From Jail to Jail. Tan Malaka
Indonesia,’ pp. 28-29). By 1926 his criticism had become even sharper. He strongly attacked the party’s apparent inability to oppose the recently introduced ban on public meetings, and went on to discuss the party’s composition and relationship to mass organizations under its leadership. He concluded that the party should be largely proletarian in composition and that nonproletarian sympathizers and allies of the party should be organized under party direction in separate mass organizations. The basis for membership and for party activity should be the trade unions and the industrial proletariat (Massa actie, pp. 55-56).
The smashing of the PKI on the heels of the 1926-1927 uprisings led Tan Malaka to establish a new party—PARI. In drawing up the party statutes, he had a free hand to determine party structure, and the statutes present a copybook democratic-centralist party. This structure was, however, never implemented, and an emergency cell structure was all that PARI managed to attain.90
On his emergence in 1945 from over twenty years in exile, Tan Malaka’s ideas on the nature and even existence of the revolutionary party were highly contradictory. In Manifesto PARI Djakarta he discussed PARI as a continuing organization, drawing attention to its aims, objectives, history, and composition and advancing the following schema:
PARI membership must be increased on the basis of 30% workers in crucial industries, 20% impoverished peasants, and 20% intellectuals, city inhabitants, small traders, office workers etc. (Manifesto PARI Djakarta, typescript; [Djakarta]: Lectura, [1945], p. 17)
His work Thesis, written in early June 1946, also contained numerous references to PARI, for example,
for twenty years PARI has held to Marxist philosophy and Leninist strategy, working towards the national revolution, the socialist revolution, socialist society . . . and further towards a communist society on a worldwide basis. (Thesis, p. 36)
Perhaps PARI did exist in the 1945-1946 period as an underground organization. Reference is made in Manifesto PARI Djakarta (p. 15) to how a party should function during an “underground period.” It must maintain direct contact with the masses through an open but more moderate party or a trade union, which would function as “the kaleidoscope [sic] of a submarine.” However, the pamphlet makes no mention of how the assessment of whether or not to work underground should be made, and so we have no guide as to whether Tan Malaka thought such a period existed in 1945, or whether he is merely looking back to the prewar experiences of PARI. From Jail to Jail makes no mention of PARI in the postwar period and discusses in considerable detail Tan Malaka’s expressed opposition to the founding of parties in 1945 as being damaging to the unity necessary for the struggle for independence. Publicly there was no PARI: no PARI organization, no PARI newspaper, no PARI statements. And in January 1946 Tan Malaka established the Persatuan Perjuangan united front without including his own party within it.
In April 1946, Djamaluddin Tamim returned to Indonesia after his long years of exile in Boven Digul and in Australia during the war. He immediately went to Central Java to see Tan Malaka, then under house detention in Tawang Mangu. The advice he received was to enter the PKI, which was then being re-formed by old PKI exiles from Digul like Sardjono. However, they wanted no part of Tan Malaka’s followers and rejected Djamaluddin out of hand.91 Meanwhile, other Tan Malaka followers were in the process of constructing the Partai Rakyat Jelata, later to be one of the constituents of Partai Murba. Others were active in Partai Buruh, Partai Wanita Rakyat, and Partai Rakyat, while still others concentrated their energies on guerrilla movements and on the Konsentrasi Nasional, in which the old Persatuan Perjuangan people tried to establish a revolutionary faction. In short, Tan Malaka’s line on a party to carry out his ideas is elusive not only in retrospect; at the time it was interpreted in many different ways by people claiming to be putting it into practice.
Muso’s return in August 1948 and his proclamation of the need for the PKI to abandon the pro-negotiation line it had been following in support of the Linggajati and Renville agreements raised Tan Malaka’s hopes for a reunion between the PKI wings that had split in 1926.92 Once again, however, his overtures were rebuffed, and the division between the two deepened with the Madiun uprising.
On his release from prison in September 1948, it seems as though Tan Malaka wished to take a different course. Almost immediately, discussions began with the aim of fusing the various parties supporting him into a single democratic-centralist party. The first steps were taken during October, and on 7 November 1948, the anniversary of the Russian revolution, the Partai Murba was established. The party’s basis was “anti-fascism, anti-imperialism and anti-capitalism, basing its struggle on the organised mass action of the murba.” It had a minimum program (see Volume III, p. 113) with seven points like that of the Persatuan Perjuangan, but with some changes: the old demands that were no longer appropriate (“disarmament of Japanese forces” and “taking charge of European internees”) were replaced by “general mobilization and arming of the people” and “implementation of a fighting economic plan.” It also had a maximum program, quite a departure from the Persatuan Perjuangan:
1. Government of, by, and for the people (murba);
2. Army of, by, and for the people (murba);
3. Recognition in the Constitution of the place of the murba in political, economic, social, and other areas;
4. Nationalization, mechanization, rationalization, and collectivization of vital enterprises (estates, industry, and transport);
5. Nationalization of export and import trade;
6. Nationalization of banks;
7. Establishment of heavy industry;
8. Education, learning, and culture to be based on mechanization and collectivization;
9. Establishment of overseas trade relations and sociopolitical relations with overseas murba on the basis of equal status;
10. To work towards becoming a member of the United Nations or some other international organization on the basis of equal status, democracy, and objectives of a murba-oriented world government. (Tan Malaka, “Keterangan Ringkas tentangan Maximum Program”)
As to the structure of the party, I have been able to find only later versions of the party statutes (from 1960).93 From these, it is clear that Partai Murba was established as a democratic-centralist party, with members obligated to carry out decisions of the party. This included members holding public office, which they were entitled to do only on the party’s authorization. Regular dues were to be paid to the party, including a proportion of the salary for public office holders; party members were prohibited from joining other parties and from acting contrary to the party’s interests; and the party had various disciplinary powers over members. On the other hand, members were assured of congresses as the highest decision-making bodies, from which the party council and executive were elected; members were entitled to vote in branch meetings and through delegates at congress. The executive had the responsibility to establish bureaus (organization, finance, agit/prop, etc.) and appropriate sub-bureaus and departments to direct various areas of work (workers, peasants, youth, and women).
The Gerakan Revolusi Rakyat was to remain a broader united front of mass organizations supporting the minimum program, and the newspapers Moerba and Massa were to function as the party’s official voice.94 Once again, as in the Persatuan Perjuangan, Tan Malaka refrained from holding any office in the party, remaining as “promoter” together with Rustam Effendi, the former PKI member and representative of the CPN in the Dutch parliament.
Partai Murba represented an evolution in Tan Malaka’s thinking, or perhaps, more precisely, a return to the views he held in the 1920s on the need for a revolutionary party on the Leninist model.
Conclusion
As illustrated in the areas elaborated above, Tan Malaka’s ideas changed little from the early twenties until his death.95 However, the considerable changes that took place within the communist movement mean that the characterization of Tan Malaka as an “orthodox communist” may appear quite reasonable in 1922, but was untenable by 1945, when