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Origins

Since the birth of the modern Thai political settlement, at the time of the Sarit coup-d’etat in 1957, power in the Kingdom has, to this day, been conserved by a narrow, interconnected elite: the military, the monarchy, and an aristocracy-aligned old-money business faction. This alliance, which was designed for the Cold War, remained in place following the withdrawal of Beijing’s support for overseas communist parties and the collapse of the Soviet Union. In short, the reactionary necessity in which it was born is long obsolete. Today, it serves as a state apparatus that can only be described as slow, clientelist, bureaucratic, and fundamentally incapable of facilitating economic movement or even modernisation. The bloat of the regime could be seen most clearly in the capital of Bangkok, a city which had mushroomed well beyond its capacity, sucking in wealth and labour— creating an economic vacuum in much of the rest of the country. While Bangkok opened its skytrain at the turn of the new millennium, virtually no other inner cities even had local bus routes.

The first real crisis this coalition faced post-Cold War was the 1997 ‘Tom Yum Goong’ financial crash, which exposed the administrative incompetence of the traditional elite and created the opportunity for a new cohort of domestic national capitalists to step forward. This faction identified the old state as an obstacle to profit, demanding the state engage in economic modernisation and efficiency, as well as developing the maligned outer provinces by spreading the wealth from Bangkok outwards. This was the birth of Phue Thai.

…The new coalition came about under Thaksin Shinawatra, an elite capitalist from the outer provinces who had made his fortune in Communications during the tech boom of the 90s. The party was initially founded as Thai Rak Thai. The key to its success was forging a genuine, if atypical, network of class collaboration. The economic imperative of the new bourgeoisie aligned perfectly with the material needs of the masses, creating a unified base against the bloated military-aristocratic network. Thaksin pieced together the foundations for his party with a wide range of political actors from military officers, elite business people, former communist insurgents and western-educated academics…

On Experimentation Contradictions

…Socialism is about changing the economic system; in the 21st century, that is going to take some experimentation. Conditions today are not those of 1917, and as such require strange experiments and unlikely alliances— as they did then. Those who struggle and fail to define Phue Thai do so because of that experimentation. They don’t fit the end-of-history model, instead they offer an alternative. While this alternative is compromised and is a form of class collaboration with the bourgeoisie, it can still be seen as a stepping stone for mass mobilisation while simultaneously putting food on the plates of workers.

This experiment, through rearranging and redirecting, if not exactly redistributing, the economy via class collaboration, creates the conditions for a higher state of class consciousness. Thaksin and the bourgeois elements of Phue Thai are often accused of cynically using the poor to suit their personal political interest, but why shouldn’t we perceive it as that way round? This writer would argue that we can afford the poor the recognition to argue that it is just as likely that they are using Thaksin and his bourgeois allies to build some kind of socialism— albeit one without any of the symbolism of red stars and busts of Marx. Perhaps that is why the overly literate classes fail time and time again to recognise Phue Thai’s liberatory potential.

Like it or not, Phue Thai are the only force within Thailand capable of creating new paradigms, and as such, they are currently the only force with the capacity to challenge that old reactionary vanguard. Their success is a testament to the power of strategic alliances and mass mobilisation— one could also call it truly radical pragmatism. As the mood of the Global South continues to develop, so too does our analysis and response. Like we said in the introduction, the Phue Thai of the early 2000s were somehow well ahead of their time. In many ways, the new experiments in governing within the Global South are only now catching up with Phue Thai, and this is an experiment that we as socialists need to be a part of.

Besides affirming the Muslimhood of the Shia, Hadi Awang has for a long time shown great support for the Islamic Republic of Iran. In his regularly published column Minda Presiden, which is available on the party’s news site, he has, on several occasions, highlighted the necessity of unity within the ummah. He considers it essential in the struggle against US imperialism, the great enemy of Islam in our time. He has even gone a step beyond to speak positively about the republic’s state ideology: the Guardianship of the Jurist (wilayah al-faqih). He likens it to the party’s own governance model known as the Leadership of the Scholars (kepimpinan ulama), which was first conceptualised by PAS’s youth leaders in 1982, some years after the Iranian Revolution. It is no secret that the Iranian Revolution had reinvigorated Islamic politics in Malaysia, as it did in the rest of the world. As recently as this year, PAS’s youth wing held a protest near the US embassy in response to Israeli missile attacks on Iranian civilians.

