When President Prabowo visited the victims of the Bali floods, he did not merely arrive—he landed with intent. Fresh off a diplomatic trip to Abu Dhabi, he bypassed the ceremony and headed straight to the heart of the disaster zone.On Saturday, the 13th of September 2025, President Prabowo Subianto arrived in Denpasar, Bali, not as a distant statesman but as a leader with boots on the ground. Fresh from a diplomatic engagement in Abu Dhabi, he touched down at Ngurah Rai International Airport and made his way directly to the flood-affected areas without delay or detour.He later visited Pasar Badung and the evacuation post at Banjar Kesambi, engaging directly with victims like Ni Nengah Manis, listening to their stories and offering comfort. His presence was not ceremonial—it was visceral. There were no grand speeches, no choreographed gestures. Just a man in a white shirt, sleeves rolled up, navigating puddles and pain with quiet resolve.There was no entourage fanfare, no theatrical pause for cameras a la "Spin Dictators" of Russian economist Sergey Guriyev and American political scientist Daniel Treisman. Instead, he walked among the people, shook hands with schoolchildren, and exchanged words that felt less like political platitudes and more like genuine concern. “The grip of Balinese hands is strong,” he remarked, not as a slogan, but as a moment of shared humanity.During President Prabowo’s visit to the flood-stricken areas of Bali, a particularly striking moment unfolded. As he stood near the riverbank, a group of residents from across the swollen stream began shouting—pleading for assistance, their voices cutting through the humid air. There was no delay, no delegation. Prabowo turned, listened, and responded, not with vague promises or bureaucratic deferrals, but with immediate action and reassurance. It was the kind of moment that, in another context, might have been dismissed as theatrical. But here, it felt raw, unscripted, and deeply human.By the way, not quite identical, but unmistakably cut from the same cloth: while the father had a penchant for tossing T-shirts into crowds, the son appears to favour lobbing microphones into the hands of local officials. In the grand theatre of Indonesian politics, the Vice President "Mas Wapres’ response to the Bali floods was less a solo act and more a family rerun. When asked about long-term solutions, he offered a line so deferential it could’ve been lifted straight from his father’s playbook: “I’ll leave it for us to figure out later.” Translation: Let’s not and say we did.It was a moment of uncanny déjà vu. The mic-pass, the vague optimism, the gentle sidestep—it all echoed the signature style of President Jokowi. One might say Gibran inherited more than just the presidential surname; he’s mastered the art of strategic vagueness. Like father, like son—both fluent in the language of “tak menjawab tapi tetep tersenyum.”Even the body language was familiar: the half-nod, the polite chuckle, the white shirt diplomacy. If Jokowi once threw T-shirts into flood zones, Mas Wapres now throws metaphors into policy discussions. It’s generational continuity, just with hair gel. When Vice President, Mas Wapres, was asked about long-term flood solutions during his visit to Denpasar, one might have expected a Churchillian declaration or at least a PowerPoint slide. Instead, what the nation received was a masterclass in political dodgeball.Faced with the question, Mas Wapres gazed thoughtfully at the horizon—perhaps searching for drainage blueprints in the clouds—and offered this gem: “Because the development here is so massive, I’ll leave it for us to figure out later.” Translation: This one’s above my pay grade, mate.He offered a line so deferential it could’ve been lifted straight from his father’s playbook: “I’ll leave it for us to figure out later.” Translation: Let’s not and say we did.It was a moment of uncanny déjà vu. The mic-pass, the vague optimism, the gentle sidestep—it all echoed the signature style of "plonga-plongo". One might say Mas Wapres inherited more than just the presidential surname; he’s mastered the art of strategic vagueness. Like father, like son—both fluent in the language of “tidak menjawab tapi tetep senyum.”He did mention chatting with the Mayor about drainage, which is rather like discussing potholes during a volcanic eruption. And while he didn’t name-drop the Governor directly, the subtext was clear: Let the local lads sort it out, I’m just here for the empathy tour and at the same time steal a start in 2029.In short, it was less “leadership in crisis” and more “leadership on mute.” A deferral wrapped in a white shirt and an incomprehensible smile.This scene added texture to his already tactile approach. He wasn’t merely present; he was responsive. The cries of the people weren’t drowned out by protocol—they were met with empathy and resolve. In contrast to more staged political optics, this was leadership in its most elemental form: hearing, acknowledging, and acting.
