Labor and the New Indonesian State in Revolution

August 17, 1945, the day the Proclamation of Indonesian Independence was signed, allowed for little preparation time in bringing forth a new state, as there was a rush to fill the power vacuum under the global circumstances, foremost the catastrophic events in Japan. Kahin (1952, 138) notes, “The establishment of a government for the newly proclaimed Republic proceeded rapidly,” and within a week the first constitution was drafted. Although the new government had to face the Dutch, who were eager to return with their troops under the sponsorship of the Netherlands Indies Civil Administration (NICA), it continued efforts to establish the necessary institutions and extend state functions to various fields. From the very beginning the republic was eager to operate as a normal state. It had a formal set of basic principles that encompassed the necessary sociopolitical structure of a sovereign state and an orderly framework of offices and decrees from the central government in Jakarta—which later moved to Yogyakarta—to administer functions and develop military units. These components of the state’s institutions were well designed, at least on paper.

The republican cabinets, however, changed every few months and were replaced one after the other. In reality, the scope of the government’s aims was limited and restricted due to budget constraints, as even members of the cabinet did not receive their monthly wages regularly. In these early days of independence, many of the state institutions were just starting to gear up, trying to penetrate society by imposing rules and regulations. The state’s scope, institutions, and instruments were only beginning to take form—as was the case with the Djawatan Kereta Api (railway bureau), described below.⁸⁹ Thus, the revolutionary period may be regarded as an early phase in the Indonesian state’s formation. In the midst of revolu-tionary zeal, the Indonesian state was taking shape through a process of trial and error.

While the state was busy getting organized, labor activists at the national level arranged a general meeting. On September 15, 1945, in Jakarta, the Barisan Buruh Indonesia (BBI—Indonesian Labor Front) was formed with the purpose of uniting and coordinating workers from the various industries (Sandra 1961). This meeting and the BBI itself enjoyed active support from Iwa Kusumasumantri, minister of social affairs. There was a strong possibility that he might provide further unofficial backing by promoting the BBI’s resolutions in the government.⁹⁰ His long-standing personal interest in the labor movement aside, Kusumasumantri’s involvement in this arrangement clearly indicated the state’s active role in the promotion of unionism.

The labor movement proved to be a critical ally in popular mobilizations due to its historical militancy against colonialism, establishing its political importance to the new Indonesian state (see Ingleson 1981; Shiraishi 1990). As a source of civilian defense when the army had not yet been formed, BBI was perceived as channeling and mobilizing the movement in the struggle for independence. Hence, the labor movement at the national level was viewed as part of the arm of the state.

Spontaneous Acts of Workers’ Control

While at the national level labor activists were forming an alliance to strengthen the independence struggle, workers at the local level had already begun organizing weeks earlier for the same purpose. These workers would do what was necessary to defend the proclamation of independence (which they had learned of via the radio), with or without the support of the state; they came together in regional groups and were ready to protect it. It was under this “pure” nationalist orientation that workers began to wrest control of factories, plantations, and railway stations from the Japanese occupation army.

Railway workers were the first to engage in such an act by taking over their stations. They were daring, young in spirit, and determined to transform their nationalist convictions into real action. This led them to initiate the takeover of the central office of the railway bureau, as described in one account:

In Jakarta, the spirit to take over power from the Japanese occupation army was so overwhelming, that on the night of September 3, a meeting was held in Bro. Bandero’s house just to discuss the steps in taking over power from the Japanese army. The next morning, without even waiting for any news from last night’s meeting, the take-over was carried out in the Jakarta office of the West Exploration area. Since September 4, 1945, the management of the Railway Bureau in Jakarta has been taken over from the Japanese army (Panitia Penjusun Buku 1970, 29).

