the nationalist movement through the end of his political career withthe fall of Guided Democracy, he saw himself as the mouthpiece of the people andmain agent of synthesis. From the Mahabharata and through the wajang, he saw thestruggle for independence and the completion of the revolution as that between thePendawas who had rights to the land and the Kaurawas who had seized it. First itwas the Indonesians against the Dutch; then the New Emerging Forces (NEFOS)versus the on Established Forces (OLDEFOS). As he saw it, his task was to lead in theendless struggle for social justice by demonstrating that at heart all things are one -so that apparent differences between forces such as Islam and Marxism are seen asmisconceptions resulting from departure from the spirit of their respective prophets.29During the struggle against the Dutch and in the first years of independence,Sukarno played a primarily symbolic-role as the “father of the nation”. It was onlywith the decline of liberal government and transition to Guided Democracy of the

late fifties that he reemerged to play a central role. With the new order, there was areturn to the more flexible constitution of 1945 and the main doctrines of Sukarno'sthought. The core of the new ideology was the Pantjasila and around it anelaboration of images drawn from traditional Javanese village structure. ThePantjasila, or “Five Principles”, include nationalism and elimination of imperialism,international humanitarianism and third world solidarity, a democracy ofmusjawarah-mufakat (deliberation and consensus), social justice (sama rasa samarata), and belief in one God. The basic ordering principle was that of gotong-rojong -mutual aid and cooperation as it was practiced in the more traditional villages. InSukarno's mind the idea of gotong-rojong extended to include the formation of atruly representative cabinet drawing on each of the major political currents ofNasakom (the acronym standing for nationalism-religion-communism). In thesekeys, Sukarno claimed to have summed up the Indonesian heritage and re-geared itfor a modern situation in which the state should take the lead by completing therevolution. 30 For Sukarno the major enemy was always Western liberalism, whetherrepresented by imperialism or liberal rule at home.The main features of the regime have been touched in the introduction - the plethoraof slogans of national unity and the series of external confrontations against theDutch and Malaysia. Most of the parties of the liberal phase faded into thebackground after the regional strife of the late fifties until the PKI, the military, andSukarno remained. Pragmatic developmental planning gave way to slogans andsymbols of unity; governmental expenditure concentrated more and more on therecreation of Djakarta as a city of monuments, modern buildings, and the AsianGames (a third world counter to the Olympics). Military authoritarianism extendedinto the village sphere and the political and ideological activities of all remainingparties was curtailed.In the villages which had served as a model for ideology, the slogans actually foundsome roots. Gotong-rojong activities remained strongest in areas farthest frommodern penetration but spread somewhat with governmental campaigns to extendvillage cooperatives and communal projects. 31 To counter the earlier emergence ofaliran politics and tensions, government agencies stressed communal identificationand tried to encourage the growth of modern coops and schools based on traditionalforms and resulting from stimulation of voluntary activities. 32 At least to someextent, slogans were interpreted in traditional fashion. In one village meeting of

Permai, an active mystical-political sect, Geertz reports that there was a mysticalinterpretation of the Pantjasila along witha micro-macrocosm correspondence theory in which the individual is seen tobe but a small replica of the state, and the state but an enlarged image of theindividual. If the state is to be ordered, then the individual must also beordered; each implies the other. 33For the law officials, there was a Sanskrit based argument that those who enforceorder must be examples of it and the relationship between government and nationalwelfare was supposed to be symbiotic. According to propaganda, “government goesto the village and arises from the village” and government directed developmentsonly by articulating latent thoughts of the masses. 34Through it all there was a considerable excess of verbiage and absence of program -and for obvious reason. In the first place, Guided Democracy represented a return tothe conviction that social order and progress are by-products of a state of mind.Perhaps more to the point, Lev has argued thatthere developed the contradiction that while Indonesian ideology oftenappears to be radical, the social reality of Indonesia - the very elite whicharticulates the radical ideology - is decidedly conservative. 35Anderson offers by far the most penetrating analysis of this split between thepolitical elite and rural masses. In his view, the new national language was seen bythe elite as an enterprise designed to master the existing crisis by providing the keyto the appropriate frame of mind. As social classes congealed after independence, thenew language bifurcated until there was a contrast between the languages of the eliteand mass equivalent to that between ngoko and krama, the lower and higher levelsof traditional Javanese. As the process developed, “the external language ofrevolutionary socialism has been taken over and given an esoteric sense, scarcelyconnected at all to its overt sense.” 36 Thus the language which had spread with thenationalist movement as a symbol of inter-ethnic unity began to mark the separationof social classes. Themes originating as serious propositions turned into tokens - herea dialectic in which the meaning of language clearly depends on the context of usagerather than the words themselves. For the elite, this meant an obvious inclination tostress external conflicts rather than internal progress which would certainly have

upset the emerging class order. Under Guided Democracy, the crystallization of anelite was a re-establishment of traditional Javanese political and social conceptions.The dialectical dimensions of Sukarno's thought should already be fairly obvious. Ihave taken Dahm's argument that the key idea for Sukarno was synthesis accordingto the Javanese tradition, that is to demonstrate the fundamental unity of all things.Then I have tried to show how the role of the state under Sukarno was to relatesymbiotically to the masses by articulating their latent wishes and translating theminto a model for action. Sukarno's image of himself as the mouthpiece of the peoplefits into this dialectical framework since it is an argument for the existence ofunconscious desires which are in some sense more real than these on the surface. Soalso with his argument that conflict between Muslims and Marxists stemmed frommisconceptions - that in each ease the followers were clinging to the ashes ratherthan relighting the flames of their mentors‘ spirits. 37 In this as in everything,Sukarno struggled to transcend differences of expression and get through to roots hewas positive were the same. His conclusion was that all could be blended andsubsumed into one fundamentally Javanese vision.His speeches were patterned on the wajang he had grown up with and he reachedinto the Indic tradition for an image of all things having meaning only in terms oftheir relation to the One. So he held that even the five elements of the Pantjasila wereindivisible and intertwined. 38 So good and evil each had a place in a world wherethey defined each other. So every thesis has its antithesis; every repression itsreaction. Thus the reconstruction of the nation could not happen without asimultaneous destruction and he could say thatA revolution ... is a great symphony, a great symphony of destructive andconstructive forces ... a great symphony between the forces which destroy,crush and turn things to dust, and the creative, constructive forces; asimultaneous action of two mighty processes. 39So also, he could not see himself apart from his roots in the masses he embodied - therelationship was symbiotic just as at all levels the parallel ordering of individual,state, and cosmos implies symbiosis. 40 At the same time, he saw that the interactionwas never static

doctrines themselves did not change ... but the knowledge of men about themwas subject to continual alteration. Therefore, new interpretations andcorrections of the old perceptions must again and again be made ... Let us notlook at the letter; let us look at the spirit, the soul of the letter. 41From this drive to discover the essential spirit of different beliefs, he developed hisown synthesis in Nasakom. In that blend he felt that Islam offered the dimension ofprofundity, Marxism that of time, and nationalism that of space. 42While he could tolerate all manner of compromise in the interest of internal unity, hewas thoroughly opposed to liberal Western thought and saw no room for it in hissynthesis. He always opposed the creation of divisive parties and abhorredindividualism and the democracy of fifty-one percent rule. 43 The Javanese hadabsorbed the whole sequence of Indian and Islamic ideas, but with the arrival of theliberal and modern West, there was no longer a chance for synthesis - it became aneither-or situation. Distaste for liberal theory was a natural consequence of bothcolonial rule and the deep-seated Javanese beliefs. The Javanese focus on unity andharmony of men with each other and the cosmos ran directly counter to liberaltheory which suggests that men are isolated and competing individuals. At the mostbasic philosophical level, the Javanese sense of unity of all being clashed with Kant 'sidea of “things in themselves”. Where Kant and Hegel diverged in the Westernphilosophical tradition, the Javanese could relate more to Hegel.For nationalists everywhere, Marxism had an immediate appeal as the mostthorough and helpful critique of the imperialism they struggled against. It offeredthe most complete image of what was going on along with a fully articulatedanalysis of the major enemies of the colonialized peoples. As Benda puts it,communism offersa meaningful closed system in which each member is once again assigned hisfirm place and duties; unfree he will be, almost certainly more rigidlyregimented than ever before, but at least he will be freed from the freedom toperish in neglected and harassed social isolation. 44Because the Marxist critique was obviously apt and clear, “it was taken overwholeheartedly by all important segments of the e1ite.” 45 Still, I think it is crucial to

stress that in Java there was an empathy far transcending the needs of the nationalistelite in its particular situation. Soedjatmoko has argued thatThe jump from the a-historical Weltanschauung of traditional agrarian society,with its chiliastic yearnings for the perfect society, to the closed and selfcontainedsystem of thought and vision of the perfect state of Marxism isapparently a smaller one than the jump to the concept of an open future andthe acceptance of the imperfect state as part of the human condition. 45The jump in question is clearly incorporated into Marxism itself. In The Origin of theFamily, Private Property, and the State, Engels connects a romanticized notion ofprimitive society with his projected image of a socialist utopia - it is a kind ofinnocence common to both ends of the dialectic and absent from the middle. 47Because of the situation, the influence of Marxism touched most of the Indonesiannationalist elite, but profoundly influenced few. There was enough empathy betweentraditional and Marxist at the theoretical level to account for considerable use ofradical jargon, but where the two differed the elite generally retained a traditionalorientation. For the Javanese portions of the elite, Marxism lent itself to synthesiswith the existing blend of Indic and Islamic conceptions but liberalism did not.Marxism entered in as part of the stock of symbolic keys - this time it was seen bySukarno as the key weapon in the struggle to defeat liberalism and capitalism, but itwas not a totally exclusive intellectual framework for him.Spearheading the effort, Sukarno has been variously cast as Vishnu, the Ratu Adil, asthe father, as Krishna. For those who wanted to carry the analogy with traditionfarther, Subandrio, Abdulgani, Mudadalam, and Aidit served as high priests. 48 Allthe rumors of Sukarno's sexual prowess may have seemed slanderous in the Westernpress, but to the Javanese this virility symbolized the vitality of the nation - Sukarnoas lingam, as the father of the nation, as Vishnu the life-giving principle. In this thereis a striking correspondence between Javanese mystical conceptions of kingship andthe psychoanalytical dialectics of Norman O Brown.For Brown the transition from primitive society to kingship is equivalent to thetransition in human sexual life from an infantile stage of “polymorphous perversity”,of general sexual pleasure, to that of genital sexuality. In the process there is adialectic of repression and the return of the repressed. Once generalized pleasure isdenied, the same energy is focused more intensely through orgasm, an orgasm which

is a release for the whole body and not simply for the genitals. For Brown, “A king isan erection of the body po1itic”. 49 The king isA part which is no longer a part; out of the body the soul. The soul arising outof the body and set over the body; the state arising out of society and then setover society ... The body, like the body politic, is a theater; everything issymbolic, everything including the sexual act ... The function of therepresentative organ is to impersonate, incarnate, incorporate in his own bodythe body politic. 50The king emerges as a collective ego whose function is to validate the whole complexof ritual and symbol which gives focus to life. Through the submission of the wholeto the part, there is a return for all in a richer nexus of symbolic expression. InBrown's tension between the life and death principles, the king epitomizes the lifeforce - for the Javanese he is Vishnu. At any rate, the analysis ties in well withSukarno's image of himself as representative, as link between man and cosmos; itsuggests another strong congruence of Javanese mystical and Western dialecticalthought.As I hope to demonstrate, the Marxist conception of the party resembles this notionof kingship and stems from the same basis in dialectical thought. At a more concretelevel, these ideas help in understanding the limits imposed on the PKI - they explainthe nature and limits of Sukarno's attraction to Marxism and establish as well whatthe general Javanese perspective on the PKI would be. For Sukarno, the PKI wasmore than a mere tool in his efforts to counter army power - it was also a majordriving force behind his efforts to complete the Indonesian revolution by establishinggeneral social justice. Even after his fall in 1966, he mentioned to Dahm that he stillstood with NasakomMasjumi and PSI obstructed the completion of our revolution. The PKI,however, was the avant-garde of the revolutionary forces. We needed her forthe implementation of social justice and a prosperous society.51From his perspective both the army and Muslims were suspect and the PKI could beuseful as demonstration of his popular support and in leading popular backing forhis radical foreign policy. 52 In the process of accommodating Sukarno, the PKI lostautonomy - Hindley argued that

Identification with and praise of Sukarno might increase the PKI's masssupport, but it might also reduce the PKI's control over their supporters. 53and McVey thatThe more the Party gained within the legal framework, the more dependent itbecame on the terms of that framework and the more in the way ofestablishing organization and influence it had to lose by resorting to violenceat any given point. 54While Sukarno protected the PKI from potential military harassment, the PKI wasforced to swallow the ideology of Guided Democracy by forgoing emphasis on classstruggle and instead working toward Nasakom and the Pantjasila. As its positionwas always precarious, there was little choice but to accept severe limits.

THE MASS LINEIdeas have no meaning apart from the conditions which have generated them andthe context to which they are applied. This argument has been made with greatclarity in Joseph Levenson's Confucian China and its Modern Fate - his point there isthat the ostensible continuity to Confucian ideology conceals an underlyingdiscontinuity through the fact that it performed very different functions duringdifferent periods of its florescence and decline. The argument has immediateimplications to study of Marxism as it has spread from west to east, the more so sinceMarxism includes a dialectical component responding to precisely this point. Foradherence to theoretical fundamentals clearly implies differences of application astheory and circumstance are woven into program in particular areas.So far, I have tried to outline the circumstances of recent Indonesian history, society,and politics and have suggested that there is a shallow but strong congruence ofJavanese mystical and Western Marxist thought. The common basis in dialecticalimages helps account for the definite place the PKI found in Indonesian politics butsuggests at the same time the severity of the ideological strictures binding the Party.The turning point of contrast between systems is the Javanese image of powerflowing outward from a center point of contact between the king and the divine.While this Javanese notion has led to heavy emphasis on symbols in politics, Marxisttheory implies that power is a consequence of mass organization based on responseto the concrete needs of the people. On the one hand the center; on the other the base.Here I will discuss the PKI's theory and practice of power by concentrating on theplace of the peasantry in Party strategy. It has been in these appeals to the peasantrythat Asian communists have departed farthest from their European mentors.The Hegelian underpinnings of Marxist dialectics centered on the assertion that thehuman condition is basically unfree since the context of human existence isestablished by forces beyond the self, beyond the individual. 1 As Marcuse puts itthe world of objects, originally the product of man's labor and knowledge,becomes independent of man and comes to be governed by uncontrolledforces and laws in which man no longer recognizes his own self. 2

History is seen as a dual process of emerging repression and self-consciousness, ofMind. According to this image, freedom is not the permission to remain subject toforces beyond the self, but the negation of apparent reality and the return to innocentself-consciousness and true harmony with the external processes of the natural order.3 Complete freedom then comes through the denial of man's alienation from himself.In trying to bring Hegel down to earth, Marx focused on the labor process as thebasic mechanism of alienation. To him, the essential contradiction of capitalisticsociety, and the ultimate source of its projected historical negation, lay in theoppression of the workers by management and machines. Oppression resulted fromthe fact that workers dedicate the whole of their being to a productive process whichthey neither controlled, owned, nor gained from. While workers earned onlyaccording to the needs of subsistence, capitalists gained from the exchange value ofthe products and thus expanded profits continuously. 4 As Marx saw it, the verythoroughness of capitalistic oppression would be the source of its demise. Theproletariat became the first historical agent having nothing to lose and everything togain through the transformation of the productive system by subordinating it to theneeds of general rather than individual welfare - it seemed to him to be the first classwhich had no selfish interests and thus its development became a measure ofprogress toward socialism. 5 The peasantry played a marginal role and necessarilyfollowed the lead of either the bourgeoisie or proletariat. 6 The marginal role of thepeasants in Europe helps explain this conclusion, but at the same time his argumentwas that there was no natural cohesion among peasants, no cohesion such as theindustrial process imposed on workers. Thus the peasantry would remain isolatedand reactionary; the workers could become organized and revolutionary.While Hegel and Marx provided an analysis, Lenin and Mao began its translationinto practice. In primarily agrarian Russia, the revolution remained an urbanphenomenon, but Lenin had a long standing concern with the development of aworker-peasant alliance. Then while Marx had felt that revolutions in backwardnations would have to progress through a bourgeois phase, Lenin argued that theycould progress directly to socialism. 8 Both Marx and Lenin believed that thepeasantry would play a greater role in backward than in advanced nations, butneither thought that role would be active.In China the focus on peasantry was some time in emerging, but the shift in focuswas pronounced when it came. Li Ta-chao, one of the founders of Chinese

communism, began to turn toward the peasantry as early as the May 4th movementof 1919. 9 After observing spontaneous peasant revolts throughout China, heconcluded that the peasants would have to play a major role in the revolution andthat they should be coordinated by the intelligentsia under the slogan of “land to thepeasants who till it”. 10 Focus on the peasantry appealed to Li's predilection toenhance the traditional in China, an inclination not as easily compatible withconcentration on the more internationally oriented workers.Mao later built on this and went far beyond Lenin by suggesting that the partywould emerge from the peasantry and through guerrilla warfare. 11 To Mao thepeasantry constituted a rural proletariat - alienated from the products of its laborthrough the excessive demands of landlords and compradores. He felt he had had ataste of his projected communist society in his years in Yenan during the 1930s. Hisstrategy was the creation of the similar bases of the revolution in rural areasthroughout China and the gradual isolation of the cities until they too had to join inthe revolution. As a guideline for action, he statedTwenty-four years of experience tell us that the right task, policy, and style ofwork invariably conform with the demands of the masses at a given time andplace and invariably strengthen our ties with the masses, and the wrong task,policy and style of work invariably disagree with the demands of the massesat a given time and place and invariably alienate us from the masses. 12From this perspective, Party power flows from its capacity to channel the perhapsunconscious drives of the masses. The key to power lay in organization which servedas a catalyst for the articulate expression of latent grievances, organizations whichwould lead to a flow of power from the mass base into political action.In Both China and Vietnam, well disciplined cellular organizations have been thebasis of contact with the masses. In Vietnam the effectiveness of rural organizingexplains the success of the communists and failure of moderate nationalists in theface of severe French repression. 13 The unglamorous business of cadre organizing inthe villages has taken a similar form in various areas. The ideal formula has been togive ideological training to experienced activists who are themselves villagers. Thenthose cadres are sent to familiarize themselves with and assimilate to a village wherethey would teach basic literacy along with raising political consciousness andestablishing networks of organizations offering concrete channels for actions leading

to socio-economic change. 14 The key to success then lies in the cadres' capacity totranslate their general ideology into terms having meaning in the village context.Ultimately, the aim is to convince peasants that they have the power to transformtheir environment if they organize and present a united front to their oppressors.Ideology and organization then emerge as fundamental principles of power.Others have concluded, and my own work confirms, that the Aidit PKI leaders werethoroughly familiar with this international communist tradition. The general level ofideological rigor far exceeded that of the 1920s and Tan Malaka. The leadershiptightly controlled access to all communist literature, but strongly encouraged thereading of the “classics” and broadened awareness through extensive cadre trainingand the establishment of a People's University in 1958. 15 Mao and Lenin were themost frequently translated, but many others were accessible. 16 Aidit and Lukman,another major leader of the PKI, spent eighteen months in China and Vietnam justbefore rising to the head of the PKI, but as youthful representatives of a recentlydevastated party they received little attention. 17 At any rate, familiarity with thosemovements does less to explain subsequent similarities than parallels between themand the centrality of the peasant question in each case. Aidit continually stressed theneed for creative rather than dogmatic application of Marxist-Leninist theory -although parallels with China and Mao are clear, the over-all PKI strategy of a unitedfront from above was independent. 18 He affirmed thatin the struggle to create a united national front, both by cooperation withvarious political parties or by cooperation with peoples of various trends andideologies, the Party must not become merged with them - the Party mustpreserve its political, ideological, and organizational independence. 19At least on the surface, the Aidit PKI was neither a mindless mimic nor careless agentof Marxist theory - rather it seemed to be a creative, independent, and responsibleParty. In the face of tight restrictions, the triumvirate of Aidit, Lukman, and Njototransformed the PKI from a shattered remnant into the best disciplined and mostpowerful of Indonesia's parties.The new leadership concluded very early that the only viable route to power lay inacquisition of massive popular support. At the same time, geo-politicalcircumstances prevented consideration of an aggressive Yenan strategy. As Hindleysummarizes it