Compare this with President Jokowi's style during previous disaster visits. His approach, while efficient, often leaned towards the symbolic. In several instances, he was seen tossing T-shirts or aid packages into crowds—a gesture that, depending on one’s perspective, could be interpreted as either mass outreach or distant benevolence. The optics were striking: a leader elevated, distributing from afar, rather than embedded within the crowd.
This divergence in style speaks volumes—not merely about political branding, but about the emotional grammar of leadership. Prabowo’s presence was tactile, immediate, and grounded. Jokowi’s was orchestrated, broadcast, and arguably more performative. Both reached the people, but through very different channels of effect.
Back again to our topic.
Capitalism is an economic system built upon private ownership, free markets, and the pursuit of profit, where competition is considered the driving engine of growth and innovation. Socialism, on the other hand, advocates for collective or state ownership of key industries and resources, aiming to reduce inequality and ensure that wealth is more evenly distributed among the population. Communism takes this idea further by envisioning a classless and stateless society, where all property is held in common and everyone contributes according to ability while receiving according to need. Marxism is not so much a political system as it is a theoretical framework developed by Karl Marx, offering a critique of capitalism and presenting communism as the final stage of human social evolution after class struggles have been resolved.
In the real world, capitalism can be seen in countries like the United States, where corporations dominate the economy, private property is sacred, and the consumer is king, though the system often produces stark inequalities. Socialism is more visible in nations such as Sweden, where the state provides universal healthcare, education, and social security, while still allowing private enterprise to flourish within a strong welfare framework. Communism was attempted in the Soviet Union, where the state controlled virtually everything, but in practice it often created bureaucracy, shortages, and authoritarian regimes rather than the utopian equality it promised. Marxism itself has lived more in books and movements than in pure political systems, serving as the ideological foundation that inspired revolutions, critiques of global capitalism, and ongoing debates about justice and exploitation.
The history of capitalism cannot be separated from the great transformations that swept across Europe from the late Middle Ages to the modern era. Its background lies in the decline of feudalism, where peasants were tied to the land and nobility controlled wealth through land ownership. With the growth of cities, the expansion of trade routes, and the discoveries of the so-called New World, wealth increasingly shifted into the hands of merchants and traders who relied on markets rather than tradition. The emergence of capitalism was, therefore, a response to the rigidity of feudal hierarchies, offering a new system where wealth could be created and expanded through investment, trade, and innovation. Its purpose was not merely survival but the accumulation of profit, reinvestment, and continuous economic growth, making it the dominant global system over centuries.Scholars such as Fernand Braudel, in Civilization and Capitalism, 15th–18th Century (1982, Harper & Row), describe capitalism as deeply rooted in long-term social and cultural shifts, where markets became increasingly central to everyday life. Eric Hobsbawm, in The Age of Revolution: 1789–1848 (1962, Weidenfeld & Nicolson), highlights how the Industrial Revolution gave capitalism its modern form, fuelled by mechanisation, factories, and mass labour. Karl Polanyi, in The Great Transformation (1944, Farrar & Rinehart), explains that capitalism was not a natural evolution but a constructed system, enforced by states to prioritise markets over social relations. Together, these works show that capitalism was born from both opportunity and upheaval, shaped by explorers, inventors, statesmen, and bankers alike.When capitalism spread beyond Europe, it did not travel politely—it arrived through sails, cannons, and contracts. The era of colonial expansion in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries transformed capitalism from a regional European phenomenon into a global force. Colonies in the Americas, Africa, and Asia were drawn into the system not by choice but through conquest and exploitation. Sugar plantations in the Caribbean, cotton fields in the American South, and the extraction of spices and precious metals from Asia all became engines of wealth that fuelled European markets and industries. This global reach meant that capitalism’s growth was built not only on free trade but also on slavery, violence, and imperial domination, a point forcefully argued by Immanuel Wallerstein in The Modern World-System (1974, Academic Press).In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, capitalism adapted itself to new landscapes. In Asia, for instance, colonial powers introduced cash crops and railways designed less for local needs than for feeding global markets. Japan, on the other hand, pursued its own industrial capitalism during the Meiji Restoration, showing that non-European nations could modernise on their own terms. By the twentieth century, capitalism had become truly global, with American corporations, European banks, and later Asian economies driving the system forward. Thomas Piketty, in Capital in the Twenty-First Century (2014, Harvard University Press), emphasises that this global capitalism has always produced inequality, with wealth concentrating in the hands of a few unless countered by political action.
