In this study of the formation of modern Thai radical culture, Tejapira
reveals a process of cultural and political interaction which results in
a mutual transformation of exogenous Marxism/communism and indigenous
Thai culture. The study draws on data from a number of primary and
secondary sources, including memoirs from and interviews with leftist
intellectuals, contemporary radical publications, and a number of
unpublished Masters' dissertations in the Thai language. The book traces
the introduction of Sino-Vietnamese Marxism/communism into Siam during
the absolute monarchy in the late 1920s until the late 1950s when, under
the military regime, it emerges as a particularly Thai cultural
phenomenon. The exogenous ethnic character of the early Siamese
communist movement made it an easy target for the conservative
nationalist/royalist ideology of Thai-ness and socialism had been
pre-judged as utopian even before its actual arrival in Thailand. After
the fall of the absolute monarchy in 1932, both the lookjin communists
(lookjin refers to Thai-born people of Chinese descent) and the
left-wing People's Party tried separately to overcome this
double-layered cultural resistance to radical ideas, but with only
partial success. But the Japanese invasion and the resultant
Phibun-Japanese alliance during the Second World War provided both
groups with an opportunity to create a popular underground resistance
movement and to earn a legitimate and legal foothold in the Thai policy
after the War. Marxism/communism entered the post-war Thai cultural
market in the form of printed commodities, whose demand, supply and
reproduction ebbed and flowed with the volatile and violent tide of
international and domestic events during the subsequent decade. More
specifically, it was paradoxically diffused but dissolved by capitalist
publishing, censored yet promoted by anti-communist authoritarian
regimes, and confined to but freed in prisons. Through this process
emerged a substantial group of (primarily) ethnic Thai radical
intellectuals who proceeded to translate Marxism/communism into the Thai
language and rhyming verse.