So how is it that my friend seems to have a drastically different expectation of Hadi Awang’s attitude towards sectarianism, given that Shia-Sunni unity has been and continues to be a no-brainer to party leadership? This has to do with the party’s recent track record of appealing to racist ethnonationalist sentiment in their political messaging, reinforcing the status quo of Malay supremacy and contributing to the polarisation between Malays and non-Malays. This behaviour, however, contradicts a public statement made by Hadi Awang himself in 1985 that the party had no intentions of defending Malay special rights as they deemed it an un-Islamic concept. Yet the party’s attitude today reflects none of that. They have even been silent on the plight of the Rohingyas since 2020, despite being among the Islamic groups that popularised the issue before that, simply because the general Malay population today views Rohingya refugees negatively. This contradictory trajectory may seem peculiar at first glance, but it becomes clear once understood within the context of how Malay(sia) and neocolonialism have historically shaped Islam and Malayness.

Yet this orchestrated persecution only confirms the Shinawatra family’s long-held conviction: Thailand’s establishment will tolerate pro-poor reforms only when it lacks the means to block them. Their strategy, enduring judicial harassment and public vilification while safeguarding incremental gains, is not weakness, but a pragmatic understanding of asymmetric political warfare.

For all its flaws, Pheu Thai remains the sole political vehicle capable of challenging Thailand’s military-monarchy complex, the entrenched power structure that has governed unchecked since the Cold War. This latest crisis is another battle in a century-long class war, one where every challenge to the elite status quo by the rural poor has been met with coups, judicial overthrows, or, as now, manufactured scandals. As of early July, the kingdom stands at another precipice: whether the remnants of the coalition can limp on, or whether the tanks will roll again in another coup remains uncertain, though the latter is increasingly likely as, on the 25th of July, the military declared martial law in 8 provinces near the border. What’s undeniable is that the real casualties will be, as always, Thailand’s working class.

It didn’t have to be this way. When Vietnamese forces, along with exiled Cambodians made up of the Kampuchean United Front for National Salvation liberated Phnom Penh in January 1979, they launched one of the most ambitious post-genocide reconstruction projects in modern history. Vietnamese engineers restored Phnom Penh’s water and electricity within weeks; medical teams vaccinated over two million Cambodians against polio and other diseases; and agricultural collectives revived food production. Assistance from Hanoi’s administration and the hard work of the Cambodian people laid foundations and literacy rates rose from 5% to 88% by 1987. A new generation of Cambodian teachers, doctors and civil servants, many trained in Vietnam, began rebuilding their shattered society…

…Cambodia is a product of UNTAC’s 90s “end of history” free market fever experiment. The state abdicated its role in providing social care and basic infrastructure to the market, supplemented by a vast international aid program (the largest ever in dollar amount at its time). Today though, as aid funds dry up, the state finds itself completely lacking the capacity to function. Very few levers are left for Hun Sen, and his successor son Hun Manet, to pull to address the country’s social and economic crises.

The “transition” from father to son merely formalises what UNTAC set in motion: capitalism without development and genocide survivors as disposable labour. Thirty years after the UN promised peace, Cambodia’s proletariat remains trapped between the Khmer Rouge’s killing fields and the sweatshops.

At the onset of this war Cambodia’s economy is hemorrhaging from self-inflicted wounds by the elite classes and global market shocks. The garment sector, 40% of GDP and a direct legacy of UNTAC’s sweatshop model, collapsed as Western brands fled, with 90 factories shuttering and 85,000 workers laid off in the past year alone. Foreign direct investment cratered by 32%, while youth unemployment hit 18.4%, a time bomb in a median-age-25 population. The riel (currency) is in freefall, inflation hit 4.5% despite stagnant wages, and 1.2 million Cambodians now survive on under $1.90/day as rice exports dwindle under elite land grabs…

…This war is not about a temple. It has also been misinterpreted as a scrap between Hun Sen and The Shinawatras, some kind of 4D chess game between the US and China or simple nationalist grandstanding. It is none of those. This war is the outcome of a decades-long project of anti-communism on both sides of the border, a war against the poor, fought by the poor as commanded by the elite. Both the US and China have called for peace– along with almost every other state in the region. Those who attempt to paint it as Chinese meddling in Southeast Asia obviously try to do so in bad faith, both parties have accepted some Belt and Road funding, bought some weapons, etc. While those inclined to see this as some kind of US instigated conflict completely fail to see the woods through the trees.