Without the image of the PKI as patriotic, sympathetic to religion, opposed tothe use of force in the achievement of its goals, attached to democracy,moderate in demands, friendly toward the non-communist political forces,and generally responsible in the exercise of the role of non-governing party,the Party could neither win the sympathy of the broad masses of poorerpeople, nor the toleration of ruling groups toward the PKI's organizingactivities. 20At first the situation was grim - power lay with the rightists in the years immediatelyfollowing independence and there were no communists in positions of power. Theold guard of the party had been eliminated at Madiun and the party had broken intothree major fragments: a front organization at Jogja, the socialist and labor parties,and an underground which retained control over the front groups. 21 Then in 1950the youthful triumvirate began to assume the leadership they were to keep firm gripon until the coup of 1965. They began by republishing the Party theoretical journal,Bintang Merah (Red Flag), and joined the Central Committee in 1950. 22 Throughcareful organization they prepared the Party for its election victories of 1955 and1957. Those striking successes contributed to the decline of Parliamentary Democracyas Muslim and liberal groups began to fear that only the PKI would gain throughvoting. When the PKI survived precariously during the transition to GuidedDemocracy - in 1960 there was a brief ban on most of the Party publications andSukarno had to step in several times to lift army restrictions on local PKI activities. 23Basically, Aidit considered independent Indonesia both “semi- feudal” and “semicolonial”due to remnants of traditional culture and the persistence of Dutch,English, and American involvement in sectors such as oil, tin, and rubber. Inparticular, he was hostile to the concluding agreement Hatta had made at the RoundTable discussions finalizing the transfer of sovereignty - those agreements hadensured continued foreign investments and Dutch retention of Western New Guinea.Continuing colonialism was clear to him in protected foreign investments and“ownership” of about 20% of the productive land; feudalism in landlord“monopolies” and the subjugation of the peasantry to demands for land rent in kind,for corvee labor, and high interest rates. 24 His aim was to eliminate first imperialismand then feudalism. Strategically, his intention was to pursue a line of a “united frontfrom above” by “building up the progressive forces, uniting the middle of theroaders, and isolating the diehards.” 25 Settling on a long range policy from the

eginning, he felt at first that the workers would be the main driving force of therevolution. Then since there were only about half a million workers in industry andanother two million in crafts and small industry, he naturally began to shift towardfocus on the peasantry through a proposed worker-peasant alliance. By 1951 he sawthe necessity of an alliance and by 1954 he had concluded that “the agrarianrevolution is the essence of the people's democratic revolution in Indonesia.” 26In viewing its own origins, the new PKI leadership looked back on three earlierphases of communist activity: the foundation and first “white terror” of the twenties,the underground and anti-Fascist struggle from 1926-1945, and the period of thesecond terror after the World War until 1951. The earliest failure was attributed toleftist deviation and lack of theory; the Madiun disaster to the absence of a peasantbase and inexperience in the formation of a united front. 27 From these failures, theleadership concluded that success in leading the revolutionary alliance in Indonesiarequired rigorous interweaving of the universal truths of Marxist-Leninism with theconcrete conditions of the situation and the building of a united front including thepeasantry. 28 In the Aidit phase, ideological rigor and Party discipline becameconstant themes even if neither ideal became a political reality.Aidit and his fellows were well aware of the dialectical facet of their theory and theyconstantly warned against dogmatism on the one hand and empiricism on the other.They stressed repeatedly that they were not imitating or following the orders of anyforeign Party and that the conditions in Indonesia clearly made strategies such asMao's unfeasible - there was neither the geographical nor social basis for guerrillawarfare and survival necessitated the tolerance of those in power. 29 Marxism wasclearly understood as a dynamic ideology with a theoretical basis which remainedconsistent even while application depended on the context. So Aidit understoodLeninism as “simply Marxism in the era of imperialism” and called for the creative“Indonesianizing” of Marxism. 30 The concern was never merely abstract - it wasrooted in conviction that the PKI had to guide itself with truly scientific principles ofdialectical materialism. Otherwise it would never assume its proper role in makingthe revolution in the name of the masses. Aidit argued thatWe must adapt the entire party to the development of the situation so that theparty is better able to direct the development of the situation. 31

The Party presented itself as a synthesis of Marxist theory and the Indonesian classstruggle, as a Party with a program rather than merely a dogma. 32As PKI leaders looked back over their indigenous roots, they were conscious of anumber of strains conducive to their theory. They themselves saw more to empathizewith in the oldest and most deeply underlying rather than more modern traditions.Aidit stressed the communal nature of primitive Indonesian society and Njotocredited that “layer” with a dialectical frame of mind. 33 At the same time, Njotofailed to see any dialectical facets to Hinduism and instead argued that indigenousdialectics had been repressed by the later Hindu and Islamic accretions. In terms ofprogram, this revolutionary Party sought a return to traditional forms of art andculture - but purged of their feudal character and changed its progressive tools. Thewajang and folklore were to serve as tools of revolution only because they touchedthe masses and not due to any recognized philosophical empathy. 34The PKI, I think, pointed to congruence with the most deeply underlying Javaneseand island traditions only out of desire to identify with the common people at a gutlevel. Thus the appeal was more to utopian and millennial strains than to historicalphases of social organization. The traditions of Indic and Islamic history had theirrepresentatives in contemporary political interest groups; the masses of peasants didnot. So in phrasing appeals to the masses, the point was to take themes mostparticularly relevant to them, it was to step into the nebulous and polymorphousmillennial tradition. Of course at base that tradition is little more than a chaoticexpression of fundamental and therefore rather simple utopian drives. The drivesand energy are those common to all people; the form of expression simply aconsequence of social conditions.The intensity of appeal was explicitly limited by recognition that “rousing” actionswere prohibited. The point was not simply to lead a burst of millennial fervor, but toorganize and channel that energy through small but concrete actions in “everyday”work among the masses. 35 So the Party stressed research into the conditions of masslife, appeals to direct interests in winning votes, the value of education as a counterto bureaucratization, the achievement of specific Parliamentary gains, and theextension of mass based organizations of all sorts. 36At the root of PKI analysis, there was a thoroughly Marxist argument that thedevelopment of the nation toward both economic well being and democracy

equired basic structural changes at the highest level - rather than simply thedevelopment of skills or education. Aidit stressed the integral relationship ofeconomics and politicsThe objective conditions of any society are especially made clear through theproductive relationships - relationships which may support and encourage orrestrain the forces of productive development ... politics constitutes the centralfact of an economy, or, put in another way, economics is the foundation andgoal of po1itics. 37Ultimately then, solution to Indonesia's economic crisis demanded transformation ofthe productive relationships - in the rural areas the abolition of “feudal” remnantsand granting of “land to the peasants” and in the advanced sectors the expulsion offoreign interests. According to Aidit againIndonesia's semi-colonial status results in perpetual economic crisis. The onlyway out is by liquidating the semi-colonial status and replacing it by a systemof people's democracy. 38For the PKI it seemed clear that the 1945 revolution had not brought full people'sdemocracy and independence because it had not assured economic independence.That revolution had merely served the interests of the indigenous compradores, ofthe national bourgeoisie, and had not revolutionized the situations of the workers,peasants and petty bourgeoisie. Those classes thus became the main driving forces ofthe united front to terminate colonial remnants and could ally with the bourgeoisiein the struggle against foreign imperialism, but not as firmly in the accomplishmentof internal economic goals. 39 The PKI strongly opposed reliance on foreign aid andinstead leaned toward strengthening of the governmental sectors of the economy,extension of rural cooperatives, and the carrying out of a thorough land reformprogram. 40The PKI conviction that the revolution remained basically incomplete tied in wellwith Sukarno's argument - as did the related Party argument that in carryingthrough the revolution there had to be a dual process of construction anddestruction. The PKI readily conformed to many of the requirements of GuidedDemocracy and lend its support to increasingly leftist foreign policy, but at the sametime was subject to tight restrictions in ideology as well as activity. Understanding

Sukarno's role in protecting the Party and knowing his penchant for flattery, the PKIplayed up to both. The PKI gave full support, as perhaps it had to, to the ideologicaldrive of Guided Democracy: for a gotong-rojong cabinet, Nasakom, the 1945Constitution, konfrontasi (against Malaysia), the Pantjasila, and the economicprogress. 41 Simultaneously, Aidit felt that the role of the Party was to continue theleftward movement of the revolution by constantly reminding Sukarno of thebroader frame of analysis underlying PKI support of Guided Democracy. 42 Againstallegations of foreign ties, the Party affirmed that it was only pursuing the besteconomic and social interests of the collectivity; in reference to Islam it was quick topoint out its equally foreign origins. 43 The same argument held in PKI critique ofliberal theory such as Sumitro's. 44 The Party accepted the real gains which had beenmade through nationalism, but went on to assert that where the bourgeoisie fell shortin performing its historical tasks, the Party would press forward. 45 Thus the PKIaccepted the existing ideologies as one step toward its own goals, as a concrete factorin the situation. Realistic enough.At the same time, the PKI had to sacrifice emphasis on the class struggle in order toconform to the needs of a united front designed to draw on bourgeois support. As aresult, it was more feasible to focus on external confrontations than internal conflict.Unity within took precedence. In an interview in 1964, Aidit refused even to discussthe ideological disagreements of PKI and Murba styles of Marxism - out of professedunwillingness to endanger unity needlessly. Similarly, he stressed that as a scientificsocialist he understood the social functions of religion and had nothing against Islamper se - it was anathema only when used for reactionary purposes. He stronglyaffirmed the Pantjasila as a basis of order and cooperation among competing parties,parties which he felt should have been drawn together in a united front rather thanabolished. 46 although perhaps inescapable, it was this emphasis on unity ratherthan conflict which lay at the heart of the breakdown of accommodation in the lateryears of Guided Democracy. In those later years, the actions of peasants at the base ofParty organization and the strategy of the leaders at the top became irreconcilable.The leaders continued with a stress on accommodation and search for a place at thetop; the masses became concerned with immediate achievement of concrete changesin land policy at the base. The extent of Aidit's stress on internal unity is evidentthrough consistent concern with the legality of PKI activity and through the notableabsence of tension between the rural masses and compradore classes in his 1963listing of the major contradictions in the world. He did list the tension betweensocialism and imperialism, between classes in capitalistic nations, between

imperialists, and between the oppressed and imperialist nations and stated that thePKI was most concerned with the first and last of these. Ommission of class strugglewithin third world nations is the more significant since he made his speech inPeking.The PKI drive for peasant backing began in preparation for the national elections of1955. In 1954 less than half of the membership of 165,206 were peasants; by 1962about sixty percent of the membership of two million were peasants. 48 Thedifficulties of the enterprise were enormous. Although the rural economic situationwas dismal and declining through the whole period, peasants tended to valuecohesion along traditional lines and persisted in feeling that they had no power tochange their situation. Even in joining the PKI, they might think that the symbolic actof joining was more crucial than subsequent efforts. In fact, a very large portion ofthe membership had little sense of the ideology they identified with. 49 Oneadvantage for the PKI lay in general failure of other parties to appeal actively to thepeasantry. Nahdatul Ulama, for instance, was very hesitant to create secular andameliorative rural organizations Although it was the most vital Islamic party of ruralJava, it was based on the support of local kijaji who suspected any secular intrusionas a threat to their local control. 50 Masjumi failed due to its tendency toward overcentralizing- an inclination which cut it off from rural roots as soon as it began todevelop them.During the revolution, the PKI largely ignored the peasantry, but Musso had seen theneed for rural land reform. 51 Assorted articles on the peasantry began to appear inPKI publications soon after the Madiun failure. In 1951 Bintang Merah came out withan issue dedicated to the agrarian question and drawing on a number of argumentswhich were to become central when the PKI directed more serious attention to thepeasantry later on. Alimin, the only old leader of the 1920s to survive Madiun, wrotean article in Suara Tani, the paper produced by the Barison Tani Indonesia (BTI -peasant affiliate of the PKI), and drew on the tradition of Marx, Engels, Lenin, andStalin for an argument that the PKI should turn to the peasantry and rural workers.He suggested a list of demands on behalf of peasants; a committee for landredistribution; a government to meet peasant needs, a bureau to inform peasants ofmodern techniques, a guarantee of cheap loans, an increase in rural cadres andschools, improved irrigation, rural cooperatives, better seeds, raised production,improved health services, and improved efficiency. Variations of all these demandsbecame common in later PKI programs and demands. 52 In the same vein, Sakirman

argued that the nationalist revolution had completed the bourgeois phase ofIndonesia's history and that the task of the workers and peasants was to unite andlead the national united front. 53Organizing in the phase of Parliamentary Democracy focused on the drive for votingsupport rather than on concrete demands, but as the general political situationchanged with the transition to Guided Democracy, the PKI became increasinglyconcerned with the quality as well as the quantity of its backing. In the Partycongresses of 1959 there was an extensive re-evaluation of past work and attention toideological work among and through cadres was increased. The basic argument inthe 1959 meetings differed little from that Aidit made in his report to the 5thNational Congress in March of 1954. At that time he argued thatWe cannot possibly speak of a real, broad, and strong united front until thepeasants have been drawn into it because, in our country, the peasantscomprise more than 70% of the people ... Because of this, the primary task ofthe communists is to draw the peasants into the united front. This means thatin order that the peasants can be drawn in, the most immediate task of theIndonesian Communists is to eliminate the survivals of feudalism, to developthe anti-feudal agrarian revolution, to confiscate the land of the landlords andgive it free of charge to the peasants, as their own private property. The firststep to be taken in our work among the peasants is to assist them in thestruggle for their everyday needs, for the achievement of their partialdemands. In this way, it will mean organizing and educating the peasants to ahigher level of struggle. This is the foundation on which to create the allianceof workers and peasants as the basis of a powerful, united national front ...The agrarian revolution is the essence of the People's Democratic Revolutionof Indonesia. 54Although imperialism usually took top billing over feudalism as the appropriateimmediate enemy of the PKI, this argument of Aidit's summarizes the main points ofthe PKI stance toward the peasantry.Feudal remnants appeared as the major villain in the analyses of the 1957 PKIconferences as well. The agents of feudal oppression included landlord monopolies,high land rents, forced labor, and high interest rates. In effect

The continuous survival of feudalism has resulted in backwardness ofagricultural technique, poverty for the majority of the peasants, the shrinkingof the home market, and has rendered industrialization impossible. 55In particular, the foreign plantations, forestry department, and landlords wereconsidered enemies of the peasantry. Thus the Resolution of the 5th Plenum of theCentral Committee of the PKI included demands for the government to buy anddistribute privately owned land, for the surrender of fallow plantation lands, for therelease of forestry lands not critical for hydraulic purposes, and for the reduction ofrents and interests. Within the Party there was criticism of inadequate study andorganization among the peasants. 56 At the BTI national conference in the same year,there was similar criticism of cadre weakness in awareness of peasant problems anda long list of fairly specific demands geared to concrete needs of the poorer peasantsand fishermen. 57In his summary statement at the Sixth National Congress in 1959 Tentang ProgramPKI, Njoto drew on the same arguments. He mentioned that rural conditions haddeclined precipitously even in the years following independence and thatresponsibility for deterioration lay with remnants of feudal and imperial control. Hecalled for increased concentration on peasant organizing with an immediate goal of a6:4 ratio in favor of peasants paying land rents. His long range aims includedredistribution of land, lower credit rates, abolition of forced labor, and the grantingof land to squatters already on it. 58At the First National Peasants Conference of the PKI in the same year, Hutapeaoffered some criticism of previous PKI peasant organizing. He condemned thetendency toward centralization in existing peasant organizations and stressed thatlocal variations necessitated autonomy. He carefully distinguished between the formof cooperative the PKI was to work toward and the type urged by Hatta - as he saw itthe liberal version involved coercion and was little better than a private company. Hereported that in the six months prior to the conference cadres had failed miserably inthe attempted implementation of the “three togethers” - that is in living, eating, andworking with the villagers while at the same time studying Marxist-Leninism. Evenwhile pointing to these problems, Hutapea suggested that the experiences gainedthrough past efforts was a basis for more enlightened activism. 59

By this time the PKI had already carried out some research into rural conditions andcould report some concrete statistics on village class structure, According to the PKI,villages averaged five to six thousand in population. The bulk of the people werepoor peasants and landless laborers, neither having enough land for meresubsistence. Middle peasants included ten to fifteen percent of the population andhad just enough to survive on; the rich minority controlled land, interests, and trade.Two villages were offered as more or less typical examples: Tjaruy in Central Javaand Geluung in East Java. 60TjaruyGeluunglandlords .25% pop:4.3% land 2.2%: 27%rich peasants 1.5% 1%: 5%middle peasants 11% 4.1%: 13%poor peasants 43% 20%laborers 44% 62%In the same villages, peasants generally paid fully 50% of the crop and all productioncosts to owners who did not always work. When short on cash, peasants werefrequently forced to sell crops in advance at 25-50% of the harvest prices and interestrates on loans went as high as 600% for six months. 61With this image of rural class structure, the PKI felt confident that the sheer mass ofthe poorer people would lend force to the proposed alliance of workers and peasants.At the same time there were few illusions within the Party - the leaders explicitlyadmitted failure of serious work among the peasants up to that point. In his openingspeech to the conference, Njoto stated that the worker-peasant alliance had not yetbeen made and that there were not nearly enough cadres working with the vi1lagers.62 He argued that as the situation had developed it was obvious that the PKI neededactive support rather than passive voting from the rural masses.The 1959 peasant conferences of the PKI and BTI set the tone for work amongpeasants through the period of Guided Democracy. In the ear1y fifties, the Party hadgeared itself toward the electoral competitions of 1955 and 1957; with the sixties andthe termination of the Parliamentary order, the PKI moved toward more activepeasant involvement. In the earlier period the Party had sided with peasant squatterswho had occupied estate lands during the anarchy of the revolution. Governmentattempts to remove them precipitated a whole series of confrontations. After 1960 the

passage of an agrarian reform bill offered a foothold on legitimacy for local PKI-BPIcalls for land reform. The bill itself was moderate almost to the point ofmeaninglessness, but its enactment led up to the aksi sefihak, the unilateral seizure ofland in the increasingly tense years before the coups and massacres of 1965 and 1966.By December 1963, Aidit demonstrated considerably greater satisfaction with PKIwork among the peasants. In his Political Report of the 7th Central Committee of thePKI, Set Afire the Banteng Spirit! Ever Forward, No Retreat!, he claimed Partysuccess in the creation of a three million member mass Party which was at the sametime a cadre Party. He claimed an additional seven million adult peasants in the BTI,a full quarter of the peasant population based on organizations existing in 50% of thevillages. He stated that the PKI was firmly integrated with the masses, that theunited front had become invincible, and that there were so many organized that noattempt to divide the Party could succeed. 63 He argued that the peasantry was thedriving force, the basis, of the revolution and that they deserved the major portion ofParty energy. At the same time, he held to the argument Marx and Engels made inthe Peasant Question in France and Germany thatit has never happened and it will never happen in history that a peasant'srevolution can be victorious without the leadership of the working class. It hasnever happened and it will never happen that the peasant forces predominateover the workers and are thus not beneficial to the revolution. 64Strategically he took an argument from Mao that the peasants could be important tothe struggle as a source of food, soldiers, a place of retreat, and a basis for attack onthe towns. 65 With the by then standard PKI formulas, he listed the major tasks ofthe peasant movement as the carrying out of the “six goods”, the expansion andimprovement of research, the expansion of the BTI mass base and creation ofcooperatives, and the spreading of Marxist-Leninist education. The “six goods”included reduction of rents and a law on sharecropping, reduction of interest rateson loans, increase in the wages of peasant laborers, an increase in agriculturalproduction and the extermination of rats, an increase in the cultural level of peasants,and an increase in peasant political consciousness. 66 Even while optimistic aboutPKI successes, he warned against cadre ideological laxness and concluded with fiveadmonitions: to combine patriotism with proletariat internationalism, to rememberthat organization was important but ideology still more crucial, to remain flexible in

the application of principles, to become a mass and cadre Party simultaneously, andto become totally integrated with the peasantry. 67Elsewhere he elaborated to argue that the strategy of integration with the villagesaimed toward the development of a Party which would be of the village while at thesame time transforming the peasantry - a reciprocal interaction. To achieve symbiosisit was obviously necessary to study the situation so that programs begun by cadrescould respond to concrete and particular needs. The hope was that through initialinvolvement in petty actions peasant consciousness would be raised to a higher levelof struggle. The stress was on integration with, but not absorption by the village,While familiarity was essential, cadres had to guard against the prestige theirbackgrounds lent them in peasant eyes. Sacrifice had to be expected and patiencewas necessary as cadres had to tolerate gains which came only slowly and in smallsteps. 68 To counteract recognized Party ignorance of rural conditions and needs, thePKI carried out a massive research project early in 1964. Although the results came intoo late to have much effect, the concluding reports were used in cadre training.The project was carried out between February and May and covered the whole ofJava. Three thousand local cadres did the basic work and were coordinated byanother three hundred working at regional and central levels of Party organization,Each cadre spent about six weeks - the total energy involved was impressive. Themotivation was necessity rather than inclination as research served a number ofpurposes: achievement of familiarity with the largest sector of the population,enquiry into failure of agrarian reforms, experience for cadres, brochures for training,and a sense of how to integrate the Party with the people. 69 Everyone involved hadto have had at least a junior high education and some training in Marxist theory.Then in going to their respective villages they were supposed to live according to the“three togethers” - again eating, living, and working with the peasants. 70Concluding conferences were held to sum up the problem and local teams drew upconcluding reports. 71 Overall the impression is that if the efforts achieved nothingelse, a great many cadres had more extensive exposure to village life and converselythat many villagers experienced the PKI. Research and activism went hand in hand.Although some of the researchers failed to carry out the “three togethers”, theconcluding reports emphasized that they were fundamental to “scientific” researchand objectivity. In addition, the project confirmed a number of other directives tocadres: not to be absorbed into the villages, not to take a lecturing stance in teaching