In its latest chapter, capitalism has entered the digital and financial age, where wealth is generated less from physical goods and more from information, algorithms, and speculation. The late twentieth century saw the rise of financial capitalism, in which banks, hedge funds, and global stock markets became the central stage, often creating bubbles that burst with devastating consequences, as vividly analysed in David Harvey’s A Brief History of Neoliberalism (2005, Oxford University Press). At the same time, digital capitalism emerged, dominated by technology giants such as Apple, Amazon, Google, and Tencent, whose value lies not in factories or land but in data, intellectual property, and global networks. This shift has redefined labour, consumption, and even human attention itself, with Shoshana Zuboff calling it surveillance capitalism in her book The Age of Surveillance Capitalism (2019, PublicAffairs).Today’s capitalism is therefore characterised by speed, scale, and an unprecedented reach into private lives. Financialisation means money can make money without producing anything tangible, while digital platforms extract value from every click, like, and scroll. The purpose remains the same as in earlier centuries—profit, growth, and accumulation—but the methods have become subtler and more invasive. Critics argue that this form of capitalism risks hollowing out democracy, concentrating power in corporations that know more about citizens than their governments, and widening inequalities on a global scale. Yet defenders claim it has brought extraordinary innovation, convenience, and access, reshaping how humans live, work, and interact in the twenty-first century.The future of capitalism is one of the most debated questions of our time, precisely because the system seems both remarkably resilient and dangerously fragile. Some scholars argue that capitalism will continue to dominate, adapting itself to new crises just as it did during the Great Depression and the 2008 financial collapse. Joseph Schumpeter, in Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (1942, Harper & Brothers), famously described capitalism as a system of “creative destruction,” in which old industries collapse but new ones rise, ensuring its survival. This suggests that even in the age of climate change and automation, capitalism may simply reinvent itself through green technology and artificial intelligence.Others, however, warn that capitalism may reach limits it cannot overcome. Wolfgang Streeck, in How Will Capitalism End? (2016, Verso), argues that the system is trapped in chronic instability, where debt, inequality, and ecological collapse erode its foundations. Similarly, Paul Mason, in PostCapitalism: A Guide to Our Future (2015, Allen Lane), suggests that digital networks and open-source collaboration could undermine the profit motive, pointing towards a post-capitalist world. The debate, then, is not merely about economics but about politics, culture, and even morality: can a system built on endless growth survive on a finite planet, and should it?Capitalism in Indonesia carries a distinct face, shaped by its colonial legacy, post-independence politics, and contemporary globalisation. Unlike in Europe, where capitalism grew out of centuries of merchant trade and industrial revolutions, Indonesia inherited a form of capitalism imposed by the Dutch through the Cultivation System and plantation economies. This meant that capitalism here was born not as free enterprise but as extraction, with wealth flowing outward rather than staying in local communities. After independence, the state under Sukarno initially leaned towards guided economics with socialist undertones, while Suharto’s New Order shifted decisively to a form of state capitalism, in which political elites and their cronies dominated industries, often blurring the lines between public power and private gain.In the post-Reformasi era, Indonesia’s capitalism has taken on a hybrid form. On the one hand, democratic reforms opened space for free markets and global investment, with malls, banks, and digital startups flourishing across the archipelago. On the other hand, oligarchic structures persist, meaning that wealth and power remain concentrated among a few families and conglomerates. Richard Robison, in Indonesia: The Rise of Capital (1986, Allen & Unwin), shows how Indonesian capitalism has always been entangled with politics, while Vedi Hadiz in Localising Power in Post-Authoritarian Indonesia (2010, Stanford University Press) demonstrates how oligarchic elites adapt to democracy without losing their grip on the economy. Thus, Indonesia’s