Yes, ultimately it was the US pax-Americana project that birthed these repressive state apparatuses decades ago, but today little direct interference remains beyond the “free” markets they left behind, along with their unexploded ordinance and incalculable trauma. To point the finger at the US is to flatter them, particularly the current administration. This war is between two of the aforementioned reactionary state apparatuses they also happened to leave behind…

…In Bangkok there is a rogue military holding a civilian government hostage, in Phnom Penh there is a state gutted by the fever dreams of the Chicago School, both perpetrating a completely unjust and unnecessary conflict. The only losers in this war, however it ends, will be the poor of Thailand and Cambodia. This is what The Eastern Tigers and organisations like UNTAC were made for. Class war against the poor.

Peace between nations is the only class-based solution.

Who do you fight when you are invaded on multiple fronts?

Although Japanese invasion was definitely horrible, it did not impact every racial group equally. This would be critical in how anti-colonial movements, both national/petite bourgeois, proletariat and peasant groups in the country navigated tactical decisions when confronting both British colonialism and Japanese imperialism. It perhaps was one of the first major disagreements between those in the Malaysian Left.

To quote an article I mentioned prior,

Armed by these racial views, the Japanese augmented early Malay nationalist sentiments which had already existed at the time, for example, among the anti-colonial pan-Islamist Kaum Muda, with strong connections with the Middle East, and the left-wing group Kesatuan Melayu Muda, which was inspired by nationalist movements in Indonesia.88 To achieve its pro-Malay policy, the Japanese established leadership training schools known as the Koa Kunrenjo in the Straits Settlements of Singapore, Penang, and Malacca…

Malay attitudes towards the British definitely took a downward turn, fuelled by their inflamed nationalist sentiments, no longer mystified by the invincibility of the British empire.95 However, they had to strategically navigate their relations with the British as ‘winner’ of the war, buttressed by the British ideological offensive against Japanese propaganda and compounded by Japanese reticence in remembering the war in Southeast Asia.96 All these worked in tandem to produce the Japanese Occupation as ‘an unfortunate anomaly of history’, an interregnum, rather than ‘a watershed in the history of the country’.97

Brief description on the Japanese occupation

This perceived closeness of the anti-colonial Malay Left to Japanese imperialists, soured relations with the Chinese communist movement in Malaya. Although history is never fully black and white, with collaborators of multiple kinds in any racial group, this underlying tension and race-class stratification lead to Malay parties holding a more ambivalent attitude to Japanese invasion, which was anaemic to the Chinese, who were facing their own ethnic cleansing through the Sook Ching massacres. Another infamous example was the “Death Railway” built in Thailand and Burma where hundreds of thousands died. Many Malays and Indians especially were captured and worked to lay across tracks across Mainland Southeast Asia. The MPAJA, or Malayan Peoples’ Anti-Japanese Army, consisting mainly of ethnic Chinese, allied and obtain weapons from the British to repel Japanese occupation. It was only after WWII did they turn to guerrilla warfare against British colonisation. The prevalence of the Communist movement in fighting Japanese occupation meant that post-independence narratives by the ruling elite often had to sweep and downplay Japanese atrocities.

Although the occupation was brief, it inflamed the class struggles that ultimately led to independence from British colonial rule, ending a century of enclosure and 500 years of direct European control.

Nonetheless, Japanese imperial influence did not disappear. Malay nationalists adopted and adapted ideas from Japanese imperialism vis-à-vis British colonialism in forwarding localised visions of Malay nationalism and development.98 One of the most unambiguous manifestations of this can be found in the working papers prepared for the first BEC in 1965, an influential state-connected platform for mobilising Bumiputera causes and resources. In line with Abdul Razak’s aspiration,99 BEC 1965 was organised on the back of increasing Malay discontent with their economic conditions, particularly among the Malay petite bourgeoisie.100

Who are our friends? Who are our enemies?

