HBAD OF
INDONESIAN CP_ATTACKS "TROTSKYISM"
At the fourth plenum of the central committee of the Communist party of Indonesia, Chairman D.N.Aidit delivered a general report May ll lasting seven hours and twenty-three minutes, according to Hsinhua, the Chinese News Agency [May 16]. One of the features of the report, according to the same source, was a sharp attack against "Trotskyism. "
Hsinhuats account of this part of Aidit's report is as follows:
"The revolutionary offensive must also be directed at Trotskyism which has since long ago ceased to be a deviation from Marxism and which is nothing more than a gang of political bandits whose work it is to organise intrigues and political crimes. The Trotskyites don the cloak of Marxism to attack Marxism, they raise revolutionary and 'left! slogans to oppose the revolutionary movement, so that they can within limits win over the politically uneducated masses of the people. The Trotskyites are not forces of the left, nor are they middle-of-the-roaders; they are ultrarightists, consciously anti- Communist and anti-Nasakom. [Nasakom: Sukarno's platform of national unity of nationalists, religious believers and Communists.] Therefore it is out of the question to build unity :with Nasakom as the axis unless action is taken against the Trotskyites, as President’ Sukarno and the Indonesian government have. done."
In a following part of his report, Aidit is reported to have charged, during an attack against "pureaucrat-capitalists," that “they abuse state power in their hands in order to undermine and manipulate state wealth for their own enrichment" and that they are "striving to seize the state power through a conspiracy with the Trotskyites, the neo-colonialists, the colonialists and the imperialists, in order to turn it into a counter-revolutionary economic hierarchy of the bureaucrat-capitalists..."
In the mythology fostered by Stalin in the days of the "cult" of his famous personality, Leon Trotsky was pictured as the arch devil standing in sulphurous contrast to the plaster-white image of Stalin. This mythology was irretrievably discredited long before Stalin's death as the dictator's true role in the mass murder of Lenin's collaborators, organization of purges and frame-ups, establishment of concentration camps and similar features of his authoritarian rule became widely known. Khrushchev's admissions at the famed Twentieth Congress of some of the crimes of Stalin only confirmed common knowledge among people interested. in knowing the truth about Stalints role in destroying the proletarian democracy that was the norm in the time of Lenin and Trotsky.
Besides serving as a mythology, the charge of "Trotskyism"
and "Trotskyist conspiracies" had a most utilitarian political purpose in Stalin's time. It corresponded in the Soviet Union to the charge of "Communism" and "Communist conspiracies" used in imperialist countries to mount a witch-hunt against political opposition.
In what:way does this ancient rubbish serve the political purposes of the chairman of the central committee of the Communist party of Indonesia? The reasons cannot be gathered from the speech itself. But it-is known that substantial left-wing sentiment does exist in Indonesia, including the ranks of the Communist party.
This opposition starts from the simple fact that the Communist party has more than 3,000,000 members and that the Communist youth organized in the People's Youth League, has almost 3, 000, 000 members. What is stopping this force of 6,000, 000 militants, undoubtedly the most powerful political army in Indonesia, from assuming power and initiating the program of socialism which it proclaims?
The reason is clear enough. It is D.N.Aidit's lack of revolutionary will, His inclinations run in the groove of Khrushchevism,
Yet the pressures on him from the left are very powerful and he has displayed a certain suppleness in bowing to them, His ending up in the pro-Peking camp instead of the pro-Moscow camp, against his own obvious inclinations, was ascribed at the time as a concession to left-wing sentiment in his own party and those sectors of the population to which it is responsive. ,
One of the political advantages derived by Aidit in making this concession was the curious one of being able to revive with relative ease one of the staples of Stalinism --- the bogey of "Trotskyism." Aidit could do this because Mao, for his own reasons, is attempting to revive and refurbish the cult of Stalin's personality.
But the fact that a figure like Aidit is compelled to dip into this cesspool for his choice of political epithets testifies in its own way to the mounting revolutionary pressures among the increasingly impatient masses of Indonesia.
This is further indicated by the title chosen by Aidit for his report: “Step Up the Revolutionary Offensive in All Fields."