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.