the peasants, not to undermine the authority of heads of households, and not to takenotes in front of the peasants. Conversely, there were four “musts”: to hold to the“three togethers”, to be humble and well groomed and to enjoy learning from thepeasants, to know the language and local customs, and to carefully analyze theproblems of household heads in order to agree with and support them. Cadres wereenjoined to carry concern for the immediate interests of the villagers to the point of“changing the diapers of the peasants' children.” 72One accomplishment of the project was the identification of seven “village devils”,the major enemies of peasants: landlords, money-lenders, tax farmers, middlemen,bureaucratic capitalists, authorities, and bandits. 73 Then there was confirmation thatrural landlords were the most serious oppressor. In his report on the research in westJava, Kaum Tani Mengganjang Setan2 Desa, that landlords were the key to thecountryside, that they controlled it in a very real sense. 74 He found that frequentlylandlords were also hadjis who used religious rationalizations in defending theirwealth. Then, the PKI argument was that there may not have been vast scalelandlord monopolies, but that the land was rich enough to make small holdinglucrative and that it was the small scale of landlord holding which accounted forparticular viciousness. 75 At the same time, the researchers pointed out that apparentsmall scale in holdings was belied by the common practice of placing land underrelatives names to evade redistribution.The problems of village economics were blamed on this economic oppression ofpoorer peasants and the only solution according to the PKI lay in peasant revolutionand land redistribution. While research indicated that peasants were far too tolerantof their oppressors, Aidit still saw considerable prospect for an agrarian basedmovement. As poor peasants were the main productive force, he felt they hadconsiderable power and could ally with others opposing the status quo, like thesquatters on government lands. 76 Growing discontent was aided by deterioration oftraditional culture under the impact of urban sprawls and rampant inflation. Aiditpointed out that customs such as the selametan and figures such as the dalang werelosing their grip - people took them less and less seriously. 77 Then in the rural areas,the PKI had inherited the spirit of the 1945 revolution and could draw on traditionalfolklore for propaganda. 78Nowhere in this analysis is there any reference to the santri-abangan split as such;instead the PKI reports were consistently phrased in class terms. While there was

some tendency for class and religious schisms to coincide, the parallel was by nomeans complete. Geertz has reported that entrepreneurial types in towns tended tobe santris but Jay offers a contrary image of smaller villages tending to he exclusivelyone or the other, across all class lines. 79 In his description of one rural election,Geertz makes it clear that the main lines of cleavage and format for conflict wereboth religious and traditional rather than according to class and economics. Localrivalries turned on contrasts between santri and abangan within the town andbetween town and country - class conflict entered in only inasmuch as it coincidedwith the cultural schism. In terms of format, the predominate conceptions wereJavanese ideas of musjawarah-mufakat, gotong-rojong, and rukun; and thatcampaigning was carried out through a series of selametans, not soap-box speeches.Although Geertz argues elsewhere that Javanese village institutions are coterminouswith national institutions, from the village perspective the election competition wascast in traditional terms. 80Of course none of this is a refutation of the relevance of PKI class analysis to ruralsocial structure. The fact that the peasants understood their difficulties in religiousterms has been an objective reality of rural Java, but that has little to do with theactual nature of economic difficulties. The task for Marxist cadres is not changed bythe fact that the point of reference for villagers has been religion rather than class, itis merely made more difficult. Then the point is not to get santri and abangan at eachother's throats but to demonstrate to every poor peasant that his real enemies havebeen the landlords and money- lenders. With this in mind, PKI emphasis on classstruggle remains comprehensible.A further obstacle to PKI organizing lay in peasant passivity. Most people in anysociety are only marginally political, and if political only marginally ideological -even more so in Java. The Javanese peasantry have had a strong tendency to agreereadily with directives from above, traditional etiquette of perintah alus requiredthat, but then to go on doing whatever seemed appropriate. Writing about localchapters of the Sarekat Islam, Oates mentions that “the Sundanese peasant had theability to compartmentalize ... to profess its aims without ever being concerned withtheir implementation.” 81 In attempting to reach this base, the PKI relied heavily onalready familiar forms. So PKI organized talks around Jogjakarta prior to the 1955elections went hand in hand with ketoprak performances and the Party held festivalsalong with its rallies. Mass meeting were designed to remind people that they didnot stand alone, but were balanced by house-to-house visiting to remind people of

the practical side or programs. Selosoemardjan concluded in his study of the areaaround Jogja thataside from the leaders of the party, it is doubtful whether the mass followingunderstands the essence of a political ideology ... In talking to the villagepeople the impression is strengthened that they join a political party forreasons other than its ideology. 82Of the various parties, Selosoemardjan suggested that the PKI gained the most fromthe residue of revolutionary spirit and from social changes connected to moderneducation.Postrevolutionary youth is more apt to stand on its rights than to sacrificethem for the sake of social harmony. Semangat berdjuang or fighting spirit hasbecome the most respected trait in the character of the youth sinceindependence. 83Fighting during the revolution had concentrated in ethnic Javanese areas - anotherfactor bending toward alliance between the Javanese and the PKI.With these problems in politicizing the rural Javanese population, Party disciplineand ideological rigor became natural centers of concern. There was a remarkableunity to the PKI through the whole Aidit period - as the Party expanded, Aidit'spersonal base naturally gained since new members entered under conditions hecontrolled. 84 With greater success and power came a tendency toward laxness,cadres closer to power lost militancy. While Aidit clearly wanted a massive unitedfront, the drive toward quantity led to problems of quality. Mao succinctly posed thedilemmaIf unity is sought through struggle, it will live;If unity is sought through yielding, it will perish. 85Within the PKI the consequence was steadily increasing concern over self-satisfactionand ideological laxness. So Aidit stressed that ideology was more critical thanorganization and numerous speeches criticized cadre laxness, the tendencies either tosink to the level of the peasants or to take advantage of prestigious positions tobecome landowners. The leadership emphasized cadre humility and confessed that

only a very few really understood the essentials of Marxism. 86 The true test of Partystrategy came with confrontations over land reform between 1960 and 1965.Discipline is always most critical in periods of struggle.The land tenure patterns have varied greatly in Java - ranging from areas of strongcommunal ownership to those of individual ownership. Tenancy and share-croppinghave varied similarly. At base the system has been one of private ownership withcommunal controls. Within villages, social standing has depended directly onrelation to the land: original settlers became nuclear villagers who owned both landand houses, a second group might own either land or a house but not both, othersowned neither and remained tenants. Ownership rotated in some areas and wentalong with extensive communal gotong-rojong projects. Villagers supported their kinwho might lack land and believed that as many as possible should cooperate incultivating crops. The result was what Geertz has termed “shared poverty”, landbecame divided into smaller and smaller plots supporting more and more people. 87The deterioration of traditional patterns came with Dutch introduction of improvedhealth measures and the subsequent boom in population during the nineteenthcentury. Individuation spread; while in 1882 1.7 of 3.7 million hectares wereindividually owned, in 1932 the ratio was 5.4 to 6.6. 88 Reserve land and the limits ofJavanese involution were used up by the 1930s. 89 Professor Brand of Leidenestimated that in the period between 1963 and 1965 there were about 15 millionpeasants on Java and Madura. Of those, 4.8 million were independent familyworkers, 6.9 million were independent farmers, .2 were employed labor, 3.1 werelandless farmers. 90 A University of Indonesia survey recently estimated that 10million out of the rural population of 27 million Javanese could be consideredsurplus labor. 91 The main problem has been population pressure rather thanunequal distribution.At the same time, van der Kroef argued that the social conditions of rural Javaconformed fairly closely to PKI analysis. He points out that around World War I 72%of Javanese landowners held only 36% of the land while 1% Owned 7.6%. 92 Theclass breakdown he provides and the statistics he gives for several villages bothsupport PKI images. 93 He also mentions that “The Muslim kijaji in the villagesociety ... was often most representative of the developing Indonesian landownerand landlord class.” 94 Rural indebtedness spread rapidly after 1900 with thepenetration of the money economy, increases in taxes, and the pressures of

population. Some studies showed concentrations of up to 50% of the land underabsentee ownership. 95Resulting disjunction naturally lent itself to PKI agitation as van der Kroef argued in1960 thatThe Communist Party is then the only organization in Indonesia today whichadvocates a forceful solution to the problem of agrarian overpopulation; andits success in winning adherents in the countryside by this program canhardly be questioned. Given the continuing political instability in the countryand its sluggish economic development, Java's land tenure problem may wellbecome the tinderbox for a kind of conflagration ... 96On the one hand, he stressed that the PKI offered the most viable channel towardupward mobility for the younger generation of rural landless peasants and that theBTI was seen by the peasantry as a useful tool against landlords. 97 On the other, heargued that PKI appeals to the peasantry were its main strengths. 98 In this there wasclearly a symbiosis through which the PKI linked peasantry and politics. Thequestion of Party competence and peasant ideological intensity is separate - and hereit becomes clear that Aidit's stress on ideology was appropriate. For theorganizational connection was an essential step but not a conclusion. While the Partyleadership stressed restraint and responsibility through small and successful actions,they had tapped a source of rural energy without disciplining it to strategies plannedat the top.Land reform is a predictable step in modernization of agrarian societies. As IsmailAjami has argued in his dissertation on land reform, as social changes occur with thepenetration of a money economy, different social sectors respond with different ratesof change. The consequence is a build-up of social tension, of strains as laggingsectors fail to balance with more advanced developments. He suggested thattraditional systems of land tenure resist change and that the general result isimpoverishment of the peasants and concentration of ownership until some catalysttouches off drastic change. In the cases he dealt with, changes in land tenure fromabove came too late to resolve tensions and in effect accelerated the process. 99 Theconclusion works here.

The main effect of Indonesia's Basic Agrarian Act of 1960 was to raise ruralexpectations rather than resolve tensions. The law was designed to complete thetransition from colonial to national agrarian structure and was not geared todevelopmental needs. Underlying it, there was an assumption that the State shouldnot own land and it was stipulated that exchanges of land ownership should remainsubject to communal approval - it was more of an attempt to step back to adat thanforward to cooperatives. Selosoemardjan reported that the basic principles were thatagrarian land should belong to the tiller, that primary rights belonged exclusively toIndonesians, that absentee ownership was allowed only for those in state service, andthat economically weak farmers should be protected. 100 The law stipulated aminimum of 2 hectares per nuclear family and a maximum for Java and Bali of either5 hectares of sawah (irrigated fields) or 6 of ladang (dry fields). In fact the averageholding per nuclear family has been closer to 0.5 hectare and it is immediatelyobvious why the reform brought no real change. 101Even if the reform had been rigorously carried out, only 4% of West Java'sagricultural land would have been subject to redistribution and the situation was nobetter through the rest of Java. 102 Then in fact very little was done to ensurecompliance with the law since enactment depended entirely on local administrativeinitiative. Pauker concluded thatWhat emerges clearly is that either because of the opposition of vestedinterests, or due to bureaucratic ineptitude, or for lack of available land forredistribution land reform had only a very minor impact by 1964. 103In fact all three of those factors worked together. Once the law existed, however, thePKI picked up on it as a theme which could draw more militant peasant support. Thelaw offered a rare chance to criticize the administration on its own terms andthrough that to evade accusations of betrayal. Although the law meant very little initself, it had a profound impact on the situation. As a Marxist Party the PKI wasultimately committed to communal rather than individual ownership, but it couldsupport this law as a step in the fight against feudal survivals. The BTI offeredqualified approval along with considerable criticism when the law first appeared, butcomplete implementation of the law became a regular theme in the BTI journalPembangunan Desa.

Through the early sixties, agrarian unrest crystallized around the question of landtenure and tended to polarize the peasantry according to the prevailing santriabanganschism. As I suggested earlier, the fact that tension broke along religiouslines does not explain its development. While the form struggle took might havebeen a consequence of pre-existing social forms, the sources of strain were certainlyeconomic. Explanation and description are separate analytical processes. Javanesenewspapers of the early sixties were filled with mutual recriminations and reports ofrural clashes. In some areas government troops clashed with squatters on estatelands, in others local BTI units met with organized Muslim resistance to unilateralseizures. From press reports it would seem that the main lines of conflict werereligious.In November 1961 there was an incident at the Djengkol estate near Kediri. In theend a demonstration of 3000 peasants confronted local military and police units - sixwere killed and eighteen wounded. 105 According to the conservative Djawa Pos, thepeasants were armed with knives and had been organized and taken to the estate bya “certain group”, obviously the BTI. From this point of view, the government hadmerely been following through with its plan to consolidate several scattered estateswhich had been occupied by squatters. The Djawa Pos stressed that the peasants hadbeen informed well in advance, that they had been granted five or six hundredrupiahs apiece, that they had been moved to other estate lands where they weregranted legal rights, and that 525 peasants had been peacefully moved until the RBIstepped in. In addition, the police had given warning and fired into the air beforeshooting the demonstrators. 106At the trial of the BTI cadre Muljodarmo, who was accused of precipitating theincident, other factors appeared. In his defense he argued that the peasants had hadno objection to the planned move, but that they had become angry when officials hadmoved in and plowed their fields under just before harvest. At the same trial, theestates official testified that the squatters had been there since just after the SecondWorld War: the land had belonged first to the Dutch, then the Japanese, and finallyto the Indonesian government. Due to lack of funds it had remained undevelopedand the squatters had been granted permission to remain. Then in 1954 the governorof East Java reaffirmed their right. In 1957, however, the estates service had decidedto consolidate it with several other estates and in 1961 they had tried to resettle thesquatters. The assistant regent of Kediri stated that the farmers had replanted thetractored land and were trying to do it again when the military blocked them. 107

Trompet Masjarakat, the main Surabaja PKI newspaper, further reported that ninehad been killed and twenty-five wounded - rather than the six and eighteen reportedby Djawa Pos. 108 Muljodarmo was initially sentenced to nineteen monthsimprisonment for provoking peasants to illegal action, but the sentence was raised tothree years in his attempted appeal. 109 The East Javanese military commandtemporarily suspended the major PKI and BTI publications for their reporting of theincident. 110 Although only minor factual disagreements come through in thereporting, the differences of perspective between newspapers is obvious - there wasclearly a substantial split in the way events appeared to conservative and radicalobservers. They did not experience the same reality in the same way.Similar confrontation occurred between squatters and forestry officials. In October1964 a mob of 2000 peasants armed with knives and axes attacked seven stateforestry policemen in Indramaju, West Java. 111 Conflicts spread elsewhere as localBTI units would organize crowds of peasants to petition landlords and village lurahs(heads) in order to carry out land reform. Then the PKI and BTI urged peasants tounilaterally withhold crop payments in excess of the law that had been passed toguarantee a 6:4 ratio in favor of cultivators. 112 Landlord and lurah terrorizing of thepeasants increased - several incidents were reported of landowners using urbangangs to intimidate peasants presenting petitions. 113 The hirelings had beaten uplocal BTI and PKI leaders in Sumput and at Djombang the BTI leader was stoned andknifed. 114 At Petjinen village the BTI led a delegation of twenty-nine peasants witha petition to the lurah demanding that landlords sign agreements to the crop-sharinglaws. The lurah ignored them saying that “there are no forms for such agreements”and that “the village secretary is busy”. 115 At Djember the local BTI demandedsevere penalty for a landlord who had killed a BTI leader who was on the LandReform Committee. 116 The Probolinggo BTI complained of rental laws for sugarland - the peasants were forced to rent their land out at Rp20,000 per ha when theycould have been making Rp90,000 by planting themselves. 117Scattered gains came through the BTI as well. The BTI at Djember reported thatpeasants in nearby villages had won a case - poor peasants had handed over 187quintals of rice for Rp72,000 while the rich peasants they gave it to received thatmuch from the government for only 72 quintals. The poor won their case and onlyhad to hand over 72 quintals. In Mumbulsari 116 tobacco mowers had been forced tosell at Rp4,000 per quintal during the planting season and the buyers had sold it atRp20,000 after the harvest. Pressed by the peasants, the company surrendered

another Rp6,000 per quintal. 118 Also, BTI organized peasants had unilaterally takenover a large number of British estates in East Java. 119Local army and Muslim groups responded to the aksi sefihak with warnings that thePKI should work through the legal framework of Land Reform Committees ratherthan taking the law into their own hands. 120 Nahdatul Ulama and PKI mobilizedcrowds were organized to counter BTI-PKI protests. At one court hearing into thebeating of a BTI cadre by a lurah the PKI masses showed up at the first hearing and acrowd of 5000 PNI-NU supporters of the lurah confronted them at the next one.Police confiscated the signs the PKI group had brought. 121 Muslim groups spreadreports, or lies depending on the perspective, to the effect that the PKI had issuedanti-Muslim statements. 122 At Banjuwangi 500 Muslim youths went to their lurah toprotest a dalang's “slur” against Islam - in the process yelling for the “crushing ofatheists”. 123Obor Revolusi reported that a PKI-BTI mass had stepped on the Koran and entered amosque with dirty feet to harass a respected NU scholar. 124 Obor Revolusi held thatresponsibility for growing tensions rested with the BTI supported aksi sefihak, butthat communist attacks on Islam were even more serious than the seizure of land. 125Their argument was that the peasant movement resulted from cadre intimidation ofthe peasants. 126In response to Obor Revolusi reporting, communist papers denied the sacrilege.They said that there had been rumors that the PKI planned to destroy the mosque,but that they had been provocations and that the PKI had sent a delegation to the subdistrict chief denying the reports. A delegation of Muslims arrived at the same timeto confirm the rumor. The sub district chief had then stationed a security team at themosque and a large crowd of Muslims with knives had assembled. An NU mannamed Salim had tried to tell the crowd that the rumor was false, but they hadaccused him of trying to cover it up.While waiting for the supposed communist attack, the Muslims had performed knifedemonstrations and attracted a large crowd since it was lebaran, the major Muslimholiday. When two men, Muljono and Ridwan, happened to walk by and stop to askwhat was going on, several of the Muslims pointed out Ridwan as a PKI veteran. Thewhole crowd then chased the two, but they managed to get away and the mob endedup venting its energy through the destruction of property. While Obor Revolusi

eported the incident as the Kanigoro affair after the name of the mosque; DjalanRakjat Triweekly reported it as the Tanggul incident after the place where thedestruction occurred. 127 Whatever the facts of the incident, it got considerable pressand seriously strained PKI-NU relations in Djakarta. 128 Obor accused the PKI ofstirring up troubles by calling others counter-revolutionary and supporting aksisefihak; Trompet blamed tension in East Java on ex-Masjumi elements (trying toavoid blaming NU by instead pointing to an already discredited group). 129Whatever the facts of the case, Muslim group consistently argued that communistreligious transgressions were the major source of strain.As far as the motivations of Muslim crowds are concerned, there is little doubt butthat the Muslim papers were correct - even if for no other reason than that the papersthemselves harped on the theme incessantly. In fact, the PKI said little about religionexcept to stress that it had nothing against Islam per se and only objected to it as atool of vested interests. PKI papers were restrained in criticisms and always carefulto aim barbs at organizations rather than Islam itself. At the same time, they pointedto the legality of everything they were fighting for and argued that it was in the spiritof Nasakom, Manipol, gotong-rotong, and the rest. In May 1965 there was a clashbetween the BTI and the students at the Islamic school of Gontor - several werewounded and sixteen BTI houses were burned down by students claiming to defendland assigned for religious purposes. 130 This is a fine example of the universalpattern through which landowners attempt to evade laws by “donating” their landto religions institutions. At least to some extent, it is clear that vested interests reliedon religious appeals in marshalling mass defense of the status quo. What realhostility the communists felt for Muslims is better explained by consistent Muslimresistance to reforms which benefitted the masses than as an outgrowth of theoreticalrepudiation of religion.As tension spread, local BTI units were the most vociferous in pushing for unilateralactions. Higher Party officials mouthed approval, but tried to cool the situation downby stressing the need for discipline and restraint. By early 1965 they could see thedanger of polarization and tried to shift the emphasis of Party activity away fromland reform. There are some, but only a few, references to serious tension within thePKI. Obor Revolusi mentions that the aksi sefihak represented only one group andnot the united front. 131 Then in the Balinese Suara Indonesia there is a reference tothe trial of Prio Maslur at Rembang in Central Java. He had been taken to court as amember of the illegal “PKI-Malam”, a group dedicated to the violent correction of

internal deviations in the PKI. 132 In 1953 Kamaluddin, Secretary of the EastJavanese PKI, expressed serious concern at the extent of rural disorder and suggestedthat even though the mass political consciousness was advanced, caution wasnecessary due to the number of gangs and troublemakers. 133 In late 1964 Njotomade a speaking tour of East Java and urged negotiations rather than armed conflictin the solution of the land question. 134In his Political Report to the Fourth Plenum of the Central Committee of the PKI inMay of 1965, Aidit had much to say about the aksi sefihak. He stated that much ofthe existing tension had been needlessly generated because cadres had not beensatisfied with small actions. Aidit repeated his past directive to minimize targets andstress discipline. He argued that cadres had to follow the main outline of Partystrategy, implying strongly that they had not been, and that they should not foolthemselves by following their subjective desires for quick victory. 135 He consideredunrest a test of the revolution and a sharpening of contradictions. In trying to counterpolarization, he focused on the continuing need to expand the rural base of the Partyand the necessity for the PKI of defending the interests of all of the people ratherthan just of a few groups. 136 The leadership continued to lean toward legitimateactivities with a strategy of accommodation to Djakarta politics; the masses bentincreasingly toward immediate accomplishment of concrete goals.Through 1965 the military and Muslims became more restive. The Sukarno-PKImove toward Peking in foreign policy threatened to cut the army off from Sovietarms and seemed as though it might lead to arms for the masses instead. 137 Therewere rumors early in the year that Sukarno's health was failing and that he wasworking toward PKI assumption of power at his death. 138 The Muslims hated thePKI and doubted Sukarno and were thus willing to cement an alliance with the army.139 The coup itself brought all these fears and tensions to a head. With the coup itbecame obvious that the PKI had completely lost the initiative - army control camequickly as everyone scrambled to ally themselves with a new center of politicalsecurity. 140 In the killings that followed, Muslim youth groups were the main agentof killing. 141 The Party leadership never recovered from the first events of the coup.A small group attempted to begin guerrilla warfare in the area around MountMerapi in Central Java, but the PKI had not prepared for armed struggle and theattempt was negligible. 142

