OUR STRUGGLE
SUTAN SJAHRIR
(Translated with an Introduction
by Benedict R. O’G. Anderson)
TRANSLATION SERIES
Modern Indonesia Project
Southeast Asia Program
Cornell University
Ithaca, New York
1968
Price—$2.00
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640 Stewart AvenueOUR STRUGGLE
Sutan Sjahrir
(Translated with an Introduction
by Benedict R. O'G. Anderson)
TRANSLATION SERIES
MODERN INDONESIA PROJECT
Southeast Asia Program
Department of Asian Studies
Cornell University
Ithaca, New York
1968©	1968 by Cornell Modern Indonesia ProjectPREFACE
A continuing concern of the Cornell Modern Indonesia
Project has been to help provide a wider understanding of
Indonesian politics and society by publishing translations
of important writings of leading Indonesian political thinkers
and academicians. The Project's Translation Series has al-
ready made available translations of the writing of such
eminent Indonesians as former President Sukarno, former Vice-
President Hatta, Mohammad Natsir, Soedjatmoko, Wilopo, and
Professors Koentjaraningrat, Widjojo Nitisastro, A. K.
Pringgodigdo, Selo Soemardjan and Soepomo.
Few Indonesians have done as much thoughtful writing
about Indonesia and her problems as the late Sutan Sjahrir,
Prime Minister of the Republic of Indonesia from November
1945 to July 1947, and Chairman of Indonesia's Socialist
Party until it was banned by Sukarno in 1960. To a degree
unusual among practicing politicians, Sjahrir devoted himself
to reflective analytical study of his country's affairs from
a very early age. Charles Wolf's excellent translation of
Sjahrir's Indonesische Overpeinzingen, which appeared under
the title Out of Exile, has already given Western readers a
superb picture of Sjahrir's intellectual maturation as a
nationalist intellectual-politician during his years of exile
in West Irian and Banda, and during the period of the Japa-
nese Occupation. But nothing has so far appeared to illumine
his role as leader of the independent nation of Indonesia in
the turmoil of the nationalist struggle against the Japanese,
British and Dutch in the post-war years.
It is therefore with particular pleasure that the Cornell
Modern Indonesia Project now makes available for the first
time a translation of Perdjuangan Kita (Our Struggle).
Written in the first months of the nationalist revolution, it
is probably not only Sjahrir's most important political
writing, but it is a document essential for understanding the
course of that revolution's subsequent development. It repre-
sents as well one of the most forceful statements by an
Indonesian intellectual-politician of the problems of making
the liberal-socialist parliamentary tradition of Europe rele-
vant and meaningful to the aspirations, the concerns, and
the hostilities felt by Indonesian society as it emerged from
the colonial experience and sought to find a satisfying
direction for its nationalism in an independent state.
inBoth during and after the Indonesian revolution I was
fortunate in having many good talks with Sutan Sjahrir. I
shall always admire the combination of keen intellectual
power and deep humanitarian concern that so marked his per-
sonality. There was nothing doctrinaire in Sjahrir's politi-
cal approach; all political theories, Marxian or otherwise,
he saw with a fresh eye, subjecting each of them to the same
cold, deep-cutting scalpel of dispassionate analysis. But,
coupled with this incisive analytical ability was a warm,
deep and very genuine sympathy for his fellowman and a power-
ful desire to improve their condition.
I was always forcibly struck by the strength of Sjahrir's
anti-totalitarian feelings. He had an abiding fear that
what he called the "feudal heritage" of so much of Indonesia,
Java in particular, inclined its population towards an un-
questioning submission to authority which he felt could
earily lead to an authoritarian political order. Certainly
this concern is manifested in Perdjuangan Kita.
Often when I think of Sjahrir, I remember a long discus-
sion we had together in Jogjakarta in late November 1948,
just after the government of Sukarno and Hatta had overcome
the Communists' Madiun Rebellion. Sjahrir had come from a
meeting of his party where the discussion had centered about
the failure of the Communists and the future of his own
party, the PSI (Partai Sosialis Indonesia). He said:
The important work now for our party members is to build
cadres of convinced socialists, who understand the mean-
ing of socialism, particularly its emphasis upon the
individual and his welfare rather than upon the state.
Mass parties with uneducated followings led by leaders
who themselves decide all party policy are an imminent
and great danger and may well lead to fascism or some
other type of totalitarian organization. The feudalistic
heritage is still very strong amongst Indonesians. It
means they are accustomed to receive political directives
from above, that they are accustomed to look up to lead-
ers for orders and that they are accustomed to follow
such leaders without themselves taking initiative. The
Communists were able to exploit this feudalistic heri-
tage of the people by building a powerful party organized
along totalitarian lines. The Communist Party's elimi-
nation does not eliminate the threat of totalitarianism.
Indonesians, because of the yet strong impress of their
feudalistic heritage, are particularly susceptible to
the danger of becoming organized along totalitarian
lines. Indeed the danger of becoming politically
organized along totalitarian lines is the greatest of
all threats to the Indonesian community. The problem
IVof gaining independence from the Dutch is transitory
and short-run. The great, abiding, long-term problem
is this danger of totalitarianism. If the Socialists
accomplish only the negative objective of preventing
totalitarianism they will have won the greatest of
victories. This takes precedence over everything else.
In the decade after the revolution Sjahrir and his
followers maintained an intellectual and political influence
much greater than their party's relatively small membership,
but they failed in their effort to train sufficient cadres
to establish any really substantial base in the masses.
The personal tragedy of Sjahrir's last years, his grow-
ing political isolation, his four year imprisonment by Sukarno
commencing in 1962, and his death alone in a hospital abroad
in 1966, have perhaps tended to obscure his intellectual and
political services to his country. Although towards the end
of his life he no longer was in the mainstream of Indonesia's
history, that is no reason for historians, Indonesian and
foreign alike, to ignore Sjahrir's important contribution to
his country's political development. Not only was he one of
Indonesia's outstanding leaders during its revolutionary
struggle and among the foremost representatives of an import-
ant and enduring part of the modern Indonesian political
tradition, but a study of his writing can do much to illumine
our understanding of the deeper problems and ambiguities
that this tradition has faced and continues to face today.
I feel sure that many will share my gratitude to
Professor Anderson for his sensitive translation of this
historically important piece of Sutan Sjahrir's writings
and for his valuable and illuminating introduction.
George McT. Kahin
Director
Ithaca, New York
July 13, 1968
vINTRODUCTION
Sutan Sjahrir was born on March 5, 1909 in Padang-
pandjang, West Sumatra, the son of a well-to-do public
prosecutor, who was later advisor to the Sultan of Deli.
He was among the lucky few who received an excellent colo-
nial Dutch education both in Medan and later in the cosmo-
politan city of Bandung. At the age of twenty he joined
the even smaller group of Indonesians who were able to
continue their education in the Netherlands. For a time
he was enrolled in the Law Faculty at the University of
Leiden, but never completed his degree. While in Holland,
however, he became strongly attracted to Marxist ideas and
the men of the left, who seemed the only considerable group
of Dutchmen sympathetic to Indonesian nationalist aspira-
tions. He became a member of the Socialistische Studenten-
club in Amsterdam, and helped pay for his studies by working
for the Metal Workers' Union and the International Federa-
tion of Transport Workers. Though not yet 22 years of age,
he also became the secretary of the Perhimpoenan Indonesia,
the Indonesian student association which produced so many
of Indonesia's later political leaders. In 1931 he re-
turned to Indonesia and there helped to set up the
Pendidikan Nasional Indonesia, a "non-cooperative" nation-
alist organization of young Indonesian intellectuals.
Though he relinquished the chairmanship of this organiza-
tion to the older Hatta on the latter's return to Indonesia
in 1932, Sjahrir remained an important intellectual influ-
ence within it.
The Pendidikan Nasional Indonesia rapidly came into
conflict with another important non-cooperative nationalist
organization, the Partindo, which had been formed by Mr.
Sartono from the remnants of Sukarno's Partai Nasional
Indonesia following the latter's arrest by the Dutch
authorities in 1929. When Sukarno was released from
prison at the end of 1931, he attempted for a while to
bring the two organizations together, but without success.
While the reasons for the conflict were many and various,
not the least of them being personal antagonisms, on the
political and ideological level the main issue between the
two organizations lay in their view of the tasks facing
the nationalist movement. In very general terms, the
Pendidikan Nasional Indonesia believed that the Dutch would
remain in control for the indefinite future, and that in
12
any case, Indonesians were by no means prepared, intellec-
tually and organizationally, for the assumption of power.
The most urgent task facing the nationalists was therefore
to develop a disciplined, highly educated, and ideologically
coherent leadership cadre, prepared, if necessary, to work
underground. If nationalist sentiment was not effectively
moulded and organized, it would remain diffuse, chaotic
and vulnerable to Dutch repression. Heavily influenced by
Marxist ideas, the Pendidikan Nasional Indonesia strongly
criticized the Partindo’s call for a national united front
of all classes against Dutch rule. Hatta denounced this
idea as a sociological monstrosity. In a famous phrase he
said it would lead, not to persatuan (unity), but to
persatean (a hodge-podge). There was no real social basis
for common action by feudal aristocrats, industrial workers,
villagers, and the urban bourgeoisie. Moreover too much
emphasis on unity would stultify democratic freedom of
expression and retard the development of critical political
thinking among the population.
By contrast, the Partindo (Sukarno) believed that
while the process of cadre-formation was important, the
Pendidikan Nasional Indonesia’s conception suffered from
two severe disadvantages. First, there was the danger
that the elitism of its ideas might tempt the party into
becoming a self-enclosed urban clique without contact with
or understanding of the Indonesian masses, whose support
was essential to any meaningful struggle against the Dutch.