Most of Malaya’s export oriented rubber and tin industry was brought through indetured labourers and former peasants from India and China. The royal institution and malay reservations were enacted to ‘secure’ the native peasantry’s existence against capitalist industry. For the Malay peasantry, Chinese capitalists were their biggest threat, for the Malay middle classes it was British colonialists. For the Chinese, whether anglo-aligned petty bourgeois or labour nationalist, fighting Japan was about defending China from imperialist threat abroad. After Japanese occupation, this contradiction between labourers and the peasantry was not adequately addressed - Chinese and Indian labourers had direct material interests in toppling British Capital but what about the peasants? To put it simply, progressive sections of the proletariat failed to organize the predominantly Malay peasantry, and their exploitation under non-British comprador classes. Their exploitation was not directly at the hands of the British bourgeoisie in the plantations and mines, and so being anti-British was not of an immediate material interest.

It should also be noted that which language you were educated in would also ultimately determine your eventual class trajectories and positions. English-educated classes would obviously lean British, but the spread of literacy would eventually also spread anti-colonial, socialist and (British) labour unionist ideas among some of them. Chinese and Tamil educated groups would take inspiration from their own background anti-colonial fights back in India and China.

Of course it is best to not over-emphasise this apparent incommensurability of material interests between different classes, and fall into liberal cynicism (and to some extent, historical nihilism). Certainly, the formation of AMCJA-PUTERA later on was a unity between various anti-colonial groups of different racial and class backgrounds. Although predominantly Chinese (about 90%), the MCP, or Communist Party of Malaya, had notable Malay-dominant army divisions (however this only really came about later during the Emergency), and one of the most notable Malay communists in the party being the chairman, Abdullah CD. The party also had networks with the “aboriginal” Orang Asli, especially after the British forced resettlements of 300,000 Chinese people, thereby cutting out the MCP’s main support base and supply lines, consisting about 5-10% of the Malayan population at that time.

These rules have led to the de-industrialisation of advanced countries in Europe and the US, and wage suppression in the developing countries in the Global South which had to, under this system, compete with their peers to attract foreign direct investment

…We have been proposing to our progressive partners in SE Asia that Comrade Samir Amin’s proposal for partial de-linking from the global economy and the formation of regional blocks, should be the central strategy to

a) retain a larger portion of the value created by the labour of the ordinary workers, farmers and business people in our region

b) share a larger portion of the wealth created in ASEAN with the people who created it through higher prices for primary agricultural products, higher pay for our workers and more robust and comprehensive social protection schemes – such as high-quality health care, old age pension, reasonably priced rental residences, etc.

SE Asia has a population of 680 million. That should provide sufficient economies of scale for the local manufacture of most of the goods we use in daily life, except for things like advanced medical technologies like robotic surgery and passenger airplanes. A policy of import substitution at an ASEAN level should be discussed by progressive movements in the region…

…We need to uphold the principle that one of the primary roles of the economy is to generate enough jobs for all the people in that society who need work. The “right to life” is an empty slogan if it does not encompass the “right to livelihood” – to be offered work at a reasonable wage level. The principle of “Free trade” should not be used to undermine our people’s right to decent jobs.

We need many new rules to move towards a better ASEAN. For example, ASEAN countries should commit to increasing corporate tax to 30% of profits over a period of 10 years. That would require Malaysia to increase its corporate tax rate by 0.6% annually as we are at 24% currently. Thailand, with a corporate tax of 19% at present, would have to go up 1.1% annually to make the target of 30% by 10 years. Increasing government revenue would help government provide better services to the people and to do serious climate mitigation work which is grossly overdue. Increase in government expenditure would augment aggregate demand, and this will provide a larger market for the businesses in the ASEAN region…

Another programme that needs to be considered at ASEAN level is to overcome wage suppression and attain a living wage for all. At present the minimum wages in ASEAN are at different levels. Jakarta is at about 75% of Malaysia’s minimum wage. Sulawesi and Cambodia are at about 50% of Malaysia’s. ASEAN nations should commit to increase the minimum wage in all ASEAN countries by 10% each year for the next 10 years, starting from their differing starting points – so that at 10 years, we would be at double today’s wage rate though still at different absolute levels. The benefits are obvious – lower income families would live better, eat more nutritious food and have better financial security. Businesses of all sizes would have a larger market to sell to.6 The increase in manufacturing and commercial activities would generate jobs that are desperately required all over ASEAN. Quite probably, government tax collection would also go up.

