October 1973 was used by a part of
AN AMBIGUOUS SITUATION the ruling class (represented under the given circumstances by the king, and probably supported by the CIA) to gain ground at the expense of another section of the ruling class (fied to the traditional military command). In this sense, the students were the victims of a con game. But the eruption of the populor masses into the streets of Bangkok cannot be reduced to a clever political maneuver. It illustrated the acuteness of the social crisis, and, in turn, it deepened that crisis. The Thai October opened a period of transition that would see the class struggle go through a sharp upswing, a period that the bourgeoisie and imperialism would be unable to bring to a rapid end. Sixteen months later, the elections and the formation of the new government gave yet another demonstration of this, if any were needed. Economic conjuncture and structural crisis The moral authority of the king, Bhumibol Adulyadej, remains very great in Thailand. This prestige allowed him to designate a new prime minister just after the mobilizations of autumn 1973. The new head of state was Sanya Dharmasakti, former rector of Thammasat University, the heart of the student movement. He was not tainted with association with the circles of the military dictatorship. Supported by the king, he gained the support of a majority of the members of the National Student Center of Thailand (NSCT). The general view was that in spite of its initial confidence, the Sanya government would merely survive and would remain incapable of offering a solution to the political and social crisis shaking the state. Nevertheless, Sanya took advantage of an exceptionally favorable economic conjuncture in these times of international recession. Obviously, the increase in oil prices strikes heavily at a country that has to import 85 percent of its energy supplies. The "oil bill" for 1974 was $512 million, compared with $180 million in 1973. But Thailand's exports
19
THAILAND were sharply stimulated by the rise in world market prices for the country's major export products: rice, corn, sorghum, sugar, rubber, tin, etc. From the first half of 1973 to the first half of 1974 the export price of rice increased 183%, rubber was up 73%, corn 57%. The 1972-73 rice harvest was a bad one because of a drought. But the 1973-74 harvest was very good, approaching 14 million tons of paddy rice (unhusked rice). This enabled Thailand to double the value of its exports of rice in 1974 compared with the previous year, Rubber exports increased 20% in volume and 120% in value. Corn exports increased less than 8% in volume but more than 30% in value. Tourism provided a large currency income (about $190 million), twice as high as four years earlier. There was no recession in the country then. (2) Nevertheless, the very favorable economic conjuncture did not permit the stabilization of the social situation. The structural crisis of the Thai economy is too serious, and the grip of bourgeois and imperialist interests is too strong. Not so long ago Thailand was still being described as a country of small-scale agricultural property in which there was a surplus of land. That used to be generally true, and if explains in large part the prolonged passivity of the Thai peasantry (as in Cambodia). But there has now been a concentration of landed property, and the grip of absentee landlords over rural land has gone so far that 60-65 percent of the rural population are landless peasants, either tenant farmers or agricultural workers. (Some 80 percent of the population of the country lives in rural areas.) In the April 10, 1974; Financial Times, Kevin Rafferty showed why the increase in the world market price of rice has not at all benefited the peasantry. The export price for a ton of white rice was 11,000 baths (about US$550). But the peasants sell a ton of paddy rice for 1, 800 baths, or, more frequently, 1, 500 baths, which means that the peasants receive about 2, 300 baths per ton of white rice. To be sure, during the past two years the rice income of the peasantry has increased 50 percent a year. But this increase was more than absorbed by the price increases for the products that the peasants have to buy: fertilizer, clothing, tools, and even rice for consumption, for the peasants often do not husk their own rice. For a peasant family to begin to benefit from the price increases, it would have to cultivate at least 8 rai (nearly 3 acres) in the rich central plain. Further, the average monthly interest rate on debt can approach 20-30 percent, so it can be seen that the debts of the peasantry will continue to mount and land ownership will be increasingly concentrated. There is no lack of rice, but the social system creates artificial shortages and a tendency toward famine.