Moreover, a small cadre, the Partindo felt, would be
easily broken up by the Dutch political police, without
leaving any significant residues behind. Secondly, the
Partindo was convinced that there was a basis for the
cooperation of all classes against the Dutch--the struggle
for national independence--and that the organizational and
military weakness of the Indonesians vis-ii-vis the colonial
government made such a coalition mandatory. Slogans about
class conflict could and would be effectively used by the
Dutch to play their traditional game of divide and rule.
In the Partindo perspective, the proper task of a nation-
alist organization was mass agitation among all sectors of
the population, to awaken a broad political consciousness
of the common humiliation and subjugation of all Indone-
sians under colonial rule.
Conflicts between the two organizations, however, did
not last long, since the Dutch moved rapidly to suppress
both cadre-formers and agitators alike. Late in 1933
Sukarno was imprisoned and exiled to Flores (later to
Bengkulu). Sjahrir and Hatta suffered the same fate in3
early 1934, being sent first to the concentration camp at
Boven Digul in West Irian, and later, in 1936, to the re-
mote island of Banda. From then on all three men remained
"quarantined" from Indonesian politics until 1942, when
the Japanese arrived in Indonesia. At the time of the
Japanese landings Sjahrir was just celebrating his 33rd
birthday, after seven and a half years in exile.*
The coming of the Japanese presented the whole Indo-
nesian nationalist intelligentsia with a grave dilemma.
The question of what attitude should be taken toward the
invaders was hotly argued. The majority were inclined to
take the Japanese promises of early independence seriously,
and therefore offered their cooperation to the military
authorities. Many of them had earlier been profoundly im-
pressed by the rapid development of Japan’s economy and
her war-making powers. Others, particularly those with a
deep sense of Java's cultural traditions, found Japan's
stress on the spiritual superiority of the East, and her
success in combining traditional values with modern tech-
nology and organization a more appealing political model
than the bourgeois rationalism of the Dutch.
It was a relatively small minority which did not
cooperate with the Japanese; and this "opposition" came
almost exclusively from those Indonesians who saw them-
selves as "men of the left," in the Western tradition.
The most significant group consisted mainly of remnants of
the Indonesian Communist Party under the leadership of the
young Christian Batak leader, Amir Sjarifuddin, who at-
tempted with extremely limited success to organize a re-
sistance movement. While not himself taking any very
active role, Sjahrir was also among the small minority who
* A collection of Sjahrir's letters to his Dutch wife
from his various places of exile has appeared as Out of
Exile, translated by Charles Wolf, Jr. (John Day, 1949).
These letters give a vivid picture of Sjahrir as a young
nationalist full of intellectual curiosity, unembittered
by his imprisonment, determined to use his enforced
leisure for sustained reflection on trends in world
politics and Indonesia's relationship to them. One is
also struck by Sjahrir's virtually complete alienation
from Indonesia's past and the urgency he felt about
liberating his fellow-Indonesians from the "dead-weight"
of tradition.4
refused to work with the Japanese, retiring into semi-
obscurity during the war years. Both men, deeply influenced
by Western radical thought, perceived what was happening
in essentially Western terms. For them the Japanese, while
certainly overthrowing Dutch colonial rule, represented
reactionary imperialism and militarism, which would cer-
tainly exploit the population more ruthlessly than the
Dutch. Nothing good was to be expected from the "feudal"
Japanese military and the "fascist" ideas that they spread.
While Amir Sjarifuddin was eventually arrested and
sentenced to death for subversion (his sentence was com-
muted to life imprisonment only because of the intervention
of Sukarno and Hatta), Sjahrir was left in undisturbed
retirement, partly because of his passivity, partly because
of his relatively low conspicuousness. The same possibili-
ties were not open to Sukarno and Hatta, who were widely
known as the two most prominent Indonesian nationalist
leaders. Their at least formal cooperation was demanded
by the Japanese--and obtained.
& jfe & & *
Paradoxically, the Japanese occupation justified the
expectations of both segments of Indonesian nationalist
opinion. The "agitators" of the Partindo and of other
more conservative nationalist groupings found under the
Japanese an unparalleled opportunity for developing their
talents and gaining political experience. For purposes of
mobilizing the population of Java for the war effort, the
Japanese formed an impressive array of mass organizations,
which while ultimately under their organizational control,
nonetheless were fully staffed by Indonesians, and pene-
trated in unprecedented fashion down to the urban and
rural masses. Whereas Dutch policy had been as far as
possible to isolate the nationalists from the population
the Japanese encouraged their coming together, on the
theory that the mass nationalism thus aroused could be
directed against the oncoming Allies, provided that its
leaders remained under their control. Many Indonesians
gained considerable experience in the basic techniques of
mass propaganda action in the Sendenbu (Office of Propa-
ganda), the Hokokai (People's Service Association), the
Barisan Pelopor (Pioneer Corps), etc.
Furthermore, largely against their will, the Japanese
were in the end induced by their military defeats to begin
really granting Indonesians that independence which had
been somewhat cynically dangled before them in 1942. Many5
Indonesian officials were promoted to fill the places of
their now absent Dutch superiors. The beginnings of an
Indonesian national army appeared in the Fatherland Defence
Force (PETA), created along Japanese military lines in 1943.
Finally, the Japanese devoted a great deal of their time
and attention to the Indonesian youth, in the belief that
they would prove more adaptable to the ideals of Dai Nippon
than their Dutch-corrupted elders. A large complex of
official and semi-official bodies for the first time ab-
sorbed huge numbers of Java’s youth in modern organizational
structures, at the same time awakening or deepening their
nationalist consciousness and giving them elementary mili-
tary and organizational skills. Thus, by August 1945, and
perhaps contrary to much of their original intent, the
Japanese had gone very far towards fulfilling the promises
of 1942. For those nationalists who had taken these
promises seriously and who admired much of Japanese civili-
zation and technological development, the war years repre-
sented enormous progress over the pre-war era. Though the
social and economic hardships of the occupation far ex-
ceeded those of the earlier colonial period, rapid political
advances more than compensated for this.
For the members of the "opposition"--both passive and
active--the experience of the Japanese occupation was in-
evitably very different. They took no part in the mass
organizations, learned no new skills in the Sendenbu,
experienced no rise in rank, were not among those who
emerged from a static rural environment into the exciting
new world of political activity. What they did experience
were the cruelties of the Kempeitai, with its extensive
entourage of Indonesian informers, spies and torturers.
Some were executed, others lived in fear of their lives.
Moreover, not sharing in the political advances of the
period, they were able to see more clearly, if with jaun-
diced eyes, the real ravages which the Japanese occupation
inflicted on the mass of the population.
To supply their armies and their military administra-
tion, the Japanese had instituted forced deliveries of
rice, which created severe food-shortages for an already
chronically undernourished population. The romusha program
of labor mobilization for defence projects in Java, Suma-
tra and parts of mainland Southeast Asia transformed the
traditional corvde by permanently uprooting the mobilized
peasants from their village environments. The closing-
down of the pre-war plantation system, caused by the Allied
naval blockade of Japan, and the isolation of Java from
its traditional export markets put many thousands of rural6
laborers out of work. Lavish spending by the military
government destroyed the value of the Rupiah, which stood,
in August, 1945, at l/60th of its value in March, 1942.
This hyper-inflation in turn undermined first the incomes,
and then, of necessity, the probity of the civil service.
Corruption, hoarding, and abuse of power for economic
profit developed very rapidly. Health measures and pest
control did not figure among the authorities'major preoccu-
pations, with the result that there were widespread epi-
demics. The combination of a declining economy, adminis-
trative inefficiency and demoralization, and the spread of
hunger and disease certainly contributed to making the
’’opposition's" picture of the war years a very dark one
indeed. Moreover, even those political advances which
others saw as compensating for the privations of the occu-
pation, appeared to Sjahrir and those like him as fraught
with ambiguity and danger. In their view, the older
nationalist leaders were betraying the population for
their own advantage; they were being corrupted by the new
positions offered them by the Japanese in return for their
cooperation in dealing with the population. The youth was
being indoctrinated with Fascist and militarist ideas.
Anti-white racism was being cynically exploited by the
Japanese. Promises of independence and freedom were, the
"opposition" felt, hollow and meaningless so long as the
military presence of Dai Nippon on Java remained pervasive.
For both groups, in any case, the suddenness of Japan's
surrender came as a complete surprise. So did the very
extensive delay before the Allied Forces landed in Indone-
sia in militarily significant numbers. The nationalists
and senior civil servants who held the highest positions
under the occupation attempted to carry forward the per-
spectives and instrumentalities of the Japanese period.
After the proclamation of Indonesia's independence on
August 17, largely under the pressure of militant youth
elements in the capital city, a Cabinet was formed under
Sukarno, consisting almost exclusively of the immediate
subordinates of the previous Japanese heads of departments
in the military administration. This Cabinet received for
a while the cooperation and assistance of the Japanese,
acting on a mixture of motives ranging from anxiety to
maintain law and order, through a sense of moral obliga-
tion incurred by previous promises, to a scarcely disguised
schadenfreude vis-a-vis the victorious Allies.7
But the difficulties of maintaining the forms, insti-
tutions and authority of the Japanese government without
the assistance of the efficient Japanese army, proved in-
creasingly insurmountable. The indigenous Indonesian
police was compromised by its association with the more
repressive aspects of Japanese policy and found it hard to
adapt to conditions of independent statehood. The PETA,
which might have provided some disciplined support for the
government, had been discreetly disbanded by the military
authorities a few days after the Declaration of Independ-
ence. Since it had never been provided with a central
staff or an officer corps above the level of battalion
commander, it proved almost impossible to reassemble in
the heady atmosphere of liberation. The new Cabinet was
thus forced to rely for its authority on the well-trained
but scarcely dynamic Indonesian sector of the colonial
bureaucracy, which was in any case demoralized by the
experience of the war years.
