People of Indonesia, Unite and Fight to Overthrow the Fascist Regime- Editorial of Hongqi (Red Flag), No.11, 1967 -
After staging the counter-revolutionary 1965 coup d'etat, the Suharto-Nasution Right-wing military clique, faithful lackey of U.S. imperialism and anti-communist ally of Soviet revisionism, established a fascist dictatorship of unprecedented ruthlessness in Indonesia. For the past year or more, it has followed an out-and-out traitorous, dictatorial, anti-communist, anti-China and anti-popular counter-revolutionary policy. It has imposed a white terror in Indonesia on an unprecedented scale, slaughtered several hundred thousand Communists and revolutionary people and thrown into prison another several hundred thousand fine sons and daughters of the Indonesian people. All Indonesia has been turned into one vast hell. By engaging in bloody suppression, it attempts in vain to wipe out the Indonesian Communist Party and stamp out the Indonesian revolution. This clique cherishes an inveterate hatred for socialist China, which resolutely supports the revolutionary struggle of the Indonesian people. It has repeatedly carried out serious provocations against the Chinese people, whipped up anti-China, anti-Chinese campaigns and practised inhuman racist persecution against overseas Chinese. It has vainly tried to sabotage the traditional friendship between the Chinese people and the overseas Chinese in Indonesia on the one hand and the Indonesian people on the other, and to prevent the Chinese people from supporting the Indonesian people's revolution. In the final analysis, the many kinds of persecution against the Indonesian Communist Party and the Indonesian people by the Suharto-Nasution Right-wing military clique will only serve to hasten the arrival of the upsurge in the Indonesian revolution and speed its own doom. The heroic Indonesian Communists and people can neither be cowed, suppressed, nor wiped out. The determination of the Indonesian people to make revolution is unshakable, so is the Chinese people's determination to support their revolution. No reactionary force on earth can obstruct this. At present, the Indonesian Communists and revolutionary people are regrouping their forces for a new battle. The August 17, 1966 Statement of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Indonesian Communist Party and the Self-Criticism it endorsed in September, which were published by the magazine Indonesian Tribune not long ago, are a call to the Indonesian Communists and the Indonesian working class, peasants, revolutionary intellectuals and all anti-imperialist, anti-feudal revolutionary forces to unite and engage in a new struggle. The two documents of the Political Bureau of the Indonesian Communist Party are a telling blow at U.S. imperialism and its flunkeys, the Suharto-Nasution fascist military dictatorial regime, and the revisionist leading clique of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and a tremendous encouragement to the revolutionary people of Indonesia. In these two documents, the Political Bureau of the Indonesian Communist Party sums up the experience and lessons of the Party in leading the Indonesian people's revolutionary struggle, criticizes the Right opportunist errors committed by the leadership of the Party in the past, points out the road for the Indonesian revolution, and lays down the principles for future struggle. The documents point out that Indonesia is a semi-colonial and semi-feudal country. The Suharto-Nasution military fascist dictatorship is a regime of the most reactionary classes in Indonesia: the comprador bourgeoisie, the bureaucrat-capitalists and the landlords. It is the primary task of the revolution in its present stage to overthrow this counter-revolutionary regime and the reactionary rule of imperialism and feudalism in Indonesia, to establish the people's democratic dictatorship and build a completely independent, democratic, new Indonesia. The documents emphatically point out:
The Political Bureau criticizes the revisionist line of the 20th Congress of the C.P.S.U., and points out that this counter-revolutionary line has caused serious damage to the Indonesian Communist Party and brought tremendous losses to the Indonesian people's revolutionary movement. Modern revisionism, with the leadership of the C.P.S.U. as its centre, is the greatest danger to the international communist movement and to the Indonesian Communist Party as well. The bloody lesson of the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives in Indonesia shows once again that the revisionist road of "peaceful transition" advocated by the leadership of the C.P.S.U. is the road to burying the revolution, the road to exterminating the Party and the people. The documents hold that the leadership of the Party in the past deviated from the Marxist-Leninist theory on the state and one-sidedly stressed the possibilities of the so-called peaceful road and parliamentary road. It claimed that Indonesian bourgeois state power had two aspects, the "pro-people aspect" and the "anti-people aspect"; it hoped to bring about a fundamental change in state power by peaceful means through developing the "pro-people aspect". This is a sheer illusion of "peaceful transition". The documents criticize and repudiate the theory of "combining the three forms of struggle", namely, guerrilla warfare in the countryside, the workers' movement in the cities, and work among the enemy's armed forces. They point out that, concerning the "three forms of struggle", the leadership of the Party in the past, instead of leading them along the road of revolution, led them separately along the "peaceful road" and thereby virtually gave up the armed struggle. The documents emphasize that the Indonesian Marxist-Leninists must resolutely abandon this erroneous theory, hold high the banner of the people's armed revolution, establish revolutionary base areas in accordance with the experience of the Chinese revolution, and turn the backward villages into strong, consolidated military, political, and cultural bastions of the revolution. The Political Bureau regards as an important task of the Party the establishment of a broad anti-imperialist and anti-feudal united front led by the working class and based on the worker-peasant alliance. To carry this out, the Party must have a correct programme, correct principles and tactics and, what is particularly important, must grasp that form of armed