…Would this lead to a flight of investment capital?

Unlikely that capital will flee to advanced countries or to NE Asia. As explained earlier, the wage level in ASEAN is about 1/6thto 1/12 of that in Europe, the US and North East Asia. Translocation of investment capital to neighbouring ASEAN countries has been the possibility that national policy makers have had to be wary about. But if ASEAN countries had a unified policy on wage increase, where would international capital run to? The wages in the advanced countries would still be more than 3 times higher even after we managed to double ASEAN wage rates.

Africa might be a choice for international capital still dependent on very low wages. If that develops, we (being progressive internationalists) should not begrudge poorer African nations this opportunity to attract investments, create jobs and build their economies. Africa is still the poorest and most marginalized continent. But being one of the last remaining bastions of overly suppressed wages, they would be in a better bargaining power to insist on more decent returns for their countries in terms of wages and technology transfer.

…That rules based order benefited the global elite and richest corporations far more than it benefited ordinary people. Consider the case of Malaysia. There are many who would call Malaysia a success story as it’s per capita GDP and health indices are better than many other countries in Asia and Africa.

Malaysia’s GDP grew 24-fold (in real terms) in the 50 years between 1970 and 2020. So, there would seem to be empirical basis for the postulate that Malaysia benefited from the rules based international order. But, if we investigate a little more deeply, we will find that :

– 60% to 70% of the Malaysian working population have to work more than 10 hours per day to make ends meet for their families.

– the prevalence of stunting for under-5 children is about 21% of the under-5 population in Malaysia. Stunting refers to heights less than the 3rd percentile of the normal range for that age bracket. It indicates long term malnutrition.

– About 40% of Malaysian graduates cannot get jobs that are commensurate with their training. They are forced to accept semi-skilled jobs at low wages or enter the gig market as motorcycle delivery riders.

– Old age poverty is a sad reality in Malaysia. About 70% of all those above the age of 65 years do not have any savings of their own and have to rely on their children or other relatives for their basic needs. (Malaysia has not yet committed to a universal old age pension scheme.)

– The younger generation is experiencing a mental health epidemic with many of them on medicines for anxiety and depression.

– Our public health care system has been chronically under-funded for the past 40 years. This has resulted in congested clinics and wards as well as inordinately long waiting times, delayed treatment and poorer health outcomes.

The problem with Globalisation based on the “Rules based order” that has been promoted all over the world since the 1980’s, is that most of the rules favour the largest corporations and the richest individuals in society. The pro-elite rules include the following

– Intellectual Property Rights provisions that have been used by the largest corporations to create monopolies and extract high rates of profit by bullying the subordinate firms in the value chains.

– “National Treatment” provisions. Many “Free Trade Agreements” require governments to give at least similar access to foreign investors as they give to local companies.

– The Investor State Dispute Settlement provision allows the biggest MNCs to haul governments to international tribunals if any aspect of government’s policies restricts the profits of the MNCs. It is considered “expropriation”.

– Unrestricted flow of capital across national boundaries. This has created a situation that has forced government to reduce tax rates for corporations and the richest individuals. This occurred both in the advanced economies as well as in the global South. In the ASEAN region for example, there has been a race-to-the-bottom in corporate taxes. Malaysia has reduced its corporate tax from 40% of profits in 1988, to its current 24% of profits. Malaysia felt pressured to do so because its neighbours also acted similarly, with Thailand’s and Vietnam’s corporate tax currently at 20%, and Singapore’s at 17%. The SE Asean countries have been reducing corporate tax in a bid to attract FDI as well as to ensure that domestic investors do not relocate to neighbouring countries.

– The “Zero Tariff Regime” of Free Trade Agreements have markedly eroded the economic sovereignty of governments. For example, the ASEAN FTA has brought the tariffs of 99% of goods traded among ASEAN countries to zero, and this FTA has the provision that tariffs can only be lowered, but never raised. As a consequence, the Malaysian government is apprehensive that raising the minimum wage for Malaysian workers might affect the competitiveness of Malaysian firms and lead to the loss of both the domestic and the exports markets to firms from other ASEAN countries.