Out of this third “white terror”, fragments of the PKI began evaluating the sources offailure. The Marxist-Leninist group most sympathetic to the fallen leadershippublished an evaluation in the East German Horizent in 1969. This moderate Marxistgroup found fault with Maoist “adventurist” tactics which had isolated the Party andstressed that the time for armed struggle was only after very thorough organizing.The task for a new Party was to function first through the legal framework in orderto convince the masses that previous failure had been the responsibility of just a fewleaders rather than of Marxism. The strategy outlined differed little from thatpursued by Aidit - the implication to them was that the 1965 coup was anunfortunate accident which might he avoided through more careful organizing inanother attempt. 143A Trotskyite pamphlet of 1966 included several arguments. Joseph Hansen blamedthe defeat on Peking and Moscow for having allied with Sukarno and the Indonesianbourgeoisie - thus blocking the formation of a truly revolutionary Party. 144 ErnestMandel argued that the initiative had been taken by the army and that the failure ofthe Party stemmed from its attempt to take over gradually through formation of aunited front. 145 Mandel agreed with the Statement of the United Secretariat of the4th International in March of 1966 - there the Party was chastised for accepting theidea of revolution through stages, for granting leadership to Sukarno, and for failingto respond to the army coup. 146 Sudarsono, a refugee from the PKI, criticized itsleadership for having believed that socialism could have come peacefully. 147By far the most thorough critique came from the Maoist group. Their self-criticism ofthe Aidit leadership appeared in the Albanian Indonesian Tribune in 1967. In thiscriticism, “Hold High the Banners of the Three Magic Weapons of the Revolution”,the Polit Bureau of a new Central Committee of a new PKI cited rightist deviation ofthe Aidit leadership as the main source of weakness. According to them, Aidit wasdoomed from the Beginning for trying to make Marxism the possession of the wholenation rather than just the proletariat. He denied the class struggle and tried tosuppress it in his efforts to control the aksi sefihak. The PKI had committed itself toParliamentary struggle and was never really serious in its efforts to reach the masses- “In practice, the work in the countryside was made to serve the work in the townsand cities.” 148 The Party had discouraged actions against the “village devils” andinstead had supported a bourgeois state. Even the worker based seizure of foreignestates had ultimately benefitted only the bourgeoisie since the nation was notsocialist. 149 The new group criticized the old leadership for promoting a “civil

service” atmosphere and for denying class struggle through conformity to theslogans of Guided Democracy. 150 As Rex Mortimer has put it, the critiques“perceive the 1965 debacle as the culmination of a long period of degeneration in theranks of the PKI.” 151In his evaluation of the coup and its circumstances, Wertheim is somewhat moretolerant of the Aidit leadership. He argued that the source of conflict prior to thecoup was the growing class struggle represented by the aksi sefihak. According tohimthe poor peasantry had become restive and could no longer be prevented fromvoicing claims which did not fit within the Marhaenist ideology and theNasakom political pattern ... The PKI evidently did not sufficiently realize thatin starting these campaigns against larger landowners, they were abandoningSukarno's diluted socialism and adopting a clean-out class-struggle position. Itwas inevitable that in doing so they would irrevocably alienate the Muslimpartner in the Nasakom coalition, the Nahdatul Ulama which, in Central andEast Java mainly represented the well-to-do landowner class. 152Perhaps the dilemma for the PKI in the early sixties was that described by FranzFanon in his writing on radical revolutions of the third world. As he saw it, “There isno contamination of the rural movement by the urban movement; each developsaccording to its own dialectic”. 153 More specifically, he argued that natural tensiondevelops between urban leaders and rural followers of parties. Peasants rediscoverpoliticsno longer as a way of lulling people to sleep nor as a means of mystification,but as the only method of intensifying the struggle and of preparing thepeople to undertake the governing of their country clearly and lucidly. Theleaders of the rebellion come to see that even very large scale peasant risingsneed to be controlled and directed into certain channels. These leaders are ledto renounce the movement in so far as it can he termed a peasant revolt, andto transform it into a revolutionary war ... They discover that the success ofthe struggle presupposes clear objectives, a definite methodology, and aboveall the need for the masses of the people to realize that their unorganizedefforts can only be a temporary dynamic. 154

The test for PKI strategy came with confrontations over land reform between 1960and 1965. My argument is that this issue and the social conditions associated with itwere responsible for the breakdown of accommodation between the PKI and otherpolitical forces, mainly the military and Muslims. For while the leadership of theParty continued to pursue a line of adjustment with the hope that it could then winpower from the top, the rural masses who had been activated by the PKI were notsufficiently politicized, not disciplined to leadership strategy. The consequence wasdirect peasant efforts to seize land, efforts directed at best by local cadres and not inresponse to strategies of the leadership.For the PKI the results were disastrous. In the first place the conflicts tended to fall inline with the existing religious schism rather than class struggle - the peasants at thebase lacked a proper class consciousness. At the same time, the spreading conflictsdoomed leadership hopes of winning power at the center since they precipitated arepressive response from military and Muslim leaders. There was an unnecessarypolarization which the leadership had not prepared for. There was a separationwithin the Party between left-wing adventurism at the base and right-wing deviationof the elite. Contrary to Mao's dictum, division came through struggle at the baseand weakness through yielding at the top. The Party elite concentrated on unity andthe projection of an image of power and responsibility; mass action injected thequestion of class struggle.

ALL THINGS ARE ONESo far I have tried to establish several major points. In the first place, I have arguedthat there is an ideological congruence between Javanese mystical and WesternMarxist thought. Then that the limits of that congruence help explain the nature ofthe accommodation reached between Sukarno's Guided Democracy and Aidit's PKI.From the Marxist perspective, the PKI identification with the contemporaryembodiment of the Javanese mystical tradition amounted to rightist deviation - thealliance demanded abdication of the class struggle. Then at the same time, there wasa split within the Party. While the leadership focused on a drive toward power at thecenter, the rural masses had been activated but not directed by the Party. The massestook to leftist adventuristic tactics through unilateral actions, in the process recallingthe Javanese millennial tradition. In this final section I will try to relate these specificconclusions to a more general framework of dialectical thought. At this point I can besuggestive, but by no means exhaustive. I will not try to map the floor of an ocean Ihave just stepped into, but I do not have to be too daring to report that the waters arewarm and delicious.I began by presenting a sketch of the situation of independent Indonesia and bytrying to establish the basic limits of the PKI's context. In doing so my argument wasthat it is essential to relate political, social, and economic structures if explanationrather than description is the object. So the political tensions of Indonesia only makesense when related to the underlying socio-economic structures. Conversely,economic development and modernization depend on political as well as technicalfactors. The point is that to genuinely grapple with the problems of any situationrequires analysis of interrelations at the most general level. Any method whichsuggests focus on isolated factors is in effect taking the rest of the situation as anassumed constant - it is doomed from the start. Of course if the object of effort isdescription it is perfectly legitimate and necessary to isolate phenomena. In fact,however, that is to strip them of their real meaning since everything exists onlythrough its relation to its context. So for example, to study Indonesian economicgrowth and begin by taking the geographical limits of Indonesia as the basic unit ofanalysis is to admit defeat by confining analysis to ameliorative efforts. Indonesia'seconomy is merely one segment of an international economy - to deal only with thatsegment is to take its international connections for granted and implicitly to assumethat those international connections are not the source of difficulties. That isridiculous.

In outlining the fundamental cleavages within Indonesia, I dealt first with thecontrast between the Outer Islands and Java. Through most of the fifties that conflictdominated national politics. In the early stages of Parliamentary Democracy theOuter Island interests had predominated - the Outer Islanders tended to be thosemost closely tied to modern sectors of the economy and modernistic Islam. Thus atthe same time they were the portion of the population most congenial to Westerninterests and practices. Regional tension came to a head in the late fifties and resultedin the temporary elimination of Outer Island and Masjumi interests.In the phase of Guided Democracy which followed, Sukarno attempted to reinstatetraditional Javanese conceptions and create internal unity through concentration onexternal enemies. Within Java, the primary social tension has been that between morepurely Javanese and more thoroughly Islamic groups, the abangan and the santri.That religious schism accounts for the initial successes of the PKI as it began toreorganize after the disaster at Madiun. Later the PEI began to transcend the schismand gain adherents through more strictly class appeals, but the schism accounts forthe initial successes which enabled it to become one of the central actors underGuided Democracy.At the grass-roots of the Party there was an alliance of pre-capitalistic villagecommunalism with modern communism; at the top there was an accommodationbetween Javanese mystical and modern dialectical thought. Sukarno and his fellownationalists could empathize with Marxism not only because it offered an especiallysensible analysis of their immediate situation, but also because the structure ofMarxist thought resembles that of the Indic and Javanese tradition which was stillalive for them. On the other hand, the congruence between systems was limited tocommon basis in dialectical awareness and did not extend to include Marxistconceptions of class struggle. While the conclusion for Javanese has been in strivingtoward unity, the Marxist emphasis has been on conflict. In each case there is asimilar sense of the inter-relatedness of being and an unwillingness to take existingsocial relations as a final and acceptable reality, but the resulting directions of actiondiffer.For the Javanese there has been an essentially mystical conviction that the aim ofexistence lies in achievement of a selamet state of mind. For the Marxist there is thecontrary conviction that individuals should strive to change the social, political, and

economic circumstances for everyone. According to the Javanese notions of kingshipand power, general social justice follows from the ruler's mystical touch with thecosmos. According to the Marxists, social Justice and freedom depend on the Party'scapacity to organize and channel energy from the productive masses into politics. Inthe Javanese view, social harmony naturally flows from symbolic insight into theway things are naturally ordered. To the Marxist that harmony only followscomprehension of social reality and the releasing of implicit but real desires of themasses. To the Javanese symbols are the keys to order through understanding. To theMarxist organization is the key to expression of mass energy, to freedom.In relating the two images, it might help to visualize a recycling fountain of water.Both the mystical and the Marxist senses of the unity and interrelatedness of thingssuggest the image as a model for the flow of energy, of power. In turning to action,the Marxist looks to the lower portion of the cycle and argues that continuationdepends on upward flow of water; the mystic looks to the upper portion and arguesthat flow depends on outward movement from the concentration of power at thespout. There is something of this in the relation between the systems of thought. Tothe Javanese, the king creates order through his mystical power to serve as a nodeconnecting the two dimensions of cosmic and social order. To the Marxist, the Partymust embody the objective and scientific ideology of dialectical materialism in orderto perform the same function. Neither king nor Party is considered an agent ofanything but universal forces. In each case one dimension is that of Truth and Unity,the other that of social order.In Indonesia the Aidit PKI acted according to patterns which match Javanesemystical at least as well as Western Marxist conceptions. To the leadership the massorganization was important more for its symbolic than for its concrete functions.There was an organization expressing mass discontent, but that expression was lessimportant than the fact that massive scale created a popular belief that the PKI wasthe established locus of genuine power and responsibility. So within the Party scalewas central and quality of politicization and tightness of organization weresecondary.All this in line with Anderson's comment that “In the Javanese game of politics beingknown to 'have power' is the surest way to acquiring more of it.” 1 He goes on tospeculate that perhaps

the strategy of the PKI in the period 1963-1965 of trying to create a sense of anirresistible tide flowing in their direction, a snow-balling accumulation ofadherents, was a partly conscious harnessing of traditional ideas about theflow of power from a decaying to a rising center. 2Further, Anderson mentions that PKI success came to some extent through thesuccess with which its “initiation” procedures paralleled induction into traditionalpesantren. Then the nature of the knowledge offered bore a resemblance to thatoffered through traditional education in mystical schools - in each case the insightachieved was seen as both ultimate and comprehensive as an explanatoryframework. 3 Overall, Anderson concluded that Sukarno and the PKI were the maincreative Javanisers of Indonesian politics and that the consequence was aninternalization rather than resolution of social tensions. 4From the Javanese perspective, the PKI found much of its appeal in authoritarianconceptions of the Party and its ideology, conceptions more in line with Javanesetradition than Western notions of liberal democracy. From the Marxist perspective,the Party ended by taking a rightist and subjective deviation - appeals were based onexisting popular under- standings rather than on underlying concrete needs. Bydoing this, the PKI essentially accepted the existing subjective reality and throughthat played the game of politics according to existing terms - rather than attemptingseriously to change the format of action for everyone. Through its accommodation tothe Sukarno regime, the PKI followed a strategy designed to accumulate power at thecenter rather than to build support from a disciplined base.At the base of PKI organization there was an appeal to the pervasive Javanesemillennial tradition. Soedjatmoko has commented thatMillenarian movements of this kind, because of their total rejection of thepresent, are not reformist, but essentially revo1utionary ... In fact the PKImade very effective use of many so-called “mystical societies” and of theirchiliastic expectations to recruit its own members and maintain theirrevolutionary fervor. 5So in fact the PKI found some of its firmest supporters among the most mysticallyinclined of the Javanese peasants. This more traditional group was the sectorsuffering most through the decline of ancient rural institutions precisely because it

was the group most thoroughly immersed in and committed to those institutions.Others had already been shaken loose from their roots and had begun to adjust tochanging social realities - those who had clung most firmly to tradition suffered mostextremely at its loss. At the same time, the Javanese tradition had much more incommon with Marxism than did the later Islamic and Western accretions.Evidence of empathy is clear in the appearance of mystical-Marxist sects followingthe purges of 1966. The Suharto government spent a good deal of energy trying toclear rural Java of vestiges of the PKI - in doing so it eliminated a number of quasireligiousand millennial groups which seemed to have PKI-Sukarno sympathies. InMarch 1967 the government killed 80 people at the village of Nginggil in East Javaand publicized it as the squashing of a PKI comeback. The movement had congealedaround Mbah Suro, a man claiming to have mastered all the serious arts of theclassical seer: he began as a lurah (village head), became a dukun (spirit healer), thena dalang (wajang puppeteer), in short he seemed a fully fledged orang sakti (holyman) and commanded considerable respect. He took four wives from villages at thevarious directions of the compass and he collected a powerful assortment of pusaka(magical objects). As his popularity and following grew, he began to become thefocus of a millennial sect and he prophesied arrival of the Ratu Adil, the messiah orJust Prince. He predicted an apocalyptic bloodbath directed against those responsiblefor the killings of 1966 and identified the army as the raksasas, the daemons of thewajang.His wajang performances had both mystical and political content and his followersreceived military as well as mystical training. The initials for the magical regaliawhich were supposed to make his followers invulnerable were IKP, the reverse of thePKI. His closest associate was a former PKI man named Suradi and he was the headof the guard. Apparently many of those who gathered around Mbah Suro wererefugees from the PKI who had turned to this mystical sect in the period of masskillings. So it was after the fall of Sukarno and the PKI that Mbah Suro becameimportant. Groups of his followers were seen publicly in Surabaja and governmentofficials became convinced that the movement was in fact a clandestine PKI cell.The immediate provocation leading to government military action was thecirculation of a millennial chain letter predicting the imminence of a huge battle andsubsequent establishment of a period of perfect social order and justice. 6 Howeverimportant or trivial the connection between Mbah Suro and the PKI, it is clear

enough that the public accepted equation between mystical and Marxist ideas andthat in fact some of the same people were attracted to both variants of protest. Foryears Mbah Suro had practiced his magic and mysticism without particular notice,but in the wake of massive social upheaval and the elimination of Sukarno and thePKI as points of reference for those who could not accept the status quo, millennialsentiment blossomed. All of this lends credence to the common suggestion that thePKI had reached a mass base under Guided Democracy, but had only a superficialhold on it.At the upper levels the nature and limits of the PKI's relation to Guided Democracyare best understood through the old Javanese ideas of politics; at the base of the PKIthe relation between the Party and its peasant supporters becomes clear only througha sense of the social conditions and millennial traditions of rural Java. At each levelthe nature of the relationship helps explain the ultimate failure of the alliancesreached. Van der Kroef and Pauker have argued that the PKI had seized the initiativeduring Guided Democracy, that it controlled the situation more than any other forceand had taken over the major symbols of nationalism. Van der Kroef argued that theideological interchange between the PKI and Guided Democracy was reciprocal inthatthe party also seeks to transform these symbols, sometimes quite subtly, interms of its own ideological and tactical objectives; it “radicalizes” theapproved state ideology, pressing it with its interpretations, into the directionswhich it wishes the nation to travel. 7Along with Pauker, he predicted that the PKI might have dominated Indonesiathrough acclamation, through general acceptance that the PKI was the only viablepower and ought to be recognized as such. 8Somewhat more perceptively, Pluvier and Anderson have taken the reverse image ofthe same interaction. Pluvier argued thatBy supporting Sukarno's policy of stepped-up nationalism the PKI has in factbecome the prisoner of the very factors which, as a communist party, it shouldfight. 9

Making a similar point much more subtly, Anderson argued that the Indonesiannational languagesymbolizes and expresses the conquest of modernism via a new languagewhich at the same time is becoming anchored in a traditional conception ofthe world, and a deep-rooted vision of the nature of being. 10Then as far as PKI terminology was concerned thatthe traditional Marxist formulas of class struggle were subtly transformed intoa style of propaganda where there was essentially one Rakjat with all itsdeserving components, not so much arrayed against an adversary class asagainst small clusters of “foreign” elements, who by their reactionary orcompradore character endangered the wholeness and the unity of the nation.11As I see it, the PKI was led into deviation, and here I have to agree with Pluvier andAnderson, through the extreme constraints of the political situation on the one handand the feasibility” of alliance with Sukarno and his abangan supporters on theother. The Party had to accept the limits of the national ideology or sacrifice legalexistence for an armed struggle it would have been in no shape to wage.For Sukarno everything was one and all points of view could come together. Hisframework remained Javanese even if he might have resisted the comparison inwhich Lubis concludes that “Marxist-Leninist dialectics pale besides theMahabharata and the mythico-mystical teachings of dukuns and gurus.” Or asMitchell puts it, Sukarnowanted to have the conflicts that it had brought to his Java resolved in the wayJava had resolved such conflicts in the past by the communists becomingJavanized, so that Marx and Lenin could settle down peaceably alongsideMohammed, Bhatara Kala and old Semar. 13In evaluating Sukarno's career, Dahm suggested that this pervasive commitment tounity was the reason for his ultimate fall. Sukarno did not reject his original ideas but“he refused to depart from them after their value had come into question.”14 ToDahm it seemed that submission of all groups to a single order could only strangle

progress. That conclusion might apply equally to the PKI in its abdication of the classstruggle. In his speeches at his trial following the coup, Sudisman made heavy-use ofthe Javanese word “manunggal” (to become one), but at the same time he concludedthat the Party had compromised too far with bourgeois and liberal tendencies,and had insufficiently emphasized the class struggle. 15Other indications confirm that the PKI had softened considerably during the earlysixties. As the leaders of the Party began to assume roles in government as well, theymoved into more impressive houses and in general began to show signs of personalwealth. In writing about the ludruk theater in Surabaja, Peacock noted the soft andbourgeois trend within the PKI and confirmed that it had become much too passive apartner in the Nasakom coalition. 16In a very crucial sense, the conceptions underlying Guided Democracy were basedon a social order which had already been too far undermined to revive. Muslimgroups and Outer Islanders generally could not understand or empathize withSukarno on his own terms. They had both become tied to economic and social formsrelated in concrete interest and general world view to the West. The bulk of thestudent population in universities throughout the islands were not from abanganareas of Java - to them Sukarno's rhetoric appeared as nothing more than shallowduplicity. 17 Never having been a part of the traditional order which had still hadsome grip on the revolutionary generation of 1945, the generation of 1966 could haveno part of Sukarno's mystical synthesis. Then the military could concur withemphasis on national unity, but not to the point of accepting the PKI.In short, both Sukarno and the PKI functioned in terms of ideas having little meaningfor powerful sections of the nation they spoke to. Times had changed and theideology had become something of an anachronism - at least in the form throughwhich it was presented by Sukarno and the PKI. They had acted in terms of symbolicand cosmological senses of power which were losing their grip on the masses. Evenwhen those conceptions touched individuals, the sentiments of unity did little toresolve the basic economic and political dilemmas of the nation. Viewingdevelopments from the perspective of the Javanese and Marxist losers, it is obviousthat neither was properly in touch with the cosmos, that neither truly embodied thehistorical moment (to use Hegel). A recent Czech lesson is appropriate - the pen ismightier than the sword, but tanks are another matter.

