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This paper discusses the significant role of the Indonesian Communist movement in the formation of Jose Maria Sison as a leading Filipino Marxist radical and its possible influence on the founding of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) in 1968. After a study fellowship in Indonesia in 1962, Sison published pioneering translations of Chairil Anwar's poetry and popularized matters pertaining to Indonesia during the Sukarno era through the journal Progressive Review. He also had a memorable and intellectually fruitful friendship with the Indonesian nationalist guerrilla and University of the Philippines graduate student Bakri Ilyas. A small but persistent controversy on the alleged plagiarization by Sison of Indonesian radical sources in the late 1960s and early 1970s will then be addressed through systematic textual analysis. The paper will propose some general theses on authorship, modularity, adaptation, and dissemination of texts and ideas in twentieth-century radical movements. Finally, the article will assess the impact of the 1965-66 massacre in Indonesia on the revolutionary ideas and practice of the CPP.
Keywords: Communist Party of the Philippines, Partai Komunis Indonesia, Jose Maria Sison, Dipa Nusantara Aidit, Philippine Society and Revolution, Maphilindo
"The thirty-five years history of the CPI is not a tranquil and peaceful one; it is a history which has gone through many turmoils and many dangers, many mistakes, and many sacrifices. But it is also a heroic history, a joyful history, a history with many lessons, a successful history."
- D. N. Aidit (1955)
Any complete history of radicalism in Southeast Asia must include the episodic but vital interactions between generations of Philippine and Indonesian Communists. It is a wellknown fact that Tan Malaka (1897-1949), former chairman of the Partai Komunis Indonesia (PKI, Communist Party of Indonesia, founded in 1920) and agent of the Eastern Bureau of the Comintern, spent some time in the 1920s in the Philippines, where he acquainted himself with Philippine history and society and reportedly developed warm friendships with political progressives such as Crisanto Evangelista (1888-1943), who founded the Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas (PKP, Communist Party of the Philippines) in 1930. Tan Malaka's autobiography Dari Penjara ke Penjara (From jail to jail) (1948) and chief theoretical work Madilog: Materialisme, Dialektika dan Logika (Materialism, dialectics, and logic) (1943) contain richly detailed sections...