From Jail to Jail. Tan Malaka
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From 1927 to 1945 Tan Malaka all but disappeared from view. After being deported from the Philippines in August 1927, he spent the next few years in hiding in Amoy and the village of Sionching, although he did continue to write journalistic articles and PARI documents. At some stage over the next few years, possibly in late 1929, Tan Malaka moved to Shanghai. In August 1931 he met Alimin there and apparently agreed to work again for the Comintern. Documentation supporting this appears in Pan Pacific Trade Union Secretariat files and elsewhere.80 In his autobiography Tan Malaka does not mention this development; possibly a section of the text is missing. Neither does Alimin mention it. With both participants now dead, and such scant documentation, the precise nature of this rapproachment seems destined to remain unclear.
In 1932 Tan Malaka and Djaos were arrested and briefly detained in Hong Kong, evidently en route to India. Tan Malaka was deported back to Amoy and hid in the village of Iwe, losing contact with Indonesia until 1935 when he moved back to Amoy and established a foreign languages school in early 1936 (Volume II, chapter 3). As the Japanese army moved south through China, Tan Malaka fled through Burma and Malaya to Singapore, where he lived from 1937 to 1942 disguised as a Chinese schoolteacher.
In 1942 he was able to travel across to Sumatra, make his way to Jakarta and then, from 1943 to 1945, he worked at the Bayah Kozan coal mine on the southern coast of West Java. His opportunities for political work were severely circumscribed both by the objective situation and by his own twenty-year absence from Indonesia, but in Volume II, chapter 6, Tan Malaka does describe his limited activities in promoting national pride and self-defense among the romusha at the mine, and his earlier efforts in Jakarta writing what he believed to be his major work, the philosophical treatise advocating rational and materialist thinking, Madilog.
Following the proclamation of independence, Tan Malaka could resume a public role in Indonesian history. The hesitant manner in which he did so is discussed above (p. lxii) insofar as it relates to his personality. It is important here to note that his major emphasis in the further three and a half years until his death was the best strategy to achieve 100 percent merdeka, clearly the dominant theme of the whole of Volume III. Once again, national emancipation from colonial oppression was his overriding preoccupation, as it had been in the 1920s, and he took the view that communists should be the strongest wing of that movement, with an understanding of the relationship between the national and socialist tasks of the revolution. He wrote as follows:
It [the Indonesian revolution] will not be merely a political revolution such as have occurred in India, Egypt, and the Philippines, where the native bourgeoisie gains only political (parliamentary) power, for their national bourgeoisie and intellectuals far outnumber ours.
The Indonesian revolution in small part opposes feudal remnants, but in large part opposes cruel and rapacious Western imperialism, urged on by the hatred of Eastern people to Westerners who oppress and insult them. (Massa actie, pp. 44-45)
The Indonesian revolution is not solely a national revolution, as envisaged by some Indonesians. Whether it wishes to or not, the Indonesian revolution will be forced to take economic and social measures at the same time as it seizes and defends 100 percent independence.
But the Indonesian independence war will not be worth a penny to the Murba groups if it merely results in changing the form of government: if it simply changes the white man’s (Dutch) government for a brown man’s (Indonesian). For then the brown man will be, directly or indirectly, quickly or slowly, turned into a puppet government [sic]. (Gerpolek, p. 24; English translation in NARS Record Group 59, File 856.00B/2-2549, Box 6306)
The interrelationships among the various aspects of the revolution, and the determining factors (both national and international) as to the relative weight of these aspects, or stages, as the revolution unfolded, was a continuing subject of Tan Malaka’s attention:
The speed of the transition to a genuine Soviet state, and further towards communism, depends on the international situation, and furthermore on the development of industry within Indonesia itself. (Menudju ‘Republik Indonesia, ’ p. 24)
Whether eventually the entire Maximum Program, or even a part of it, is implemented, and by what means it is implemented, depend to a large extent on the outcome of the Indonesian murba, the murba of Asia and Africa, and the proletariat of Europe and America. Naturally, we cannot now predict the outcome of their struggles, and so we must also put off any prediction of the timing and even the possibility of implementing the Maximum Program.
For example, if tomorrow or the next day the world revolution is completed, then the Maximum Program will no longer be maximum. Every article of this Maximum Program, or at least some of them, will be reformulated and extended. Matters relating to politics, ownership and economics will no longer be limited by the existence of capitalist and imperialist states. In such a case, the Maximum Program would become the Minimum Program of a higher historical stage. If, however, capitalism-imperialism continues to surround Indonesia as it does today, then perhaps this Maximum Program will remain Maximum in its real sense. In such a case we would be forced to move towards the socialist era with whatever instruments and forces we had ourselves. (“Keterangan Ringkas,” p. 3)
In applying Marxism to Indonesian society, Tan Malaka was well aware of the need to take local conditions into account. He polemicized against the view that revolutionary theory could be simply learned by heart and then put into operation.
Since the social factors in Indonesia or India are going to be different in character and history from those in Russia, for example, the conclusions reached by Indonesian or Indian revolutionaries will certainly differ from those reached by Russians. The only similarities will be in the method of thinking (dialectical materialism, the spirit of inquiry), in the revolutionary element; the one requirement for a leader of the masses, to know the psychology of the masses; and, finally, in the basic principles which we share as communists—proletarianism, mechanization, collectivism and so on.
To adopt holus bolus such terms as feudal, bourgeois, or proletarian and apply them with all their corresponding characteristics, motivations, and history to the feudal, bourgeois, or proletarian classes in Indonesia or India would be uncritical and undialectical. (Volume I, pp. 89-90)
In following his own advice, Tan Malaka found it necessary to introduce two new terms—murba and Aslia—to the Indonesian political lexicon.
Murba. Tan Malaka used the term murba (common, plain, ordinary, or lowly) in his postindependence writings and agitation, and finally as the name for the party founded in 1948 to advance his policies. His fullest explanation of the term was made in an article in the newspaper Moerba on 20 October 1948 as follows:
What we mean by the term murba is the greatest/most numerous group (golongan) of all within Indonesian society, those who no longer own anything but their brains and their own labour power.
The term murba more or less approximates proletariat. However, the historical development and the characteristics of the Indonesian murba differ from those of the Western proletariat in Europe and America. The Indonesian murba is not yet completely free from the ties of family spirit, as is the Western proletariat in Europe and America. Furthermore, the nature of struggle and of its enemies differ from those of the Western proletariat particularly in details.
In general, the murba can be divided into several categories, including industrial murba (in the factories, workshops, and mines); agricultural murba (in estates and rice fields); transport murba (in railways, ships, cars, etc.); commercial murba (in companies, shops, banks, etc.); city murba (all the poor and wretched—djembelan) the intellectual murba (impoverished-djembel).
The murba group lives on wage, which they earn by using their brains and labour power. They do not exploit the labour of others. The murba group is the product of the oppression and exploitation by Dutch (and other foreign) capitalism and imperialism of the peasants and artisans and even the landowners and employers in existence when the Dutch landed here. The murba group represents the transformation of the majority of Indonesian people, from