As a result, the Cabinet of Sukarno was extremely
weak from the start, while the role its members had played
under the Japanese did not allow for any optimism about
friendly relations with the arriving Allies.
The situation was further complicated by the dissolu-
tion of the elaborate network of Japanese-sponsored youth
organizations, which unleashed on Java hundreds of thou-
sands of passionately nationalist young men and boys,
without encadrement, leadership or control. In the months
of September to November,1945, Java was swept by these
youthful militants who, ignoring the government, wrested
weapons and stores from the Japanese and began attacking
Allies, Japanese and "collaborators" alike in the name of
Merdeka. In this process countless acts of cruelty and
bravery were performed, both massacres of Chinese, Dutch-
men, Eurasians, Ambonese and Menadonese, and heroic re-
sistance to Allied penetration and Japanese repression.
The traditional gap between older and younger generations
(40-year olds and 20-year olds) had been widened by the
experience of the Japanese occupation into a psychological
and cultural abyss. For the older men, the long-awaited
independence essentially meant succession to the position
once held by the Dutch and Japanese, the take-over of the
instruments of state power, and the securing of recog-
nition of the new nation by the international community.
For the politicized youths of 1945, Merdeka had little to
do with the outside world, and even less with the accession
to power. It was essentially a liberation from the physi-
cal and psychological bonds of the war society, a soaring8
leap out of the routines and norms of everyday existence,
a pure consciousness of unfettered will in action. In
many ways, their perspectives were less the political ideas
of nationhood emerging from colonial subjugation, than
traditional messianic conceptions of a golden age emerging
from a "mad era" of cruelty, oppression and disaster.
*****
Observing the violence, exaltation and chaos around
him, the impotence of the governmental apparatus, the
dubious international standing of the Cabinet and the grow-
ing threat of the Allied armies, Sjahrir tried, while still
in the position of uncommitted observer, to think through
the problems which faced the new nation, and to provide
some clarity and order to the revolutionary activity swirl-
ing around him. In the historic pamphlet called Perdjuangan
Kita (Our Struggle), whose publication was officially
announced on November 10, 1945, he attempted to provide a
thoroughgoing analysis of the situation, a critique of the
government’s policies and personnel, and a rational pro-
gram for the future course of the nationalist struggle.
It was the most clearly articulated diagnosis of Indone-
sia's contemporary problems and the only coherent program
for the development of the nationalist struggle during the
years of physical conflict with the Dutch. (The only com-
parable piece was Tan Malaka's program for the Persatuan
Perdjuangan. Sukarno himself did not provide any extended
public statements of his own perspectives for this phase
of the national struggle--a silence in striking contrast
with his enormous articulateness as an ideologue in the
periods before and after this one.)
The impact of Sjahrir's pamphlet was immediate. The
militant youth of the capital city, while paying little
attention to the subtleties of Sjahrir's long-term prognos-
tications, were stirred by his bitter and caustic attacks
on the older nationalists and civil servants as "running-
dogs of the Japanese." And it was to an important extent
because of their support that Sjahrir came to power in the
"silent coup" of November,1945. While Sukarno was retained
as President of the state, the terms of the presidential
constitution were reinterpreted to shift all executive
power into the hands of a Prime Minister directly respon-
sible to a provisional legislature. And it was Sjahrir who
was the first to occupy this new position. The Cabinet he
formed represented a complete break with its predecessor,
and the coming to power of the "opposition" of the Japanese
period. Its key figures were Sjahrir himself and the9
recently released Amir Sjarifuddin. The fact that the
author of so anti-Japanese a manifesto was now at the head
of the Indonesian government made nonsense of Dutch claims
that the new state was a Japanese creation and thus con-
siderably improved the diplomatic standing of the young
Republic with the Allied commanders and the outside world.
But the strongly anti-Japanese and anti-"collaborationist"
tone of Our Struggle, while ingratiating Sjahrir with the
militant youth and with the Allies, who still tended to
regard Sukarno as a collaborationist on the basis of his
wartime speeches, earned Sjahrir the implacable hostility
of many of his older nationalist colleagues. This hostil-
ity was to haunt the rest of his political life. The
biting, and scarcely concealed references to Sukarno were
of lasting importance in estranging the two men from each
other.
But Our Struggle was not only an effective piece of
political writing m support of Sjahrir's big for power.
Nor was it merely a polemic against political rivals. It
provided a clear statement of the strategy and tactics
which the Sjahrir governments subsequently adopted, and
which indeed were followed without serious disagreement by
their successors. (There is no reason to suppose that
Sukarno himself disagreed in any fundamental way with these
aspects of Our Struggle.) It is this that makes Our
Struggle essential reading for an understanding of Indone-
sian policy during the revolutionary years.
*****
The heart of Our Struggle's argument lies in the enor-
mous disparity that Sjahrir^ Tike so many of his generation,
both "collaborationists" and "underground," saw between
the weakness of the new state of Indonesia and the over-
whelming strength of the great powers, especially the West.
In the opening pages of the pamphlet, Sjahrir paints a
dark, vivid, but essentially "oppositionist" view of Indo-
nesian society at the end of the Japanese occupation.
Uprooted peasants, corrupted and demoralized officials,
vacillating intellectuals and fascist-indoctrinated youths
pass grimly before the reader's eye. One senses the diffi-
culty which Sjahrir faces as he tries to come to terms
with a situation which his whole pre-war political educa-
tion had predisposed him to fear and to mistrust:	an
enormous expansion of "mass" nationalism through agitational
politics, without the formative and controlling elite
cadres to guide and channel this energy in a positive10
direction. Hence the highly ambiguous attitude revealed
throughout Our Struggle towards the phenomenon of the
radical youth:
The present psychological condition of our youth is
deeply tragic. In spite of their burning enthusiasm,
they are full of confusion and indecision, because
they have no understanding of the potentialities and
perspectives of the struggle they are waging.
As Sjahrir saw it, the combination of the structural
weaknesses of Indonesia's political organization and the
uncontrolled, unpredictable revolutionary energy of the
youth, was all the more dangerous in the light of Indone-
sia's international position.
Sjahrir's analysis of the world context of Indonesia's
struggle reveals the deep impact of Marxist categories on
his thinking, categories which indeed imprinted themselves
on virtually all the Western-educated intellectuals of the
pre-war period, Sukarno and Hatta no less than Sjahrir
himself. With impeccable orthodoxy, Sjahrir describes the
polarization of power between the Soviet Union and the
United States in the wake of the Second World War, making,
however, a clear distinction between the introspective,
autarchic socialism of the former and the extrovert, ex-
pansionist capitalist economy of the latter. Noting that
"it can safely be said that the whole world is in debt to
Wall Street," and warning of "the political ambitions of
that Giant of the Pacific, the United States," he declares
that:
Those who . . . still cling to the old order are
looking in every direction for ways of strengthening
their position in order to restore the capitalist and
imperialist system. And so we are faced with a new
kind of imperialism. We are living in a period which
will decide once and for all which system is destined
to spread and ultimately determine the fate of all
mankind--neo-capitalism or socialism.
A classical Marxist perspective perhaps, yet one notes the
typically Sjahririan undercurrent of detachment and skepti-
cism. There is no determined outcome to the struggle be-
tween neo-capitalism and socialism. The future is uncer-
tain and open.11
But of still greater importance is the fact that
Indonesia is geographically situated within the
sphere of influence of Anglo-Saxon capitalism and im-
perialism. Accordingly, Indonesia's fate ultimately
depends on the fate of Anglo-Saxon capitalism and
imperialism. . . . In spite of our best efforts, we
shall not, in ourselves, be strong enough to destroy
[the Anglo-Saxon] ambience and thereby win for our-
selves the fullest kind of independence.*
From this analysis, Sjahrir draws the decisive con-
clusion that "so long as the world we live in is dominated
by capital, we are forced to make sure that we do not earn
the enmity of capitalism."* From this conclusion, It
follows logically and inexorably, that the most subtle
diplomacy will be required to prevent the enormous power
of American capital being mobilized behind the Dutch effort
to reconquer the Indies, and to enlist American sympathy
for Indonesian nationalist aspirations. This in turn de-
mands a flexible attitude towards American capital in Indo-
nesia, an end to violence by militant youths, particularly
against white foreigners, political forms and institutions
acceptable to the West, and a nationalist rhetoric without
immediate radical components.
In the final section of Our Struggle, Sjahrir turns
to the program which, under the circumstances, should
guide the immediate future of the nationalist struggle.
Speaking again with the voice of European evolutionary
socialism, but with a vivid consciousness of what he and
other "oppositionists" felt to be a Japanese exploitation
and perversion of nationalism, he warns against the prose-
cution of a national revolution without a social revolu-
tion. For
the danger is that, not realizing that feudalism too
is one of our enemies, we shall ally with the still
living spirit of this feudalism, which is quite com-
patible with a certain kind of nationalism, and so
create a nationalism built on a hierarchical, feudal-
ists solidarism:	in fact on Fascism, the greatest
enemy of world progress and of our people. The
present ideological confusion often manifests itself
as a kind of nationalism or national communism a la
*
My italics--B.R.A.12
Hitler or Mussolini . . . such methods can work for a
while (see, for example, the successes of Mussolini,
Hitler, Franco, Chiang Kai-shek, etc.), but in relation
to the advancement of their societies they are always
reactionary and conflict with progress and the social
struggle the world over. The men who urge such a
course are always enemies of the people, even though
they may, momentarily, be deified by the people, like
Hitler and Mussolini.