On that same day, their fellow manual workers at a different railway station, the Manggarai railway center, proceeded with a similar action:

At the Manggarai railway center in Djakarta, railway workers passed a resolution in the name of all railway employees in Indonesia, which declared the railway systems in Indonesia to be milik negara Republik Indonesia (state property) as of that day. Indonesian personnel were urged to consider themselves state employees, and a committee headed by Soegandi was set up to facilitate their take-over of the railways (Sutter 1959, 293).

Although not in a coordinated fashion, the news from Jakarta spread to other areas in Java. By the end of September, the initiatives of these young Indonesian workers had intensified to the point that all the railway stations throughout Java had been declared state property. Due to the stations’ vital function as public space as well as means of transport, the railway workers had a crucial security task during the revolution: to guard the stations and keep them under republican control. In stations throughout Java’s main cities, these workers formed groups to complete the takeover process. By October 5, the takeover process had been completed rather smoothly, and subsequently it was formally announced that all railway stations in Java were no longer under the control of the Japanese army; not a single Japanese soldier was allowed to enter any railway station, office, or workshop (Prarwitokoesoemo 1946).

In taking over the stations, the groups of railway workers were acting with an intention that served the nationalist purpose. Similar accounts were recorded among the plantation workers in Java ⁹¹; this same nationalist motive provided the initial impetus for their actions, as well as for the later groupings to ensure that the takeover process remained under their control. The railway workers formed a unit at each station in order to execute this task accordingly, and the station at which they worked became their main point of reference. This territorial forming of groups was similar to that of manual workers in many other industries.

These initiatives did not conclude with physical control of the stations. Due to the unstable political situation, the railway workers realized it was their obligation to administer and manage the railway system, despite their often limited knowledge and skills—inevitably without any support from the government. Seizing control proceeded quite easily, as reported in many accounts, but once the workers got their hands on the station operations, they began to organize in a new direction. The task of managing the railway’s operation made it immediately necessary to set up an accountable, workable system of self-organization.

Adam Malik (1950, 71), a pemuda (youth) leader at that time who witnessed the phenomenon, recalled that upon the takeover of Central Station in Jakarta, the workers selected heads for each department from among their group, and these individuals “swore their oath and promise in the upper open hall of the Jakarta station before the lower-level workers, youths and general public.” Later, within each exploration area office,⁹² they formed a group known as dewan pimpinan (council of leaders)—their original form of primus inter pares. This council of leaders supervised, managed, coordinated, and ultimately held authority over the railway system.

Selo Soemardjan, based on his personal observations and experiences as “a member of the country’s civil service during the time,” also noted a similar episode among the sugar plantation workers in Yogyakarta:

A meeting of all the native factory and field workers was called to decide upon the status of the factory and to determine the way in which the open positions should be filled. The meeting unanimously decided not to recognize the foreign company as owner of the factory, but no decision was reached as to its future ownership. A second decision was made that the workers then present should run the factory and the cane plantation. Use of the profits was to be determined by a board, its composition reflecting the former technical staff and its head to be the director. In overwhelming majority, a man who had been the assistant of a former European sugar analyst and who had chaired the meeting was elected director; he was the only one who had any specialized education in sugar production (actually only a one-year training period). The other open positions were to be occupied by the highest-ranking and oldest native worker in each branch (1957, 194).

Here we can see how the plantation workers followed the same path as the railway workers, first moving to manage the operations of the plantation by organizing a meeting to consolidate their group, then later electing a representative to supervise the directions given by the management.

This initial control of operations by the workers themselves created a situation in which, for example, authority over the plantation was placed with one of their own colleagues who had more skills and experience. The elected councils of leaders took on the tasks of management and made themselves accountable to the workers, as they understood the control of production was in their hands. The leaders’ skills were acknowledged as the grounds for letting them have the last word on how things should be arranged—as such, the railway workers accepted that their leaders would impose order and discipline in the operation of the railways.⁹³

There is no record of outside instigators trying to implement workers’ control from above or to influence the workers’ consciousness with propaganda. Instead the instances of workers’ control all seem to have emerged organically during the revolutionary period, the workers framing their as a nationalist duty in the best interest of the young nation. Workers’ self-management emerged as a suitable response to the unstable socioeconomic environment of the day, and the workers eventually established independent paths to controlling the facilities.

