 Well, welcome today to the latest video blog from Socialist.net. I'm joined here today by Ben Glanetsky, the editor of the marxiststudent.com website and regular writer for Socialist.net and marxist.com who's going to be speaking to us today about the events in Thailand taking place. So Ben, just to begin, can you basically tell us what are the recent events in Thailand? What's been happening lately? Yeah, well over the last six months or so the government of Ying Lek Shiawatra, which was elected in 2011, July 2011, has been facing protests from largely urban kind of petty bourgeois middle class layers, centred in Bangkok, in fact almost exclusively in Bangkok. And these protests, these protesters have been calling for the government's resignation and for an unelected People's Council, as they call it, to be installed, with the sole aim more or less of purging Ying Lek and her party's influence from Thai politics. And this, despite dwindling numbers of protesters, this culminated last week with why it's effectively a judicial coup, where the constitutional court removed Ying Lek and nine of her ministers, her cabinet ministers, which leaves basically a truncated cabinet in power in Thailand at the moment. It hasn't satisfied the protesters who want the whole party removed and this unelected People's Council to take power. So the protest is still going on. Ying Lek is rallying her supporters, who are largely rural peasant-based supporters, and at the moment the whole situation is in limbo. Great, thanks. Can you maybe give us a bit more background to these events going back a few more years? Yeah, the background is very important, because in 2001, Ying Lek's brother, Thaksin, was elected in the most open and corruption-free elections ever held in Thailand. On an anti-neoliberal programme, on an anti-IMF programme, the IMF had been intervening in the economy since the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997, cutting public spending and implementing neoliberal policies across the board. And Thaksin ran in the 2001 election on a programme of free universal health care, more money for the rural areas, and so on. And unsurprisingly, he won the overwhelming support of the peasantry in Thailand and was elected. Because of this mass support, the hostile elements, the monarchist royalist elements in the Thai establishment were unable to remove him in their traditional fashion, which is to use a coup against those people they don't like. That's been the case in Thailand since about 1932, where coups have been used to remove opposition, populist elements. So Thaksin was able then to win a second election in 2005, again on the back of a movement of the peasantry, where he has a lot of support. Now in 2006, Thaksin was removed by a coup. Finally, the establishment, the royalist elements, got their act together and removed him in 2006. And since then, there has been extreme instability in Thailand and conflict between Thaksin supporters, who are the red shirts, and the monarchist royalist supporters, supporters of the establishment, the urban petty bourgeois middle class layers, who are the yellow shirts. And this conflict reached boiling point, tipping point in 2010, when following another judicial coup in 2008, a yellow shirt supported government was in power. And then in 2010, the red shirt protestors occupied areas of Bangkok as a massive movement, largely based on the peasantry, but it obviously spread into the city. And there was a large movement, elements of dual power emerged and but for the provocations of the leadership of the red shirts, there would have been a successful revolution in Thailand at that time. And then on the basis of those events, the ruling class was forced to concede elections in 2011, which Yingluck did win on the basis of her closeness to Thaksin, again on the back of a massive peasant vote. And the conflict has been simmering since then, the ruling class just looking for their chance to strike back against the red shirt movement. Great, thanks to that. Can you maybe give us a bit more of a detailed explanation about the different class interests involved in all this? I mean, on the one hand, you've mentioned the red shirts being based mainly upon the peasants, from what I understand in the north of the country, but then the yellow shirts are the kind of monarchist elements and more urban middle classes. But then you've also got the added complication of the Sinuatras, who themselves are very rich, actually Thaksin being a media tycoon himself. Can you maybe explain a bit more about these different interests involved? Yeah, absolutely. Although what's going on in Thailand at the moment does express different class interests, it is being expressed in quite a peculiar, unusual way, because as you say, the Sinuatras are billionaires, to all intents and purposes, the representatives of the bourgeoisie. And it looks on the surface like you simply have one faction of the ruling class leaning on the peasantry just in order to fight another faction of the ruling class, and it doesn't seem to be much deeper than that. But it's important to realize, kind of, going back even further with the history of Thailand, that because of the nature of Thai society and politics, that being a largely peasant-based country, and also political movements being consistently stunted by coups and military intervention and so on. In the history of politics in Thailand, it means that an independent workers and peasants party has never had a chance, or a movement of any kind, has never really had a chance to crystallize. And until 2001, the peasants had never seen anybody, any politician, ever stand up for their interests. It had always just