Opposed to a purely national revolution (which would
naturally see its antagonist abroad), Sjahrir urges the
development of a democratic revolution, a social revolu-
tion, led by "revolutionary democrats, not by nationalist
groups who have kowtowed to fascists, whether Dutch colo-
nial or Japanese military fascists."
What is to be the character of this "social revolu-
tion"? Sjahrir calls for a massive purge of the state
machinery of those he terms "running gods and henchmen" of
the Japanese, the proclamation of a democratic constitution
guaranteeing the broadest possible democratic rights, reso-
lute democratization of governmental institutions down to
the village level, and the creation of a democratically
oriented party to guide the revolutionary struggle. Sig-
nificantly he adds that the party's "membership need not
be large, provided that it forms a tightly disciplined
army, efficient and modern in organization, and armed with
a powerful, developed ideology and wide general knowledge."
Here one finds again the old elitism of the Pendidikan
Nasional Indonesia.
The most striking aspect of the Sjahrir program is
the extent to which it fits his political assessment of
the situation. For attacks on authoritarian ideas in the
name of democracy, and demands for a liberal constitution,
human rights and the democratization of governmental insti-
tutions, while fulfilling the requirements of a "democratic
revolution," were also fully in harmony with the liberal
rhetoric of the West, and thus least likely to arouse the
formidable "enmity of capitalism." Thus the thrust of
Sjahrir's ideas was at once to placate, or attract the
sympathy of the Western powers and to begin the process of
liberalizing Indonesian society from the institutional and
psychological bondage of colonialism and "tradition."
The logic of Sjahrir's formulations was compelling
enough to the majority of the older nationalist intellec-
tuals, that all Indonesian governments thereafter, at least13
until the transfer of sovereignty in 1949, more or less
followed his guidelines, and accepted the premises and
assumptions on which these guidelines were based. It was,
in fact, only Tan Malaka who seriously challenged them.
It is not possible here to do justice to Tan Malaka's
ideas; suffice it to say that he accepted neither the in-
herent strength of the West in Southeast Asia, nor the
weakness of Indonesian nationalism, as Sjahrir viewed them.
He believed that the mass nationalism developed under the
Japanese occupation was an enormously powerful and ulti-
mately invincible social force, which could only be deepened
and strengthened by direct conflict with Western capital-
ism. Arguing from this reversal of Sjahrir's premises he
called for a massive mobilization of popular nationalism,
the incorporation of the masses in a national front, the
seizure of foreign-held economic installations, and a
clear confrontation with the West. Sjahrir's arrest of
the elderly revolutionary and many of his followers, how-
ever, meant the temporary eclipse of his ideas and program,
and his murder by military officers in 1949 removed him
finally from the political stage. The main stream of the
Indonesian nationalist struggle during the Revolution con-
tinued to move along the paths outlined for it in Our
Struggle.
*****
It is perhaps too easy today to criticize Sjahrir's
ideas from the comfortable armchair of historical hind-
sight. One could ask whether the guarantee of the fullest
democratic freedoms and the radical democratization of
governmental institutions is really compatible with the
building of a single, revolutionary party. The belief
that parliamentary institutions automatically undermine
"traditional" structures may now seem a little over-simpli-
fied. We have seen the enormous staying power of these
structures, and are now more inclined to suspect that chal-
lenging of "traditional" institutions in the name of
democracy without an accompanying mobilization of the
social forces thus released may prove self-defeating.
Many would now hold that giving top priority to conciliat-
ing the West is likely in the long run to have fossilizing
influences on dynamic change. One can also point to a
certain partiality in Sjahrir's thought, which he shared
with Sukarno:	an engrossing interest in the psychological
and institutional, rather than the sociological and organi-
zational aspects of politics. From this perspective, it
is not altogether surprising that neither man ever succeeded14
in building an effective organization, or developing a
sociological analysis of Indonesian society on which such
an organization might be based. But in the light of a
similar failure on the part of their contemporaries, it is
probable that this was an inevitable consequence of the
educational and social milieu in which their generation
grew to maturity.
It has also become clear with time that Sjahrir was
closer, generationally speaking, to what might be called
the "Pudjangga Baru" (New Writers) group of nationalist
leaders, men whose political ideas were formed in the
generally placid environment of late colonial Netherlands
India. The young men who gained their first real politi-
cal experience under the Japanese occupation, in the
disturbances, uncertainties, violence and melodrama of the
war years, developed a decidedly anti-"pragmatic" point of
view, romantic, expressive and at times self-consciously
heroic. This "Angkatan '45", of the political world was,
in 1945 and afterwards, fundamentally hostile to many of
the values and assumptions which guided the "Pudjangga
Baru"--above all to its rationalist meliorism and cautiously
optimistic utilitarian humanism. While Sjahrir was brought
to power by this "Angkatan *45" he was by temperament and
generation unsympathetic to it. In the passages of Our
Struggle dealing with the youth, one misses any sense of
the sneer excitement, elan and nervous exhilaration which
many members of that younger generation, now middle-aged,
still so wistfully recall.
Yet once these things have been said, one can also not
fail to be impressed, I think, by the coherence of Sjahrir's
thinking as expressed in Our Struggle--the sense that
Sjahrir was very much "all of one piece"--the moral strength
of his impassioned pleas for humane treatment of the Chi-
nese, Eurasians and other minority groups, and his sensi-
tive awareness of the degradation of many sectors of tradi-
tional society. Perhaps no less impressive are Sjahrir's
intuitions of the dangers his country would face in the
future. To give only two examples:
The nationalist struggle rarely escapes completely
the danger of being too influenced by names and forms.
It frequently turns out that a so-called national
victory is, in practice, without meaning for the
masses of the people. .	. . This nationalist frenzy
may at first represent a certain strength, but in the
end it must reach an impasse and finally choke itself
to death in a spirit of dj ibaku.15
These last years we have felt only too deeply the
impact of military rule. This . . . has encouraged
the false idea that our struggle is primarily a mili-
tary one which should therefore be led by military
men. Only a thorough understanding of the social
basis of our present struggle can help us avoid this
illusion. ... In time our youth will learn from
experience that it is not the soldier who will make
our revolution triumph, but the masses of the people,
the workers and the peasants, together with the intel-
lectuals and the younger generation.
:fe :fe :fe is is
During his tenure as Prime Minister Sjahrir negotiated
the important Linggadjati agreement whereby the Dutch
recognized the Republic's de facto authority in Java and
Sumatra. But in spite of this and other diplomatic suc-
cesses, opposition to his conciliatory policies grew and
he was forced to resign from office on June 27, 1947.
Thereafter he was Indonesia's chief advocate at the United
Nations. In 1948 growing personal and ideological differ-
ences with Amir Sjarifuddin led to a split in the Socialist
Party which they had led together, and Sjahrir formed the
Partai Sosialis Indonesia or P.S.I. (Indonesian Socialist
Party) as a break-away group from the main body, which
followed Amir's increasingly pro-Communist course. During
the Madiun affair he gave strong support to the Hatta
government's suppression of the old Socialist Party,which
had in the meantime joined with the Indonesian Communist
Party and other leftist political organizations in the
People's Democratic Front. After the transfer of sover-
eignty, Sjahrir played no direct role in the government
but was perhaps the major influence in creating the intel-
lectual framework within which the governments of the
early 1950's approached Indonesia's problems. But when
national elections were held in 1955, the PSI managed to win
only 5 seats in the 257-man Parliament, while the Commu-
nists, apparently crushed in 1948, recovered remarkably to
win no less than 39 seats, and emerge as one of Indonesia's
"Big Four" parties. This electoral rejection virtually
ended Sjahrir's chances of a political come-back. He was,
however, active in the opposition to Sukarno's growing
political ascendancy and the expanding power of the Com-
munists. With the onset of Guided Democracy he went into
eclipse, and in August, 1960 the PSI was banned by Sukarno
for failing to give pledges of support to the ideological
principles of the new regime. On January 17, 1962 Sjahrir16
was arrested, together with a number of friends and polit-
ical allies, on trumped-up charges of conspiracy against
the state. He was never brought to trial. Early in 1965,
while still in prison, he suffered a massive stroke. By
May,1965 his condition was so serious that Sukarno gave
permission for him to undergo medical treatment in Switzer-
land. Sjahrir never saw his country again. He died in
exile on April 9, 1966.
It is now more than two decades since Sjahrir fell
from power. His party has been dissolved for seven years.
Yet in many ways his influence is still felt, not least
through former friends and party colleagues now in influ-
ential positions in government and the universities. In
the post-Sukarno period, the demands for "modernisasi" re-
flect many of the values central to Sjahrir's thinking:
practical rationality, respect for individualism, contempt
for "outworn traditions," distrust of nationalist utopian-
ism, and concern for order and efficiency. In the histori-
cal perspective he therefore takes his place as a major
representative of that important stream in Indonesian
political thinking which draws its models from Western con-
stitutional democracy. Our Struggle, in this perspective,
is not only the best expression of Sjahrir's thinking at
the peak of his career. It is not only an important docu-
ment for the study of the Indonesian revolution and of the
intellectual milieu of its leaders. It is also a humane,
intelligent exploration of Indonesia's continuing problems,
still relevant to our own times.
Benedict Anderson
Ithaca, 1968.OUR STRUGGLE
The basic situation two months after the establish-
ment of the Republic of Indonesia can be described as
follows.
