Political Prisoners in Thailand

We are late getting to the World Socialist Web Site’s article on the 2026 election. The article’s Marxist perspective means it attempts a broad perspective on the run-up to the election based on a light-touch class analysis. This kind of discussion has been sorely lacking as attention has been sucked into seat counting and popularity contests.

Yet as the article says, the “February 8 general election highlights the political crisis facing the ruling class. None of the major bourgeois parties expects to secure a parliamentary majority…”.

Part of the reason for this is that “the parliamentary apparatus has become increasingly discredited. That discrediting in recent years is because in “the eyes of broad layers of workers and youth, there has been a succession of betrayals since the last election.”

That includes by the People’s Party, the only party that is even remotely reformist. The party’s leadership has “lamely accepted the authority of the courts, the military and the monarchy-linked establishment. The party repeatedly pledged its commitment to “stability” and the capitalist order, even as it was dismantled.”

But what are the underlying class interests involved? Why has reformism been abandoned?

The article comes up short of these fundamental questions. It does point out that Thailand’s “ruling class faces a new political crisis as the next government will be compelled to preside over a program of austerity and rising social tensions, all compounded by the global geo-political instability…”. But why?

PPT isn’t able to provide a deep analysis of these fundamental questions – and nor do we see much academic research attention to such questions – but such research might begin by looking at the increased monopolization of the barely expanding economy where years of military rule and kowtowing to the Sino-Thai tycoons. This has fractured the capitalist class, with the tycoons gorging and other capitalists getting the dregs of an economy that has industrially hollowed out.

A rapidly aging working class and struggling small farm sector means that a second industrial (and technological) “revolution” is unlikely. This represents a failure of the ruling class that has the monarchy as its keystone – and spends a fortune in taxpayer money propping it up – and its incapacity for self-renovation. That incapacity is also seen in politics, where its military designed a system that is stagnant and corrupt.

Tellingly, accumulation strategies have become focused on the state and grey money. State infrastructure projects are milked to such an extent that buildings and other infrastructure collapse. Corruption in the bureaucracy is massive as senior positions are traded like commodities or top appointments are made on orders from the very top. Scams are reported on non-stop, but because this grey money is stupendous, is relatively “easy money” and requires state and political accommodation, it is never-ending. It undermines government, crushes the poor and repositions the capitalist class’s gaze to illegal activities. Yes, we know that this has often been the case in the past, but this time it is massive and overwhelms economy, society and politics. It has probably been the source of the huge spending on the election.

After the election, the ruling class must caucus to decide what it wants. That will be no easy task, and another coup cannot be ruled out if it or at least its topmost movers and shakers decide that would be the way out. Whatever they decide, the people will suffer and the capitalist class will not find a way out of the economic malaise.