capitalism is not simply a textbook free market but a negotiated system, shaped by history, politics, and the struggle of ordinary people to claim their share.European and American capitalism has largely been defined by long traditions of industrial development, financial institutions, and liberal markets in which competition is celebrated as a virtue and entrepreneurial freedom is considered sacred. In these contexts, capitalism often appears as a system of relatively predictable rules, where private enterprise grows within a framework of laws and regulations that, at least in theory, restrain excessive political interference. By contrast, Indonesian capitalism has been far more entangled with political power from the very beginning. It emerged not as a free market of equal opportunity but as a colonial system of extraction, was later reshaped by state-led development under Suharto, and today operates in a hybrid space where democracy, oligarchy, and global markets constantly negotiate with one another. The result is a capitalism that looks familiar on the surface—with shopping malls, stock exchanges, and digital platforms—but underneath remains deeply coloured by historical inequality, elite dominance, and the unfinished struggles of ordinary citizens.If Indonesian capitalism had truly developed free from the shadows of colonialism and oligarchy, it might have looked radically different from what we know today. Instead of being born from a system designed to drain resources outward, it could have emerged as a model rooted in local enterprise, cooperative traditions, and the vast cultural wealth of the archipelago. Small and medium businesses might have been nurtured as the backbone of the economy rather than conglomerates tied to political patrons, and natural resources could have been managed for long-term prosperity rather than short-term profit. In such a scenario, Indonesian capitalism might have resembled a form of people’s capitalism, combining market dynamism with social fairness, while positioning itself as a unique alternative to both Western liberalism and Eastern state-led models. It would be less about malls and monopolies, and more about communities thriving through shared prosperity and innovation.Communism has a different story. Communism as an idea long predates Karl Marx, since visions of a classless society where property is shared can be found in ancient philosophies, early Christian communities, and various utopian experiments throughout history. What Marx did, however, was to give communism a systematic theoretical framework through Marxism. In The Communist Manifesto (1848, co-authored with Friedrich Engels, published by Workers' Educational Association, London edition), Marx argued that communism is the final stage of historical development, achieved after the overthrow of capitalism and the resolution of class struggle. Thus, communism in the modern political sense does not come directly from “Marx the individual,” but from Marxism as his body of theory, which defined communism as the endpoint of social evolution.Before Karl Marx, there already existed what is often called “utopian communism,” which was built on idealistic visions of a perfect society without private property, classes, or conflict. Thinkers like Thomas More, in Utopia (1516, first published in Leuven by Dirk Martens), imagined communities where wealth was shared and harmony ruled, though these ideas were more moral dreams than political strategies. In the nineteenth century, figures such as Charles Fourier and Robert Owen also promoted communal living and cooperative work, hoping to reform society through voluntary experiments rather than revolution. These early visions were inspirational, but they lacked a clear explanation of how such societies could realistically come into being.Marx and Engels introduced what they called “scientific communism,” or more commonly “scientific socialism,” which they laid out in The Communist Manifesto (1848). Their approach differed by grounding communism not in dreams of harmony but in a materialist analysis of history. They argued that human societies progress through stages of class struggle—from slavery to feudalism to capitalism—and that communism would inevitably emerge once capitalism collapsed under its own contradictions. Unlike utopian communists, Marx did not simply describe the world as it ought to be; he attempted to show, through economics and history, why a classless society would eventually arise. In this sense, communism as Marxism presented itself to be claimed not a fantasy but an inevitable outcome of historical development.