In a curious sense, judgments of either Marxist parties or Javanese rulers are harsherthan evaluation liberal Westerners might direct at themselves. As far as Marxists orJavanese are concerned, a post hoc ergo propter hoc logic is appropriate. Just as withany form of magic, failure indicates nothing about method except that it wasincorrectly applied. Theory is inviolable and only application is subject to judgment.Thus for Marxists any failure prompts reinterpretation which from the Westernperspective seems merely crude rewriting of history. Similarly, the fall of a Javaneseruler would indicate to his subjects that he had already lost touch with themacrocosmos. Method is never subject to doubt because it is rooted in a realityexplicitly transcending the actions or expressions of any individual - the ultimate. AsMarcuse puts itTheory accompanies the practice at every moment, analyzing the changingsituation and formulating its concepts accordingly. The concrete conditionsfor realizing the truth may vary, but the truth remains the same and theoryremains its ultimate guardian. Theory will preserve the truth even ifrevolutionary practice deviates from its proper path. Practice follows thetruth, not vice versa. 18In judging individual actions, the moral intentions and efforts of the agent becomeirrelevant - only his function is subject to evaluation. Merleau-Ponty has made thepoint quite forcefullyman is simply the reflection of his surroundings; the great man is the onewhose ideas reflect most exactly the objective conditions of action ... politicalacts are to he judged not only according to their meaning for the moral agent,but also according to the sense they acquire in the historical context anddialectical phase in which such acts originate.19From here, I will focus on dialectical awareness as a mode of transcendentconsciousness common to Marxists and mystics generally and this essay inparticular.The central point to be made is that dialectics begin with a sense of unity andinterrelationship, the particular is only comprehended in terms of its relation to thewhole. Understanding then follows realization that apparently separate or

contradictory things are actually simply different forms or aspects of the same thing.The point is to work with frames of mind which suggest relationships in variouspatterns - not to begin with the mind as a vacuum and gradually build knowledge byconcentrating first on one empirically verifiable “fact”, then differentiating it fromothers most like it through development of typologies, and finally to erect a pyramidof knowledge by taking each fact as a 'brick' and building from there. That is to erecta temple to Baal, it is the plague, it is to create graven images and then worship them.It is to profoundly confuse symbols and metaphors for the reality they merelyexpress and never embody. It is a literalism which in sociological jargon is“reification” of abstractions. Escape from the blinders of everyday awareness hasbeen an increasingly common focus of thought in contemporary America - theconsequence has been spreading interest in writers such as Marcuse, Brown, andWatts and subjects such as Marxism, mysticism, and Zen. In his Zen and the Birds ofAppetite, Thomas Merton concludes thatThe point is that facts are not just plain facts. There is a dimension where thebottom drops out of the world of factuality and of the ordinary. Westernindustrial culture is in the curious position of having simultaneously reachedthe climax of an entire totalitarian rationality of organization and of completeabsurdity and self-contradiction. Existentialists and a few others have noticedthe absurdity. But the majority persist in seeing only the rational machineryagainst which no protest avails ... 20Response to the extremity of repression and alienation, that is to the depth ofconfusion between the apparent and the really real is what Marcuse terms “negative”thought. In this sense, negation is not a nihilistic denial, but a transcendence leadingtoward higher affirmation.To Marcuse, dialectical thinking is positive since it leads to a notion of universalswhich makes the particular comprehensible. 21 To Norman O Brown dialectics occuras the activity of consciousness struggling to “circumvent the limitations imposed bythe formal-logical law of contradictions.” In his view dialectical thought is commonto psychoanalysis, mysticism, poetry, the philosophy of organism, Feuerbach, andMarx - "a miscellaneous assemblage; but, as Heraclitus said, the unseen harmony isstronger than the seen.” 22 For Brown "dialectics rather than dualism is themetaphysic of hope rather than despair.” 23 For Hegel “the truth is the whole. The

whole, however, is merely the essential nature reaching its completeness through theprocess of its own development" and “Being is continuous becoming.” 24Critical thought is negative in Marcuse's sense because “Dialectical thought startswith the experience that the world is unfree; that is to say, man and nature exist inconditions of alienation, exist as 'other than they are'.” 25 Then freedom and truthcome only when man can break through his “reified world”. 26 At the some timethere is a dual process through which increasing separation between consciousnessand the true self leads to intensified awareness. In Hegel's termsabstraction from reality, which the formation of the notion requires, makes thenotion not poorer but richer than reality, because it leads from the facts totheir essential content. 27And for Brown it appears that “Our deepest knowledge of ourselves is attained onlyon condition of the highest abstraction.” 28 The history of man then is seen as thedual growth of alienation and emergence of mind. Resolution of the tension createdby the split comes through comprehension of the distance between the particular andthe universal - not through collection of infinite particulars. In Hegel's framework theparticular individual appears asincomplete mind, a concrete shape in whose existence, taken as a whole, onedeterminate characteristic predominates, while the others are found only inblurred outline.” 29Then perfect freedom requires “that the subject comprehend all objects, so that theirindependent objectivity is overcome.” 30 The free individual is the one whounderstands, who experiences, the depths of his unfreedom and sees that he is only afocus or node within a total unity of being.At base, the dialectical notion of negation is fairly simple. Money, for example, is realonly in a very particular sense. It is not something having intrinsic value, rather itbecomes “real” because human beings choose to act as though it has value, in otherwords it is a symbol. Brown has argued that

Measured by rational utility and real human needs, there is absolutely nodifference between the gold and silver of modern economy and the shells ordogs‘ teeth of archaic economy. 31To negate money is to realize precisely the sense in which it is a symbol rather thansomething transcendentally real. Yet the tendency steaming from our situation is toassume that money is an inalterable fact of existence. The tendency is to forget that itis merely our creation and take it for granted that we have to function throughmoney in order to exist. Once the reality of the symbol has been accepted, once thesymbol has been reified, then it begins to control consciousness rather than theconverse. The symbol is confused with the reality it refers to, the human beingsresponsible for the symbol to begin with are repressed by it. All symbols functionthis way.Negation is the realization of the unreality of the form; but then affirmation comes inacceptance of the object's reality at a different level - as an expression but notembodiment of the really real. So money is real as a symbol, but not as somethingultimate in any sense. The dialectical traditions of negative and mystical thoughthold that a similar argument bears on all existence. It becomes clear that the ego, forinstance, is no more real or permanent than a symbol. The self is not separate in thesense that we all like to think it is. From this vantage point, freedom is not thepermission to remain in idiosyncratic and isolated delusion, but awareness of unityand the irrelevance of the individual ego.In Marxist theory, dialectical materialism suggests analysis of society and historythrough focus on three basic structural levels: the techno-productive, the social, andthe ideological. Change and process then result from contradictions between levelswhich create imbalance and tension. The point is that in reality there is never aperfect functional balance since changes in one level are not met with automatic andreflexive response at other levels - there is an inertia to structures. Hegel commentedon the resistance to change at the ideological level.The first instinctive reaction on the part of knowing, when offered somethingthat was unfamiliar, is usually to resist it. It seeks by that means to savefreedom and native insight, to secure its own inherent authority. 32

According to Marx, changes at the productive level have the most significance sincesubsistence is the major problem of life. In this sense the social and ideological levelsare epiphenomenal, but he never implied that in any given situation a total analysiscan rest on economics. That is a gross reductionism and inversion which obscures theMarxist contention that it is precisely the lack of reflexive functional response whichaccounts for the nature of change. It is always the interaction of all structures whichdetermines the course of events.Still, different structures perform different functions. Mao, using “cause” where I use“structure”, distinguishes between external causes which are the condition of changeand internal causes which are its basis. SoIn a suitable temperature, an egg changes into a chicken, but no temperaturecan change a stone into a chicken, because each has a different basis. 33At the same time, structures are abstractions and really exist only in the mind - sowarns Lévi-Strauss. 34 They are heuristic devices or tools designed to increaseunderstanding of patterns of events, but exist only in continuous change andinteraction and at most establish a set of probabilities. 35 Pursuit of this image resultsin a critical paradox. On the one hand there is the suggestion that structures arecomprehended only in transformations, on the other the demand for cleardelineation of structural parameters in order to clarify the stresses of interaction. Thevery act of description implies static exposition contrary to the search for flux andchange. The point is that any reduction of reality to words or patterns is a perversionor parody - grasp of structure and process occurs only in the mind. Genuine insightthen comes through understanding of drives underlying forms rather than withgrasp of structural contours. Thus there is a double edge to the sword of analysis andescape from alienation comes through construction of transparent tools of thought,tools which really come to grips with themselves rather than merely with some“objective” reality “out there”.The implication is that normal academic notions of objectivity and neutrality areillusions. To a large extent the roots of contemporary established social thoughtfollow patterns set in the natural sciences. Mystique has it that insight increases withextrication of the self from personal emotive involvement with the object of study.The ideal is clear separation between subjective “distortions” and “objective”conditions. In effect this is to argue that valid insights reflect mastery of surface

forms without a sense of the underlying forces those forms respond to. TheodoreRoszak has commented on this in his analysis of the “counter culture” in the UnitedStatesWhatever the scientific method may or may not be, people think they arebehaving scientifically whenever they create an In-Here within themselveswhich undertakes to know without an investment of the person in the act ofknowing ... Under its auspices we subordinate nature to our command onlyby estranging ourselves from more and more of what we experience. 35The attempt is diametrically opposed to the notion that there is a unity to existenceand that meaning comes through relationship between forms. Hegel recognized thecontradiction and foreshadowed Heisenberg's uncertainty principleFor if knowledge is the instrument by which to get possession of absoluteReality, the suggestion immediately occurs that the application of aninstrument to anything does not leave it as it is for itself, but rather entails inthe process and has in view, a molding and alteration of it. 37Hegel's view is not common to an academic community which holds that seriousunderstanding of things like Marxism and mysticism is hampered rather thanenhanced when those become serious emotive possibilities for the researcher.In fact I think it should be clear that genuine understanding presupposes awarenessof the sense in which those who are studied are precisely the same as those who dothe studying. Without that awareness there is a lack of touch with the commonhuman element, there is no sense in the researcher that those he is studying arehumans like himself and dealing with essentially the same dilemmas in a differentform and context. If that touch is missing, then it is beyond any doubt that theintervening structures are not understood, if the dichotomy between object andsubject remains then understanding is a perversion.Still, this is not to abdicate critical capacities. Those who study something fromoutside begin from a very different vantage point and cannot help but emerge withdifferent conclusions. The point is only that it is essential to begin with theassumption that those who are being studied are engaged in the same struggle asthose who are doing the studying. So again the point is to begin from an awareness

of unity rather than dichotomization. The task of scholarship is to explore andilluminate the nature of relationships between things rather than to build typologiesby describing things and defining differences. That task of scholarship is to exploreand illuminate the nature of relationship between things rather than to buildtypologies by describing things and defining differences. That task of description isan integral part of awareness of unity, but comprehension of dynamics and vision ofthe universal truths which all scholarship claims as a goal requires orientationtoward unity.One clear implication of all this is that the accepted academic separation betweenhistory and social science, between diachrony and synchrony, is both misleading andfalse. The thrust of dialectical imagination is toward simultaneous vision of structureand process. In stark contrast, a vast line of historians and social scientists have beencultivating world views without structure and order on the one hand and withouttime on the other. This must be one of the more blatant instances of reification ofdichotomies through institutionalization in academic structure. Students are taughtto believe that by choosing a discipline they are defining what they will study, notthat they will be working at the same problems from a different vantage point. This“division of labor” suggests separability of the problems spoken to.Of course none of this is to deny that excellent insights have been achieved, if it is a“negation” of the traditions it is meant as a dialectical negation which subsumes anddoes not deny past accomplishments. Rather this is to try to pinpoint a structuraltendency of the existing academic arrangement and suggest that the inclinationstemming from current situations is to view things as separate problems while in factthat separation denies the stated aims of each discipline and leads to falsecommitment to academic disciplines rather than to Truth.So in this essay I have been far more concerned with the extension of my frame ofmind, with the growth of my own real awareness, than with explicitly “academic”accomplishments. I am much less concerned with evaluation of some of the very finework which has been done on modern Indonesia than with trying to place the bestinsights of that tradition in a more holistic framework. My theoretical interest lies atthe most general level and I have tried to stick to that level in writing. The aim hasbeen to articulate a framework challenging past insights in terms of approach morethan by arguing the facts of development. As I see it, more strictly scholarly gainswill follow from this kind of commitment than from dedication to the existing corpus

of academic work by fleshing out underdeveloped areas of primary research andthrough careful modification of accepted approaches to insight.Rigorous pursuit of insight naturally results in borrowing from whatever is of value,but the commitment should never be to the existing structure itself - that would be aclear contradiction. If I offer an approach to understanding here, it is because I havefound it enlightening in my own grappling with the basic conundrums of socialtheory - the point of organized expression is that it serves both to extend my own lineof thought and to communicate those images to others. The judgment must bestrictly pragmatic: does a particular image work to clarify. In this case it is quite clearto me that dialectical thought clarifies the nature of process in history and change insocial structure - that is more than enough to justify effort and the remainingquestion is that of effectiveness of communication.In fact, the human situation is very much out of joint; we act not so much accordingto the Real as in terms of distorted images of it. The distortion comes throughconsistent confusion between the images and the reality they refer to. So the religionsof the world originated as efforts to translate visions of unity and harmony intosocial reality. Then they degenerated into confusion as the followers have takenliterally the messages which began as poetry. We act through images of the Realwhich grow from experience of conditions which no longer remain. Because man is asocial animal, his images of order and devices for survival depend on symbols whichbecome perversion: of the thoughts they represent. The very tools which give usdepth of feeling and complexity of experience act at the same time to create distancesbetween the self and the universal. Our creations turn back to recreate us as parodiesof the Spirit. Consciousness is captive of past experience of the individual and society- it is not tuned to its immediate situation.In times of trouble, social structures crumble and normally adequate symbolicstructures lose their coherence. People are jarred from their moorings in everydayawareness and discover the chaos and void lying beyond familiar cosmologies. Itbecomes the apocalypse as the world as it was known is lost. As experiential distancebetween the self and others grows, mind continues expanding to discover thingsother than itself. At the moment of greatest isolation there is also the most potentialfor intensity in reunion. Sanity and brilliance, touch with the natural order, thencome through greatest awareness of the unreality of precisely the structures through

which it is manifest. It is the capacity to translate total insanity into language, thecreative act of giving meaningful order to symbols.In the United States the established reality is becoming intolerable to an increasingnumber of people. It is a millennial era in which our entire conception of cosmicorder is suspect - at least it offers little direction and less comfort. Current conditionshave been paralleled in microcosm where innumerable and isolated primitive worldshave shattered after Western intrusion. New conditions are more extreme due to thetotality of organization and extent of interdependence in industrialized society. Butas Norman O Brown puts itPerhaps the time is now ripe when the mystic can break the glass throughwhich he sees all things darkly and the rationalist can break the glass throughwhich he sees all things clearly, and both together can enter the kingdom ... 38In Indonesia the deterioration of social order resulted in extreme tensions, theflorescence of millennial and Marxist movements, and ultimately the killing ofmasses. In America there is a similar deterioration of order and meaning. As always,the demand of the time is for transcendence, for vision which can break the barrierbetween the insanity of accepted reason and the incomprehensibility of mysticism. Itthere is a revolution to be made, it must be the revolution in which progress inhistory and the fulfillment of individual self-consciousness are united.NOTESUNITY IN DIVERSITY1. Donald Hindley, "Political Power and the October l965 Coup in Indonesia", TheJournal of Asian Studies, V XXVI N 2. Here he suggests the need for a re-evaluationof the PKI in the aftermath of the killings. Earlier articles by Hindley, McVey, andFeith provide fine analyses of the PKI prior to the coup. The thrust of their argumentwas that the PKI was becoming Indonesian faster than Indonesia was becomingcommunist. See Donald Hindley, "President Sukarno and the Communists: thePolitics of Domestication", American Political Science Review, V 56 N 4. Ruth McVey," Indonesian Communism and the Transition to Guided Democracy" in Doak Barnetted. Communist Strategies in Asia, New York and London, 1963. Herbert Feith,"Dynamics of Guided Democracy", in Ruth McVey ed. Indonesia, New Haven, 1967.

In the years before the coup the PKI had developed a mass organization includingwell over two million party members in 1962 - with an additional 12.5 million inauxiliary organizations. See Donald Hindley, The Communist Party of Indonesia,Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1931, p vii.2. The Sarekat Islam was a mass organization springing up in the second decade ofthe century. It was the first mass movement of Indonesian nationalism and declinedin the early 1920s following a 1922 split within the party when the radical Semarangbranch, along with perhaps one third of the local branches, left the party to create thePKI. see Robert Jay Religion and Politics in Rural Central Java, SEAP, YaleUniversity, New Haven, 1963 p 17.3. Herbert Feith, The Indonesian Elections of 1955, CMIP, Cornell University, Ithaca,NY 1957. p 84. Support for the PKI came mainly from the abangan population of Eastand Central Java although it had spread beyond that base by the 1960's.4. Herbert Feith, "Dynamics of Guided Democracy", p 324.5. Jan Pluvier, Confrontations, Kuala Lumpur, 1965, p 28.6. The Darul Islam guerrillas were religious extremists whobegan agitating during the revolutionary struggle of thelate 1940's and were in favor of establishing a theocraticMuslim state. The movement was led mainly by rural religiousteachers and picked up steam during the late 1950's aftera lull early in the decade. Centers of activity were inWest Java and Northern Sulawesi.7. John Legge, Indonesia, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1965, p 144.8. Clifford Geertz, Agricultural Involution, Berkeley and LosAnge1es, 1966. This is by far the most useful summary ofdevelopments in the two ecosystems and the imbalanceof Western impact on the archipelago.9. Clifford Geertz, "The Integrative Revolution", in C. Geertz ed.Old Societies and New States, New York and London, 1963

and John Legge, Indonesia, p 3.10. On the "Great Debate" see Claire Holt, Art inIndonesia, Ithaca, 1967. Her chapter coveringthe modern arts deals with the way tension has beenfocused on and magnified through the lenses of art. Thedilemma of the intellectual is finely stated in SutanSjahrir Out of Exile, New York, 1949.11. Maurice Godelier, "System, Structure, and Contradiction inCapital, in The Socialist Register 1967, New York 1967. On page 92 he refers to Marxand Levi-Strauss’s similar attitude to underlying structures.12. This is the same argument Godelier makes on page 105 - that it is the total systemwhich should "be subject to analysissince the course of events is a matter of interrelations rather than individual will".Ellu1's argument is from Jacques Ellul The Technological Society, New York, 1964, p391; quoted in Theodore Roszak, The Making of a Counter Culture, New York, 1969,p 231.13. Soedjatmoko, "Indonesia: Problems and Opportunities",Australian Outlook, v 21 N 3, p 274.14. Herbert Feith, The Indonesian Elections of 1955, CMIP, Cornell University,Ithaca, NY 1957 gives an overview and summary of the results and the social roots ofvarious parties.15. Soedjatmoko, “Indonesia, Problems and Opportunities", Australian Outlook, V21N3, page 268-9 for a summary of the various parties. Daniel Lev, The Transition toGuided Democracy, CMIP, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 1966 p 9 comments thatPKI success came from appeals to a peasantry largely ignored by the other parties.16. Feith, "Dynamics", p 318 and Lev, Transition...., p 717. Feith, "Dynamics", p 323

18. Hans Schmitt, "Post Colonial Politics: A Suggested Interpretation of theIndonesian Experience", The AustralianJournal of Politics and History V IX N 2. Feith has responded to criticism of his stanceby David Levine in "History and Social Structure in the Study of ContemporaryIndonesia", Indonesia, N 7. Feith's response came in a paper presented to theConference of the Australian Political Studies Association in Sydney on August 28,1969. "The Study of Indonesian: Politics: A Survey and an Apologia". While it is a finesummary of the real progress made in the field, it is not a sustative response to thecritical issues raised by work such as Schmitt's and comments such as Levine's.19. Geertz, Involution, p 48.20. Ibid. pp 48, 80, 142. The Dutch wanted to keep the buying power of the Javanesepeasantry down to prevent possible British and later Japanese interests fromdeveloping. Both of those powers stood to gain from any increase of market forcheap industrial goods and the Dutch did not. Accordingto DH Berger in Structural Changes in Javanese Society: theVillage Sphere. CMIP, Ithaca, NY 1957, pp 1. The Dutch governorGeneral Bosch, in the early nineteenth century, wanted theJavanese to remain peasants with a subsistence orientationrather than to have them become "coolies".21. Geertz, Involution, p 56. 60% of the coffee crop was grownby almost entirely Outer Island and indigenous smallholderswhile 95% of the sugar crop was grown by almostexclusively Dutch owned corporate plantations on Java.22. Ibid. p 123.23. Schmitt, "Post Colonial Politics", p 181 and support fromWilhelm Wertheim, Indonesian Society in Transition, Bandung1956, p 279. also Harry Benda,"Decolonization in Indonesia", The AmericanHistorical Review. V LXX N 4, p l073 and HarryBenda and John Bastin, A History of Modern Southeast AsiaEnglewood Cliffs, New Jersey 1968, p 157. Benda argues that decolonisation impliedthat the "Indonesian river is flowing more and more in an Indonesian bed" but thatindependence did not imply a decline of Western influence.

24. Schmitt, "Post Colonial Politics", p 132. This view ignoresthe possible interpretation that the nationalist movement should be seen asessentially the rise to power of one social sector, the one which in fact was gainingthrough its foreign connections and through inaction. He confuses nationalism withthe general welfare at this point, but it is a rare exception in a perceptive essay.25. Ibid. p 177 and p 180.26. Both of the sentences here draw from Benjamin Higgins,Indonesia: the Crisis of the Millstones, Princeton, London, Toronto, New York, 1963,pp 10 and 74.27. Douglas Paauw, "From Colonial to Guided Economy", in Ruth McVey ed.Indonesia, New Haven, 1967, p 166.28. Ibid. p 174 and p 180.29. Schmitt, "Post Colonial Politics“ and Levine, "History andSocial Structure" in contrast to Higgins, Indonesia, p 8and Paauw, "From Colonial to Guided. Economy", p 156.30. Geertz, Involution, pp 146-7.31. Feith, "Dynamics...", p 322.32. John Legge, Indonesia , pp 158-161.33. Feith "Dynamics...", 11 325. Lev, "Political Role of the Armyin Indonesia," Pacific Affairs V XXXVI N 4 P 353. Feith argues on page 337 thatSukarno had legitimacy and the armydid not, but that he still needed the PKI mass base for leverage against the army.34. Lev, Transition..., p 5 and Lev, "Political Role...", p 349.35. Lev, Transition..., p 191 and Ruth McVey, "Communism and Transition...", p 177.

