Indonesia - An Unfinished Revolution
Collapse, revolt and instability
For those whose much-vaunted free market system is crumbling about their ears, Indonesia has become synonymous with collapse, revolt and a dangerously unstable and unpredictable political situation. When Russia's currency and share prices plummeted in August 1998, in part as a result of the continuing downward spiral in the economies of East Asia and Japan, the spectre was raised of "An Indonesia, with nuclear weapons"!
As the currencies and share markets of Latin America, Europe and the United States are buffeted by the economic turmoil, those with the most to lose - the super rich owners of industry and of the banks - ponder their fate. How will the people who make them their millions react to the mass redundancies and impoverishment that confronts them?
Indonesia gives them good cause to fear the worst. It also offers to workers and other oppressed layers in every society, a glimpse of what their united strength can achieve. The lava of revolution has not yet cooled. The headiest days may have been those of May, when the youth of the nation occupied the parliament building and brought a dictator to his knees. But, "far more serious", as a Jakarta observer commented, was the wave of strikes and workers' demonstrations that swept the country.
While economic catastrophe invariably leads to political turmoil and uncertainty, Marxists see nothing automatic about the working class moving immediately into action. The onset of recession and slump undoubtedly leads to a questioning and a significant political radicalisation amongst certain layers of workers and especially young people. This was evident in Indonesia, where, as the situation turned dramatically from one of steady growth to sudden collapse, opposition to Suharto's continued rule became more and more vociferous. It also confirmed that the first reaction of workers in industry to a sharp economic crisis can often be to hold back from strikes and protests. "If we fight", they reason, "We risk having no job". Then, after the initial shock, they can come to a different conclusion: "If we don't fight, we will have no job"!
In Indonesia, the victory of the predominantly student movement over a vicious military dictatorship, gave an enormous access of confidence to the millions of exploited and oppressed people. The "hunger for revenge" and the "spirit of reformasi" have still by no means been brought under control. Although the ruling class was severely shaken but not removed, the new government is still walking a tight-rope between concession and repression.
Workers
Immediately after Suharto's resignation, workers moved into action demanding a doubling of the minimum wage, equal pay for women and the restitution of subsidies on the nine basic necessities or 'sembako'. Their demonstrations were confronted by heavily armed troops - in the 'red belt' of Jabotabek on the edge of Jakarta, for example, and on the streets of Surabaya, Java's sprawling industrial second city.
The response of a frightened government was to increase the minimum wage - but only by 15%, when prices had gone up by 200%! - and to try and introduce a ban on large demonstrations. They have also moved to bring in new industrial legislation that would severely restrict the ability of workers to organise a fight back against retrenchment and all the injustices in store for them as the economy collapses. The moderate as well as the state-run trade union federations have proved themselves unable or unwilling to mobilise effectively against either the bosses or the regime that helps pass onto workers the full burden of their system's crisis. (The pro-market SBSI of Mukhtar Pakpahan is known to get support from the German CDU (Kohl's Party) and members of the US Congress).
Sporadic strikes and demonstrations have continued - of workers in engineering, textiles, electronics - in spite of over one-third of factories being out of production. Networks of trade union activists exist, holding meetings and conferences in secret. In the factories, mines and depots, the representatives of these independent 'unions' and workers' committees may not be formally elected but are recognised as leaders by their fellow workers, many of whom may not yet themselves be formal members. Strong independent unions are a vital weapon for defending workers in the face of crisis and mass unemployment.
Students
The months-long protests of the students, having achieved their immediate aim in May, temporarily subsided. The students drew breath and considered how much further they needed to struggle. There were sharp differences of opinion amongst them anyway as to what they saw as the ultimate goal. Those who had got closest to the workers and poor, wanted to link up the struggle to rid society of corruption and dictatorship with a broader struggle to eliminate poverty and exploitation altogether. Others had limited their horizons to simply cleaning up 'crony' capitalism and replacing it with a democratic 'free market' version, in which opportunities for participation in the economy and society were opened up to wider layers of the middle class.