The hope and desire of joining in the defense of our
independence is now general at all levels of our society.
Never in years gone by did the freedom movement reach the
heights of urgency that it has today. Above all, our youth
stand out for their whole-hearted devotion to the struggle for
our independence. Yet in the long run it is the ordinary
people in the villages and towns who are intensifying and
heightening our struggle. The masses of the poor have
been stirred to join the independence movement by the pro-
found unrest resulting from their present social environ-
ment. For the masses of the poor it is clear that the
slogan "Freedom" does not simply mean a sovereign Indone-
sia; nor is the Red and White Flag merely a symbol of
national unity and aspirations. For them "Freedom" means
above all their liberation from arbitrary rule, from star-
vation and from misery; the Red and White Flag is above
all a symbol of their struggle, the struggle of the people
themselves. Expressions of mass unrest, which often take
the form of cruelties and violent assaults on property, can
readily be understood if we look for their deeper causes.
During the three and a half years of the Japanese occupa-
tion the foundations of village society were disrupted and
overthrown by forced labor, by the impressment of villagers
to serve as romusha,1 far from home, or as soldiers, by the
compulsory delivery of some crops and the forced planting
of others, and by an unlimited arbitrary despotism. In
the towns, too,the uncertainty of their position stirred
deep unrest among the masses. Thousands who earned their
living as workers before the arrival of the Japanese have
lost their livelihood. Tens of thousands of peasants fled
1. Romusha. A system of hiring ostensibly volunteer labor
for work on construction projects in Indonesia and in
mainland Southeast Asia. In practice, working condi-
tions verged on slave-labor and many romusha died of
disease, starvation and ill-treatment.
1718
to the cities to escape tyranny and famine in the villages.
Tens of thousands more, fugitives from the r5musha, Heiho2
or other forms of forced labor, were added to the throngs
in our cities who had no sure means of earning a living.
All this caused a steadily rising tension in our society.
The danger of this exploding in an uprising and in wide-
spread disorders increasingly threatened the Japanese.
When Japan collapsed, and the Japanese prepared for
surrender, their government’s authority became extremely
weak, and the danger of a massive explosion of the accumu-
lated tensions in our society grew still more grave. To
escape this threat, the Japanese resorted to all kinds of
stratagems, including attempts to divert popular unrest
against other groups.
By propaganda and agitation they tried to deflect the
deep and growing hatred they aroused against the whites,
against the Chinese and against the pangrShpradja.3 It
cannot be denied that this propaganda campaign was very
influential and benefitted the Japanese considerably. For
three and a half years Indonesia was completely sealed off
from the outside world, so that we knew nothing of develop-
ments abroad, and the Japanese had no difficulty in selling
the lies which formed the basis of their propaganda. When
the hatred of our people for the Japanese had become uni-
versal and had in some places even caused disorders, they
manipulated our nationalist feelings to ’’cool down" our
burning hatred for them.
They formed a Younger Generation to heighten nation-
alist agitation and so to avert the internal social dangers
which threatened them. And certainly this nationalist
agitation gave deep satisfaction to our youth and intellec-
tuals, who were in a general state of unrest and irresolu-
tion. Japanese secret societies, like the Black Dragon,
the Black Fan and other creatures of the Japanese fifth
2.	Heiho. A corps of Indonesians serving as auxiliary
troops in the Japanese army. In practice they were
mainly used as a brutalized workforce for military
construction projects.
3.	Pangrbhpradja. The semi-aristocratic Indonesian sector
of the Dutch and Japanese colonial bureaucracies,
through whom Dutch and Japanese policies were perpe-
trated on the populace.19
column, the Kempeitai1* and the Kaigun,4 5 directed most of
their energies towards our youth--not without success.
Although on the surface our youth generally loathed the
Japanese, many were unconsciously influenced by Japanese
propaganda, so that their behavior and way of thinking
often followed the Japanese model. This psychological in-
fluence was manifested most clearly in hatred of foreign-
ers, particularly those whom the Japanese denounced as our
enemies:	the Allies, the Dutch, the Eurasians (our own
countrymen), the Ambonese, the Menadonese (these too our
fellow-countrymen), the Chinese and the pangrbhpradja. In
other words our youth were permitted to hate the whole
world, so long as they did not direct their hate towards
the Japanese.
Such was the situation before the declaration of Indo-
nesian Independence, and such, accordingly, were the mate-
rials at hand for building the dwelling-place of Indonesian
Freedom. When the Free State of Indonesia was set up, most
of the men who controlled it were former employees and
assistants of the Japanese. This has proved an obstacle
to purging our society of the Japanese "disease" so danger-
ous for the moral health of our youth. Political educa-
tion, which even in Dutch colonial times was superficial
enough, virtually ceased to exist in the Japanese period.
Our youth were psychologically conditioned simply to take
orders, to bow down to and to deify their superiors, just
as the Japanese themselves bowed down to and deified their
Emperor. Thus our young people learnt merely to bow down
to and deify their leaders; they were never taught--and so
did not develop the ability--to act with a sense of indi-
vidual responsibility. Real revolutionary consciousness,
which must be based on a solid understanding of society,
was naturally very rare. Accordingly, the ability to
organize and make use of the potentialities existing in
our society was scarcely developed at all. Thus the
weapons and instruments of our struggle--which could and
4.	Kempeitai. The dreaded Japanese Military Police.
5.	Kaigun. The reference is to the liaison office main-
tained in Djakarta by the Naval Authorities who admin-
istered the whole of Eastern Indonesia. The function
of the office was to maintain smooth relations with,
and secure the economic cooperation of the Japanese
16th Army,which administered Java. Under Admiral Maeda
the Kaigun instituted, late in 1944, a school for the
political education of certain elite youth groups.20
should have been forged from the social force inherent in
hatred for Japanese oppression and exploitation--remained
unforged. The pervasive unrest in our society was chan-
nelled by our youth into hatred for the foreigners living
in our midst. Marching about with bamboo spears spread,
and has now turned into robbery, murder and other acts
which either have no meaning for our democratic struggle
or are reactionary--as indeed all fascistic acts are ipso
facto irremediably reactionary.
The delayed arrival of the Allies to replace the
Japanese Army, which had lost the will to rule, actually
offered the government of the Indonesian Republic an excel-
lent opportunity to gather its strength. But this has
never been adequately accomplished.
In the first place, this is because the people in
control of the Republican government are men without real
character. Most of them are far too accustomed to kowtow
to and run errands for the Dutch and Japanese. Psychologi-
cally they are irresolute and have proved quite incapable
of acting decisively and assuming responsibility.
Secondly, many of them still feel morally obliged to
the Japanese,who "bestowed'* on them an opportunity to "pre-
pare" Indonesian Independence.6 In their own eyes, they
have become the government because they worked together
with the Japanese.
It was for these reasons that when the power of the
Japanese weakened and finally collapsed--and yet had still
not been replaced by Allied military power--the Republic
of Indonesia was unable to build up our nation's strength.
The result was that we were a state and a nation without a
government. The masses in their uncertainty were given no
education or clear understanding of how to solve the prob-
lems of government administration. Thus was born the
6. This refers to the fact that the Japanese had insti-
tuted a Committee for the Study of Indonesian Inde-
pendence, which met for the first time at the end of
May,1945. Most of the nationalist leaders who were
not "underground" participated in this committee. In
August,1945 this Committee was superseded by a smaller
Committee for the Preparation of Indonesian Independ-
ence, headed by Sukarno and Hatta. It was to this
Committee that power was to be transferred according
to Japanese plans, when Indonesian Independence would
be granted.21
chaos which is now spreading contagiously everywhere. In
this atmosphere nationalist agitation has had consequences
which the nationalist agitators themselves neither wished
for nor could control. Looting and murders of foreigners,
while quite understandable from the standpoint of the
situation of the masses, nonetheless exposed the naked
weakness of the Government of the Republic, which felt
itself to be neither regarded nor respected by the people.
Our youth, who were trying to make use of popular un-
rest, also completely lacked the necessary qualifications
for leading the people’s struggle in the proper way.
Generally speaking, their skills were simply those of the
common soldier:	marching, obeying orders, conducting field
offensives and suicide assaults. They had never been
taught to lead.
Inevitably therefore--since they knew no better--their
methods of agitation and propaganda among the masses were
those they had seen and learnt from the Japanese--in other
words the methods of fascism. The present psychological
condition of our youth is deeply tragic. In spite of their
burning enthusiasm, they are full of confusion and indeci-
sion because they have no understanding of the potentiali-
ties and perspectives of the struggle they are waging.
Thus their vision is necessarily very limited. Many of
them simply cling to the slogan Freedom or Death. When-
ever they sense that Freedom is still far from certain,
and yet they themselves have not faced death, they are
seized with doubt and hesitation.
The remedy for these doubts is generally sought in
constant uninterrupted action. Action thus becomes a
psychological opiate. For our nation, our youth’s intoxi-
cation with action is actually an inestimable advantage:
their activism has been a powerful stimulus to our struggle
at its beginning. Nevertheless,through lack of understand-
ing, many of their actions have missed the mark, and have
undermined and damaged our cause. For example, agitation
and violence against foreigners have seriously weakened the
moral standing of our struggle in the eyes of the outside
world.
The outside world was initially quite sympathetic to
our hope of building a nation of our own. In fact it can
be said that at first world opinion was generally on our
side, especially the world labor movement. But with the
growing number of incidents, such as looting and murder,22
which indicate the spread of anarchy among our people, and
which can scarcely be regarded as legitimate expressions
of our struggle for freedom, international sentiment to-
wards our cause has begun to change, as the events of the
last few weeks have showed.