36. Legge, Indonesia, p 143. The divisions into regional sectionsremained until 1956.37. Pluvier, Confrontations, pp 51-54. He comments that after therebellions had been crushed the central command and centralgovernment treated the rebel leaders very leniently - indicating an empathy militaryleaders did not feel with leftist or religious recalcitrants.38. McVey, "Communism and Transition", pp 159 and p 164 mentions that the PKIsupported this effort of the army although it did not offer concrete assistance.39. Ibid. p 167. She cites the army's heightened sense of efficiency following thesuppression of the various rebellions.40. Lev, "Political Role", pp 362-3 and Toenggoel Siagian's Operasi Karya,unpublished MA thesis, Cornell University, 1966.41. McVey, "Communism and Transition", p 168.42. Feith, "Dynamics", p 332.43. George Kahin, Nationalism and Revolution in Indonesia, Ithaca. 1952, pp 476-8.He states that "the preponderant majority (of the Republican 1eadership)...werededicated to political principles and practices which were roughly the same as thoseaspired to in the Western democracies". It makeslittle difference whether you use Harry Benda's term"semi-Westernized intelligentsia” or Franz Fanon's label"national bourgeoisie" from The Wretched of the Earth, NewYork, 1968.44. Clifford Geertz, "The Integrative Revolution", I wouldquarrel with him only in that he focuses too narrowly onthe cultural dimensions of diversity rather than placingheavier weight on institutional structures transmittingthose forms.45. Kahin Nationalism and Revolution, pp 478-80. My attention

was drawn by Feith's article cited above on "The Study ofIndonesian Politics". Geertz says much the same in his essay on the "Javanese Kijajithe Changing Role of a Cultural Broker" Comparative Studies in Society and HistoryV II, p 228. He argues that the connections beween the two traditions were extremelybrittle and that "One of the most serious problems facing‘ the post-revolutionaryIndonesian political elite has turned out to be the maintenance of mutualunderstanding between themselves and the mass of the peasant population".46. Eric Wolf, Peasants, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1966 andRobert Redfield, The Primitive World and its Transformations,Ithaca, NY 1953. The terms “Great" and "Lesser" traditions were coined by Redfieldand have found a good deal of popularity among social historians like Benda andKartodirdjo. The framework suggests an approach to peasantries throughanalysis of the structural links connecting them to thecivilised and centralised tradition they relate to. Benda uses this approach in hisessay on "The Structure of Southeast Asian History", Journal of Southeast AsianHistory V 3 N 1. My view of the PKI would place it into the train of earlierdevelopments as he describes them. Wolf suggests that the essence of "peasantry" liesin the tenuous balance between subsistence needs and thedemands of a greater tradition (p13). Further, he suggests that it is the essence ofmodernity and revolution to transform the function of the peasantry until theybecome producers for an expanding market economy (p12). He says that "revolutionsaim, ultimately at the subjugation and transformation of peasantry into a new kind ofsocial grouping" (p 109).47. Eric Hobsbawm, Primitive Rebels, New York, 1959, p 24.Wilhelm Wertheim in Indonesian Society in Transition, Bandung, 1956, p 269 arguesthat Indonesian movements were mysticallyand reactionarily inclined - fitting the thesis for this case. Harry Benda has argued inhis essay on "Peasant movements in colonial Southeast Asia" Asia Studies, V III N 3thatagrarian movements are distinct from modern nationalism.In one sense I would agree with him, but I think it is moreimportant to emphasize that the social drives underlying the variants of protest areessentially the same.

48. Hildred Geertz, "Indonesian Cultures and Communities", in Ruth McVey ed.Indonesia, New Haven, 1967, pp 25-48. Hersummary is the basis of my presentation and includes all the specific factsmentioned.49. Donald Hindley, The Communist Party of Indonesia, p 5.50. Hildred Geertz, "Cultures and Communities", p 30.51. Clifford Geertz, "Ritual and Social Change", American Anthropologist, 59: 1, p36. The essay describes the impact of political parties on a funeral selametan which isupset because factions unexpectedly prevent the normal functioning of the ritual.52. Clifford Geertz, "The Javanese Village", in GW Skinner ed.Ethnic and National loyalties in Village Indonesia, New Haven, l959, p 37.53. Geertz, "Ritual", p 37. The schism was probably exaggerated in the area of histeam's fieldwork, but the image holds generally and is emphasized a great deal in thework of most of the "Modjokerto" team.54. Clifford Geertz, Peddlars and Princes, Chicago, 1963 and "The Javanese Kijaji" inComparative Studies in Society and HistoryV II, p 230. In both of these he coments on the connectionof modernistic Islam to emerging petty trade and villagecommerce. In the essay on rural kijaji he details the mannerin which teaching at the rural religious schools, the pesantren,feed into this complex.55. Soedjatmoko, "Indonesia", p 263. Islam offered an ethic ofindividualism and egalitarianism which could rationalisea break from the constraints of local customs and familyties which limited opportunity to get ahead commercially.56. Robert Jay, Religion and Politics pp 1-14.57. Alice Dewey, "Trade and Social Control in Java", Journal of the RoyalAnthropological Institute, V 92, 1962 she details the role of Chinese traders in rural

Java. Wertheim, Indonesian Society in Transition, pp 184-5--he discusses the maindirections of the leadership of SI. His conclusion was that the SI was "mainlyconcerned with the interests of the rising middle class". The SI concession to radicalelements that foreign capitalism (but not indigenous capitalism) was evil was anattempted conciliation which obviously cost commercial interests little. BernardDahm in Sukarno and the Struggle for Indonesian Independence, Ithaca, 1969 hasdisagreed with Wertheim on this point. He argues (pp 35-9) that the deeplyIndonesian idea that "all things are one" was active early in the independencemovement and that the leaders of the movement were actively concerned withunifying the movement to create a "state within a state" - based on support from allclasses. (p 36). I have to agree with Baars, who wrote after the SI conference of 1916that the leaders "really felt that they spoke for the whole people and saw a concessionachieved as their victory. But this in no way alters what we are taught by our theory,that we are to look for the driving social forces hidden behind the thought, so thatthen it becomes clear" (Dahm, 1:35). Here again it is the effect of strategies rather thanthe intentions underlying them that is critical.58. William Oates, "The Afdeeling B", JSEAH, V IX N l. Oates describe the senses inwhich the peasantry at the base of the SI saw things differently than the leadership -how peasants conceived of the movement in millenarian terms and were quitecapable of formally accepting a program without feeling any responsibility to carry itout.59. Robert Van Neil, The Emergence of the Modern Indonesian Elite The Hague andBandung, 1960. He describes the "red hadjis" active in the revolts of 1926 and 1927.My point is that from the strictly grass-roots perspective there is little reason forhostility to the PKI while there has been clear reason for antagonism from theleadership. Of course I am not arguing that that distaste did not filter down throughalirans - it did. I am only trying to explain its beginnings.60. Jay, Religion and Politics... , p 103.61. Hindley, Communist Party, pp 11-12.62. Feith, Indonesian Elections, p 84.63. Hindley, Communist Party, p 3

NOTES: THE NAIL OF GOD1. Clifford Geertz, The Development of the Javanese Economy, MIT mimeo, 1957.The whole essay is a coherent introduction to Javanese social history. My mainsources have been Robert Jay, Religion and Politics in Rural Central Java, NewHaven, 1963, pp 134 and DH Berger, Structural Changes in Javanese Society: theVillage Sphere, Ithaca, 1957, pp l-20. Berger coments (p 14) that the aristocratic stylewas more deeply rooted than it had been in Europe. He uses the term "feudal"throughout. The history should be seen in terms of gradual shifts of focus forcivilisation, not in terms of long conflicts between separate established centers ofpower. So the Pasisir emerged gradually as its regents broke away from declingMadjapahit and then the converse came as the hinterland of Demak became theinland based empire of Mataram. Berger comments that is was the isolation of thekratons which accounts for the extreme refinement, the cultural involution (p 12).2. Soemarsaid Moertono, State and Statecraft in Old Java, Ithaca, 1968, p 18. RobertHeine-Geldern, Conceptions of State and Kingship in Southeast Asia, Ithaca, p 1.3. Soedjatmoko, "Indonesia: Problems and Opportunities", Australian Outlook, V 21N 3, p 266.4. van der Kroef, Justus M, "Javanese Messianic Expectations",CSSH, V I, p 304 cites "the nail of the universe" as a title for the Sultan of Surakarta.Similar reference in Heine-Geldern, Conceptions, p 6. Van der Kroef also mentionsthe conception of the king as Vishnu, as does Heine-Geldern. Moertono, State andStatecraft, mentions the king as lingam as does Heine-Geldern p 10; and BenAnderson, "The Idea of Power in Javanese Culture", Ithaca, mimeo, 1969, p 21.Moertono states ('p 45) that the source of the king's power is thought to be mystical.5. Anderson, "Power", p 5 and Berger, Structural Changes, p 4both suggest that the Javanese notion of power was personalrather than being based on wealth.6. van der Kroef, "Messianic expectations", p 303.7. Moertono, State and Statecraft, p 20.

8. Soedjatmoko, "Problems and Opportunities", p 2679. Anderson, "Power", p 57 and Claire Holt, Art in Indonesia,Ithaca, 1967, pp 84 and 149. Holt states that there is no hint of rationality in theancient arts, that the whole mood is mystical and magical (p 122).10. van der Kroef, "Messianic Expectations" p 301.11. Ibid. p 299.12. Moertono, State and Statecraft, p 74. The doctrines of theBhagavad Gita bear very closely on this. For instance, "All actions take place in timeby the interweaving of the forces of Nature; but the man, lost in selfish delusion,thinks that he himself is the actor." (p 58) Other sections come to mind in comparingJavanese to Indian thought: "The soul that moves in the world of senses and yetkeeps the senses in harmony, free from attraction and aversion, finds rest inquietness." (p 54) "But beyond my visible nature is my invisible Spirit. This is thefountain of life whereby this universe has its being."(p 74) I "When a man sees thatthe infinity of various beings is abiding in the One, and is an evolution from the one,then he becomes one with Brahman."(p l02).13. Moertono, State and Statecraft, p 15.14. van der Kroef, "Messianic Expectations", p 302.15. Clifford Geertz, "Ritual and Social Change: A Javanese Example”, AmericanAnthropologist, 59:1, p 40.16. Holt, Art in Indonesia, p 28. Holt argues that art served as the strongest linkbetween peasants and kraton. Clifford Geertz, Religion of Java, London, 1960, p 268mentions the holding of wajang performances in selametans in the villages.17. Benedict Anderson, On the Mythology and Tolerance of the Javanese. CMIP,Ithaca, 1965, p 5

18. Benedict Anderson, "The Languages of Indonesian Politics", Indonesia, 1966, p 94and James Peacock, Rites of Modernization, Chicago, 1968, p 125. Peacock speaks ofshifts in theme within the ludruk, a popular modern form of drama; mainconcentration shifted in recent times from the tension between alus and kasar to thatbetween madju and kuna, modern and progressive versus traditional Anderson citeschanging preference within the wajang for figures such as Kumbakarno, with his"my country right or wrong" frame of mind, and away from alus heroes like Ardjuna.19. Berger, Structural Changes, p 4. He describes the "art of living" focus among theprijaji.20. Anderson, "Power", pp 24-2521. van der Kroef, "Messianic Expectations", p 307. Kali beingthe god of destruction, the inverse of Vishnu, the life principle.22. Ibid. pp 307-309. Perhaps there is something in this like Hegel's world historicindividual - embodying and in the same breath transcending the age.23. Ibid. p 31624. Clifford Geertz, Islam Observed, New Haven, 1968, p 83. Hementions Feith's position and takes his own. I do not think this orientation ofSukarno's limited his appeal as it seems to account for his mass base.25. Ibid. p 85.26. Soedjatmoko, "Problems and Opportunities", pp 266-26727. Geertz, Islam Observed, p 86. Lubis makes a similar pointin his essay on "Mysticism in Indonesian Politics", in Robert Tillman ed, Man, State,and Society in Contemporary Southeast Asia, New York, 1969, p 179. He says thatthe "Sukarno regime was the ideal model of a situation in which it would be verydifficult, if not impossible, to ascertain where the political leader ends and the dukunbegins."28. Bernard Dahm, Sukarno and the Struggle for Indonesian

Independence, Ithaca, 1969. p 23 cites Sukarnco's immersionin the wajang as a boy. The quote is from pp 26-7.29. Ibid. The whole book is the major source for these comments.30. Weatherbee, Donald, Ideology in Indonesia, New Haven, 1966, p 45 and thewhole book for a general overview of theideology of Guided Democracy. Sukarno specifies liberalismas the major enemy in his important speech, Marhaen and Proletariat, CMIP, Ithaca,1960.31. Koentjaraningrat, Social Anthropological Observations on Gotong-rojongPractices in Two Villages of Central Java. CMIP, Ithaca, 1961 and Selo Soemardjan,The Dynamics of Community Development in Rural Central and West Java, CMIP,Ithaca, 1963.32. Selo Soemardjan, Community Development, pp 5, 7, 8.33. Geertz, "Ritual and Social Change", p 46.34. Department of Foreign Affairs, Republic of Indonesia, Indonesia 1961, Djakarta,1961. reference to Sanskrit law, p 133; that to Sukarno drawing on latent thoughts ofthe people on pp 38 and 41; and that to symbiosis on p 44.35. Daniel Lev, The Transition to Guided Democracy, Ithaca, 1966, p 10.36. Anderson, "Languages of Politics", p 112. Perhaps the process he is describing issimilar to processes everywhere as elites become entrenched and gradually grow touse the slogans through which they reached the people as a defense against them.But probably the point can be emphasized more for Indonesia. As he describes itmore fully... "This fission within some of the most important emotive words of theIndonesian language reflects both sociological and metaphysical characteristics ofpost-revolutionary Indonesia. It represents the re-stratification of contemporaryIndonesian society, and the metaphysical determination to maintain the aspirationsand idealism of Indonesia in a changing social context by a traditional process of (soto speak) 'dualization' and disassociation... Sociologically it is manifest in thegrowing stratification of Indonesian society, the increasing isolation of the elite from

the masses, and the development of parasitic bureaucratic structures in all fields ofsocial activity. Politically the slow narrowing of the government's political base, theincreasing conservatism of its policies, and the ever more frantic effort to protect itsown vested interests reflects the same condition" (pp 106-7 and 109).37. Bernard Dahm, "Sukarno and History”, in Tillman ed, Man,State and Society, p 409. He mentions that the image of "ashes and fire" came fromJuares. Then in Sukarno and the Struggle 'Dahm points out that Sukarno alwaysdistinguished between the true thought of originators and the actions of historicalagents (p 71). On p 65 he states that Sukarno saw the three elements of Nasakom ashaving: essentially the same goal. Finally, on p 74 that as far as Sukarno wasconcerned "Not only the tactics but also the theory of Marxism had changed. Marxand Engels were not prophets who had laid down guiding principles valid for alltime; even their teachings had been outdated with passage of years." In this I thinkDahm ignores the dialectical component in the teachings of Marx and Engels - iftaken seriously, the implication was from the beginning that ideas have meaningonly in their context and that thus seemingly fundamental tenets of Marxism aresubject to change, but the underlying- framework might remain consistent.38. Department of Foreign Affairs, Indonesia 1961, p 3639. Sukarno, Marhaen and Proletarian, p 1840. Ibid. p 28. Sukarno stated that he would be nothing apart from his roots in thepeople and Dahm in Sukarno and the Struggle... p 123 argued that in fact Sukarnowas very closely in tune with the masses.41. Dahm, Sukarno and the Struggle... pp 188 and 192. He is quoting Sukarno in this.Weatherbee, Ideology in Indonesia. p 20comments on the dynamic and dialectical aspects of Sukarno's thought.42. Dahm, "Sukarno and History”, p 411.43. Dahm, Sukarno and the Struggle..., 1969. He refers to Sukarno's distaste for theWest and lack of analytical thought, that he lived in a world of fluid boundariesbetween things and that an either - or situation only emerged with the arrival of theWest (pp 26, 67, 341). Then that he was always against parties (p 300) and favored a

one party system (p 320). Sukarno's distaste for liberalism comes through as well inhis own speech Marhaen and Proletatian, pp 12, 22.44. Harry Benda, "Reflections on Asian Communism", The Yale Review, V LVI N 1, p13.45. Anderson, "Languages of Politics", p 102.46. Soedjatmoko, "Problems and Opportunities", p 288.47. Frederick Engels The Origin of the Family Private Property and the State, inMarx and Engels, Selected Works, New York, 1968. pp 592-593.48. Lubis, "Mysticism in Indonesian Politics", pp 182-183.49. Norman O Brown, Love’s Body, New York, 1966, p 133.50. Ibid. pp 129 and 131.51. Dahm, Sukarno and the Struggle, p xii.52. Donald Hindley, "President Sukarno and the Communists", The AmericanPolitical Science Review V 56 N 4. pp 915-916.53. Ibid. p 916.54. Ruth McVey, "Indonesian Communism and the Transition to GuidedDemocracy“, in Doak Barnett ed, Communist Strategies in Asia, New York andLondon, 1963, pp 151-152.NOTES -THE MASS LINEl. Herbert Marcuse, Reason and Revolution, Boston, 1966, p 1162. Ibid. p 23.3. Ibid. p 155.

4. Ibid. p 298.5. George Lichtheim, Marxism, New York and Washington, 1967, p 128.6. Ibid. p 77 and Justus M van der Kroef’, "Indonesia: Lenin, Mao, and Aidit", inWalter Lacquer and Leopold Labedz eds,Polycentrism, New Fork, 1962, p 209 he mentions that Marxacknowledged the revolutionary potential of peasants, butstressed their conservative orientation. On p 210 he mentions that to Lenin it seemedthat the peasant component was democratic, but not socialist.7. Ibid. p 344.8. Stuart Schram, The Political Thought of Mao Tse-tung, 1967 p 249. Maurice Meisner, Li Ta-chao and the Origins of Chinese Marxism, Cambridge,Mass, 1968, p 237.I0. Ibid. p 240. The initial demands of the communists seem liberal in character as theaim we first to redistribute land intomore equal small holding for the peasantry. The aim was to consolidate intocooperatives only after the completion of the revolution. See Lin Piao, Long Live theVictory of the People's War, Peking, 1965, p 23. van der Kroef in "Indonesia" inPolycentrism says the same thing on p 210.11. Schram, Political Thought of Mao, p 43.12. Mao Tse-tung, Quotations, pp 123-124.13. Adam Schesh. The Organizing Tactics of the Vietnamese Communist Partybefore World War Two, unpublished MA thesis, University of Wisconsin, 1967, pp59-100. For details and a sense of what cadre organizing has been like in China, twobooks are particularly helpful. From them, one could argue that there wasconsiderable cadre and Party response to particular local needs - at least in someareas of China. see Jan Hyrdal, Report from a Chinese Village, New York, 1965 andWilliam Hinton, Fanshen, New York, 1968.

15. Donald Hindley, The Communist Party of Indonesia, Berkeley and Los Angeles,1964, p 94.16. Ibid. pp 71 and 77.17. Ibid. p 23 reports the trip. Aidit and Lukman were 26 and 24 years old at the time(p 31). Neither Russia nor China paid any attention to the PKI between Madiun andthe election victories of 1955. Ruth McVey mentioned that Aidit explained thatduring the trip they had been largely ignored by their fellow communists sinceneither was important at the time and their Party had just been decimated (interview,August, 1969).18. van der Kroef, "Indonesia" in Polycentrism, p 217 stresses the independence of thePKI. p 212 he mentions Aidit’s distinction between "patriotic" and "imperialist"landlords as it coincides with Mao's thought.19. Ibid. p 215 from Aidit, Pilihan Tulisan, V I, p 249. This isparallel to Mao's line that "If unity is sought through struggle, it will live; If unity issought through yielding, it will perish”. in Lin Piao, People's War, p 19.20. Donald Hindley, "President Sukarno and the Communists: The Politics ofDomestication", American Political Science Review V 56 N 4, p 920.21. Hindley, Communist Party, p 22.22. Ibid. p 25.23. see Hindley, "Sukarno and the Communists" and Ruth McVey, “IndonesianCommunism and the Transition to Guided Democracy" in Doak Barnett ed.Communist Strategies in Asia. New York and London, 1963.24. Hindley, Communist Party, pp 33-34. Western analysts almost universallycontest the contention that there was largescale concentration of land under monopolistic landlords.As comes through later in the essay in my discussion of

this point, Aidit 's defense was through argument that it was precisely the small scaleof landlordism which made it particularly vicious. Also, foreign "ownership" mightbetter have meant "control". The terminology here is Aidit's.25. Dipa Nusantara Aidit, Problems of the Indonesian Revolution, Djakarta, 1963. in"Indonesian Society and the Indonesian Revolution", 1957, a manual for training ofcadres in the PKI schools, p 50. The same position is paralleled in Lin'sPeople’s War.26. Aidit, "The Road to People's Democracy for Indonesia",General Report to the 5th National Congress, March 1954. Hindley, CommunistParty, p 41, quotes from Aidit. Also in I Aidit 's Problems, "The Birth and Growth ofthe CPI", p 63 he cites an argument that the history of the PKI is the history ofworkers leading the peasants. Hindley, p 160 argues that the real turning point in theParty position on the peasantry came with Aidit’s 1953 article on the subject.27. Aidit, Problems, "The Birth and Growth of the CPI", speechon the 35th anniversary of the PKI, Hey 23, 1955, p 64 heperiodises PKI history. On pp 70-71 he mentions that the1926 revolts had done something to raise political consciousnessand challenge the Dutch. On p 89 he gives hisanalysis of the Madiun fiasco. In "Lessons from the Historyof the CPI", p 150 he suggests that the primary weakness ofthe PKI at Madiun was the absence of a peasant Base.28. Ibid, both speeches, pp 96-97 and pp 154-157.29. Aidit, Problems, "The Road to People's Democracy for Indonesia",1954, "Lessons From the History of the GPI", p 154 he argues necessarilyheavy emphasis on attention to local circumstances in the formulation of a program.Also in his speech on "Lenin and Indonesia", 1960, p 182, he stresses the selfdeterminationof the Party. Hutapea wrote a fine essay on this question of themarriage of theory and practice and dangers of various sorts of deviations - "RaiseHigh the Banners of Party Development in the Field of Ideo1ogy", Bintang Merah VXVI (US-JPRS, Activities of the PKI, 1961).30. Aidit, Problems, "Lenin and Indonesia", p 173 and Aidit’s

Marxism dan Pembinaan Nasion Indonesia, Djakarta, 1964, pp 13 and 15. Thestatement here is originally Stalin's.31. Aidit, "With the Spirit of the Banteng, Consolidate a GreatCommunist Organisation", Harian Rakjat July 6, 1964 ( JPRS 59).32. Aidit, Marxism dan Pembinaan, p 50.33. Aidit, Problems, "Indonesian Society and the IndonesianRevolution " (p 12) and Njoto, "With Dialectical and HistoricalMaterialism as the Weapons, Win Victory for the Indonesian Revolution", Review ofIndonesia, V VIII N 8-10, p 26. As Njoto saw it, this indigenous layer of dialecticalthought , had been repressed by later Hindu and Islamic ideas.34. Aidit, Set Afire the Banteng Spirit! Ever Forward, No Retreat, Peking, 1964, p 143- art must be revolutionary. Also his articles in Bintang Merah written after aconference on art and literature. V 20 Sept-Oct 1964. There he calls for theintegration of arts with the people and the ridding of feudal residuals so that art canbecome a means of making the revolution (p34). On p 16 he argues that folkloreshould he used as a way of reaching and educating the people. That art is neverneutral even in claiming to be, that it always is subject to influence by larger socialforces, and that it therefore ought to be explicitly recognised as a politicalphenomenon.35. Aidit, Problems, "For Democracy and a Gotong-Rojong Cabinet", p 418 and aparallel in Schesh, Organizing Tactics, p 53.36. Aidit, Problems, pp 402-435 and from Sudisman, "Consolidate the Militancy andEfficiency of the Party Organization", Harian Rakjat, July 9, 1964 (JPRS 59) the wholeessay.37. Aidit, "Indonesia's Present Economic System and the Solution of the EconomicQuestion", Harian Rakjat, July 10-11, 1964 (JPRS 60) pp 2-3.38. Aidit, Problems, "The Road to People's Democracy for Indonesia", General Reportto the 5th National Congress of the PKI, March 1954, p 244.