The social condition of the urban workers is not much better. The government buys a certain quantity of rice at reduced prices from merchants who intend to export it. This rice is destined to be sold in the state stores of Bangkok for 40 baths for a thirty-three-pound sack (as compared with 70 baths on the free market). This measure, which affects only 10 percent of the population, has no significant impact: Only a small part of the rice bought through this procedure reaches its destination. It serves most of all to guarantee superprofits to people "on the scene" and passes to the free market or goes into the smuggling network to be sold on the world market. Above all, the economic development of Bangkok has been deeply deformed by imperialist domination. Thai land experienced one of the highest rates of expansion of any country in the region during the 1960s, a result of the war in Vietnam and the considerable American investment. The U.S. ormy remains the second-largest employer in the country (after the state), with 80, 000-100, 000 civilian employees. But the withdrawal of the American expeditionary force from Vietnam dealt a sharp blow to the inflow of currency. American servicemen on leave had been spending $5 million a month in the bars and brothels of Bangkok. The "Vietnam boom" has now run down. While there has been a relative industrialization based mainly on durable consumer goods (like automobiles, for which there are about ten assembly lines), if is not at all oriented toward the country's development needs (especially agricultural needs). Machine tools and fertilizers are imported. Exports are based above all on raw materials. The world market prices for raw materials now seem to have moved toward a real collapse because of the international recession. The source of the economic upswing of past years has run dry. The economy is under imperialist control. Japanese capital controls 11.5% of investment, U.S. capital 5.7%, and Taiwanese capital 5.2%. And that is enough: Foreign capital orients production and imports its own crisis. The social consequences are there to see. According to a report of the National Economic Development Bureau, 5,500 children under the age of five died of malnutrition in 1972; the figure was the same for 1973. Some 70 percent of the children of the suburbs of Bangkok receive only 70 percent of the necessary daily caloric intake.(3) Thailand is the largest rice granary of Southeast Asia, and for the first time there is beginning to be a shortage of rice. Inflation (25 percent per year) is striking the urban workers hard and the un-
employment rate among the active population in Bangkok is 6-7 percent. That is something new in the history of Thailand. Awakening of class struggle Outside of the peripheral regions inhabited by national minorities, Thailand did not experience significant social struggles up to 1973. The "revolution of 1932, "which put an end to the absolute monarchy, was the affair only of the top echelons of the social hierarchy. And the changes in regime that have occurred since then have been palace revolts rather than popular movements. The First strike movements began a few months before the fall of the military dictatorship. Later, these movements took on considerable scope. In one year more than 400 strikes broke out, with more than 300,000 working days lost. That is higher than the figure for the previous twenty years combined! At the end of 1973, following the student struggles, there were three months of strikes (especially in industry, banks, and transport) and some violent demonstrations. The beginning of 1974 was marked by a rise of peasant struggles, in addition to a short strike by fishermen. The struggles took on a new scope in June and July. Some 5, 000 textile workers went on strike. For the first time they gof the support of thirty-four associations including 400, 000 workers who issued an "ultimatum to the government" demanding that the labor laws be modified. The demands of the textile workers concerned the labor code, working conditions, and wages. They demanded that their daily wage be increased from 16 to 25 baths (that is, from about SO. 90 to $1.401). At the end of June and the beginning of July hundreds of peasants from eleven provinces came to demonstrate in Bangkok. That again was unprecedented in Thailand. They occupied the big square of Saman-Luang and threatened to plow up the streets of the Thai capital. They considered the government agrarian reform program to be inadequate, protested against the usury to which they are subjected, demanded the restitution of their expropriated lands, and called for prosecution of absentee landlords. Strikes and demonstrations continued throughout the summer (the strike of hotel employees being a notable example) and frequently ended by winning partial success. Significant trends of radicalization appeared among the bonzes. In December five superior bonzes went on hunger strike to protest against autocracy, political repression, and corruption in their church; they were supported by 2,000 of their followers. The student movement, although weakened, remained active. On January 22, 1975, some 10,000 demonstrators led by students set fire to the residence of the governor of the southern province of Nakhonsi-Thamara, who was accused of corruption. The struggles in Thailand, both in the city and the countryside, began immediately