· Subject: Re: [Marxism] An important development on the Indonesian left
· From: Nick Fredman
· Date: Fri, 08 Feb 2008 15:53:02 +1100
· Delivered-to: lnp3@panix.com
· Reply-to: Activists and scholars in Marxist tradition
· Sender: marxism-bounces+lnp3=panix.com@lists.econ.utah.edu
· Thread-index: AchqDnvZup0kZNYBEdygmwAZ4zahlA==
· Thread-topic: [Marxism] An important development on the Indonesian left
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I have a lot of respect for Max Lane but also have a lot of respect for Dita
Sari. Even when she came to our town in 1999 and said the food we prepared
for the public meeting was "disgusting" (this I should add was just to me
and my partner, who'd made friends with Dita in Indo in 1996, rather than
the crowd of 100, and she had just been banged up for 3 years and was maybe
still a bit cranky, so I didn't mind deep-frying to death some eggs and
tempeh for her after which seemed to help mend inter-party relations).
The characterisations of the PRD majority made by Max could be quite correct
for all I know (I don't follow Indo politics as I did fairly closely around
1994-2000 and have always sadly found learning other languages too much like
hard work). But on the other hand the PRD has been regularly accused of
reformism, opportunism, Stalinist two-stage-ism and all the rest since it's
formation around 1994 - the charges including 'opportunist' orientations to
the mass base of the mildly liberal Islamic bourgeois PPP (one of the three
legal parties under Suharto) when underground around 1996, at the same time
as its orientation to the mass base of the Megawati wing of the secular
mildly liberal bourgeois PDI.
I don't know how anyone could possibly expect to present a credible account
of a split in such a formation (a small but impressive Marxist organisation
which has negotiated complex and changing terrain, in both illegal and legal
but repressive contexts, with a major economic crisis thrown in), without
carefully presenting the actual views of both sides in their own words,
rather than one side and that side's representation of the views of the
other side.
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