After electing members to positions of authority, workers began to resume their designated jobs. In the case of the railway workers, following the seizure of control, they operated, managed, and coordinated the railway system based on their respective areas under the direction of the council of leaders, dewan pimpinan. The organization of work was still based on the hierarchy constructed during the Japanese occupation, which differentiated workers into three levels—high, middle, and lower—but this time the workers weren’t required to report to any Japanese military officials or white colonial Dutch master. Most railway workers remained in their previous positions, except the few who were selected as members of the dewan pimpinan , and performed their routine duties to secure the railway operation as usual. For months the workers maintained service, and the operation of the railways during this time was noted by Sutter (1959, 359) as being “reasonably smooth . . . [although] with the occurrence of fighting and incidents connected with the expansion of British (and Dutch) bridgeheads,” as it connected Java’s major cities regardless of the occupying forces. With skills acquired during the period of Japanese occupation, these young workers proved capable of operating and coordinating the railway system, successfully serving the public for the first several months of independence under the management and coordination of their own council of leaders.⁹⁴

Now that the management and operation of these public industries were under workers’ control, at this point the railway and plantation workers were inspired to improve their livelihood—to cater to their own needs as workers—by extending the organizational capacities of their groups. Lingering memories of the poor working conditions during the Dutch colonial times and especially under the Japanese occupation prompted the desire for improvements. In the case of the railway workers, the stations had become their centers of organizational activity directly after being seized from the Japanese authorities. Not only were the working conditions at the stations substandard, but also the workers were not receiving their regular wages to be able to provide for their basic daily needs. In the meantime the workers came to a common understanding that by performing their usual duties, they as a group were accountable and, as such, earned a sort of collective entitlement—they were aware it was informal and provisional in nature—to maintain the railway operation.⁹⁵ A similar situation also occurred in the case of the plantation workers, as witnessed by Selo Soemardjan:

The director and the board, not knowing to whom they owed responsibility, communicated every important decision to their fellow workers by written announcement upon the communication boards. As an additional incentive for the workers, the board decided to distribute a part of the sugar product to them, everyone receiving an amount of sugar according to the position he held in the hierarchy. Another part of the sugar product was put aside to support the guerilla troops. Relations with others outside the factory were carried out by the director, assisted by the members of the board. In this way the factory for several months acted as an autonomous organization, resisting any interference from outside (1957, 195).

What had once been the property of the Dutch capitalists or the colonial state had been expropriated by the hands of the workers—including production. Workers came to perceive that they had the right to the products of their own labor on the plantation. Under their own management, they ran and administered the workplace so as to continue production, eventually contextualizing the situation in such a way as to defend their own economic interests. This system of self-management allowed them to retain their jobs and survive the hardships of this time.

This form of organization and production was therefore of major significance to a newly independent country on the edge of economic chaos, in which workers had to protect their economic interests in the face of shortages of basic life necessities. Instead of using conventional tactics such as strikes, sabotage, or the abandonment of the factories that they had worked during colonial times, they had coordinated operations among themselves. As they organized this self-management system, the workers pushed to create a structure in which a division of labor was based not on one’s social status but instead simply on the functions that one performed. This was in stark contrast to the hierarchal and racially discriminatory working conditions to which the workers had earlier been made accustomed under the colonial system.

The self-management system also empowered the workers by allowing them to gain control, make decisions, implement what they decided, and (re)distribute the results of their own efforts—all of this being carried out by the workers themselves, without the oversight of an entity above them. The council of leaders, although equipped with managerial authority, acted as the workers’ representative in putting together all their collective work. Under the Dutch colonial system, the production of goods (especially in the case of the sugar plantations) was determined by the demand of the world market, and under the Japanese occupation army, workers’ manpower was channeled solely to support the war campaign (Brown 1994).