[Part 15]Communism, as an organised doctrine and political project, did not exist in its modern sense before Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels gave it both a theoretical foundation and a revolutionary direction. In their Communist Manifesto (1848, Penguin Classics 2002 edition), they outlined communism as the inevitable outcome of class struggle, a stage where private property would be abolished, and production would serve collective rather than individual interests. However, what many call "Communism" in practice is better described as the political application of Marxism, the body of thought developed from Marx’s critique of capitalism and his vision for a classless society. Marxism itself is broader, encompassing philosophical, economic, and sociological theories, while Communism is the political goal derived from those theories. Thus, one might say Communism springs out of Marxism, but is not identical with it; Marxism is the intellectual root, and Communism is the fruit that different movements attempted to grow, sometimes in ways far removed from Marx’s original blueprint.When one speaks of Marx’s original vision of communism, it was largely theoretical and deeply rooted in his critique of capitalism. In Capital (1867, Penguin Classics 1990 edition), Marx described communism as the final stage of historical development, achieved only after capitalism had fully matured and collapsed under the weight of its contradictions. He imagined it as a stateless, classless society where production was driven not by profit but by human need. Lenin, however, faced the reality of a backwards, semi-feudal Russia, not the advanced industrial society Marx had assumed. In State and Revolution (1917, Penguin Classics 1992 edition), Lenin argued that a transitional “dictatorship of the proletariat” was necessary, where the state would be wielded by the working class to crush bourgeois resistance. This was a sharp departure from Marx’s more organic expectation of capitalism collapsing on its own terms.Mao Zedong, in turn, modified both Marx and Lenin to fit the Chinese context. In On New Democracy (1940, Foreign Languages Press 1965), Mao placed the peasantry, not the industrial proletariat, at the centre of revolution. He developed the concept of a protracted people’s war and emphasised continuous revolution even after victory, fearing that a bureaucratic elite could replace the old ruling class. While Marx envisioned communism as the culmination of capitalism’s internal logic, Mao saw it as a perpetual struggle to prevent the return of class hierarchies. Thus, Marx’s communism was a distant utopia, Lenin’s was a practical strategy for seizing and holding power, and Mao’s was a living, ongoing revolution shaped by rural realities.The Soviet model of communism, shaped under Lenin and then consolidated by Stalin, became heavily centralised, industrially focused, and marked by rigid state control. After the Bolsheviks seized power in 1917, they implemented policies such as war communism and later the New Economic Policy, but under Stalin, the system hardened into a command economy where rapid industrialisation and collectivisation of agriculture were enforced through coercion. Stalin’s Foundations of Leninism (1924, Foreign Languages Press 1976) presented communism as synonymous with absolute party authority, and the Soviet Union came to embody a version of communism where the state itself, rather than withering away as Marx predicted, became an all-encompassing machine.China under Mao, by contrast, took a different path because its revolutionary base lay in the countryside. Whereas the Soviets believed in heavy industry as the engine of progress, Mao emphasised the power of the peasantry and experimented with radical campaigns like the Great Leap Forward (1958–1962) and the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976). In Quotations from Chairman Mao (1964, Foreign Languages Press 1966), he insisted on the idea of continuous revolution, warning that without constant struggle, new elites would replace the old ones. The result was a more populist, mass-mobilisation form of communism that was deeply disruptive, often destructive, but uniquely Chinese in its reliance on rural society and ideological fervour.Thus, the Soviet Union’s communism looked like a bureaucratic, industrial juggernaut, while China’s was more chaotic, rural, and perpetually revolutionary. Both claimed Marxist legitimacy, yet both diverged dramatically from Marx’s original vision of a stateless, classless society. In practice, they created new hierarchies and new states that Marx himself would likely have recognised as betrayals of his theory.In Southeast Asia, the influence of Soviet and Chinese models of communism played out in complex and often violent ways, with each movement drawing inspiration according to its own social conditions. The Soviet Union tended to support official communist parties aligned with Moscow, emphasising disciplined organisation, hierarchical control, and loyalty to an international communist line. This was visible in places like Vietnam before the rise of Ho Chi Minh, where early communists tried to follow