39. Aidit, Problems, "Indonesian Society and the IndonesianRevolution", pp 33-50. According to him (p 33), the Indonesian bourgeoisie has beenweak and can therefore ally with the PKI for the achievement of some ends withoutjeopardizing overall Party strategy. This might well have been his line due to thepressures of political circumstance rather than from his analysis itself. The problemduring the national revolution was (p 34) that "the basic forces in the Indonesianrevo1ution... were not sufficiently aroused and drawn into the revolution."40. The Board of Directors of the BTI issued an argument against reliance on foreignaid in Harian Rakjat Jan 7, 1964 (JPRS 52) p 6. Aidit argues for the strengthening ofthe government sector of the economy in "On the Mobilizing of Funds and Forces forDevelopment" in Harian Rakjat, Jan 10, 1964 (JPRS 53) pp 2 and 4 and for land reformas an essential for development on p 7. In Aidit's Banteng Spirit pp 57-59 there is alist of PKI developmental aims: increasing the productive priority to workers andbusiness, to have importing controlled so that it stops inhibiting the productivesectors, for the government to control exports, to cut back on interest rates andprices, for economic leadership to the state sector, for coordination of import - exportdistribution, for a realistic state Budget, for economic confrontation of Malaysia, andfor more direct relationships with peoples Indonesia trades with.41. Aidit, Marxism dan Pembinaan, pp 35 and 38 Nasakom and the Pantjasila are putforth as the keys to the united front. Also in Aidit "Back to the 1945 Constitution for aChange in Policies and Living conditions", Review of Indonesia, Supplement tonumbers 9-10 (Sept-Oct 1959) Political Report to the 8th Plenum of the CentralCommittee of the PKI, p 3 there is stated complete support for Guided Democracy, p7 he pushes the idea of a gotong-rojong cabinet, and on p 10 he favors the drive totake Irian Barat from the Dutch. Sakirman made an important statement on thewhole question in "What Does PKI Support for the 1945 Constitution and GuidedDemocracy Mean", Bintang Merah, V XVI, 1960 (JPRS, Activities of the PKI, 1961.42. Aidit in Harian Rakjat, February 3, 1964 (JPRS 54) p 32.43. Aidit, Marxism dan Pembinaan, p 35.44. There is an extended critique in Aidit's "Indonesia's PresentEconomic system and the Solution of the Economic Question",

Harian Rakjat, July 10-ll, 1964. On pp 21-22 there is an elaborated critique of Sumitrofor divorcing the concept of poverty from those of feudalism and imperialism.Sumitro, acording to this discussion, expected solution to the economic ills of thenation through "Puritanical self- denial" on the part of the masses rather thanthrough planning at the top for the interests of the whole.45. Sakirman, "PKI Support for Guided Democracy", p 10 andAidit, "Toward Perfection of the Constitution of 1945" inReview of Indonesia, V IV, July 1957, p 39.46. From an interview with Aidit in Harian Rakjat, August 20,1964 (JPRS 64) pp 1-8. On page 1 he affirms the Pantjasilaas a base of action, on p 2 he comments on religion, andon p 5 he refuses to comment on the differences betweenMurba and PKI out of interest in unity.47. Aidit, "On the International Communist Movement and theIndonesian Revolution” (speech given at Peking, Djakarta,and Pyongyang), Review of Indonesia, supplement to numbers 2-4, 1963. p 8reasserts necessity of legal Party and the list of major contradictions is on p 23.48. Hindley, Communist Party, p 16349. Selosoemardjan, Social Changes in Jogjakarta, Ithaca,1962,pp 184-185. The period he is dealing with is that around the time of the nationalelections, the area is the special district around Jogja - neither could be stretched toinclude all of Java through the whole period I am dealing with, but grass-rootsperspective: on the PKI are extremely hard to come by and this is useful as asuggestion of the Party's general mode of operation.50. Clifford Geertz, The Religion of Java, London 1960, p 171 for the comments onboth the NU and Masjumi.51. Hindley, Communist Party, p 160. Also Bintang Merah V 7 N 16, p 1 for thecomment on Musso. His class analysis differed very little from the general PKI linelater on - perhaps evidence of dogmatism on the part of the PKI rather than realresponse to the peculiarities of the situation.

52. Alimin, "Orang Tani dan Proletariat Desa di Indonesia",Suara Tani V 5 N 8/9, pp 13 and 14. A very full listing of demands which were laterto become standard comes in the 5th anniversary meeting of the BTI in 1950. SuaraTani . V 5, N 8/9 (Nov 1950) pp 8-11. The list included: lower land rents, takeover offoreign estates, distribution of excess government lands, rural loan banks,supervision of water resources, cheap rural credits, improved villages, improvedrural health services, improved teaching in village schools .53. Sakirman, "Peranan Tani Dalam Revolusi Nasional", Suara Tani, V 5 N 8/9 pp35-40.54. Aidit, Problems, p 252.55. Speech of the General Secretary of the CC of the PKI, "Toward Perfection of theConstitution of the 1945 Proclamation Republic". Review of Indonesia, V IV 1951 July1957, p 35.56. Aidit, "Change the Balance of Forces for the 100% Implementation of thePresident Sukarno Concept", Review of Indonesia, V IV, July 1957, p 16.57. "Peasant's Union Holds National Congress", Review of Indonesia, V IV N 10-11(Oct-Nov 1957) pp 30-32. The Fifth National Congress of the BTI was held inSurakarta - both Sukarno and Aidit attended.58. Njoto, Tentang Program PKI, Djakarta, 1959, list of demands on p 57, commentson feudalism and imperialism on p 46, and on rural conditions on p 40.59. Hutapea, "Some Lessons From the First National Peasant 's Conference of thePKI" Review of Indonesia, V VI N 8, August 1959), pp 30-34.60. "Survivals of Feudalism Still Oppressing the Peasants in Java", Review ofIndonesia, V VI (January 1959), p 38.61. Ibid. p 38

62. Njoto, "Opening Speech, CPI National Peasant's Conference", Review ofIndonesia, supplement to V VI N 6 (June-July 1959) p 4.63. Aidit, Banteng Spirit, pp 122-123.64. Ibid. p 86 and on p 126 that the peasants were the basic force of the revolutionand on p 124 that the revolution had. to Be essentially an agrarian revolution.65. Ibid. p 130 and Aidit, Kaum Tani Mengganjang Setan Setan Desa, Djakarta, 1964,p 12 he gives the same list of reasons why peasants contribute to the revolution andexplains that the list is a result of experience during the 1945 revolution. The list isthe same as the one Lin Piao gives in People's War, p 10 which might suggestborrowing despite Aidi' s statement of origin. Since Aidit elsewhere consistentlyminimized the possibilities of armed conflict, this list doesn't conform too well to thegeneral outlines of his analysis.66. Ibid. pp 133-4.67. Ibid. pp 144-6.68. Aidit, Asmu, Mau, and Lenin. Untuk Bekerdja Lebih Baik Dikalangan KaumTani, Djakarta, 1964, pp 6-26.69. "Aidit Discusses Study Made of the Situation of the Peasantry in Java" or "MainConclusions Gained. from Research into Agrarian Relations in Java", Harian Rakjat,August 1, 1964 (JPRS 61) pp 16-18.70. Ibid. p 20 and education on p 24.71. Ibid. p 2772. Ibid. pp 22-23 and Aidit, Tani Mengganjang... , p 18 for all of the above.73. "Aidit Completes Research into the Conditions of the Peasants and PeasantsMovement", Review of Indonesia V VIII N 5-7 pp 27-28.74. Aidit, Tani Mengganjang..., pp 21-22. The reference covers the following‘ sentenceas well.

75. Aidit, "Main Conclusions" (.TPRS 61), p 29. reference also for following sentence.76. Aidit, Tani Mengganjang... , p 33 in reference to squatters and p 37 for that toproductive forces.77. Ibid. p 82.78. Ibid. p 83 for reference to the spirit of 1945 Aidit, "Completes Research", Reviewof Indonesia, V VIII N 5-7, p 30 for reference to folklore as aid in propaganda.79. Clifford Geertz, Peddlers and Princes, Chicago and London, 1963 and Robert Jay,Religion and Politics in Rural Central Java, New Haven, 1963, p 76. Not that these arein conflict, they aren't, but the implications do differ.80. Clifford Geertz, The Social History of an Indonesian Town, Cambridge, Mass,1965 for reference to the election and Geertz, "The Javanese Village", in Skinner ed,Local, Ethnic and National Loyalties in Village Indonesia, New Haven, 1959 for thestatement on Javanese village institutions being essentially national institutions.81. William Oates, "The Afdeeling B: An Indonesian Case Study", JSEAH, V IX N 1, p111.82. Selosoemardjan, Social Changes, pp 181-185.83. Ibid. p 394.84. Hindley, Communist Party, p 65.85. Lin Piao, People's War, p 19.86. Sardjono, "Kader Organisasi Tani", Suara Tani, V V N 3;"On the Question of Developing Work Among the Peasants",Review of Indonesia, V IV N 8; Aidit, "Building the Organization is Important, butBuilding Ideology is even more important", Review of Indonesia, supplement tonumbers 6-7, 1959; "Campaign Against Self-Satisfaction", Harian Rakjat, August l0,1964 (JPRS 61); Aidit, "Be a Good and Still Better Communist”, Review of Indonesia,

V VIII N 5-7; and finally in Aidit’s Sendjata Ditangan Rakjat, Djakarta, 1958, hementions that the major weakness of the Harian Rakjat, the main Party paper, wasthe lack of creative and constructive criticism from below (p 9).87. Justus van der Kroef, "Land Tenure and Social Structure inRural Java”, Rural Sociology, V 25 N 4, pp 414-420.88. Ibid. p 421.89. Justus van der Kroef, "Peasants and Land reform in Indonesian Communism",Journal of Southeast Asian History, V 4 N 1, p 45. Guy Pauker argues that theexpansion into unused lands stopped only ten years ago. in Political Consequencesof Rural Development Programs in Indonesia, Rand Corporation, P 3864, p 4. Itdoesn’t much matter which and neither could be defended with any precisionanyway. The point is that the limit had certainly been reached in the fifties and it wasdownhill from there.90. Pauker, Consequences, p 25.91. Kroef, "Land Tenure and Social Structure", p 424.92. Kroef, "Peasants and Land Reform", p 34.93. Kroef, "Land Tenure and Social Structure", p 427.94. Kroef, "Peasants and Land Reform", p 38.95. Ibid. pp 33, 35, 53.96. Kroef, "Land Tenure and Social Structure", p 430.97. Ibid. pp 427-428‘98. Kroef, "Peasants and Land Reform", p 54.99. Ismael Ajemi, Land Reform: A Sociological Interpretation,unpublished. PhD dissertation, Cornell University, 1964, pp 123-128.

100. Selosoemardjan, Social Changes, p 26.101. Ibid. p 26.102. Pauker, Consequences, pp 13-14103. Ibid. p 7. The government recognized the problem in its own journal whichreported on the progress of the agrarian law. The minister of Agriculture, Sadjarwo,reported in Penjuluh Landreform, V IV N 4-7 (April-June 1965) p 9 that many of theofficials delegated to carry out the program were themselves landowners and thatthis was one explanation for lack of success.104. The comments on the passing of the law came in Review of Indonesia, V IV N 9-10, p 21. The PKI also came out with a journal specifically directed toward thelandreform, Pembangunan Desa. It was published by the directors of the BTI, but forthe most part was filled with reports on land reform, on local gotong-rojongactivities, on new techniques, and so on. It was a very toned down journal and not atall aggressively Marxist in cast.105. Djawa Pos, November 18, 1961 (Surabaja Press Summary)106. Djawa Pos, Nov 18, 1961 (SPS)107. Trompet Masjarakat, June 5-7, 1962 (SPS)108. Trompet Masjarakat, July 20, 1962 (SPS)109. Djawa Timur, August 6, 1962 (SPS) and Suara Rakjat, May 27, reported raising ofthe sentence after the appeal.110. Surabaja Pos, November, 1961 (SPS).111. Justus van der Kroef, "Indonesian Communism"s Revolutionary Gymnastics",Asian Survey, 7 V II 5, p 221.

112. Review of Indonesia, V VIII N 3-4, pp 2 and 6.113. Djawa Timur, December 26, 1964 reports farmers manhandled by urbanhirelings in Sumpit village on December 16th.114. Djalan Rakjat Triweekly December 25 1964. (SPS) reporting on the incident ofDecember 18th.115. Trompet Masjarakat, November 26, 1964, p 5 (SPS).116. Trompet Masjarakat, December 7, 1964, p 6. (SPS).117. Mingguan Djalan Rakjat, March 24, 1964 (SPS).118. Trompet Masjarakat July 29, I964 (SPS).119. Harian Umum, January 25, 1964 (SPS)120. Obor Revolusi, January 22, 1964 and in Suara Rakjat February 1964 the armycommander of East Java warned communists to negotiate peaceably rather thanconfront over the land issue. (SPS)121. Harian Umum, September 26, 1964 (SPS).122. Trompet Masjarakat, August 15, 1964 (SPS).123. Obor Revolusi, February 11, 1964 (SPS).124. Obor Revolusi, February 12, 1964 (SPS).125. Obor Revolusi, February 17, 1964 (SPS).126. Obor Revolusi, January 2, 1965 (SPS).127 . Djalan Rakjat Triweekly, February 11, 1965 (SPS).128. Indonesian Weekly, February 14, 1965 (SPS).

129. Obor Revolusi February 15, 1965 and Trompet Masjarakat, February 16, 1965(SPS).130. Obor Revolusi, May 8, 1965 (SPS).131. Obor Revolusi, June 24, 1964 (SPS).132. Suara Indonesia, November 2, 1962 (SPS).133. Trompet Majarakat, May 21, 1963 (SPS).134. Trompet Majarakat, January 5, 1965 and Dinamika, January 11, 1965 (SPS).135. Aidit, "Political Report" to the 4th Plenum of the CC of the PKI, May 11, 1965,Harian Rakjat, May 12, 1965 (JPRS 90) p 25 for reference to unnecessary generation ofthe conflict and p 59 for cadres following subjective desires.136. Ibid. p 74 for statement that the front should include all people and p 33 forstatement that the base of the Party needed to be expanded.137. Michael Langenberg. "A Brief View of the September 30thMovement and the Army", Review of Indonesian and Malaysian Affairs, V 1 N 2, p 8.138. Hindley, "Political Power and the October 1965 Coup inIndonesia", The Journal of Asian Studies V XXVI N 2, p 244.139. Ibid. p 245.140. Ibid. p 245-6.141. Wilhelm Wertheim, "Indonesia Before and After the Untung Coup", PacificAffairs, V XXXIX N 1-2, p 123.143. "Communist Movement Faces Urgent Tasks", Horizont, N 24, June 1969.144. The Catastrophe in Indonesia, New York, 1966, pp 4 and 6.

145. Ibid. pp 13 and 15.146. Ibid. pp 20 and 22.147. Ibid. p 32.148. Indonesian Tribune, p 29.149. Ibid. p 30.150. Ibid. p 34.151. Rex Mortimer, "Indonesia: Emigre Post-Mortems on the PKI", AustralianOutlook, V 22 N 3, p 353.152. Wertheim, "Untung Coup", p 120.153. Franz Fanon, Wretched of the Earth, New York, 1968, p 116.154 Ibid. pp 135-136.NOTES - ALL THINGS ARE ONE1. Ben Anderson, "The Idea of Power in Javanese Culture", mimeo 1969. p 13 .2. Ibid. p 53.3. Ibid. pp 57-60.4. Ben Anderson, "The Languages of Indonesian Politics", Indonesia, N I 1966, pp111-112. He goes on to say on p 114 that Sukarno is better understood in terms ofRatu Adiil than Marx and that tension were along aliran lines rather than class.5. Soedjatmoko, "Indonesia: Problems and Opportunities”, Australian Outlook, V 21N 3 p 268. Soedjatmoko's conclusion is diametrically opposed to that of Hobsbawmcited in the first chapter. Hobsbawm argued that peasant revolts were basically

conservative in that they only reacted against excesses within an accepted frameworkand Soedjatmoko the contrary, that peasant movements are basically revolutionary.The difference is not important to my argument here as my concern when citingHobsbawm was only to establish that these peasant movements do lend themselvesto modern aims.6. Willard Hanna, "The Rise and Fall of Mbah Suro", AmericanUniversities Field Service, Southeast Asia Series, V XV N 7and David Mitchell, "Communism, Mystics, and Sukarnoism",Dissent 1968 are the sources for all of this material on the Mbah Suro movement.7. Justus van der Kroef, The Communist Party of Indonesia, Vancouver, 1965, p 303.8. Ibid. p 304 and Guy Pauker, "Current Communist Tactics inIndonesia", Asian Survey V 1 N 3 (1961) whole article. Soedjatmoko, "Problems andOpportunities", p 276 agreed that the PKI had captured the main symbols ofrevolution due to Sukarno's policies. He felt that the PKI‘ had had the initiativeunder Guided Democracy.9. Jan Pluvier, Confrontations, Kuala Lumpur, 1965, p 84.10. Ben Anderson, "The Languages of Indonesian Politics", Indonesia N 1 1966, p116.11. Ben Anderson, "The Idea of Power in Javanese Culture", mimeo, 1969, p 28. andMitchell, "Communism, Mystics, and Sukarnoism", p 31 argues that "In Sukarno'sIndonesia... Sukarno was the final arbiter of what was indoctrinated, and what wascensored, not the PKI."12. Mochtar Lubis, "Mysticism in Indonesian Politics", in Robert Tillman ed. Man,State, and Society in Southeast Asia. New York, 1969, p 183.13. Mitchell, "Communism, Mystics, and Sukarnoism", p 32.14. Bernard Dahm, Sukarno and the Struggle for Indonesian Independence, Ithaca,1969, p 335.

