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A Coup For the Rich Thailand’s political Crisis
Thai Autonomists and Post-Modernists cannot put their theories into practice when confronted by the capitalist state and the capitalist free-market. When Autonomism and Post-Modernism prove to be powerless in defending the interests of the poor, in the face of attacks from the free-market and the state, Autonomists and Post-Modernists fall back into pessimism and lose all faith in fighting for any reforms. Squeezing modest concessions out of the capitalist class becomes an “impossible dream”. This is the same justification for right-wing social democracy adopting the “Third Way” or the capitulation to neo-liberalism by Lula’s government in Brazil.
Pessimism of the Peoples Movement Confidence and pessimism are important factors which contribute to the choices of political strategies. One major problem of the Thai Peoples Movement is an under-estimation of its own strengths, which is naturally encouraged by mainstream ideology, which places much emphasis on the Pu-yai (Big People) in society. The result is a tendency to rely on “friendly governments” like Thai Rak Thai, or “progressive businessmen” like Sondhi Limtongkul, or even “progressive” military coups!!
“Get the dogs to bite each other”: the 2005 election At the time of the 2005 election the Midnight University and people like Pipop Thongchai 55 could only offer a strategy to vote for thoroughly capitalist, neo-liberal “opposition” parties. The vain hope in this abstract strategy was that it would dilute the expected parliamentary majority of the governing Thai Rak Thai Party. There was no concrete explanation about why the dilution of Thai Rak Thai’s majority would benefit ordinary people other than abstract talk about the need for “checks and balances” in order to 55
He later became a leader of the anti-Taksin P.A.D.