Soviet structures. However, as the 20th century unfolded, China’s example became far more influential, especially for movements rooted in peasant societies. Mao’s focus on guerrilla warfare, rural mobilisation, and the idea of a continuous revolution offered a model that felt directly relevant to Southeast Asian contexts.Vietnam became the clearest example of Maoist influence adapted to local needs. Ho Chi Minh, while trained in Moscow, built a revolution that relied heavily on the countryside, using guerrilla warfare to wear down both French colonial forces and later the American military. His writings in Prison Diary (1942, published by Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1967) reflected a deep blend of Marxist-Leninist discipline with Maoist rural tactics. Indonesia, on the other hand, saw the rise of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI), which by the 1960s became the largest non-ruling communist party in the world. While its leadership under D.N. Aidit leaned closer to Beijing than Moscow, attempting to adapt Mao’s model to Indonesian realities, the movement ended in the catastrophic anti-communist purges of 1965–1966, events that revealed the violent clash between communist aspirations and state power.Elsewhere, in Malaysia, Thailand, and the Philippines, communist insurgencies drew directly from Maoist strategies. Rural guerrilla movements tried to replicate the Long March of China, often without success, but they demonstrated how deeply Mao’s communism resonated in agrarian settings. In short, Soviet communism offered a blueprint for party discipline and international alignment, but Mao’s communism provided the tactics and imagery that could ignite peasant-based revolutions. The region’s history shows that Southeast Asian communism was less about Marx’s original vision and more about how Soviet and Chinese models could be borrowed, twisted, and localised.The Indonesian tragedy of 1965–1966 marked one of the most significant turning points for communism in Southeast Asia, both in scale and in consequence. The Indonesian Communist Party (PKI), which had grown to some three million members with an additional fifteen to twenty million sympathisers in affiliated organisations, appeared on the brink of becoming a decisive political force. Its leader, D.N. Aidit, cultivated close ties with Beijing and sought to adapt Maoist strategies of mass mobilisation to the Indonesian context, while still operating in a parliamentary framework.This event not only destroyed the PKI but also sent shockwaves through the entire international communist movement. For the Soviet Union it demonstrated the vulnerability of large communist parties that operated without seizing direct control of the state. For China, it was a bitter blow, as one of its most important allies in the developing world was annihilated almost overnight. The tragedy reshaped Indonesian politics under Suharto’s New Order, where anti-communism became a state doctrine and a justification for authoritarian rule. In Benedict Anderson and Ruth McVey’s A Preliminary Analysis of the October 1, 1965 Coup in Indonesia (Cornell University, 1971), often referred to as the “Cornell Paper,” the authors argued that the events of 1965 could not be reduced to a simple coup but represented a complex interplay of internal tensions and international geopolitics.From the very beginning of Indonesia’s independence, the nation’s founding fathers wrestled with the question of what ideological framework could unite a diverse, multi-ethnic, and multi-religious people. Sukarno himself, in his famous Pidato Lahirnya Pancasila of 1 June 1945, spoke explicitly of “social justice” (keadilan sosial) as the cornerstone of the new state. But importantly, he rejected the dogmatic, class-based communism of Marxist orthodoxy, instead advocating for a form of collectivism that was rooted in Indonesian traditions of gotong royong (mutual cooperation). This was a vision closer to social democracy than to revolutionary communism.Mohammad Hatta, Indonesia’s first Vice-President, was even clearer. Educated in the Netherlands, Hatta was deeply influenced by European social democratic thinkers, especially those within the Fabian tradition and Dutch cooperativist movements. He explicitly promoted a cooperative-based economy (ekonomi koperasi) as the foundation for Indonesian prosperity. In his writings, collected in Demokrasi Kita (1957, Pustaka Antara), Hatta rejected both laissez-faire capitalism and authoritarian communism, favouring instead a democratic socialism where the state would intervene to guarantee welfare while preserving political freedoms.This distinction became even sharper in the early years of independence. The 1945 Constitution, particularly Article 33, lays out an economic vision in which production is controlled not by private capital nor by a party elite, but “by the state for the greatest prosperity of the people.” This is often cited as evidence of a “socialist orientation,” yet when interpreted alongside Pancasila’s emphasis on democracy, it clearly reflects a social democratic compromise. It was never meant to authorise one-party communist dictatorship.