15. Anderson, "Power", p 28 for reference to manunggal and the quote is fromMitchell, "Communism, Mystics and Sukarnoism", p 31.16. James Peacock, Rites of Modernization, Chicago, 1968, p xvi.17. Soedjatmoko, "Problems and Opportunities", pp 284-285.18. Herbert Marcuse, Reason and Revolution, Boston, 1966, p 322.19. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Humanism and Terror, Boston, 1969. pp 14, 33.20. Thomas Merton, Zen and the Birds of Appetite, New York, 1968, p 140.21. Marcuse, Reason and Revolution, p 113.22. Norman O Brown, Life Against Death, Middletown, Conn, 1970, p 318.23. Ibid. p 84.24. Hegel, The Phenomenology of Mind, New York, 1967, p 81 and Marcuse, Reasonand Revolution, p 13625. Marcuse, Reason and Revolution, p ix and Brown, Life Against Death, p 47where Brown agrees with Spinoza and Freud in the war against the notion of freewill.26. Marcuse, Reason and Revolution, p 112. Marcuse is citing hegel here.27. Ibid. p 156.28. Brown, Life Against Death, p 172.29. Hegel, Phenomenology, p 89.30. Marcuse, Reason and Revolution, p 163.31. Brown, Life Against Death, p 247

32. Hegel, Phenomenology, p 11633. Mao Tse-tung, Quotations, Peking, 1966, p 214.34. Maurice Godelier, "System, Structure, and Contradiction inCapital", The Socialist Register, New York 1967. p 96 refers to Levi-Strauss.35. Merleau-Ponty in Humanism and Terror suggests that the most we can knowthrough analysis of social processes is a set of probabilities. He says on p 3l that"Since, in respectto the future, we have no other criterion than probability,the difference between a greater or lesser probabilitysuffices as the basis of a political decision, but notto leave all the honor on one side and the dishonor on theother." He argues that Marxism does no more than give youa perspective from which to orient yourself toward reality(p 55) and that communist do not choose their end, butrather orient themselves around forces already at work (p 53).36, Theodore Roszak, The Making of a Counter Culture, New York, 1969, pp 218, 232.37. Hegel, Phenomenology, p 13138. Brown, Life Against Death, p 34. Merleau-Ponty states inHumanism and Terror that (p xxiii) "Marx...did not mean to‘suppress’ liberty, discussion, philosophy, and in generalthe values of individual conscience except by 'realizing'them in the life of everyone." So for Marx the revolutionwas not meant as a denial of individual consciousness, butin its fulfilment. Even the process of making the revolutionwas not meant as a denial. As Merleau-Pouty puts it again,(p 80) "to live ‘and die for a future projected by desirerather than think and act in the present is precisely whatMarxists have always considered utopianism,"SOURCES

PERIODICALSBintang Merah (PKI)Indonesian Press Survey (US, Joint Publications Research Service)Indonesian Triliune (Albania)Pembangunan Desa. (BTI)Penjeluruh Land reform (RI)Review of Indonesia (PKI)Suara Tani (BTI)Surabaja Press Summery (US Consulate)Translations on South and Southeast Asia (US; JPRS)BOOKS AND ARTICLESAidit, Dipa Nusantara. "Change the Balance of Forces for the 100% Implementationof the President Sukarno Concept".(General Report to the 5th Plenum of the Central Committee of the PKI in 1957).Review of Indonesia. supplement to V III (1957)--. "General Report". Documents of the Sixth Plenum of the Central Committee of thePKI.--. "Building the Organization is Important, but BuildingIdeology is Even More Important". Review of Indonesiasupplement to numbers 6 & 7, June-July, 1959.—-—. "Fly High the Banners of 'Land to the Peasants' and 'Fight for One Victory afterAnother'". Review of Indonesia. supplement to numbers 6 & 7 (June-July, l959).

--. "The Key to Food and Clothing: Release the Productive Forces in theCountryside". Review of Indonesia V VI N 11-12.—-. "Back to the 1945 Constitution for a Change in Policies andLiving Conditions". Review of Indonesia. supplement to numbers 9 & 1O(September-October, 1959).—-. "On the International Communist Movement and the Indonesian Revolution".Review of Indonesia. supplement, 1963.-—. Problems of the Indonesian Revolution. Djakarta, 1963.Aidit, Dipa Nusantara. "Main Conclusions Gained From Research into Agrar1anRelations in Java" Harian Rakjat, August 1, 1964 (US - JPRS 61)--. Marxism dan Pembinaan Nasion Indonesia. Djakarta, 1964--. "Be a Good and a Still Better Communist" V VIII N 5-7 Review of Indonesia V VIIIN 5-7 (May-July 1964).--. Set Afire the Banteng Spirit! Ever Forward, No Retreat!(Political Report of the 7th Central Committee of the PKI, December 1963). Peking,1964.--. Kaum Tani Mengganjang Setan Setan Desa. Djakarta, 1964--. "Political Report of the 4th Plenum of the Central Committee of the PKI", HarianRakjat. May 12, 1965 (US-JPRS 90)--, Asmu, Mau Tje-tung, and Lenin. Untuk Bekerja Lebih Baik Dikalangan KaumTani. Djakarta, 1964Ajami , Ismael. Land Reform: A Sociological Interpretation, Cornell University,unpublished PhD dissertation, 1964.

Alavi, Hamza. "Peasant's Revolution“. Socialist Register 1965. reprinted by theRadical Education Project, Ann Arbor, Michigan.Alimin. "Orang Tani dan Proletariat Desa di Indonesia". Suara Tani V 5 N 8/9(November 25, 1950).Anderson, Benedict. Mythology and the Tolerance of the Javanese. Ithaca, NewYork. 1965.--. "The Languages of Indonesian Politics". Indonesia. N I 1966.-- "The Idea of Power in Javanese Culture". mimeo 1969.Asmu. "The Question of Land reform". Review of Indonesia. V VII N 7-—— ”Pembangunan Desa Berarti Tanah dan Demokrasi bagi Kaum Tani",Pembangunan Desa. V I N 1 (December 1961)--. "Siapa Main2 dengan Pantjasila untuk maksud Mengadu Domba adalah Durhakaatau Orang jang Kepalanja Sutang". Suara Tani V 14 N 1, Djakarta, 1964.--. Masa1ah2 Landreform. Djakarta, 1964.--. "Laksanakan putusan2 Konfernas I BTI". Bintang Merah V XX (1964).-—- "The Fundamental Problem is execution of Landreform and the Formation of aCabinet of Mutual Assistance Based onNasakom". Harian Rakjat. January 25, 1964 (US-JPRS 55)Asmu. "Put TAVIP Into Effect in Order to step up Dwikora andIncrease Food Production". (resolution of the first BTI conference). Harian Rakjat.October 3, 1964 (US-JPRS 70)Benda, Harry. "The Structure of Southeast Asian History“. TheJournal of Southeast Asian History V 3 N 1 (1962).

--. "Peasant Movements in Colonial Southeast Asia". Asian Studies. V III N 3(December 1965)———. "Decolonization In Indonesia”. The American Historical Review. V LXX N 4(July 1965).--. "Continuity and Change in Indonesian Islam". Asian and African Studies, V 1(1965).--. "Reflections on Asian Communism". The Yale ReviewV LVI N 1 (1966).-- and John Bastin. A History of Modern Southeast Asia, Englewood Cliffs, NewJersey, 1968.-- and Lance Cast1es. "The Samin Movement". Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Lande enVolkenkunde. V 125 N 2 1969.Berger, DH. Structural Changes in Javanese Society: the Village Sphere and TheSupra Village Sphere. Ithaca, New York 1957.Brackman, Arnold. Indonesian Communism. New York, 1963--. "Communist Strategy in Post-Gestapu Indonesia”. Asia N 14 (1969)Britten, Peter. "A Communist Indonesia?". Review of Indonesian and MalaysianAffairs V 2 N 4 (1969).Brown, Norman O, Life Against Death, Middleton, Conn. 1970.---, Love's Body, New York, 1966.Castles, Lance. "Notes on the Islamic School at Gontor" Indonesia N 1 1966."Communist Movement Faces Urgent Tasks". Horizant (East German) N 24 June 1969(US- JPRS 221).

Dahm, Bernard. Sukarno and the Struggle for Indonesian Independence. Cornell UP,Ithaca, New York, 1969.—-. "Sukarno and History". in Robert Tillman ed. Man, State Society inContemporary Southeast Asia. New York, Washington, London. 1969-- and Justus van der Kroef. "Sukarno, the Ideologue An Exchange". Pacific Affairs. VXLII N 1 (spring 1969)Dewey, Alice. "Trade and Social Control in Java” Journal of the RoyalAnthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, V 92 (1962)Documents of the PKI National Peasants Congress. Review of Indonesia. N 6/7(1959)Dommen, Arthur. "The Attempted Coup in Indonesia" The China Quarterly N 25(1966).Fanon, Franz. The Wretched of the Earth, New York, 1968.Feith, Herbert. The Indonesian Elections of 1955. CMIP, Ithaca, New York l957.--. "Dynamics of Guided Democracy". in Ruth McVey ed. Indonesia. New Haven,1967.-— "The Study of Indonesian Politics: A Survey and Apologia". a paper presented tothe Conference of the Australian Political Studies Association. Sydney. August, 1969.Geertz, Clifford. "The Javanese Village". in William Skinner ed.Local, Ethnic, and National Loyalties in Village Indonesia. New Haven, 1959--. "Ritual and Social Change: A Javanese Example". American Anthropologist 59:1(1957)--. "The Javanese Kijaji". Comparative Studies in Society andHistory. V II (1959-1960) '

--. The Religion of Java. New York, 1960.--. Peddlers and Princes Chicago, 1963.-—-. “The Rotating Credit Association". in E. Wallerstein ed. Social Change. NewYork, 1966.--. Agricultural Involution, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1966--. The Development of the Javanese Economy. MIT mimeo, 1957--. Islam Observed. New Haven, 1968Geertz, Hildred. "Indonesian Cultures and Communities". in Ruth Mcvey ed.Indonesia. New Haven, 1967Giap, The Siauw. "The Samin and Samat Movements in Java", Revue du sud-estasiatique et de l'Extreme Orient. continuous in 1967/2, 1968/1 and 1969/1.Godelier, Maurice. "System, Structure, and Contradiction in Capital". SocialistRegister 1967. New York, 1967.Hanna, Willard. "The Rise and Fall of Mbah Suro".) Southeast Series. AmericanUniversities Field Service. Asia V XV N 7 (Nov 1967)Harris, Marvin. The Rise of Anthropological Theory. New York, 1968Hegel, GWF. The Phenomenology of Mind. New York, 1967.Heilbroner, Robert. The Worldly Philosophers. New York, 1961.Heine-Geldern, Robert. Conceptions of State and Kingship in Southeast Asia. Ithaca,New York, 1956.Higgins, Benjamin and Jean. Indonesia: The Crisis of the Millstones. Princeton,London, Toronto, New York, 1963.

Hindley, Donald. "President Sukarno and the Communists: The Politics ofDomestication". American Political Science Review. V 56 N 4 (1962)--. "The Indonesian Communists and the CPSU Twenty-Second Congress". AsianSurvey. V II N 1 (March 1962)--. The Communist Party of Indonesia. Berkeley and Los Angeles, l964---. "Political Conflict Potential, Politicization, and the Peasantry in theUnderdeveloped Countries". Asia Studies. V III N 3 (December 1965)---. "Political Power and the October 1965 Coup in Indonesia”.Journal of Asian Studies. V xxvx N 2 (Feb 1967)Hobsbawm, Eric. Primitive Rebels. New York, 1959Holt, Claire. Art in Indonesia. Ithaca, New York. 1967Hughs, John. Indonesian Upheaval. New York, 1967Hutapea, B0. "Some Lessons from the First National PeasantsConference of the PKI". Review of Indonesia. V VI N 8 (August 1959).—-. "Raise High the Banners of Party Developments in the Field of Ideology".Bintang Merah. V xv (May-June 1960)Jay, Robert‘. "Local Government in Rural Central Java". Far Eastern Quarterly V XVN 2 (February 1956).——. Religion and Politics in Rural Central Java, . Haven, 1963—--. Javanese Villagers. Cambridge, Mass. 1969Johnson, Chalmers. Peasant Nationalism and Communist Power. Stanford,California. 1933Kahin, George. Nationalism and Revolution in Indonesia. Ithaca, New York. 1952

Kartodirdjo, Sartono. The Peasant's Revolt of Banten in 1888. The Hague, 1966.Koentjaraningrat. Social Anthropological Observations on Gotong-Rojong Practicesin Two Villages in Central Java. Ithaca, New York, 1961.van der Kroef, Justus H. "Prince Diponegoro: Progenitor ofIndonesian Nationalism". Far Eastern Quarterly, August 1949.—-"Javanese Messianic Expectations". Comparative Studies inSociety and History V I (1958).-- "Communist Policy and Tactics in Indonesia". The Australian Journal of Politicsand History V V N 2 (1959)—-- "Indonesian Communist Policy and the Sixth Party Congress". Pacific Affairs vXXXIII n 3 ( Sept 1960)--. "Land Tenure and Social Structure in Rural Java". RuralSociology. v 25 n 4 (Dec 1960)-- "Dilemmas of Indonesian Communism". Pacific Affairs. V XXXV N 2 (summer1962).--- "Indonesia: Lenin, Mao, and Aidit". in Walter Lacqueur andLeopold Labedz eds. Polycentrism The New Factor in Internationa1 Communism,New York, 1962---. "Peasants and Land Reform in Indonesian Communism". Journal of SoutheastAsian History. V 4 N 1 (Mar 1963).-- "Indonesian Communism's Drive to Power". Communist Affairs. v 3 N 2 (Mar-Ap1965)-- The Communist Party of Indonesia. Vancouver, 1965.

-- "Indonesian Communism's Revolutionary Gymnastics". Asian Survey. V V N 5(May 1965).-- "Gestapu in Indonesia". Orbis. V X N 2 (summer 1966)Kuchiba, Masuo. A Typology of Desa: a comparative Study of Village Structure andLeadership in Java. Cornell University, unpublished MA thesis, 1962.Kuhn, Thomas. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago, l963.Kurdi. "Desa di Indonesia" Pembangunan Desa. V II N l (Jan 1961)van Langenberg, Michael. "A Brief View of the September 30thMovement and the Army". Review of Indonesian andMalaysian Affairs, V 1 N 2 (July 1967).--. "A Maoist View of the Indonesian Communist Party". Review of Indonesian andMalaysian Affairs. V 2 N 2 (Ap-June 1968).Legge , John. Central Authority and Regional Autonomy in Indonesia, Ithaca, NewYork, 1963.---. Indonesia. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey 1965"Lessons of Indonesia, Statement of the United Secretariat of the Fourth International,March 20, 1966". in The Catastrophe in Indonesia. New York, 1966.Lev, Daniel. "The Political Role of the Army in Indonesia".Pacific Affairs V xxxvz N 4 (winter 1963-4).——. The Transition to Guided Democracy. Ithaca, New York. 1966.Levenson Joseph. Confucian China and its Modern Fate. Berkeley and Los Angeles,1968.Levine, David. "History and Social Structure in the Study ofContemporary Indonesia" Indonesia N 7 1969.

Levi-Strauss, Claude. Structural Anthropology, New York, 1967.Lichtheim, George. Marxism: An Historical and Critical Study. New York andWashington, 1967.Lubis, Mochtar. "Mysticism in Indonesian Politics". in RobertTilman ed. Man, State, and Society in Contemporary Southeast Asia. New York,Washington, London, 1969.Mandel, Ernest. "Lessons of the Defeat in Indonesia" in TheCatastrophy in Indonesia. New York, 1966.Marcuse, Herbert. Reason and Revolution, Boston, 1966Marx, Karl and Frederick Engels. Selected Works. Baltimore, 1962.Mascaro, Juan. trans. The Bhagavad Gita, Baltimore, 1962.McVey, Ruth. "Indonesian Communism and the Transition to Guided Democracy".in A Doak Barnett ed. Communist Strategies in Asia. New York and London, 1963.Meisner, Maurice. Li Ta-chao and the Origins of Chinese Marxism, Cambridge, Mass,1968.Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Humanism and Terror, Boston, 1969Ministry of Agriculture. "'Laporan Pelalksanaan Land reform dan Problemprob1emnja".Penjeluruh Land reform. V IVN 4-7 (Ap-July 1965).Mintz, Jean. "Marxism in Indonesia". in Frank Trager ed.Marxism in Southeast Asia. Stanford, California. 1959---. Muhammed, Marx, and Marhaen: the Roots of Indonesian Socialism, London,1965.

Mitchell, David. "Hammer and Sickle Among the Mystics". Review of Indonesianand Malaysian Affairs. V 2 N 1 (Jan l968)--. "Connmmism, Mystics, and Sukarnoism". Dissent, Me1bourne, l968.Moertono, Soemarsaid. State and Statecraft in Old Java, Ithaca, New York, 1968.Moore, Barrington. The Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy. Boston, 1966.Mortimer, Rex. "Indonesia: Emigré Post--mortems on the PKI".Australian Outlook v 22 N 3 (1968).Mozingo, DP. Sino-Indonesian Relations: an Overview 1955-1965. RandMemorandum RM 4641 PR, July 1965. Santa Monica, Ca1.van Niel, Robert. The Emergence of the Modern Indonesian Elite. The Hague andBandung, 1960.Njoto. Tentang Program PKI. Djakarta, 1959.--—. "With Dialectical and Historical Materialism as the Weapons, Win Victory forthe Indonesian Revolution". Review of Indonesia. V VIII N 8-10.Oates, William A. "The Afdeeling B: An Indonesian Case Study". Journal of SoutheastAsian History. v IX N 1(Mar 1968)"On the Question of Developing Work Among the Peasants". Review of Indonesia. vIV (Aug 1957)Paauw, Douglas. "From Colonial to Guided Economy”. in Ruth McVey ed. IndonesiaNew Haven, 1967.Paget, Roger. "The Military in Indonesian Politics: The Burden of Power". PacificAffairs. V xx N 3-4 (1967-8)Palmier, Leslie. "Aspects of Indonesia's Social Structure",Pacific Affairs V xxviii n 2 (June 1955)

Pauker, Guy. "Current Communist Tactics in Indonesia”, Asian Survey v 1 N 3 (May1961).Pauker, Guy. "Has the Sukarno Regime weakened the PKI?".Asian Survey, V 4 N 9 (Sept 1964).—-. Political Consequences of Rural Develoment Problems in Indonesia, RandCorporation P 3864 (May 1968).Peacock, James. Rites of Modernization. Chicago, 1968Piao, Lin. Long Live the Victory of the People's War, Peking, 1965.Pike, Douglas. Vietcong. Cambridge, Mass. 1967Pluvier, Jan. Confrontations, Kuala Lumpur, 1965.Polit Bureau of the Central Committee of the PKI. "Hold Highthe Banner of the Three Magic Weapons of the Revolution". May 23, 1966, IndonesianTribune August-Sept 1967.Potter Jack May Diaz and George Foster, Peasant Society. Boston, 1967.Redfield, Robert. The Primitive World and its Transformations. Ithaca, New York.1953Roszak, Theodore. The Making of a Counter Culture, New York, 1969.Sakirman. "Peranan Tani Dalam Revolusi Nasional". Suara Tani V 5 N 8/9 (Nov 25,1950).--. "What Does PKI Support for the 1945 Constitution andGuided Democracy Mean". Bintang Merah V XVI May-June 1960 (US-JPRS, Activities of the PKI, 1961).Samson, Allan. "Islam in Indonesian Politics". Asian Survey.

V VIII N 12 (Dec 1968).Sardjono. "Kader Organisasi Tani" Suara Tani, V v N 3 (Aug 1950).Schesh, Adam. Organizational Tactics of the Vietnamese Communist Party BeforeWorld War ll. University of Wisconsin, unpublished MA thesis, 1967.Schmitt, Hans O. "Foreign Capital and Social Conflict in Indonesia 1950-1958".Economic Development and Cultural Change. V X N 3 (April 1962).—-. "Post Colonial Politics: A Suggested Interpretation of theIndonesian Experience, 1950-1958", The AustralianJournal of Politics and History. V IX N 2 (Nov 1963).Schram, Stuart. The Political Thought of Mao Tse-tung. New York, Washington, andLondon, 1967.Schrieke, BJO. "The Causes and Effects of Communism on the West Coast ofSumatra”. in Schrieke. Indonesian Sociological Studies. Vol I, The Hague, 1959.Schurmann, Franz. Ideology and Organization in Communist China. Berkeley andLes Angeles, 1968.Sedjati, Kusmuljo. Changes in the Social Organization of Javanese Villages. CornellUniversity, unpublished MA thesis, l959."Selected Documents Relating to the September 30th Movement and its Epilogue",Indonesia. N 1 (1966).Simon, Sheldon. The Broken Triangle: Peking, Djakarta, and the PKI . Baltimore,1969.Skinner, G William. "The Nature of Loyalties in Rural Indonesia". in Wallerstein ed.Social Change. New York, 1966.

Smail, John RW. "On the Possibility of an Autonomous History of Modern SoutheastAsia", Journal Southeast Asian History. V 2 N 2 (1961).--. Bandung in the Early Revolution, Ithaca, New York. 1964.Soedarsono, "Lessons From a Defeat". in The Catastrophe inIndonesia. New York, 1966.Soedjatmolco. "Indonesia: Problems and Opportunities" and "Indonesia and theWorld" in Australian Outlook, V 21 N 3 (December 1967).Soekarno, Marhaen and Proletarian, Ithaca NY, 1960.Soemardjan, Selo. Social Changes in Jogjakarta. Ithaca, New York. 1962.--. "Land Reform in Indonesia“. Asian Survey V 1 N 12.--. The Dynamics of Community Development in Rural Central and West Java,Ithaca, New York, 1963.Steward, Julian. "Levels of Sooio-cultural Integration: An Operational Concept”.Southwest Journal of Anthropology. V 7 N 4 (1951).Sudisman. "Consolidate the Militancy and Efficiency of the Party Organization".Harian Rakjat, Ju1y 9, l964 (US-JPRS 59)Weatherbee, Donald. Ideology in Indonesia. New Haven, 1966.Werthheim, Wilhelm F. Indonesian Society in Transition. The Hague and Bandung,1956.-—. "Indonesia Before and After the Untung Coup" Pacific Affairs V XXXIX N 1-2(spring and summer 1966).Wertheim and The Siauw Giap. "Social Change in Java, 1900-1930". in Wallerstein ed.Social Change. New York, 1966

Wolf, Eric. Peasants. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1966

Javanese Mystical and Marxist Dialectics - Paul Stange

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?