[Marxism] Suharto and the Indonesian people

[Nestor Gorojovsky]

Louis Proyect:


> If Indonesia had the same kind of economy as Yugoslavia's, this case
> might be more easily made. Unfortunately, Indonesia was typified by
> the kind of class relations that Milosevic was anxious to stave off.
> The dictator Suharto was backed by the CIA just as was Otpor and other
> "civil society" institutions in Belgrade. Ultimately, that's the value
> of a class analysis. It allows one to make these kinds of
> distinctions.  
> 

We have had similar confrontations in the past.  The replacements of 
Suharto are no better anti-imperialists than him.  But the problem 
does not lie in what does a _temporary_ regime do in a single 
country.  The national question in the Balkans needed Serbia to 
become the magnet around which the Southern Slavs could coallesce, no 
matter what kind of regime they had.  The King of Belgrade was a 
fanatic Slavophile, an ideological puppet of Moscow.  So were most of 
his connationals.  Marx said "They are Slavophiles in the measure of 
their backwardness, allow them to become the core of a large and 
great nation, and they will throw that backwardness away".

It was not _Suharto_ who was defeated on the East Timor issue.  It 
was all the peoples of the area, EAST TIMORESE INCLUDED. 

The whole thing is independent of the particular character of such or 
such ruler.  There is a general dynamic which opposes the 
construction of integrated self-centered great nations in the Third 
World, and splintering of the weaker links is the first move by 
imperialism.  Imposing a dictator is not always the first move.

As to the reasons why East Timor remained "independent", allow me to 
tell you that the Portuguese colony of East Timor might have been 
handed over to other powers, not Portugal, at the end of World War 
II.  If it returned to Portugal, it is simply because the Western 
bourgeoisie needed full Portuguese support in the struggle against 
the socialist bloc, and the "statu quo ante" situation was desired by 
USA in the Eastern Indies at the same time it was rejected in 
Palestine.

Had East Timor turned Dutch, for instance, in 1945, what would we be 
talking about?  Had it become Australian -as many East Timorese of 
Portuguese origin wanted- what would be talking about?  Doesn't 
Australia, today, have its own mini-Empire in the South Western 
Pacific?

Do you think, comrades, a Bismark, or a Vittorio Emanuele, were nice 
chaps?  Well, they weren't.  But the workers of their countries were 
wise enough to understand that the struggle for nationhood passed 
through them.


Este correo lo ha enviado
Néstor Miguel Gorojovsky
nestorgoro en fibertel.com.ar
[No necesariamente es su autor]
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"La patria tiene que ser la dignidad arriba y el regocijo abajo".
Aparicio Saravia
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