But, as it has become clear that even the reforms promised by Suharto's successor, in the face of their 'revolution', have got stuck in the sand, the students have renewed their demonstrations. Every day there are protests demanding an end to the Suharto-era legislature, an end to the involvement in politics of the army ('dwi fungsi') and increasingly for President Habibie to resign.
This hapless successor to General Suharto, had the effrontery to suggest to the starving millions of his fellow countrymen, women and children that they should follow his example and fast for two days a week! The fact that a president can always find sufficient for his needs on the days when he is not fasting was not lost on protesting workers and farmers who demanded that rice be subsidised. Habibie then conceded a price subsidy - too little and too late. The vast stocks of rice being hoarded by vulture speculators waiting for higher prices are a provocation to starving families. No wonder the pattern of the recent period has been direct action - people taking what they regard as theirs by right, besieging banks, demanding nationalisation of all crony property even seizing opportunities for mass break-outs of the teeming prisons.
Half-measures in a crisis
President B J Habibie was fond of calling his friend and predecessor 'SGS - Super Genius Suharto' . Now he is keen to tell reporters that no-one should expect that he can wave a magic wand or "just go 'zingaboom' and everything is there!". Indeed, he seems as surprised as anyone to find himself still at the helm of what has become a very shaky ship of state. All the half-measures he has introduced - be it in relation to probing Suharto's mega wealth, devising new electoral laws, clipping the wings of the army etc. - are aimed at keeping every layer of society satisfied. In fact, they are more likely to irritate each of them by being totally inadequate.
With the local currency - the rupiah - having lost 80% of its value compared with the US dollar and with national production shrinking by between 15 and 20% this year, the economy is seizing up. Factories are at a standstill. Much of industry and agriculture has been disrupted beyond repair. Real wages are back to the level of 1965. The 'miracle' growth of the '80s and 90s, which took per capita income from $70 - $700, has turned into its opposite. Far from getting into the top ten economies in the world by the year 2005 - the declared aim of the dictator Suharto - Indonesia came to be universally regarded as a 'basket case'.
More than 80 million people, out of a 200 million population, can barely assure themselves even one meal a day. By the end of the year it will be more like 100 million. A recent newspaper report claiming a certain 'stabilisation' of the currency and 'improvements' in business prospects, stressed the fragility of the situation. It also brought home with one ghastly statistic, the human cost of economic disaster. Half of the country's children below the age of two are so undernourished that they have suffered irreversible damage to the development of their brains.
Television reports from Indonesia have shown children suffering form all the horrific symptoms of malnutrition associated with Africa - no flesh on their bones, swollen stomachs, vacant eyes. They have also shown swarms of desperate and starving people descending on onion plots or rice fields, being chased away by terrified farmers wielding bamboo poles, and swarming back again. Fields and plantations have been stripped bare, fish stocks raided and rice warehouses forced open.
The situation is rapidly deteriorating; the question is sharply posed: 'Who will re-plant and who will re-stock?'. Some urban and rural poor have invaded the estates and even the golf courses of the rich and planted rice and other crops, agreeing to cultivate and distribute the produce on collective principles. These are, at present, a minority. Blind rage has led to the torching and destruction of buildings and equipment on palm-oil plantations, for example, where Suharto cronies still refuse to recognise the grievances of local people. The situation is crying out for a form of direct democracy and local decision-making that bring immediate results. In many areas, mass demonstrations, picketing or occupying government buildings, have forced out of office not only local governors associated with Suharto's corrupt regime, but even village head-men - mini Suhartoes - accused of cronyism, nepotism and favouritism.
National Struggles
The fall of the Suharto dictatorship gave a huge boost to the struggles for liberation in the regions that have suffered the cruellest national oppression - Aceh, Irian Jaya, East Timor. Mass demonstrations forced the Habibie government to give the appearance of acceding to demands for the withdrawal of troops. In Aceh in August as the last divisions were supposed to be leaving the area, agents provocateurs were obviously under instruction to stir up riots and provide a pretext for the decision to be reversed.
In spite of one much publicised airlift of soldiers from East Timor, there are now more, rather than less, encamped in the territory - over 25,000 according to TV reports which have shown military landing craft spewing out hundreds of fresh troops onto the beaches of this half-island nation. East Timor has suffered the slaughter of one third of its population since the invasion of 1976 - one of the worst ever genocides in history.