as class struggles and then moved toward becoming anti-imperialist struggles, the opposite of what happened in Vietnam. They have drawn in all the sectors that had not been affected by the communist guerrilla movement. But despite its scope, this explosion of struggle did not directly threaten the regime and the ruling classes. The Thai proletariat and pecsantry suffered from too great a lack of tradition of organization. To be sure, the Thai Communist party, founded thirty-two years ago, has not turned toward reformism. But its base has remained peripheral, centered among the national minorities. Until October 1973 the CP did not play an active role in Bangkok or the surrounding regions. There was no real trade-union organization; it was forbidden by the dictatorial laws. Only "associations of workers" with limited functions were allowed. This was so much the case that very often when workers of some factory went on strike they had to call on the central headquarters of the associations to negotiate their demands with the employers, because none of the workers on strike had the necessary experience. Before the fall of the dictatorship there was no independent political organization of the working class having a mass base in Bangkok, not even a reformist organization. The dominant ideology is that of individualist "Theradava" ("small vehicle") Buddhism. Many Thais still believe that social inequality stems from birth. Nepotism and corruption sometimes appeared natural. Under these conditions, it fell to the student movement to play the role of catalyst and political vanguard. But the student movement also lacked tradition. The first: (very limited) nuclei of the movement were formed only in 1965 in the form of "study and discussion groups. " The members of these groups oscillated between revolutionary romanticism and social action (in education and heaith, among the slum dwellers, etc.). Very belatedly, the National Student Center of Thailand was formed; if began by denouncing Japanese imperialism, an issue around which it was sure to find a favorable response, even in some government circles. Then it attacked the university structures, denounced corruption, and demanded a constitution, progressively gaining broad popular support. The October 1973 demonstrations were touched off by the arrest of militants of the Movement for the Constitution. In the very course of the October demonstrations a division appeared between those who tended to accept the first compromise with the dictatorship and those who wanted to press the mobilization forward
21
THAILAND and bring the dictatorship down (Saeksan Praserkul being an example of the latter). The majority of the members of the NSCT rallied to the support of the newly formed Sanya government (the overwhelming majority of the student milieu comes from the middle bourgeoisie and the urban intellectual layers), while the more radical left wing called for support to workers struggles. Several currents and organizations were born of these divisions. One of the student leaders, Sombat Thamrong Thanyawongse, joined a bourgeois formation. Thirayuth Boonmee, who had been opposed to continuing the demonstrations, founded the People for Democracy group and later left it. This group, under the leadership of Pirapon, became one of the most radical currents, based essentially in student circles (especially in the provinces). Finally, Saeksan Praserkul created the Federation of Independent Students of Thailand (FIST). This organization, especially strong at Thammasat University, played a driving role in the mobilizations and seems to have succeeded in breaking out of the university ghetto. The National Student Center of Thailand, having been set up by university delegates, has an orientation that fluctuates according to the sentiment of the majority of students. In addition to these political divisions, there were increasing numbers of violent clashes (sometimes with the use of homemade bombs) among technical colleges. Little by little, the student movement lost a good part of its audience. The bourgeois reformist wing participated in the government propaganda aimed at preparing for the campaigns for the "new democracy. " But the radical wing of the movement gradually established links with the struggles of the workers and peasants. Some coordination and cooperation thus seems to have been set up, which will permit the centralization of the peasant movements around Bangkok. An Anti-Dictatorship United Front has been set up, for example. The bookstores have suddenly begun stocking Marxist works. The Thai Communist party, which had ignored the urban intellectual milieu, is now becoming a point of reference for the student movement, even if its own implantation remains, apparently, very weak. What is going on today is a whole process of formation of mass workers and peasants movements and of a political vanguard in the Thai cities and provinces in which the Communist party is not active. The Communist guerrillas This is one of the paradoxes of the Thai situation. In the provinces in which it has a base, the CP has 22 succeeded in resisting many operations conducted against it by the Thai army, which commands considerable resources. The CP has regularly extended its zones of action and has strengthened its movement. But beyond these provinces it has not been a political force capable of carrying out its own