In this new system of mutual coordination and self-management, the line of industrial command was horizontal, in contrast to the vertical structure of industrial organization common under the capitalist system. Self-management was thus a phenomenon that defied the colonial capitalist system of production and its pillars: the racial division of labor, market-based production targets, uncontested prerogatives of the colonial employers, and the liberal legal-based conception of private property. Furthermore, with its successful operation—as manifested in the smooth operation of the railway and the fine workings of the plantations—it called into question the need for the commanding orders of a patron, whether economic (the employers) or political (the state). It is precisely because of this implication that the Indonesian workers’ experiment with self-management was ultimately short-lived.

The Political Discourse on “Self-Management” versus “Syndicalism”

By the end of 1945, the state had gradually become more politically stable and the central government better established, and its attentions turned to the self-management of the railways stations and plantations. This the state viewed with deep concern. Since the plantations were the main means of production in Java, and the railway stations the means of transporting those products, their strategic functions made state control desirable—if not imperative—in the government’s view. With a growing number of industrial factories and estate plantations under workers’ self-management, the government surmised that the spread of this social phenomenon would not be conducive to general economic stability or a sound investment climate, as some enterprises, legally speaking, still belonged to the Dutch.⁹⁶ As workers had de facto control of the establishments but not legal ownership, self-management created an economic dilemma for the new state. By early 1946 the state was trying to regain control over Java’s railway stations and plantations.

The state also feared workers’ self-management as a potential source of political instability. In November 1945 a parliamentary cabinet was introduced as the form of governance of the new Indonesian state. This form was chosen partly because the state leaders, Soekarno and Hatta (president and vice president, respectively), recognized that the previous political instruments were inadequate to stave off the mushrooming of party formation among their political rivals. They also wanted to show the outside world that the new Indonesia was not a puppet of the Japanese army, but instead a democratic state with real legislative power under the newly transformed Komite Nasional Indonesia Poesat (KNIP—Central Indonesian National Committee) as the transitional parliament. Indeed, many political parties, either based on leftist ideas or with a religious bent, were formed during this time of political change.

While the government was dominated by Socialists or leftists of various kinds, they did not have a strong hold over the parliament, whose members represented various groups in the society. In the meantime, Tan Malaka, a respected Communist leader who was in exile during the time of Dutch colonial rule and returned shortly after the Japanese occupation of Java in July 1942, entered the national scene and soon gained enough political power through popular support to oppose the government. In particular he advocated the seizure of all foreign establishments without any compensation, although he did not explicitly say they ought to be under workers’ con-trol. ⁹⁷ Tan Malaka formed the umbrella organization Persatuan Perdjuangan (the Fighting Front) to lead the course of the revolution he was espousing.

Following this development, labor activists on the national scene began to separate themselves from the state. Under the seemingly democratic political climate for the new state, labor leader Sjamsu Harja Udaja—despite dissent within the BBI—saw the chance for the labor movement to pursue its own political agenda. He mobilized the movement to establish the Partai Buruh Indonesia (PBI—Indonesian Labor Party); it soon held its first congress on December 15, 1945. With this new form of labor organizing, activists at the national level pushed the labor movement into the political arena in search of power.