Since the hated Suharto's departure, there have been huge demonstrations in the capital Dili and many other areas. Political organisations have come out into the open to pursue the struggle for national liberation to the end. Under the pressure of the movement, some rebel leaders have been released from prison. The most well-known - FRETILIN leader Xanana Gusmao - remains in a Jakarta jail, refusing on principle a deal on 'special status' for East Timor within Indonesia. He holds out for a referendum on self-determination, though he believes it may take five, or even ten years before it is held and should be under UN supervision. It is possible that even he under-estimates the determination of his own people to achieve complete independence in the shortest possible time.
Chaos and the army
Today throughout Indonesia, conventional 'law and order' have broken down. In East Java hundreds of people - human rights workers, young people and local Islamic leaders- have been killed by black-clad 'Ninja' assassins. In revenge, vigilante groups have turned into lynch mobs, carrying out summary executions. Ethnic and religious rivalries have been exacerbated by poverty and desperation but they are whipped up and used by the ruling class to divide and rule the population. In a predominantly Muslim country, Islamic fundamentalism in one form or another would move to fill the gap left by the breakdown of conventional authority and the absence of a revolutionary workers' party capable of uniting all the oppressed against the common enemy.
It is said that the army is the only force operational on a national basis. It is certainly still very much in evidence in political life. In the government's proposals for a 'reformed' parliament, the armed forces -ABRI- would still have 55 unelected seats. Although there is much talk about ABRI moving back into centre stage, the likelihood of a military coup is still small - at least over the next 6 - 12 months.
The army is discredited and now even officially blamed for provoking the riots which brought the widespread death and destruction to Jakarta in May. The International Herald Tribune reports in one province, armed clashes between rival military units.
Large elements of the army are impoverished and demoralised. Mining companies complain that the military, along with local officials are unwilling to intervene to stop thousands of miners digging gold and coal for themselves and selling it on the open market. "As they cannot feed the people," comments a Broken Hill Proprietary manager, "They're quite happy for the community to help themselves!" (And it is not only gold and coal that is being appropriated in this way...but whole forests full of teak!).
Socialist order or capitalist compromise
In situations of famine and crisis all kinds of committees spring up dominated by bourgeois and intellectual elements who appoint themselves but do little to overcome the powerful lobbies and corrupt practices which plague a poverty-stricken society. But the challenge before the leaders of the class struggle is to replace chaos and 'lawlessness' with an ordered but democratically controlled and practical way of planning the distribution and use of resources, starting with the most basic aspects of life. They need to encourage the election of councils to take over the task of feeding the population.
Elected representatives of the rural and urban poor, linking up with those of workers in the factories and offices, could begin to organise collectively the acquisition, production and distribution of food and basic necessities.
Such councils of action, similar to the soviets thrown up in the course of the Russian Revolution, could mount a struggle to take all large estates, banks and industrial conglomerates out of the hands of capitalist cronies and land-owners. Under the 'direct democracy' of a workers' and peasants' government, they could organise democratic workers' control and management of society. All that is on offer from the Habibie government, is new elections in May of 1999 and a presidential poll in December. Some doubt that either will be held. A new campaign to discredit the ideas of socialism and communism is under way and troops are preparing to crack-down on demonstrations outside the 'phoney' parliament's meetings this month - November.
The seven person committee of academics, appointed to draw up reforms to the constitution, has agreed to proposals which contradict even the accepted norms of 'representative' democracy. To register, a party must have branches in half of the 27 provinces or get a million signatures on a petition! To be eligible to stand for a second time it must pass a 10% threshold in the election.
Yet, all these efforts to maintain the status quo are by no means assured of success. Laws severely restricting the right of assembly have already been over-ruled even by today's phoney parliament. They have seen that that in the present inflamed situation, they are anyway being disregarded and discredited. In the political ferment that has followed the end of the Suharto dictatorship, no fewer than 250 different new journals and newspapers have appeared on the scene. New radio stations have opened up and numerous new parties and organisations have come into existence. Eighty eight parties are applying to be legally recognised.