intervention, until recently. The CP leads a guerrilla movement, the Thai Patriofic Front (TPF). The main armed actions have been Fought in three zones: The Northeast, the plateau sloping down toward the Mekong (and the Laotian border), is inhabited by 16 million-people, mostly Lao-Thai; it is the poorest region of the country. That is the cradle of the CP. The North, where the CP is organizing the Meo minorities (Hmong) in the mountains and valleys. The South, where four provinces - Pattani, Yala, Narratiwat, and Songkhla - are inhabited by Muslims. The latter are probably in contact with both the Thai CP and the Malayan CP, which operates on the other side of the border, although there is also a separatist Muslim movement that is not oriented toward the far left. In all, armed actions have been reported in forty of Thai land's seventy-one provinces. A spokesman of the TPF in Bangkok told a journalist of the monthly Le Monde Diplomatique that "the partisans are now coordinated from Bangkok. " "We can distinguish two sorts of zones, " he continued, "those that we control by night (representing one-eighth of the Northeast, one-tenth of the North, and one-twentieth of the South) and those that we hold permanently. It is not correct to speak of liberated zones exactly. The authorities can still go there, but only under heavy military escort. But these zones escape the rule of the authorities completely: no taxes, no draft, no cooperation. The villages live in a closed economy."(4) Since then, the CP has proclaimed the existence of liberated zones. (See Le Monde, September 25, 1974.) Varying figures on the strength of the guerrillas are given by American and Thai services. Nevertheless, that strength is increasing constantly. According to the latest figures, published in the Far Eastern Economic Review, there were 8, 000 guerrillas in 1974, compared with 5,000 the year before and 3, 500 in 1972.(5) The U.S. Lowenstein-Moose report evaluated the strength of the guerrillas in 1972 at 7,340-7,770. (6) The Thai CP, of Maoist ideology but also linked to the Indochinese Communist movements, favorably greeted the demonstrations of October 1973. But it also denounced the Sanya "civilian" government, as it denounces the Seni Pramoj government today. Hence, the military operations have sometimes been of particular importance. One of the latest to date,
conducted in mid-February, resulted in nine dead and about 100 wounded among the government troops in the Northern province of Chieng Rai, according to an official communiqué. More than 500 functionaries and soldiers are said to have been killed during the past ten months. (7) The peripheral character of the CP's base is partially accounted for by a number of objective factors. First, the border regions are often inhabited by very poor peoples subjected to national oppression, while the central regions of Thailand have lagged behind in the development of class struggle. Second, because of the absence of direct colonial rule and of an acute agrarian crisis (at least for a long period), Thailand served in effect as a "buffer zone" between the French and British territories of the region. Further, the urban proletariat and the commercial bourgeoisie arose out of the Chinese immigration. Even in Thailand, where the assimilation of these immigrants was more pronounced than it was in many other countries of the region, the Chinese or SinoThai population had great difficulty winning political rights. A final reason for the CP's peripheral implantation was that the development of Bangkok, a cancer grafted onto Thailand, was very rapid beginning with the start of the exodus from the rural areas. Bangkok today has between 3 million and 4 million inhabitants (including the adjacent city of Thonburi). In 1950 it had only 780, 000, and 1.7 million in 1960. Chieng Mai, the second largest city in the country, has a population of only 200, 000. There are also political problems. First of all, it is possible that the orientation chosen has had some weight in the absence of extensive urban work by the CP. Second, the Thai CP today still has a Maoist ideology. And Peking's diplomacy does injury to the CP's orientation. The New China News Agency waited nearly a year before drawing a balance of the CP's activities after October 1973. And Peking Review has not accorded much space to the statements and radio broadcasts of the Thai CP. Worse yet, Chou En-lai told a Thai diplomat that U.S. troops should remain in the country to act as a counterweight to Soviet influence in the Indian Ocean. The National Student Center of Thailand protested this statement(8) and the CP did not change its combative policy. A contradiction exists between the Thai CP's ideological references to Maoism and its relations with Peking. Finally, the CP has developed essentially within the framework of guerrilla activity during the past several years. Now it is confronted with more or less spontaneous mass movements among the peasantry, the urban proletariat, and the student milieu, movements that are engaging in struggles for economic and political demands, at least in the present period. The junction of the guerrillas with these movements is not necessarily easy to make. These questions are important: The CP is the only revolutionary organization that has existed for a long period. Many possibilities may arise out of its development. Shadow of the military In spite of the flight of the three dictators, the formation of a "civilian" government, and the election of the National Assembly, the shadow of the military still hangs over Thailand. "Three tiles of the roof (Marshals Thanom and Praphas and their relative, Colonel Narong) have fallen over the garden wall, but the rest of the house has not been touched, " said a disillusioned student leader. leader.