A political party formed by the labor movement itself was a clear sign of its discontent with the state. This development was viewed by the governing elites as a move away from labor’s previous loyalty; they believed that labor activism should be kept to a minimum, under the control of the state, and moreover should support the nascent government at all costs. Thus, the governing Socialist cabinet under Sjahrir (November 1945–March 1946) was suspicious of labor’s loyalty and further support, fearing that perhaps it would pursue its own goals or be mobilized by opposition groups. The PBI had been in close contact with Tan Malaka’s group Persatuan Perdjuangan, which had been outspoken in opposing Sjahrir’s negotiation with the Dutch; the resulting political accord, the Linggadjati Agreement, stated as one of its provisions, “the recognition by the Republic of all claims by foreign nationals for the restitution and maintenance of their rights and properties within the areas controlled by the Republic.”⁹⁸

In light of these developments, the new Indonesian state began to reconsider the idea of labor as an ally in the revolution. Labor’s industrial activities in organizing self-management were now cast as “political” activism. In contrast to what the minister Kusumasumantri had done earlier by supporting and in fact promoting pro-labor policies, the state now feared the labor movement’s potential control over the national economy and its ambitions in the political arena. From this time on, labor was perceived as a separate entity from the state that needed to be monitored and whose political maneuvers had to be rendered predictable.

Starting under the Sjahrir cabinet, labor was viewed warily, as an opponent whose power could challenge or even take over the state. Labor was constantly reminded of its duty to defend the nation and to bind itself to the struggle for independence. At the local level, the governing elites labeled the self-management of workers as “anarcho-syndicalism”—a term borrowed from Marxist literature to describe the danger and risks of workers being beyond the state’s control⁹⁹; however, the label was not intended to describe the actual process of workers’ control, rather to reject and condemn the phenomenon.

Using the term “syndicalism” brought the political discourse regarding workers’ control onto new terrain. In contrast to the actual self-management practices of the workers, it implied that their industrial actions had always had a political end, and that workers’ control in particular was a challenge to the state’s authority. In the context of the Indonesian revolution, the term “syndicalism” itself was double-edged; the labor movement was acknowledged to have the power to supply mass mobilization for the state, as well as the power to topple the existing government, still in its infancy. That is, the “proletarian power” of the labor movement was celebrated, admired, and deemed functional, but also feared for its potential backlash.

Far from suppressing or taming the labor movement, Sjahrir was more concerned with incorporating labor under the state’s arm so as to uphold the image of a democratic government. He realized that suppressing labor would only increase its militancy. In a short manuscript published in 1933 (republished in 1947), Sjahrir wrote that “labour should not give all of its power to the independence struggle at the expense of fulfilling its own objectives” (25). From this we can construe that he must have calculated that labor might have its own program to pursue, and thus the state could not expect its full support. The best course of action for the state then, would be to channel the labor movement toward the interest of the state. To this purpose, incorporation was the moderate way to handle the labor movement.¹⁰⁰

It was Vice President Hatta who named and criticized publicly the workers’ self-management practices as “syndicalism” at the Yogyakarta economic conference in February 1946 (Sutter 1950, 377). The conference was organized with the goal of creating a blueprint for the national economy; thus Hatta, speaking more as an economist than as a politican, warned the labor groups not to “misconstrue syndicalism as economic democracy or arbitrarily replace their managers without the knowledge or approval of the Government” (Sutter 1959, 393). There is little doubt that Hatta must have heard reports from several local governments on how difficult it was to keep the labor groups under their control. His reading of the political situation might have unsettled the labor groups, who at that time saw no organizational alternative, as they were still searching for a suitable format to accommodate their nationalist aspirations while also protecting their interests as workers.

Although the PBI under Sjamsu tried to radicalize the workers involved in the widespread self-management practices in the belief that workers’ discontent with economic matters could be exploited to topple the government (Anderson 1972, 251–6), other parties of the left—although they did not support Sjahrir’s cabinet program—shared the ruling Socialist Party’s suspicions of political labor activism. It seemed there was a kind of consensual outlook among the political elites, especially on the left, in viewing the phenomenon as a potential danger for the national economy. In addition, many prominent national leaders, based on their interpretation of Marx, did not support the practice of workers’ control and simply condemned it as “syndicalism”—an attitude dominant among the urban intellectuals.¹⁰¹ In the absence of employers (or any group representing the capitalist class), they believed the national economy ought to be administered by the state’s authority; labor was just one component under its command. Furthermore, they all held the same opinion that self-management should not be allowed to become a permanent institution. Since it was strongest in the often foreign-owned industrial production sectors, they encouraged the workers to hand over control of the enterprises to the central government.