Evidence of this orientation also comes from Indonesia’s rejection of the PKI’s attempts to monopolise the political space. Even during Sukarno’s Guided Democracy, the PKI was tolerated as one among several parties, but the broader political culture leaned toward pluralism. The very existence of strong Islamic parties (like Masyumi), nationalist groups, and social democratic currents in the Indonesian National Party (PNI) showed that the Indonesian spirit was never about absolute communism, but about balancing justice with democracy.Modern historians echo this view. Benedict Anderson in Java in a Time of Revolution (1972, Cornell University Press) emphasised that Indonesia’s political imagination in the 1940s and 1950s was shaped less by Marxist class struggle than by indigenous concepts of unity and justice. Similarly, Takashi Shiraishi in An Age in Motion: Popular Radicalism in Java, 1912–1926 (1990, Cornell University Press) shows how even radical movements in Indonesia fused socialism with local traditions rather than adopting strict Leninist frameworks.The United States seized upon the Indonesian tragedy of 1965 as a major victory on the global chessboard of the Cold War. For Washington, the elimination of the PKI—then the third largest communist party in the world after those of the Soviet Union and China—represented the removal of a key domino in Southeast Asia. Declassified documents, including those published in Bradley Simpson’s Economists with Guns: Authoritarian Development and U.S.–Indonesian Relations, 1960–1968 (Stanford University Press, 2008), reveal that American officials not only welcomed but actively supported the purge, providing intelligence, logistical backing, and in some cases even lists of suspected communists to the Indonesian military. This fitted into the broader “domino theory,” which assumed that if Indonesia fell to communism, much of Southeast Asia would soon follow.With Suharto’s rise and the entrenchment of the New Order, Indonesia swung firmly into the Western camp, becoming a bulwark against communist expansion. American policymakers celebrated this shift as a strategic triumph, particularly in light of their escalating difficulties in Vietnam. In fact, some in Washington considered Indonesia’s tragedy proof that ruthless anti-communist campaigns could achieve what military intervention could not.Yet, the American embrace of Suharto’s regime came at a tremendous human cost. Hundreds of thousands of Indonesians were slaughtered, and the trauma silenced political dissent for generations. The complicity of the United States in these events remains a dark stain on its Cold War legacy. Instead of fostering democracy, Washington backed a dictatorship that cloaked itself in anti-communism while consolidating authoritarian rule. Thus, the Indonesian tragedy of 1965 stands as both a turning point in the Cold War and a grim reminder that superpower rivalry often turned local conflicts into theatres of unimaginable violence.The Western world’s criticism of Indonesia’s mass killings of 1965–66 rests upon the principles of universal human rights that became increasingly dominant in international discourse after the Second World War and especially after the 1970s. While the United States and its allies tacitly supported the Indonesian Army at the time, providing intelligence and financial backing in the name of anti-communism, the very same countries later shifted their rhetoric once the Cold War logic faded. In other words, what had once been quietly celebrated as a geopolitical victory became, in retrospect, framed as a moral catastrophe. This explains why human rights activists, particularly from Europe and the United States, began pressing Indonesia to apologise, even though their own governments were complicit in the violence. Scholars like Bradley Simpson (Economists with Guns, 2008, Stanford University Press) and Geoffrey Robinson (The Killing Season: A History of the Indonesian Massacres, 1965–66, 2018, Princeton University Press) have shown how this double standard was built into Cold War policy: support for authoritarianism when convenient, condemnation when politically safe.Communism, as a political and economic ideology, is deeply rooted in the writings of Karl Marx, yet it is not exactly identical with Marxism itself. Karl Marx, together with Friedrich Engels, laid down the foundations of Marxist theory in works such as The Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital. Marxism is the broader body of thought developed from their analysis of history, class struggle, and economic systems. Communism, on the other hand, represents a specific application of these ideas, aiming at the abolition of private property, the end of class distinctions, and the establishment of a stateless and classless society.In this sense, Communism can be seen as a branch that grows out of the Marxist trunk, but its practical forms have often diverged from Marx’s original vision. While Marx outlined the theory, later leaders such as Lenin, Stalin, and Mao shaped Communism into state systems that combined Marxist concepts with local political realities. Therefore, Communism is derived from Marxism, but what the world has witnessed throughout the twentieth century was often an interpretation—or even distortion—of Marx’s initial ideas. As Eric Hobsbawm notes in How to Change the World: Tales of Marx and Marxism (2011, Yale University Press), the difference between Marxist theory and Communist practice has always been a subject of intense debate, both among scholars and within revolutionary movements themselves.
[Part 13]