In general every sign of anarchy in our country dis-
appoints, not only the capitalists, but also the workers
of the world. The capitalists are disappointed in their
hopes of profitable capital investment once security is
established in our country. The workers are disappointed
at evidences of fascist cruelty, which is now so notorious
throughout the world. It is hard for them to swallow mur-
ders of foreigners, let along murders of Eurasians, Mena-
donese and Ambonese, who are our fellow-countrymen. They
will interpret these cruelties as signs of the immaturity
of our nationalist feelings, which should properly contain
a solid core of nationalist political consciousness.
Hatred for Eurasians, Ambonese and Mepadonese can only
be understood by the outside world as proof that a genuine
national consciousness among the masses of our people is
either still very superficial, or simply does not exist at
all. So long as the people from one region can be played
off against people from other regions, it will be very
difficult for the world to accept the reality of an
Indonesian national consciousness among our people, and
our present struggle will also be completely misunderstood.
The capitalists judge our struggle by one simple
standard--their calculation of profit and loss. If it
costs them nothing, they will be neutral. If they stand
to gain, they will be pro. If they expect to lose, they
will be anti. If they believe that our struggle is going
to damage them seriously, they will bend every effort to
oppose us, and will not hesitate to instigate military
intervention to protect their financial interests. There-
fore, if the Indonesian republican government does not suc-
ceed in preventing disorders which threaten the plans and
prospects of foreign capital, it will undoubtedly bring
upon itself the hostility of foreign capital and therefore
of those countries where capital is dominant. Either be-
cause they do not understand this truth, or because they
choose to ignore it, many of our people are acting and
behaving as though they were inviting foreign intervention.
Such actions are in complete contradiction with the most
basic rules of combat, which require that one's enemy be
kept as weak as possible, his friends and allies reduced
to a minimum. Of course such actions are understandable23
enough, if we bear in mind the "djibaku"7 spirit. But we
must be constantly on guard against the danger of continu-
ing to fall victim to Japanese indoctrination and propa-
ganda .
Now that we have explored and stated frankly what we
regard as the shortcomings and weaknesses of our freedom
struggle at the present stage, we may draw the conclusion
that much of the present anarchy and confusion cannot be
avoided. But we can also say with certainty that if the
direction of our struggle can be carried on with a real
understanding and careful calculation of the political
realities and potentialities both at home and abroad, we
shall make much better progress and the existing confusion
and irresolution will be appreciably diminished. To help
clarify some of these ideas and perspectives, we shall
turn in the following sections to certain political facts
which must be made the basis of our calculations, so that
we can determine the course and direction of our struggle,
internationally and here at home.
I. The Situation After the End of
The Second World War
The end of the Second World War has left in existence
three military and economic powers which dominate every-
thing else:	the United States, England and Soviet Russia.
The present international structure, in which almost all
nations are included, is wholly directed and controlled by
them. As a result of the latest changes in the world
balance of power, all other nations have lost what little
genuine sovereignty they may have had before.
The political system of the Soviet Union is solidly
based on a socialist economy which has successfully sur-
vived the appalling ordeal of the last few years, and which
does not depend to any significant degree on the general
political and economic situation outside Soviet Russia her-
self.
7. Dj ibaku. This refers to the so-called "suicide" squads
organized by the Japanese to resist Allied landings on
Java. Special psychological training and indoctrina-
tion was given to the youths in these squads.24
The United States and England, on the other hand, re-
quire the entire world as lebensraum for their capitalist
and imperialist economies. The Second World War, which
caused the destruction of billions of rupiahs' worth of
property, has impoverished the entire globe--with the ex-
ception of the United States. The means of production,
indeed often production-sites themselves, have been irreme-
diably ruined, and cannot again be put to use. Vast human
losses, too, have seriously diminished the workforce, and
the strength of the survivors has been sapped by hunger
and disease.
All of this has weakened the capitalist world, and it
is by no means clear how capitalism can muster the strength
to continue a healthy existence.
Economic collapse in most parts of the world is being
manifested in social disorder and acute political conflict.
Pressure from the workers to transform the basis of capi-
talist society into a socialist community is becoming
increasingly urgent. On the other hand, those who, in
spite of this pressure, still cling to the old order, are
looking in every direction for ways of strengthening their
position in order to restore the capitalist and imperialist
system. And so we are faced with a new kind of imperialism.
We are living in a period which will decide once and for
all which system is destined to spread and ultimately de-
termine the fate of all mankind--neo-capitalism or social-
ism. The competition and struggle between these two
ideologies and power-systems will continue to form the
fundamental conflict in world politics. We are about to
experience a permanent political crisis, possible in the
form of a further economic depression exacerbated by power
rivalries, and perhaps even by new wars.
II. Indonesia's Position in the World Today
Indonesia is geographically situated within the sphere
of influence of Anglo-Saxon capitalism and imperialism.
Accordingly Indonesia's fate ultimately depends on the
fate of Anglo-Saxon capitalism and imperialism.
For more than a hundred years now Dutch power over
our country and our people has been a by-product of the
calculations and decisions of British foreign policy. We
know that since Britain seized Indonesia from the Dutch at
the beginning of the nineteenth century (and then later25
handed it back), the Dutch have remained in our country
not on the basis of their own strength, but by favor of
the English, on whose policies they have been wholly de-
pendent. Yet though British policy towards the Far East
has been sustained successfully for more than a century, in
spite of the emergence of new powers and new conditions--
e.g., Russia, Japan, the United States and the Chinese
Revolution--England's power position has clearly been
changing, particularly in China. The most significant
change that has taken place with regard to our own country
has been the expulsion of Dutch power from Indonesia by
the Japanese military. However, Japan' s subsequent defeat
has meant that for the time being she has been eliminated
from Southeast Asian politics, and her entire pre-war posi-
tion has been assumed by the United States, which is now
far and away the greatest power in the Pacific. Vis-^-vis
Britain's century-old politique in the Far East, the Ameri-
cans feel themselves everywhere (also of course in Indone-
sia) as reformers and innovators. If the British cannot
adapt themselves to this American politique, dominated as
it is by the laws of capitalist development, it is clear
that they will eventually be overwhelmed by the superior
force at the United States' disposal. It is also clear
that till now Dutch power has simply been a pawn in the
political chessgame that the British have been playing.
But we must also recognize that Dutch power here has by no
means the same significance for American as it does for
British foreign policy. In this fact lie possibilities
for us to win a new position for ourselves, in harmony
with the political ambitions of that Giant of the Pacific,
the United States. But the same basic factor limits the
potentialities of our future. So long as the world order
remains capitalist and imperialist, as it does now, we shall
have to live within, and be surrounded by the Anglo-Saxon
capitalist and imperialist ambience. In spite of our best
efforts we shall not, in ourselves, be strong enough to
destroy that ambience and thereby win for ourselves the
fullest kind of independence. Therefore the fate of Indo-
nesia, more that that of other nations, is bound up with
the international situation and world history. Therefore,
too, we need, more than other nations, a radical transfor-
mation of the bases of human intercourse, so as to elimi-
nate imperialism and capitalism from the world.
So long as this condition is unfulfilled, our national
struggle will not be fully satisfactory, and our independ-
ence, even should we succeed in wresting it wholly from the
Dutch, will remain the nominal independence that we observe
in many other small states, dominated by the influence of
the great capitalist powers.26
III. The Democratic Revolution
Looked at from the outside our revolution is a national
revolution. But seen from within it is a democratic revo-
lution. Although we have been deeply involved in the
modern world-wide communications-system for decades, and
our society has been deeply influenced and transformed by
this experience, our people, especially in the villages,
still live and think in a feudal manner. Dutch colonialism
clung to every vestige of this feudalism in order to arrest
the historical progress of our nation. For example, our
pangrbhpradja is nothing more nor less than an instrument
fashioned by Dutch colonialism from the feudal heritage of
our society. All the various ordinances applied to the
peasants in our villages were simply more orderly and sys-
tematic extensions of feudal practices. The peasant was--
and is--despised as little better than a bond-slave, not
only by our own "aristocrats",but also by the Dutch colo-
nialists themselves.
Dutch colonialism sought its strength in a marriage of
modern rationalism with Indonesian feudalism--and as such
it became the earliest example of modern fascism. Colonial
fascism long anticipated the fascism of Hitler or Mussolini.
Years before Hitler set up his concentration-camps at
Buchenwald or Belsen, Boven Digul was already in existence.8
Accordingly, in their struggle against foreign domination,
our people have from the beginning really been fighting
against the bureaucratic feudalism, and ultimately the
fascism and autocracy of Dutch colonialism. This is why
the struggle has been a profoundly popular struggle. The
demand for people's sovereignty in our national movement
clearly illustrates the realities of our conflict with
autocratic and fascist colonialism. In their struggle for
nationhood our people are demanding their basic human
rights as guarantees that they will never again be treated
like slaves. That is the reason why, in our view, the
present revolution is both a national and a democratic
revolution in relation to the feudal structures of our
society, especially in the villages. Nevertheless, we obvi-
ously cannot equate this revolution of ours with, for
example, the French Revolution. We are living in a world
which has already learnt to make use of atomic power, and
8. Boven Digul was a concentration-camp for political
prisoners set up by the Dutch colonial government in
the remote jungles of Southwest New Guinea.27
whose technical, organizational and intellectual capacities
make it totally dissimilar to the world of the French Revo-
lution. Our own society has long been familiar with trusts
and cartels, the telegraph, radio, factories, giant cor-
porations (such as the oil companies), and so forth. All
this tells us that though we are determined that our revo-
lution shall be a democratic revolution, we must never
make the mistake of seeing it as comparable to the French
Revolution, either in its basic conditions or in its poten-
tialities. When the French Revolution broke out, world
capitalism and world imperialism, as described above, did
not exist. Nor was the world inseparably one as it has
since become through modern economic relationships.