From the workers’ perspective, there was not any political objective to be gained by having permanent control over the plantations and railways other than to maintain the operation of public facilities. Railway workers understood the importance of transportation during this challenging and dangerous period, and by managing and maintaining the railway operation well, just as they had during “normal” times, they believed they were doing their part to defend the nation’s independence. Although labor groups were depicted as difficult to control under the local government, no accounts ever reported that workers at the local level had transformed the self-management practices into specific political objectives. It is apparent that workers’ self-management was a new phenomenon to comprehend, and with this the national political elites sought to encapsulate it or channel it along the lines most advantageous to their own political objectives—instead of listening directly to the workers themselves and appreciating what they had achieved and sacrificed in order to support the nation’s independence. By ignoring the voice of labor, the elites managed to confine self-management within the limits of their own political vocabulary and goals.

After Hatta’s speech in Yogyakarta the government directed its attention toward overcoming the situation. As there was no solid plan, their general objectives were simply to gain control over the self-managed workplaces and to tame the potential threat of the labor movement at the local level.

Labor activists at the national level also supported the objective of taming the workers’ self-management practices and gaining control of the situation. This was evident from the BBI’s official statement on the matter (BBI 1946). In this statement the blame was put on workers at the local level, who were described as having “a misconception of the real meaning of socialism,” and self-management was dismissed as nothing more than a “Kinderziekte” (childhood disease)—again, a political label borrowed from the Dutch vocabulary—“ [that] does not have roots in the history of the Indonesian labor movement.” The BBI recommended that the government “pursue immediate and correct actions” in order to accomplish the following:

1. Expand and deepen information and education for labor that would guide the workers to the true labor struggle, as well as undertake efforts to consolidate the still unsteady labor organizations.

2. Coordinate all the still abandoned establishments, plantations, and factories by enlisting the cooperation of the production leaders, and also take a firmer stand toward the status of some foreign-owned vital enterprises that were still under workers’ control.

3. Cleanse the labor movement of the influences of damaging persons or groups, as it was also part of the labor leaders’ responsibilities to operate with restraint.

It was understood that the BBI’s official statement was meant to support the government under any given circumstances. Although claiming to be labor’s representative, labor activists at the national level, nevertheless, were not truly aware of what was at stake. Indeed, by calling for the state’s arm to take control of self-management and “cleanse the labor movement,” the national-level activists had given the government a blank check to interfere in the labor movement’s course. Events later demonstrated that the BBI did not in fact have a strong grip at the local level where workers were struggling on their own. By dismissing self-management simply as a “childhood disease,” the BBI played down the real progress of labor’s self-organization, instead binding the movement to the direction of the state.

The government, however, realized that its institutional capacities were still too limited to abolish the self-management practices in total. Initially, the government took action based on each specific situation. The railway was centralized from the top down by means of government directives (makloemats). The administration and management of the railways was centralized under a new governmental body, the Djawatan Kereta Api (railway bureau), which created a management board representing twenty-seven divisions and sub-areas. Membership on the board was by exclusive appointment by the central government; its establishment formally dissolved the workers’ dewan pimpinan.

Afterward, knowing that it would be difficult—if not theoretically impossible—for the state to bring the widespread self-management practices in other industries solely under the control of the central government, it was announced on March 20, 1946, that “all enterprises formerly controlled by the Japanese government would now be managed by the regional governments of the Republic” (Reid 1974, 125). Subsequently, self-management was transformed as the workers remodeled their dewan pimpinan to organize an independent union. Under the state’s direct policy to put an end to self-management, workers were quick to divert their activities to form new organizations that could retain and channel their nationalist orientation while also defending their interests as workers.