Bringing 'Das Kapital' to Indonesia<\/p>\n
Evi Mariani, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta<\/p>\n
One cold night in 1979, 41 political prisoners from a Buru Island
\npenitentiary disembarked from a ship north of Madura.<\/p>\n
Among these was \"prisoner number 001\", Oey Hay Djun, a former
\nlegislator from the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI), and
\n\"prisoner number 007\", Pramoedya Ananta Toer.<\/p>\n
Those 41 were the last batch of hundreds of Buru prisoners
\nreleased by the New Order regime, held the longest because they
\nwere considered the most defiant.<\/p>\n
Now, 26 years later, at the venerable age of 76, Oey does not
\nseem like a man who spent 14 years in jail under Soeharto and
\neven longer ostracized from political life.<\/p>\n
Jail, he said, did not kill his spirit or make him denounce
\nhis ideology.<\/p>\n
Working more than eight hours a day for almost a year,
\nOey recently finished a formidable, 1000-page translation of the
\nfirst volume of Karl Marx's magnum opus, the three-volume Das
\nKapital.<\/p>\n
The Indonesian translation of the first volume was issued in
\nFebruary this year, 138 years after the original was published in
\nGerman in 1867.<\/p>\n
\"Currently, I'm working on the second volume. This time it's
\n600 pages. I hope it can be published next year,\" Oey told The
\nJakarta Post at his house in Cibubur, East Jakarta, where he
\nlives with his wife, Jane Luyke, and several pet dogs.<\/p>\n
\"Reading Kapital is a complicated task. However, the book is
\nbeautiful,\" he said, adding that he had never thoroughly read the
\nwork until he translated it.<\/p>\n
He did not work on Marx's masterpiece for the money, as he was
\npaid less than Rp 10,000 (US$1.10) per page.<\/p>\n
\"It doesn't matter: I liked translating it,\" he said. \"I have
\nwanted to do this since I was 35 years old.\"<\/p>\n
Since his release from Buru, he has translated 22 books from
\nEnglish into Indonesian, of which 12 have been published.<\/p>\n
He translation of Human Phenomenon by Pierre Teilhard de
\nChardin, was published during his detention in Buru.<\/p>\n
Another published translation was that of W. Wertheim's 670-
\npage High Wave of Emancipation, in which Oey used the pseudonym
\nIra Iramanto.<\/p>\n
\"Ira Iramanto is my homage to Njoto, who wrote poems using the
\npseudonym Iramani,\" Oey said, referring to Njoto, the chief
\neditor of the PKI newspaper Harian Rakjat.<\/p>\n
\"Oey's spirit is admirable. He never stops working,\" Benny G.
\nSetiono, chairman of the Chinese-Indonesian Association (INTI),
\nsaid.<\/p>\n
\"Although he is quite old, it seems like he never feels old,\"
\nhe said. \"He is a man of integrity, of principles. And he is
\nundaunted.\"<\/p>\n
Benny said he admired Oey for always keeping up with current
\naffairs.<\/p>\n
\"He often comes to INTI meetings. He doesn't talk much at the
\nmeetings, but younger INTI members respect him,\" Benny said,
\nadding that differing political beliefs were never a problem
\nbetween them.<\/p>\n
Born in Malang, East Java, on April 18, 1929, said, Oey joined
\nthe PKI at 25 after he clinched a seat in the House of
\nRepresentatives for the party, which polled in fourth place,
\ngaining 16.4 percent of the total vote in the first election in
\n1955.<\/p>\n
\"I was candidate number 39 in Central Java,\" he said. \"But I
\nwas not a PKI member yet at that time.\"<\/p>\n
\"A number of PKI officials approached me to be one of the
\ncandidates. I was a chairman of a cigarette industry association
\nand the PKI thought they needed a representative from the
\nbusiness world,\" Oey, who was<\/p>\n
However, his first encounter with socialism happened long
\nbefore he became a party member. At the age of 15 he read a Dutch
\ntranslation of Hell by Henri Barbusse, a noted pacifist and later
\na communist.<\/p>\n
At that age he had already left school, his studies at the
\nHollandsch Chinese School cut short because of the Japanese
\noccupation from 1942 to 1945.<\/p>\n
\"My mother had a grocery store so I helped her to watch over
\nit, but sometimes I sneaked out to go to a library,\" Oey said.<\/p>\n
In the cool town of Malang during the 1940s, there was
\nbookstore-cum-library owned and managed by the late ARC Salim,
\nthe younger brother of the late Agus Salim, a national hero, a
\nself-educated diplomat and a noted Muslim leader.<\/p>\n
\"His library had a great collection of books in Indonesian and
\nDutch. Later, because I spent a lot of time reading there, ARC
\nSalim approached me and recommended what books I should read,\" he
\nsaid.<\/p>\n
\"Emil Zola's and Barbusse's books were his recommendations,\"
\nhe said.<\/p>\n
\"I was really lucky to have the acquaintance of such an
\nintellectual and kind person,\" he said.<\/p>\n
Later, he met other intellectuals and leaders who taught him a
\nlot of things. Siauw Giok Tjan, a noted community leader and a
\njournalist who founded the newspaper Sunday Courier, were among
\nOey's \"teachers\".<\/p>\n
Apart from books, he also learned from organizations like the
\nChinese-Indonesian Youth group.<\/p>\n
His activities in organizations attracted some PKI talent
\nscouts, who offered him the chance to take a short course on
\ndialectical materialism. After finishing the course he took up
\nanother offer to join the Marx House study group for four months.<\/p>\n
Although his involvement with the PKI resulted in his
\nimprisonment, he does not regret his past or his chosen ideology.<\/p>\n
\"One thing I regret is the fact that I was a coward. Even
\nthough I could see that some PKI leaders were wrong, I did not
\nsay a thing because I was afraid I would be fired,\" he said. \"I
\nguess I was already too comfortable with my position and
\nprominence as a legislator.\"<\/p>\n
\"For me, what Sukarno said about the cause of the (Sept. 30,
\n1965) coup was correct: 'It was caused by some overindulgent PKI
\nleaders, internal friction inside the Army, and a CIA-engineered
\nplot',\" he said. \"I believe Sukarno's analysis was true.\"<\/p>\n
While many political commentators see communism as a spent
\nforce nowadays, Oey disagrees.<\/p>\n
\"The Soviet Union was bankrupt -- not communism,\" Oey said.<\/p>\n
\"I still believe a popular movement will prevail some day
\nthrough the organization of workers and peasants,\" he said.<\/p>\n
\"But, as Pramoedya puts it, we (the older generation) are
\nfinished, we are the failed generation. Let the younger
\ngeneration continue the struggle,\" he said.<\/p>",
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