>>Of course this doesn't mean I
>>wouldn't be hard on the CIA agents who effectively passed death sentences on
>>five thousand members of the Indonesian Communist Party, the PKI, by handing
>>their names over to Suharto and the insurgent generals during the '65 coup.
writes:
>I don't like Suharto, but when I think about what happens in the first
>generation or two after a Communist victory...
>...
>So I find it very difficult to condemn the CIA's actions in Indonesia in
>1965. Eurasian Communists have been very bad news...
This support for the massacre of worker and peasant leaders by the bourgeoisie puts Mr. De Long on the other side of a bloody divide from any kind of leftist -- whether trade union militant, anarchist, Marxist or any combination or variant thereof. One should no more engage in polite discussion with him than with an admirer of Adolf Hitler. He should be promptly removed from this list.
- In solidarity against capital,
- Aaron
>Date: Sat, 11 Jul 1998 09:39:56 -0700
>To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
>From: Brad De Long <delong at econ.Berkeley.EDU>
>Subject: Re: PKI in 1965
>
>Re:
>
>>Of course this doesn't mean I
>>wouldn't be hard on the CIA agents who effectively passed death sentences on
>>five thousand members of the Indonesian Communist Party, the PKI, by handing
>>their names over to Suharto and the insurgent generals during the '65 coup.
>
>I don't like Suharto, but when I think about what happens in the first
>generation or two after a Communist victory...
>
> Total Killed/Average
>Rulers Population...
>====== ============
>USSR 25%
>China 9%
>North Korea 12%
>Vietnam 5%
>Cambodia 32%
>Laos 1%
>Cuba 0.4%
>Nicaragua 0.1%
>Chile 0.0%
>
>It looks to me as though a successful PKI coup in 1965 would have been
>likely to lead to the violent deaths of 9% of Indonesia's population in the
>years since...
>
>Suharto was no slouch at genocide: getting about 0.7% of Indonesia's
>population during his reign. But we would have had to have had a *very*
>good draw from the set of Communist regimes--the leaders of the PKI would
>have had to turn out to be like Castro rather than like Kim Il Sung--for a
>successful PKI coup in 1965 to have led to a better outcome than we
>actually got.
>
>So I find it very difficult to condemn the CIA's actions in Indonesia in
>1965. Eurasian Communists have been very bad news...
>
>
>
>Brad DeLong