Finally, the whole situation in France and the composition
of French society were utterly different from the situation
in Indonesia and the Indonesian social structure today.
France and the French Revolution were the pioneers
who cleared the way for the world of capitalism and imperi-
alism, whereas our revolution must be regarded as one of
the revolutions contributing to its termination. The
social struggle taking place in the world today as a result
of the capitalist-imperialist system--manifested in the
struggle of the workers, the struggle of socialists every-
where, the advances and the victories they are gaining in
the contemporary world--sharply differentiates the condi-
tions of our revolution from the merely bourgeois-democratic
French Revolution.
So our revolution must inevitably be social in char-
acter. In our revolution the workers will have a position
fundamentally different from that of the working class in
France during the French Revolution, even though there are
similarities in their outlook--a general immaturity and
lack of class consciousness.
The social character of our revolution also reveals
the social possibilities inherent in our revolution, since
all these factors involved are dynamic. Yet for our coun-
try, as has been explained above, everything still turns
on the international situation and its potentialities.
Subjectively, of course, the social character of our revolu-
tion should grow steadily deeper and clearer, but objec-
tively the potentiality for development in this direction
will depend on changes in the international order. The
limits thereby imposed I have already sketched out above.28
IV. The National Revolution
Externally our revolution is a national revolution;
internally it develops according to the laws of a demo-
cratic society and bears a socia.1 character. If we do not
fully comprehend this truth” and so, internally, do no
more than promote a national revolution--whether through
ignorance or insufficient understanding of the crucial
role of democracy in the transformation of our society, we
shall be in grave danger. The danger is that not realiz-
ing that feudalism too is one of our enemies, we shall ally
with the still living spirit of this feudalism, which is
quite compatible with a certain kind of nationalism, and
so create a nationalism built on a hierarchical, feudalistic
solidarism:	in fact on Fascism, the greatest enemy of
world progress and of our people. The present ideological
confusion often manifests itself as a kind of nationalism
or national communism & la Hitler or Mussolini. Therefore
in marshalling our society’s force for the revolution, we
must never for a moment forget that we are creating a
democratic revolution. Our national revolution is simply
the ''tail-end" of our democratic revolution^ Top priority
must be given, not to nationalism, but to democracy, even
though it may seem easier to arouse the masses by encour-
aging their xenophobia. It is true, of course, that such
methods can work for a while (see, for example, the suc-
cesses of Mussolini, Hitler, Franco, Chiang Kai-shek, etc.),
but in relation to the advancement of their societies,
they are always reactionary and conflict with progress and
the social struggle the world over. The men wno urge such
a course are always enemies of the people, even though
they may, momentarily^ be deified by the people, like
Hitler and Mussolini.
V. Revolution and Purge
If our struggle is to be carried on in the environ-
ment just described, it is clear that our revolution must
be led by revolutionary democrats, not by nationalist
groups who have kowtowed to the fascists, whether Dutch
colonial or Japanese military fascists.
This democratic revolutionary struggle must begin by
purging itself of the stains of Japanese fascism, and curb-
ing the views of those whose minds are still under the in-
fluence of Japanese propaganda and indoctrination. Those29
who have sold their souls and their honor to the Japanese
fascists must be eliminated from the leadership of our
revolution--those who have worked in the Japanese propa-
ganda organizations, the secret police, and the Japanese
fifth column in general. These men must be regarded as
traitors to our struggle and must be sharply distinguished
from ordinary people who worked for the Japanese simply to
earn their daily bread. Thus all such political collabo-
rators with the Japanese fascists must be regarded as
fascists themselves, or as the running-dogs and henchmen
of the Japanese fascists, who, it goes without saying, are
guilty of betraying the people’s struggle and the people's
revolution.
The Indonesian Republican State, which we have made
the instrument of our people's revolution, must also be
made the instrument of our democratic struggle, purged of
all traces of Japanese fascism. The present constitution,
which is still far from fully democratic, must be replaced
by a wholly democratic constitution which will imprint on
every organ of state administration the fundamental rights
of the people:	freedom of thought, speech and religion,
freedom to write, to earn a living, to have an education,
and to share in determining the organization and the busi-
ness of the state through the right to elect and be elected
to all bodies which participate in governing the country.
VI. Revolution and Party
To be able to harness all energies for carrying on
the revolution in a purposeful and orderly manner, our
leadership must be like an army, fortified by ideology and
scientific knowledge, and tightly organized in a revolu-
tionary party.
A revolutionary party with a fully developed, coherent
ideology and theory, organized in a modern and efficient
way, is essential for leading the revolution, for mobiliz-
ing all the forces in our society which can be brought
into the struggle, for establishing tactics and strategy,
and for shaping and utilizing all the instruments and
weapons of that struggle.
This party must be a democratic and revolutionary
party, preferably led by men with a broad knowledge of
modern revolutionary methods, men with a wide understanding
and experience of the revolutionary struggles of the30
contemporary world, who can keep the course of our struggl
in line with over-all changes in the world outside. Its
membership need not be large, provided that it forms a
tightly disciplined army, efficient and modern in organi-
zation and armed with a powerful and developed ideology
and wide general knowledge.
VII. Revolution and Government
In the present circumstances the first step to be
taken to improve and transform our situation, aside from
the mobilization of all conscious revolutionary forces
into a disciplined party structure, is the most rapid
possible restoration of the authority of the Indonesian
State and the systematic prevention of disorder among our
people.
The whole governmental apparatus must be democratized
as swiftly as possible, so that the masses of the people
can be integrated into the structure of government. This
can easily be accomplished by revitalizing, and, where
necessary, by setting up popular representative councils
from the villages right up to the highest levels of govern
ment. Governmental agencies must also be democratized as
far as possible, to lessen the gulf of antagonism between
them and the masses. For the time being the old pangrbh-
pradj a can be given positions as advisors and inspectors
of all the governmental changes being carried out in their
respective regions--or they may be withdrawn to various
departmental offices, to the police, to the agricultural
extension services and so forth. With the formation of
these new administrative organs the present anarchy will
automatically be checked at its very source (i.e., in the
village itself). The government will be provided with an
instrument which can be utilized to promote a democratic
revolution in the rural economy and social structure. And
our society will acquire the means for a radical transfor-
mation of its foundation--the village. Thereby all our
ideals for the renewal of our society can begin to be put
into practice.
Inevitably, under these conditions, cruelty and in-
humanity towards foreigners or towards groups of our own
people who are not yet politically aware, will decline and
eventually vanish altogether. Fascist attitudes will auto
matically disappear with the flowering of the spirit of
democracy and humanity.31
Inevitably, too, our position vis-a-vis the outside
world will be greatly strengthened. Concentrated and con-
tinuous efforts to strengthen that position further mean
building up the organization of our government in a demo-
cratic manner, and increasing world confidence that we are
capable of a disciplined ordering of our state and nation,
without undermining our economic, political and cultural
relations with the world outside. So long as the world we
live in is dominated by capital, we are forced to make sure
that we do not earn the enmity of capitalism. This in-
volves opening up our country to foreign economic activity
as far as possible--always on condition that no damage is
done to the welfare of our people. The same is true of
the entry of foreigners into our country. In a strong and
healthy democracy all this can easily be borne without
arousing--as at present--racial hatred on the basis of
nationalist sentiment. All laws and other matters relating
to foreign residents must be regulated democratically in a
spirit of humanity and social justice.
VIII. Struggling for the Content of Freedom
The Indonesian republican state which we are struggling
to make an instrument of our democratic revolution, will
only achieve its fullest value if we imbue it with a genu-
inely democratic character. For us, only a victory of this
kind would be a victory with real meaning and content, not
simply a victory of reputation and honor. It is this real
content of freedom that must now guide our political
struggle. For the nationalist struggle rarely escapes com-
pletely the danger of being too influenced by names and
forms. It frequently turns out that a so-called national
victory is, in practice, without meaning for the masses of
the people. If we determine the value of Indonesia's
freedom by its genuinely democratic quality, then in our
political struggle vis-^-vis the outside world, it is for
this inner content that we must strive. "The State of the
Republic of Indonesia" is only a name we give to whatever
content we intend and hope to provide.
IX. Hatred of Foreigners
One of the most important aspects of our struggle is
our attitude and policy towards various groups who are more
or less isolated from the rest of our citizens:	foreigners,32
Europeans and Asians of mixed descent, Christians, Ambo-
nese, Menadonese, and so forth. As of now we still do not
have a satisfactory attitude and policy towards all these
groups. Recently, indeed many acts have been performed
which are clearly wrong and do grave harm to our democratic
struggle. Hatred for alien groups and peoples is a hidden
facet of every nationalist movement, especially when these
aliens occupy a visibly privileged position. But every
nationalist movement which intoxicates itself with xeno-
phobia in order to compound its own strength, will undoubt-
edly in the long run be confronted by the whole world and
all mankind. This kind of nationalist frenzy may at first
represent a certain strength, but in the end it must reach
an impasse and finally choke itself to death in a spirit
of dj ibaku. The strength that we must seek lies in a
spirit of sacrifice, and a feeling for justice and humanity.
For only a nationalist spirit sustained by a feeling for
justice and humanity can lead us forward within the context
of world history.
Ultimately all nationalities will inevitably come to
an end in a human fellowship which will envelop the whole
world and form it into a single nation of mankind, whose
relationships will be based on justice and truth, no longer
limited by narrow sentiments which cut man off from man,
through difference of skin color or ancestral descent.
