Comments

Observer: I say “analyze each case on it’s merits“, and you say that is “naive” and point to a “coup by judiciary“.

Which of us is politicizing the courts?

Cat tastes kind of stringy.

It intrigues me is that Dr Somsak continues to read Thai politics as a politics of monarchy versus capitalism.

In fact, the monarchy is now a capitalist agent in own its right

I NEVER made an analysis anywhere of the current conflicts in terms of CLASS. This has been a conscious decision. I have my reasons but it’s too complicated to explain here.

But let’s deal with this issue, for it’s one of the keys to Connors’ stance as well as his friend, Ji’s (see Ji’s article on the monarchy a few months ago.)

Let’s say I agree that BOTH the monarchy and Thaksin ARE thoroughly capitalistic.

Does this entail the sort of politics Connors and Ji advocate, the song mai aw? Absolutely not. To say both are capitalistic, no where logically and theoretically entails that a socialist MUST oppose them at oncein all cases at all times

It’s wrong to believe that there can be NO difference at all among members of the same class, or that any difference between them ‘means nothing’ to the people and thus (in Ji’s case) advocate the sort of politics that sees no difference between bourgeois parliamentary politics and bourgois dictatorship. Since they are both bourgeois, let oppose them both! (see that part of his article on two ‘types’ of bourgeois rules where it implies no difference).

The kind of thinking characteristic of Connors’s is the same one – god forbid! – as Stalin’s infamous ‘Third Period’ that sees no differences between Hitler and all other kinds of capitalistic elites – differences that matter to the cause of the people and/or socialists.

To say that the monarchy is as capitalistic as Thaksin doesn’t at all mean that in political terms they are ‘equally bad’. It’s logically coherent to argue that one is worse/better from the standpoint of democracy and ‘the people’. This has just recently been argued, not by myself but by Thongchai! (See his article on the ‘Left-Right Unite’ and a short comment he wrote under ‘pseudonym’ on an article by “Piyamit Lilatham” on FDK website.)

It’s funny to see dogmatists like Conners or Ji hurl charge of Maoist/Stalinist historical telelogy at me. As I suggested before on this website, if you want to discuss things as socialists or (in Ji’s case) defender of the Bolshevik heritage, do make an effort to really study the history of the socialist/bolshevik movement. Even at the height of their strength the Bolsheviks, the classical example of intransigent left ofindependent political stance, did NOT advocate the blow to both the Kornilovs and the Kerenskys at once. To anylyse concrete situations concretely is the soul, the spirit of Marxism, as Lenin famously put it. To begin – like Connors – with the insistence that since both groups of elites are capitalistic (both are human-right violators, etc) one therefore always at all times and places oppose them both, is just thoughtless dogmatism.

Why not just analyze each case on it’s merits?
What merits?
The whole case is premised on the 2006 coup, the single biggest law-breaking act in the past few years.

I’m glad you agree that these cases would never have seen the light of day if Thaksin had stayed in power.

I did not call for a coup, but chose to accept it once it was fait accompli, however it’s unusual to see you providing justification for a coup.

If Mugabe was overthrown by a coup, would all cases against him have to be thrown out due to illegal procedure?

btw, it’s unusual to see you providing justification for a coup.

It intrigues me is that Dr Somsak continues to read Thai politics as a politics of monarchy versus capitalism. His Maoist past obviously means that he sees capitalism as progressive and therefore new-age globalised capitalism is seen as progressive because it is held to be removing the monarchy from the scene. The monarchy is seen as attached to feudalism or, in Thai terms, sakdina.

In fact, the monarchy is now a capitalist agent in own its right. Furthermore, with the symbolic capital that comes from its investment in Thainess and virtue, it is one of Thailand’s most robust capitalist agents.

The battle in Thailand has moved well beyond the imaginary battle of capitalism versus feudalism that occupies the Maoist imagination, a struggle from which Dr Somsak has yet to extricate himself. The current struggle is not about Thaksin and the monarchy. The simplistic reading of Thai politics that comes from a Stalinist politics (oddly echoed by the most pro-capitalist Western academics who have forged a perverse alliance with erstwhile re-incarnated Thai Maoists) fails to capture the struggle between capitalist elites over specific capitalistic interests and regime form.

In recent years Thai politics held the promise of a significant shift to a political liberalism that would bring about some redress of political inequality and which would secure human rights. Instead, under the conditions of the 1997 constitution, that deliberately provided for strong executive rule, the Thaksin regime moved against liberal features on the pretext of his democrat mandate. This led to an unsavoury choice in the absence of mass struggle: limited forms of political liberalism – with all the arrogance of who gets to decide what virtue is – as against Thaksin’s populist electoral democracy (who gets to decide what people want in the conditions of structured inequality).