(9) The army has not been lying low since October; its power remains intact. Many facts attest to this - apart from the absence of any deep reforms. Many people assume that there will be a coup. That assumption was quite prevalent when Marshal Thanom Kittikachorn returned to Bangkok on December 27, 1974. Despite the fact that the government had forbidden his coming, he evaded the police and customs controls and came in by airplane. Then he went directly to the military airport, where he met with some officers. Upon the announcement of his arrival, the students assembled at Thammasat University. A united front of twenty organizations was formed including Saeksan Praserkul's FIST and the People for Democracy. This assembly was attacked by rightwingers using handmade bombs. Gunshots were fired in return. In the end, Thanom was forced to go to Singapore after a hesitation waltz by the government and some pressure from the army, which made Sanya abandon the plan, supported by the students, to bring the former dictator to trial. This episode enabled the student movement to recoup a good part of the audience it had lost among the population, and it was the radical wing of the movement that benefited. Above all, it brought to light the military connections that continue to be operative. The army is not the only semi-hidden power. A scandal broke out in Bangkok when the daily The Nation revealed that a CIA agent had sent negotiating proposals to the prime minister - in the name of a Communist leader in the Northeast! In July 1974 riots broke out in the "Chinese neighborhoods" in the center of the capital when the police, who are detested, tried to arrest a taxi driver. The riots lasted for three days and resulted in 30 dead and 200 wounded. The students had to call off the demonstrations that had been planned for July 4 - U.S. independence day — to protest against the presence of American imperialism. The left tended to see the hand of the Taiwanese Kuomintang in these events. (Let us recall that Taiwan is the third-largest foreign investor in Thailand.) They were considered attempts at postponing the elections through a "strategy of tension. "
23
THAILAND Thai political life is thus dominated by uneasiness about a coup. But a coup could not be carried out without raising problems. Social struggles have not run their course. A coup would force all the opposition into clandestinity and the CP would then threaten to rapidly gain a mass base nationally. The outcome of such a coup would be uncertain. That is why the army is still lying low and waiting, certain that the "civilian regime" will not betray its interests. General Kris Sivara, one of the main superior officers today, did not participate in the electoral battles, apparently holding himself in reserve for a Bonapartist role later on. Nevertheless, he did indicate his preferences: He would like a coalition of rightists. The results of the elections reflect this ambiguous situation. Forty-two parties contested the elections, with 2,199 candidates running for 269 seats. It is not easy to define these parties. The "patronage" phenomenon is still predominant. The programs of various parties were often very similar. And each of the major formations includes a part of the military apparatus, the industrial and banking interests (which the officers have extensively penetrated), and a privileged imperialist power. Nepotism reigns supreme . The direct continuity of the political apparatus of the dictatorship is guaranteed by four parties: the Thai Nation party (Chat Thai), the Social Justice party (Dhamma Sangkhorn), the Social Agrarian party (Kaset Sangkham), and the Social Nationalist party (Sangkhom Chat Niyom). Among the leaders of the Thai Nation party are General Paitun Inkatunawat, the commander of Thai troops in Laos; Brigadier General Chatichai Chunhaven, a former minister of foreign affairs; and Generdl Pramarn Adireksan. The party is linked to Japanese interests and to the textile and sugar industries. It won twentyeight seats in the elections. The Social Justice party, which won forty-five seats, is led by Dewit Klinprathum, a very rich businessman. The Social Agrarian party and the Social Nationalist party are two smaller formations allied to the first two parties; together they won thirty-seven seats. In spite of the millions that were spent by these parties during the electoral campaign, they suffered a relative defeat. This defeat is an expression of the unhesitating rejection of the pro-Thanom right by the population of the most politicized areas. The Social Action party (Kit Sangkhom) led by Kulkrit Pramoj also suffered a defeat, winning only eighteen seats. A royalist and loyalist, Kulkrit wants to found a party in the image of Lee Kuan Yew's party in Singapore. Probably linked very closely with the United States and Israel, Kulkrit is surrounded by bankers and industrialists, notably the president of Thailand Coca-Cola. It was the Democratic party, led by his brother, Seni Pramoj, 24 the next