Javanese Mystical and Marxist Dialectics - Paul Stange

The continuous survival of feudalism has resulted in backwardness ofagricultural technique, poverty for the majority of the peasants, the shrinkingof the home market, and has rendered industrialization impossible. 55In particular, the foreign plantations, forestry department, and landlords wereconsidered enemies of the peasantry. Thus the Resolution of the 5th Plenum of theCentral Committee of the PKI included demands for the government to buy anddistribute privately owned land, for the surrender of fallow plantation lands, for therelease of forestry lands not critical for hydraulic purposes, and for the reduction ofrents and interests. Within the Party there was criticism of inadequate study andorganization among the peasants. 56 At the BTI national conference in the same year,there was similar criticism of cadre weakness in awareness of peasant problems anda long list of fairly specific demands geared to concrete needs of the poorer peasantsand fishermen. 57In his summary statement at the Sixth National Congress in 1959 Tentang ProgramPKI, Njoto drew on the same arguments. He mentioned that rural conditions haddeclined precipitously even in the years following independence and thatresponsibility for deterioration lay with remnants of feudal and imperial control. Hecalled for increased concentration on peasant organizing with an immediate goal of a6:4 ratio in favor of peasants paying land rents. His long range aims includedredistribution of land, lower credit rates, abolition of forced labor, and the grantingof land to squatters already on it. 58At the First National Peasants Conference of the PKI in the same year, Hutapeaoffered some criticism of previous PKI peasant organizing. He condemned thetendency toward centralization in existing peasant organizations and stressed thatlocal variations necessitated autonomy. He carefully distinguished between the formof cooperative the PKI was to work toward and the type urged by Hatta - as he saw itthe liberal version involved coercion and was little better than a private company. Hereported that in the six months prior to the conference cadres had failed miserably inthe attempted implementation of the “three togethers” - that is in living, eating, andworking with the villagers while at the same time studying Marxist-Leninism. Evenwhile pointing to these problems, Hutapea suggested that the experiences gainedthrough past efforts was a basis for more enlightened activism. 59