Dr Somsak would have the entire Thai population accept the illiberal shift on the premise that Thaksin had a democratic mandate. It should be noted that Dr Somsak’s own politics (unless he has moved beyond them) would endorse a politics of Leninist democratic centralism and would eschew the kind of electoral democracy he is currently championing. In principle, he declares others morally bankrupt for not supporting electoral democracy, but if he is true to his Leninist past he believes well enough that such a system is questionable in terms of genuine democracy (perhaps I have missed his conversion to liberal democracy?). One can only assume in his “perverted” (to return the compliment) hierarchy of values, capitalist democracy has a premium: its faults are plenty but they are an advance on feudal monarchism. Well communists, as Marx declared, declare themselves. So what are Dr Somsak’s real thoughts on electoral democracy? Clearly, he is interested in the propaganda value of of Thaksin’s “mandate” , but I doubt that he thinks they are enough for genuine freedom. I am asking Dr Somsak to come out of his shell and explain why he supports Thaksin, beyond the na├пve argument that Thaksin had a democratic mandate. As a socialist he needs to tell us more.

I would argued that a position that holds that the monarchy is merely a feudalistic residue (as Thai Maoists and their liberal interlocutors do) misses the capitalist transformation of the Thai monarchy, and the way in which liberal capitalism and its organic intellectuals have attached to it (opportunistically and without varied success).

In historical terms, Somsak’s willingness to excuse many things that the capitalist government of Thaksin did (including the massacres in the South) is premised not on particular right on wrong but on a historical teleology of historical progress. The rights and wrongs of particular events are merely the debris of history that need not concern a person interested in the objective march of history (unless he happened to be involved in them – October 1976).

Does Dr Somsak want to offer some commentary on the
the Stalinist and Maoist experiments and the millions of people that fell victim to them? These, too, continue to be justified by the kind of false historicism that is employed in the current Thai situation.

Perhaps Dr Somsak would like to share with us his politics, instead of merely repeating the mantra of Thaksin’s democratic mandate? He has been speaking about the principles of democracy for a long time now. What are his politics? What does he think about other episodes in history, where people have been sacrificed at the altar of objective history? How does that thinking inform his politics in Thailand? And by the way, this is not red-baiting, I am a socialist. I believe in the end of capitalism and the rise of a socialist democratic society that eradicates the aristocracy of birthright that comes with class.
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Just thought this was an amusing quote from an article titled ‘Journalism in Rangoon’ on April 20th, 1937.

“The New Light of Burma preaches Burma for the Burmans and violently opposes the new Constitution.”

Thanks for alerting me to this, for general news I don’t venture far from the warm glow of the Guardian or the homely vibes of abc.net.au too often.

What a strange co-incident that Khun Nicolas should mention the 1982 illness of the King as a “forgotten history” especially about the call for a pray. I’ve been working on an article that will deal with this interesting episode. The brief account in King Never Smiles contains some info that could be misleading (though in a very interesting way). To give a bit of a ‘preview’: the 1982 illness compared with the most recent one (Nov 2007) shows, or I argue, the changing nature of the monarchy. The prey mentioned in the Times article actually was ignored or overlooked by a large number of Thai – in Bangkok of all places! – at the time. This compares with the near ‘mass hysteria’ reaction during last year illness.

That the “law” is hardly ever neutral, not only in Thailand, is well documented in the US and many other places. India might be an exception. While in the US the result of court cases is quite strongly determined by the ability to purchase well versed lawyers, in Thailand the political figuration and the positioning of those interpreting the law tends to play a significant role. Therefore, a change of such a figuration affects the outcome of those cases brought forward against potentially powerful and well connected persons like Chalerm (and his sons) as well as Thaksin and others. In the triangular relation of power differentials referred to in the title, currently those identified with Thaksin seem to be the weaker. But this is, I guess, just a temporary situation. The question is what are the dynamics within the political figuration and whether democratic alternatives to PPP, PAD etc. do exist. As long as such an alternative is absent, we just have shifts between the current two main poles and their supordinates, and the interpretation of the law following these shifts.

Thanks nganadeeleg.

Srithanonchai, in the shorter term, i think the PAD do a good job of helping to keep public and media attention focused on the cases. I think they are also needed to help keep attention focussed on the government’s attempts to amend the constitution.

Re: #9

By the way, if you were referring to the interview of the PAD protesters injured in the Udon incident held by PAD at Makawan Bridge on 28 July, well, then that’s just 4 days after the attack happened. I am very glad the critically injured (who must have still been very traumatized and in shock and undergoing treatment) were not dragged out of the hospital and transported to Bangkok to do a long interview on stage. The Thaksins would have found it easy to do such thing though since we’ve already seen that sacrificing thousands of lives were worth it for some publicity. Luckily the PAD are no where near that kind of cruelty.