stage of the asian revolution may well unfold.. In thailand» that won a relative victory, winning seventy-two seats, among them twenty-three of the twenty-six seats in Bangkok. The Democratic party is the only old party, formerly an opposition party, and is supposed to represent the indigenous bourgeoisie; it is considered to be "liberal. " Seni Pramoj has a reputation for honesty. That is the likely reason for the success of the Democratic party. None the less, Seni is very close to his brother Kulkrit, and now that he is prime minister, the government has taken on Kulkrit's political hue. The minister of foreign affairs is Pichai Ratakul (Democratic party), a businessman who was the Southeast Asian director for Rotary International eleven years ago; the vice prime minister and minister of finance is the leader of the Social Agrarian party. The ministry of defense is still under the direction of the military; General Thawich Seniwongse is minister. The New Forces party (Palang Mai), known as the party of young technocrats and intellectuals, has been called "barely left of center" by a reporter for the International Herald Tribune. (10) This party won twelve seats. Finally, there are two socialist parties, the United Socialist Front (ten seats) and the Socialist party of Thailand (fifteen seats). The former includes old leftist elements, some of whom had been imprisoned. The latter won seats especially in the politicized and radicalized regions of the Northeast. Its best-known leader is Boonsanong Punyodyana, a sociology professor at Thammasat
Tober 1973 University. It is probably the most leftist party, although it remains very heterogeneous politically. In an interview granted the journalist Norma Peagam(11) Boonsanong explained that there are in his party about thirty former political prisoners and many militants of October 1973. Significantly, he refused to condemn the Thai CP and, on the contrary, explained that it is certainly natural that the freedom-loving people of this country will not cease resisting" in view of the exploitative and oppressive character of the government and that "the communists are a good example of such patriotic, freedom-loving people. " That is rather unusual language in the very anticommunist political society of Bangkok. Reformist currents, personalities identifying with Pridi Banomyong, one of the promoters of the 1932 revolution, who was in exile in China and then in Paris(12), and radical militants coexist side by side in the Socialist party of Thailand. The minority government has been formed by a center-right/far-right coalition. The strongest bloc of parties in the National Assembly is that of the proThanom right-wing parties. But alone this bloc does not command a majority. The Democratic party remains the winner of these elections, thanks to its reputation for "probity. " The royalists are a very small minority in the National Assembly, as is the left. But 60 percent of the electorate abstained in Bangkok, and the Northeast voted for the Democratic party or for the left. Thus, the elections opened rather than closed a new period of political instability. Washington The military coup - always a possibility - seems to have been postponed. The future of struggles will depend to a large extent on the ability of the new young generation of militants that has come out of October 1973 and the subsequent battles to regroup their forces, centralize the student, worker, and peasant struggles, and offer them political perspectives for the period of transition that has now opened. At the same time, the new militants must remain prepared to respond to any other eventuality. But U.S. imperialism is also intervening as an-active factor in the process now under way. Thailand is a key to its regional strategy. A hinge linking Indochina, Southeast Asia, and the Indian subcontinent, Thailand has a 1, 350-mile common border with Laos and Cambodia and a 485-mile coastline on the Indian Ocean. A founding member of SEATO, Thailand has benefited from rarely equaled aid from its protector and master. The air bridge supplying Phnom Penh today originates from the U.S. base at Utapao in Thailand. Anticipating the possible fall of the Lon Nol regime and the establishment of the Pathet Lao rule over Vientiane, Washington has made Thailand its next line of defense, while at the same time it has begun consolidating its rear areas in the Pacific. The next stage of the Asian revolution may well unfold, at least partially, in Thailand.= FOOTNOTES: 1. See Quatriême Internationale, No. 13 (JanuaryMarch 1974) and Far Eastern Economic Review, October 22, 1973. 2. See J.C. Pomonti, Le Monde, May 28, 1974; Kevin Rafferty, Financial Times, April 10, 1974; and the Bulletin Commercial of the Banque de Bruxelles, December 26, 1974. 3. Le Monde, December 20, 1974. 4. Marcel Barang and Nayan R. Chanda, Le Monde Diplomatique, February 1974. 5. Far Eastern Economic Review, January 17, 1975. 6. Le Monde Diplomatique, February 1974. 7. Le Monde, April 23, 1974. 8. The Voice of the Nation (Bangkok daily), Janvary 20, 1975. 9. J.C. Pomonti, Le: Monde, April 28, 1974. 10. International Herald Tribune, January 28, 1975. 11. Far Eastern Economic Review, January 17, 1975. 12. Contrary to what is asserted by F. Fetjo in his book Dictionnaire des PC et Movements Revolutionnaires, Pridi is not the president of the Socialist party of Thailand.
25
MOROCCO THE