struggle in which it integrates with the peasants and wins their support. The documents criticize the slogan of "national co-operation with the 'Nasakom' as the core" and hold that such a statement obscures the class content of the united front. In its effort to establish a united front with the national bourgeoisie, the Party leadership in the past abrogated the independent role of the proletariat and turned it into an appendage of the national bourgeoisie. It put the three components of Marxism on a par with the "three components of Sukarno's teachings" and in an unprincipled way recognized Sukarno as "the great leader of the revolution". The Party's erroneous attitude towards Sukarno was a major manifestation of its loss of independence within the united front. They point out that an arduous task lies ahead in the building up of the Indonesian Communist Party. It must be built into a Marxist-Leninist Party free from all forms of opportunism, one that resolutely opposes legalism, subjectivism and modern revisionism. The documents say that on the question of Party building the main mistakes in the past have been "liberalism and legalism". They criticize the Party for its tendency to blindly seek numerical strength in recruitment, and point out that the mass character of the Party is expressed first of all not in a vast membership but in close ties with the masses, in its political line defending the interests of the masses and in the overall application of the mass line. In order to build a Marxist-Leninist revolutionary Party, the Political Bureau of the Indonesian Communist Party calls upon the whole Party to improve its education in Marxism-Leninism, Mao Tse-tung's thought, to sum up the historical experience of the Party and carry out a rectification campaign. The documents point out:
After summing up the historical experience of the Indonesian revolution, the Statement and the Self-Criticism of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Indonesian Communist Party come to this important conclusion:
The conclusion drawn by the Political Bureau of the Indonesian Communist Party concerning the "Three Banners" conforms with Marxism-Leninism, Mao Tse-tung's thought, and will play an important guiding role in the Indonesian revolution. The road pioneered by Comrade Mao Tse-tung for the Chinese revolution is the road by which "political power grows out of the barrel of a gun",1) the road of relying on the peasants, establishing rural revolutionary bases, encircling the cities from the rural areas and finally capturing the cities. Summing up the experience of the Chinese revolution, Comrade Mao Tse-tung says:
In the course of leading the Chinese people's struggle to seize political power, the Chinese Communist Party has had great victories in the revolution as well as serious defeats. The Party's defeats and victories, its retreats and advances, its shrinking and growth, its development and consolidation, are all closely linked with whether or not the Party's political line correctly handles the questions of armed struggle and the united front. Armed struggle and the united front are the two basic weapons for conquering the enemy. The united front is a united front for carrying out armed struggle. The Party organization is the heroic fighter wielding these two weapons. Such is how these three are interrelated. Comrade Mao Tse-tung says: "Having a correct grasp of these three questions [the united front, armed struggle and Party building - Tr.] and their interrelations is tantamount to giving correct leadership to the whole Chinese revolution."3) At present, the white terror in all its severity continues to reign over Indonesia. The Indonesian Communist Party is faced with an extremely difficult and complex task. The Party's struggle is undergoing a major change: a switch from the cities to the countryside, from peaceful struggle to armed struggle, from legal to illegal, from open to secret. For a Party, whose main work over a long period of time was open and legal activity in the cities, this change is not easy indeed. It is bound to meet many difficulties. But the objective realities of the revolutionary struggle compel people to make the change and compel them to learn armed struggle, and there is no alternative for them but to master it. In fact, as long as they are resolute and surmount all difficulties, there is no doubt that they can do so. Comrade Mao Tse-tung says:
We are convinced that the Indonesian Marxist-Leninists, guided by the invincible Marxism-Leninism, Mao Tse-tung's thought, will surmount obstacle after obstacle, effect this historic change and lead the Indonesian people on to the long march for winning victory in the revolution. The Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese people constantly have the fight of the Indonesian Communist Party and the Indonesian people in mind. Our hearts are closely linked with the hearts of our class brothers in Indonesia. We stand unflinchingly on the side of the Indonesian Communist Party, on the side of the Indonesian revolutionary people, and firmly support the Indonesian Communist Party in leading the Indonesian people's struggle to overthrow the Suharto-Nasution fascist regime and establish a completely independent and democratic new Indonesia. Comrade Mao Tse-tung says,
As the documents of the Political Bureau of the Indonesian Communist Party well express, the present military dictatorship of the Right-wing generals and the U.S. imperialists, who support this reactionary regime, are all paper tigers. In appearance they are terrifying, but in reality they are weak. Dark clouds cannot long obscure the sun whose resplendent light will surely shine over the whole of Indonesia. Final victory will certainly belong to the Communist Party of Indonesia and to the Indonesian people. (Bold-face emphases and quotation marks are in the original.) References in the Hongqi Editorial Mao Tse-tung, "Problems of War and Strategy", Selected Works, Vol. II, Foreign Languages Press, Peking, 1965, p. 224. Mao Tse-tung, "On the People's Democratic Dictatorship", Selected Works, FLP, 1961, Vol. IV, p. 422. Mao Tse-tung, "Introducing The Communist", Selected Works, FLP, 1965, Vol. 11, p. 288. Mao Tse-tung, "Problems of Strategy in China's Revolutionary War", Selected Works, FLP, 1965, Vol. 1, p. 190. Mao Tse-tung, "On New Democracy", Selected Works, FLP, 1965, Vol. 11, pp. 377-78.
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