Prior to the Indonesian genocide of the 1960s, where the CIA installed a military dictatorship that took the lives of millions, the country’s communist party technically did warn about the peril. The problem was that this warning had been made in a reactive way, and therefore wasn’t nearly enough to prepare the people to fight back. Concluded Ernest Mandel in his 1965 essay Lessons of the Defeat in Indonesia:
These warnings, voiced on the very eve of the country’s counterrevolutionary coup, then already in full preparation, came without any previous or accompanying measures for broad mass mobilizations, without preparation for a general strike, without preparation for arming the masses, without concrete warnings about the impending army coup. The warnings could only heighten the determination of the counterrevolutionaries to strike immediately. They could not create adequate means to prevent or to reply to the counterrevolution. It is not surprising that under these conditions the only response this belated warning evoked was the desperate action of a small group around Lieutenant Colonel Untung and not a mass uprising.
As the U.S. government prepares to use Indonesia’s “Jakarta Method” of counterrevolutionary violence against its own people, communists here cannot repeat this mistake. If we don’t respond to this threat in a serious way, we’ll be purged like so many communists of the 20th century were, and the North American continent will descend into the barbarism which a collapsing capitalism brings. We can overcome the American Jakarta, but we’ll need to navigate our conditions correctly.
Firstly, we need to understand what we’ve been doing right lately, and then build on those gains. The reason why the Jakarta Method has come to be closer than ever to the United States is the same reason why we now have such potential to win: recently, there’s been an escalation in the country’s class conflict. The ominous acts of repression our government has carried out in recent years, where it’s raided the Uhuru organization and sought to create a precedent for criminalizing all anti-imperialist organizing, have been in reaction to the progress our cause has made.
I’m not just talking about the gains made by revolutionary orgs in the United States itself, because the actions of Washington’s geopolitical challengers have been instrumental in getting us to this point. China has been economically defeating the imperial hegemon, while Russia has been militarily beating it. As Washington’s Russia sanctions and Ukraine proxy warfare have failed, it’s become apparent that the hegemon is getting easier to beat. Global anti-imperialist forces have been further strengthened and emboldened, making it easier to imagine a future where international monopoly capital no longer rules.
This trend towards final victory against the monopolists has carried over into the empire’s core, to the extent that’s possible at this stage in the struggle. The organizations that stand with Russia in its anti-fascist action have been growing, gaining more members, allies, and discourse prominence. The Uhuru indictments have backfired on the state in certain ways, getting the org attention from major voices across the ideological spectrum. There’s increasing momentum behind the effort to abolish NATO, thereby giving the movement against Zionism a greater chance at success.
That this is happening at a moment when compounding crises have provoked widespread discontent, and an unprecedented economic meltdown is due to come, means the revolutionary orgs could become a serious threat. The state doesn’t believe they’re guaranteed to remain marginal, which is why it’s trying to establish that precedent for targeting all of them. Our ruling class aims to pre-empt a scenario where we’ve managed to gain a leadership role among large numbers of the people, because it knows we could fill the great political vacuum that’s appeared.
The disadvantage we have compared to Indonesia’s communist party is that our orgs are small, and our numbers likely won’t have become huge by the time the purge has fully begun. The big advantage we have compared to that party, though, is we have an ideological flexibility which it lacked.
The Indonesian communists had a leadership that was committed to a particular, narrow path, one which made it unwilling to equip the masses to physically resist the state. The party was invested in the strategy of a united front with forces inside the bourgeois state, preferring to work within the system. And in the years leading up to the massacres, the party was focused not on agitating among the masses but on defending this reformist strategy. This is why its warnings were so lacking: it had gotten far too comfortable with a way of operating that rejected armed struggle, assuming it could keep making progress by gaining favor among the national bourgeoisie. This strategy was successful during that particular moment, as Indonesia had come to have one of the world’s biggest communist parties. But at a certain point, the reactionaries would take advantage of their opposition’s self-imposed weaknesses.
We’re in place, though, to become a force that can overcome the state’s coming attacks. Because whereas Indonesia’s communist leadership had a material interest in reformism, as it was already entrenched within a powerful position, the only path we can practically take is a revolutionary one. Every communist organization that’s followed Uhuru’s principled anti-imperialist strategy has no choice but to confront our perilous reality, and prepare to defend against the state and its counter-gangs. If you’re a political actor right now who’s supported Russia in its anti-imperialist actions, are aligned with antiwar groups which extend beyond the insular “left” niche, and isn’t undermining your own cause with petty infighting, then the state has every reason to target you. Therefore the logical action for yourself, your cadre, and your organization is to train in anticipation of an unprecedented escalation of this country’s class conflict. For us, the threat is imminent. Taking our situation seriously is the only way we can survive.
The biggest socialist orgs in the United States are following in the reformist path. The PSL has primarily invested in electoralism, which means it’s been too afraid of offending the liberal establishment to support Russia’s Ukraine action, join with the new antiwar united front, or be more than a fair-weather friend to Hands off Uhuru. The rationale behind this strategy is that this will supposedly protect its members from repression. But if Uhuru gets convicted, the state will be able to charge all pro-Palestine activists, including the ones in PSL. And as history shows, imprisonment isn’t the worst thing a state can do to its targets during a counterrevolutionary purge.
The next wave of attacks from the state is imminent, and joining the liberal wing of the state in a united front against the right wing isn’t going to make the liberals not target us. It’s only going to leave us more vulnerable. The united front we need is not with the deep state, but with the forces that share our opposition to the deep state. (That excludes the parts of the right which claim to be against the deep state, but have reaffirmed their support for Zionism.)
For somebody who’s entered into the anti-imperialist movement to any capacity, it’s not in one’s best interests to try to appease the state. It’s in one’s best interests to commit to the revolutionary path, and continue expanding the cause into the broad masses. Their support is going to be at least as important to our success as our internal trainings will.
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