From Jail to Jail. Tan Malaka
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1920s, and even into the 1930s, “communist” was the most frequently used appellation for Tan Malaka, though it was often embellished to become “notorious Javanese Red” or “communist subversive.”96 While Tan Malaka was chairman of the PKI, delegate to a Comintern congress, or Comintern agent for Southeast Asia, the term “communist” was a sufficient description. Even after Tan Malaka expressed severe and public criticism of the PKI and established his own party, PARI, in 1927, with no ties to the Comintern, the catchall label “communist” was still applied (except by his immediate opponents in the PKI who preferred to call him “traitor,” due to his opposition to the 1926 uprisings). It must be remembered that although the differences between Stalin and Trotsky were becoming apparent at this time, they had not yet hardened into an open split, and to be a communist was to be a supporter of the Third International and of the Russian revolution. It was hardly surprising, then, that this term was still used to describe Tan Malaka, particularly since so little was known of the nature of PARI and of his differences with the Comintern.
Since World War II, however, the term “communist” has been used in reference to Tan Malaka principally by anticommunists who regard it as sufficient to describe and thereby to condemn. It is in this unscientific sense that we see the term used to categorize Tan Malaka during the physical struggle for independence by, among others, the Dutch officialdom and the U.S. State Department.97
As the line between Tan Malaka and the PKI became clearer during the revolutionary period, some sought to label Tan Malaka a “national communist.” There was undoubtedly some basis for this characterization since many regarded him as a communist of some type, while seeing clearly that he had no ties with the international communist movement directed by Moscow which, until mid-1948, supported the government’s policy of diplomasi, not perjuangan. The “national communist” label gained some currency as people began to hear of Tito and his break from Moscow and then to apply the term to another “independent” communist, whose parallel with Tito was far from close.98 Though not used very often while he was alive, it has continued after his death as the most common descriptor for Tan Malaka.99 It is worth addressing here in some detail. Anthony J. Reid develops the concept most fully as follows:
At the end of 1945 it was abundantly clear that the most important cleavage was not between communists and social democrats. It was between those Marxists in both the above camps whose principal orientation was international, and those whose experience and sentiments were primarily or entirely Indonesian. For the former the primary issue was still the international struggle against capitalism; the strategy was the united front with the anti-fascist and bourgeois-democratic forces; and one of the assumptions was relative confidence in the Dutch and British Left, both now in power. . . . The great majority of Indonesians attracted to communism in 1945, on the other hand, saw it as the party of revolution par excellence, carrying on the defiant tradition of the 1926-7 revolt, prepared to match its rhetoric with action and to carry the revolution into domestic Indonesian social structures. The eventual success of the international Marxists in taming most of this group was one of the most important factors in curbing the whole social revolutionary movement. (Indonesian National Revolution, pp. 81-82)
Reid’s identification and separation of the two main streams of Indonesian politics during the revolutionary period is accurate and incisive and follows the diplomasi versus perjuangan dichotomy that Tan Malaka himself used as the litmus test during the 1945-1949 period, and that Benedict Anderson developed at length in his work Java in a Time of Revolution.
There is, however, in my view, a major flaw in the categories to which Reid assigns the two streams and in the labels he places upon them. Reid confuses the “primary issue” and the “strategy” and, in so doing, ends up with untenable categories. If “national communist” is taken to mean a lack of international perspective or a lack of understanding of how the international situation can affect the Indonesian revolution, then the term is clearly inappropriate for Tan Malaka. Similarly, “international Marxist” is a misnomer for the advocates of diplomasi. The line followed by the social-democratic parties of Europe against the colonial people’s struggle for independence (a line that was for a time also supported by the communist parties in the metropolitan countries and also in the colonies themselves) was a far cry from both internationalism and Marxism. If, on the other hand, “national communist” is taken to mean an ideology that embraces both nationalism and communism, and that implies a locally oriented approach without direction from above, then one can unquestionably assign Tan Malaka to this category. The very ambiguity of the term, however, makes it one best avoided.
The appellation “Trotskyist” has frequently been given to Tan Malaka. There is a certain basis for this characterization in that the hallmarks of Trotskyism are opposition to the bureaucratic degeneration in the Soviet Union and particularly to its expression in the subordination of the world revolution to the narrow interests of the Soviet state, issues which, as we have seen above, were pursued by Tan Malaka. Such criticism of the Stalinist policies advanced in Moscow, however, were made by many people other than Leon Trotsky, and there is no indication that Tan Malaka came close to adhering to Trotsky’s analysis of the reasons for these developments or the remedy for them.
This description of Tan Malaka stemmed originally from confusion over the identity of “Alphonso,” the delegate from Indonesia to the Sixth Congress of the Comintern in 1928. This delegate, who was widely assumed to be Tan Malaka, was attacked by Bukharin as a “Trotskyist” for criticizing the Comintern policy of alliance with the national bourgeoisie in the colonial countries.100
A full-throated example of the PKI’s use of the Trotskyist label to attack Tan Malaka is in Alimin’s Analysis, which vigorously attacks Tan Malaka for his position in 1926. Alimin maintains that the strategy for the 1926 uprising was correct, opening the way for advances in Asia. He characterizes Tan Malaka as an “adventurer” and a “Don Quixote” who “functioned as Trotskyists usually have in other countries by muddying the nationalist movement” (p. 19). In 1961 the PKI’s Institute for History published its account of the 1926 uprisings, roundly castigating the Trotskyist Tan Malaka for his role. According to Pemberontakan Nopember 1926, Tan Malaka made contact with Trotskyists inside the Executive Committee of the Communist International (ECCI), which he attended in 1922-1923. As a result of these contacts, it alleges, Tan Malaka became a Trotskyist, most likely due to his origins “as a member of the nobility and an intellectual,” with a petty-bourgeois intellectual’s understanding of Marxism-Leninism. Supposedly Tan Malaka’s non-Marxist perspectives became evident at ECCI meetings from 1923 to 1925 and in his acceptance of the ideas of permanent revolution and the need for a world revolution to ensure the success of the Indonesian revolution.101 Aside from the factual inaccuracies of this account, which has Tan Malaka attending ECCI sessions some two years after his departure from Moscow, it is a good illustration of the persistent view of him in official PKI circles.
Others who continue to tag Tan Malaka as a Trotskyist and who do not speak from any official Stalinist position do so more in passing than to develop a particular critique of him; but, in general, I see this use of the term as derivative. In most cases Tan Malaka is not central to their research, and they have relied on secondary sources, thus giving new life to old errors in fact and analysis; or their research in Indonesia has been confined to anti-Tan Malaka informants who have passed on their own distortions.102
Most Indonesians who voice support for Tan Malaka take pains to deny that he was a Trotskyist, perhaps largely today for self-defense against the right, but also in the days of PKI ascendancy when Trotskyism was also a dirty word. A good example of such concern is the 1957 publication by Partai Murba in commemoration of the eighth anniversary of Tan Malaka’s death. This volume contains transcripts of addresses given at the anniversary meeting held on 19 February 1957. Semaun states that he has read every one of Tan Malaka’s works and found not a single sentence of Trotskyism—they are all in line with the doctrines of Marx, Engels, and Lenin. The secretary-general of the Partai Murba, Wasid Soewarto, states categorically that Tan Malaka was neither a Stalinist nor a Trotskyist. On a lighter note perhaps there is significance in the fact that Tan Malaka was reported (by Muhammad Yamin) as having worked as a tailor during the Japanese occupation, a story as remote from fact as the frequent references to