Only when these narrow sentiments cease to be the main
impulse behind our actions and behavior will the bands
fall off which have blinded us to the barbarousness of our
history. Only then shall we be able to understand clearly
the difference between love of our country and hatred for
foreigners or hatred for groups of our own countrymen, who,
through accidents of history, have either been isolated or
have isolated themselves from the rest because of differ-
ences of blood--stupid and barbarous as this idea of
"blood" is. Our attitude towards this question must be
based on a profoundly social perspective, honest analysis
and rational calculation, m the service of the cause of
humanity and social justice.
X. The Workers
At the present stage of capitalist development, in
which world capital is undergoing ever greater concentra-
tion, especially in New York and London, the totality of
production in the capitalist world is more than ever con-
trolled by one oi; two financial centers, particularly Wall33
Street. As a result of the War, it can safely be said
that the whole world is in debt to Wall Street. This has
made the position and power of the capitalist world truly
international. Accordingly the resistance and struggle of
the workers against this concentration of power will only
bear fruit if they are organized in a way which takes this
fact into account. Thus the organization and the struggle
of the workers must also be internationally based.
Our workers are now directing their struggle towards
the defense of the Free State of Indonesia. This of
course is as it should be. Nevertheless we must re-empha-
size the truth stated above, since for the further develop-
ment of their struggle our workers must be able to tran-
scend their nationalist solidarity and develop an interna-
tional solidarity and organization on a plane with the
struggle of the workers of the entire world. In fact a
fiery nationalist zeal may even prove a hindrance to our
workers, preventing them from understanding their struggle
in the international context, and from becoming conscious
of and evaluating their position in a capitalist society.
And this in turn may lead them astray, and undermine and
weaken their position. To avoid the danger of forgetting
or abandoning the basis of their own struggle within the
over-all nationalist struggle, and thus of falling prey to
manipulation and exploitation by other social groups, our
workers must know how to struggle for their own position
as Indonesians within the framework of the nationalist
movement:	in other words through workers' organizations
and with the weapons of the workers' struggle. The spirit
needed to carry on this struggle is a spirit of class con-
sciousness and class solidarity which cannot be weakened by
nationalist sentiment. The essential condition for clari-
fying their position is for the workers to demand the
fullest possible array of democratic rights, even from the
Free State of Indonesia itself--the right to speak, to
write, to assemble, to meet, to strike, the right to a
guaranteed livelihood, health, education for their children,
minimum wages, and so forth. Class consciousness and class
understanding must be continuously deepened and strength-
ened, so that in the shortest possible span of time they
can develop into an international class consciousness and
feeling, thus facilitating the eventual linking of our
workers' struggle with the international workers' frater-
nity. Our labor unions must be organized along modern
lines, i.e., on an industrial basis. Workers' education
must be adapted to the requirements of the working class
struggle, i.e., on the level of an awareness and under-
standing of the international struggle to build a socialist
world. In their struggle for Indonesia's freedom our34
workers must also struggle for the strongest possible posi-
tion for themselves, so that they can become the vanguard
of the struggle against imperialism in Indonesia, and
strengthen the struggle of the international working class
against world capitalism.
XI. The Peasants
For the peasant our struggle for independence will
only be meaningful if he feels it to be genuinely demo-
cratic. If the Indonesian national revolution now in full
course is to be felt as a democratic revolution by the
peasant, he must be liberated from arbitrary treatment by
his government, so that he can fully enjoy the fruits of
his labor, and is no longer harassed by countless regula-
tions basically designed to make life pleasant for his
rulers. Our revolution must combat rural feudalism in the
form of landlordism, feudal bureaucratic regulations, and
feudal levies of peasant labor and produce, such as were
formerly maintained by Dutch colonialism. The population
of our villages is already extremely dense; although agri-
cultural land in Java is being worked to the utmost to
provide food for her population, there is still not enough
produced to raise the general level of our people's stand-
ard of living. Every day this problem becomes more
urgent. We must therefore not only make every effort to
spread the population more evenly across the Indonesian
archipelago by transmigration, but also, in the light of
Java's position and present circumstances, we cannot avoid
stating that the most direct answer to the problems of
population and production there is industrialization. If
we can diminish the surplus population of the villages to
a point where the village communities have a chance to
raise their own living standards by means of cooperatives,
then a planned program of industrialization under govern-
ment direction should ensure that the great majority of
that surplus can look forward to earning their livelihood
as factory workers. Their standards of living should then
steadily rise as Indonesia grows more wealthy, especially
on a solid basis of peasant prosperity. Village govern-
ment must also be restored to health by the institution of
genuine democracy through the utilization of traditional
customs--elections and village meetings--which will be
given the fullest possible authority. The quality of this
government must be improved by raising the level of village
education and instruction, developing leadership in all
village affairs, renovating the basis of our society, and
promoting rationalization and efficiency. By these methods35
we shall break the grip of rural tradition, so that without
having to undergo the experience of town and factory life,
the village can be modernized, and electricity and machin-
ery introduced to help its inhabitants raise their own
standards of living. Peasant associations must be set up
to lead and guide the struggle to attune the spirit of
peasant life to the pace of change we want to develop.
Peasant associations will not only help promote this effort
on a massive and disciplined scale, but will also facili-
tate the development of peasant unity and a close relation-
ship with the workers' movement.
XII. Our Youth
One of the problems which looms largest at this moment
is the problem of our youth. It cannot be denied that the
remarkable surge of national consciousness that we are now
experiencing appears to have been stimulated by the younger
generation. It is as though it were they who determined
the very rhythm of our struggle. It is as though the
revolution we are now undergoing originated in the enthu-
siasm and stout-heartedness of our youth, in other words,
that it has been driven forward by pure idealism alone.
But only at first glance can this view be accepted. It is
clear from the foregoing analysis that the very possibility
of the present flare-up of our young people's enthusiasm
and the possibility of a wide popular response to it, is
rooted deeply in the condition of our society itself. That
condition has already been briefly sketched above. But it
is very plain that the younger generation, especially the
students, who are now burning with patriotic ardor, will
not be able to perform their pioneering tasks if this
nationalist spirit is not suffused with a real feeling of
democracy and social responsibility. Without this, it
will find itself in the impasse which ultimately confronts
all nationalisms. The time will come when the people will
no longer follow, and may even resist.
In time our youth will learn from experience that it
is not the soldier who will make our revolution triumph,
but the masses of the people, the workers and the peasants,
together with the intellectuals and the younger generation.
The moment has come for our young people to broaden their
vision of the foundations of our society. They must now
realize that the real strength of our struggle lies not
with them, but with the masses, especially the organized
workers, who have a keen awareness and understanding of36
the world-wide struggle of the working class. If our
young men and women fully realize this, they will see that
their real role is that of champions of the workers and
peasants.
It should now be clear that the view that the younger
generation must assume the leadership of our struggle for
freedom, is a misconception which can do our struggle
serious harm.
The leadership of our revolution belongs to the core
of its political strength, in the form of a democratic
revolutionary party. Given the full support of a revolu-
tionary workers' party, our youth can still at the most
become the advance guard of the party which leads the
struggle. Equally misconceived is the view that leader-
ship of our revolution should devolve onto those youths
who have been organized in military formations, whether as
ordinary troops or officers. This error is readily under-
standable. These last years we have felt only too deeply
the impact of military rule. This and the military train-
ing given to our youth and to our people in general, has
encouraged the false idea that our struggle is primarily a
military one which should therefore be led by military men.
Only a thorough understanding of the social basis of our
present struggle can help us avoid this illusion. By
nature our youth is neither fascist nor feudal-militaristic.
Yet fundamentally incorrect ideas on this question still
remain to be combatted. While our youth are engaged in
the present struggle, their understanding must be given
content, and their attitudes changed so that they do not
lower themselves to the level of wild beasts, but can
develop into a revolutionary youth looking forward to a
new world, an idealistic youth with a deep consciousness
and unsullied awareness of their struggle on behalf of our
people and of mankind in general.
Xm. The Army
In spite of this, however, the present world situation
demands that we heighten our ability to defend our country
and our people as systematically as we can. We need an
organized defense force. We need a disciplined army struc-
tured along modern lines. Our youth as a whole must be
given training to fill this need. We therefore not only
require a well-organized, modern army with up-to-date
weapons, but also military training for our whole people,37
especially our youth. We must institute a mass militia as
soon as possible, in which all young people, beginning at
a certain age, will have to undergo military training for
a specified period. Since the basic materiel and equip-
ment are still largely lacking, we must make do with what
we have, meanwhile endeavoring to make good these defi-
ciencies. Of course the most essential of these require-
ments is education:	this can be developed through an Army
and a Naval Academy. In this regard local deficiencies
can be supplemented with help from abroad in the form of
teachers and instructors. To equip ourselves with an ade-
quate supply of armaments it is only proper that in the
present situation we sacrifice less pressing needs. In
the present crisis the manufacture and purchase of weapons
must therefore be given the highest priority. Nevertheless,
acknowledging the importance of military expertise and
techniques does not for a moment permit us to forget the
real nature of our struggle as described above, nor to
overestimate the real place of military affairs in our
revolution. Since our struggle is expressed in the form
of the Indonesian State, and so must utilize the power-
instruments of the state, we are compelled to build up the
main instrument of state struggle--in other words, the Army.
But this certainly ought not to be taken to mean that we
should become the slaves of the state or the military--
i.e., fascists and militarists.
We must draw a clear and sharp line between these
objective requirements and the spirit of our democratic
revolution, so that we never destroy our revolution and
its spirit by straying into militarism and fascism.