BY FELICITY COGGAN
The fall of the Suharto dictatorship in Indonesia, a victory that working people are celebrating around the world, marks the opening of a deep-rooted process, not the end. Workers in Indonesia have lost their fear. Beginning to sense their power, they are entering the arena of politics by the millions. They are increasingly raising their demands in the streets, in the factories, in the countryside. This giant - our class - is a terrifying nightmare for the imperialist rulers, from Washington to Tokyo. It's what the big-business media reacts to every time they nervously repeat the fact that Indonesia is the world's fourth-most populous nation.

A few months ago, U.S. secretary of state Madeleine Albright - who offered parting words of praise for Suharto's blood-soaked regime hours before he resigned - proclaimed the United States "the indispensable nation" leading "those people around the world who follow the rules" and punishing those who don't. But to Washington's horror the Indonesian people changed the rules. They forced Suharto to revoke the price increases for fuel and basic services that the International Monetary Fund had demanded as a condition for a $43 billion "bailout," and then they brought down the regime.

Today's events are rooted in deep changes that have occurred in Indonesia over the last 30 years. The growth of industry and capitalist agriculture has produced a huge, potentially powerful working class. Responding to layoffs and brutal working conditions, groups of workers concentrated in big industrial areas began to organize in recent years, despite Suharto's ban on most unions. Now the working class is stepping onto the political stage and is not about to leave. Workers will press harder for their right to organize unions, for jobs, for social and political demands.

In 1965, when the capitalist rulers of Indonesia unleashed a bloody coup and put Suharto in power, slaughtering half a million people, the working class was dealt a defeat that was felt worldwide. For three decades, the specter of 1965 instilled fear among many working people. But today, the new generation of workers in Indonesia is not marked by the scars of that defeat and is reacting with increasing boldness to the intolerable social conditions generated by capitalism. In addition, they are no longer blocked by the counterrevolutionary obstacle of Stalinism, which has disintegrated worldwide. It was the class-collaborationist role of the Indonesian Communist Party, a Stalinist organization claiming more than 3 million members at the time, that disarmed working people in face of the 1965 capitalist crackdown.

Students, defying the Suharto regime's repressive apparatus with mass protests, have served as a detonator for the current upsurge. When tens of thousands of working people exploded in revolt in Jakarta and other urban centers, venting their hatred at the property and symbols of the rich (described in the big-business press as "riots"), Suharto's days were over, and Washington quickly told him to step down to try to stave off deeper protests.

The imperialists' main concern now is how to force Indonesians to accept brutal economic austerity measures - and prevent the shock waves from accelerating the financial meltdown throughout Asia.

The main subversive force in Indonesia, however, is capitalism itself and the normal workings of its economic laws, which lead to crisis. While felt most sharply in Asia, this worldwide crisis is increasingly destabilizing the entire financial structure of imperialism, especially in Europe. These conditions fuel the resistance by workers and farmers.

As imperialists search for a stable replacement for Suharto to impose their dictates, working people worldwide should stand shoulder to shoulder with our fighting brothers and sisters in Indonesia. Above all, we should demand cancellation of Indonesia's $137 billion foreign debt to imperialist banks.  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home