Asians and Commissars

...During the '20s and '30s, when Western socialists were too preoccupied with their own problems or reluctant to upset relationships between their home countries and their colonies, Moscow succeeded in identifying Communism with the national and anti-colonial aspirations of the peoples of Southeast Asia...

...By pushing for national liberation, the Kremlin was able to weaken Western power, enhance its own prestige and set the stage for postwar events...

...Reviewed by Philip M. Kaiser Professor of International Labor Relations, American University Southeast Asia poses a major challenge to the free world...

...to determine its relationship, avowed and hidden, to indigenous and similar ideologies...

...Only in that way is there any hope of developing continuous and meaningful channels of communication between Western and Asian socialist groups...

...Before World War II and the national liberation of Burma, Indonesia and Vietnam, this was a relatively easy task...

...Although Trager has demonstrated that there has been a strengthening of non-Communist Marxist elements, particularly in Burma, the evidence does not seem to justify his optimism for a "Scandinavian solution...

...But the situation in Southeast Asia is still fluid, as recent events in Indonesia would seem to indicate, and it will be some years before we can be certain that Southeast Asian countries have developed democratically structured societies...

...have become "revisionists" in word as well as deed...

...Burma, Indonesia, Vietnam and Thailand provide important testing grounds of whether the new Asian nations can fulfill their national and social aspirations in an authentically democratic manner and whether the United States and the free world can constructively influence their emerging social and political patterns...

...Consequently, the extreme proponents of this position suggest, Western socialists are no longer able to exert any serious influence on their brothers in the East...

...Democratic socialist as well as nationalist and religious groups were active in the struggle against colonialism and often worked closely with the Communists, but the Communists were the major if not the primary catalyst...

...The Europeans, now wedded to the "welfare state...

...In the summary section, Trager draws a series of general observations and interpretations based on the essays dealing with the individual countries and performs his task with sensitivity and skill...

...The influence of democratic socialism, particularly in Burma, seems to be in the ascendancy and the way is open for fruitful communication between Southeast Asian socialists and Western socialists...

...Is this too optimistic an evaluation of the current situation and future prospects...

...One school of thought contends that developments in Western European socialism since World War II have seriously weakened its ties with Asian socialism...

...The more moderate (and still relatively pessimistic) view contends that Western socialists must perform the neat trick of combining the role of responsible statesmen at home with that of an ally of non-Communist revolutionaries in the Orient and Africa...

...and to relate these findings to current political processes and activites, domestic and international," and succeeds in achieving its objectives...

...Marxism's role since the Russian Revolution and the promulgation of Lenin's doctrine on colonialism is clearly delineated and the book stresses the importance of recognizing both the considerable Marxist influences in all these countries (with the exception of Thailand) and the effectiveness of Communist policies and tactics in the inter-war period...

...Idealistic slogans were used effectively to serve the purposes of Realpolitik...

...Students and policy makers dealing with Southeast Asia will find the studies invaluable...

...This is the basic purpose of Frank Trager's new book...

...The essays on Burma, Indonesia, Vietnam and Thailand by the four individual authors (Jeanne S. Mintz, I. Milton Sacks, John Seabury Thomson and David A. Wilson) reveal deep knowledge and broad understanding...

...After underlining how developments in the past decade have led to separation of the Communists from the "nationalist-Marxist amalgam," Trager suggests that "what appears to be developing is a tropical variant of the Scandinavian pattern...

...The study sets out "to identify the nature of Marxism in selected countries of Southeast Asia [Burma, Thailand, Vietnam and Indonesia...

...Its argument runs like this: At a time when the Asian socialists are committed to radical approaches and solutions and still consider Marx a major prophet, European socialists have discarded their traditional Marxist pretensions...

...Before Western policy in Southeast Asia can be really constructive, however, we must understand the socio-political forces at play in these countries...

...Trager is right, however, in suggesting that there are reasonable prospects for fruitful contacts between Western and Asian socialists...