been changes in the ruling clique that oppressed them and in various different ways. So in 2001, when Thaksin, this billionaire telecommunications tycoon, actually started offering to fight basically for the interests of the peasantry, they had never seen anything like this before. And naturally, they decided to vote for Thaksin and were willing in 2010 to come out and fight for pro-Thaksin parties. And so, in many ways, Thaksin and Yingluck as well, the pro-Thaksin parties basically, despite their bourgeois credentials, they're more or less accidental figures in this movement, perhaps unwittingly and perhaps unwillingly. They are actually expressing the desire for a fundamental change of the vast majority of people in Thailand. And because of the lack of a historical workers movement or peasant movement, that hasn't been able to express itself in any other way. So it's expressing itself like this. And on the other side, you have the yellow shirts, the very reactionary monarchy, the monarchy being, it's a constitutional monarchy in Thailand, and the monarchy there is very much the rallying point of reaction. They've always been involved with the coup attempts and the removal and oppression of progressive forces. So you really have the pro-Thaksin parties representing the anti-establishment desire for change, and the yellow shirts, the monarchists representing the reaction, the counter-revolution. Thanks. And finally, can you maybe outline what you think the perspectives for Thailand now? Are we going to see an actual coup with the military coming in, potentially civil war, or do you think that there's even potential for revolution here? Yeah, that's an important question. Clearly, we're in a state of limbo at the moment, but clearly the protesters would welcome military intervention at this stage. They are consistently trying to destabilize the whole country, occupying government buildings, shutting down government meetings just yesterday, I think, a meeting between the interim Prime Minister, now that Ying Le has been removed a meeting between that Prime Minister and the Electoral Commission, was disrupted by protesters, meaning that they're unable to proceed with plans for an election that has been scheduled provisionally for the 20th of July this year. Many people don't think that election is going to go ahead precisely because the yellow shirts are disrupting things and trying to get the military to intervene. But we'll have to see about that. That's not clear. The reason the military hasn't intervened so far, and the thing that's going to be holding it back in the future in terms of the prospects for a coup, is actually it's fear and it's scared of, it remembers the events of 2010 when large parts of Bangkok and the country as a whole were occupied by red shirt protesters. It was only due to a weak leadership that that movement failed to completely remove the monarchy and other elements of the establishment. And they don't want to spark that kind of movement again. And they're well aware that the red shirts themselves have learned the lessons from 2010 and they will come back, the movement will come back on a much higher level this time if and when it's rekindled. So the military are going to hesitate before they have a coup, but it may well be that there's, they have little choice. In terms of what the red shirts are likely to do next, well the peasant population in the north is not going to be, is not going to accept the actions of the yellow shirts. They won't accept a coup and they certainly will accept an unelected people's council taking over from a government that they themselves elected in 2011. They certainly will accept that and there's all kinds of interviews with people in the north who have said as much. But the leaders of the red shirts, and Ying Leck in particular, even though she's now been removed from power, ousted, has been hesitant to call the red shirts into action. They had a demonstration recently last few days, but it was about 40 kilometers away from the center of Bangkok, 40 kilometers away from where the opposition demonstrations were. They're keeping them very separate. And this I think is actually because Ying Leck herself is also afraid of the potential power of that movement. She herself as I've said is not a worker or a peasant, she's not a leader of them in that sense. She's an accidental figure, afraid of the kind of forces that she's capable of conjuring up. And so she's going to hesitate before she calls out the red shirts because she she's afraid of conjuring up forces that then she won't be able to control. So really, if there is to be a solution, an answer for the red shirts to avoid a coup and to avoid the unelected people's council purging all the progressive elements from Thai politics, they're not socialist elements clearly, but they are certainly progressive. Ying Leck, for example, has implemented various rice subsidy schemes that have benefited the peasants enormously. And the yellow shirts, the monarchists, they want to get rid of all these things. The only option that the red shirts really have in the face of Ying Leck being paralyzed by fear of her own supporters is to take control of the movement themselves and build an independent workers and peasants movement, link up with the working class in the cities, which, although it exists, it hasn't been active really at all, hasn't played an independent role certainly in the recent events. So that's really, really what needs to happen. And what's clear as well is that if that does happen based on the events of 2010, then you do have very, very revolutionary potential. You do have very clear potential for an overthrow of the existing order. And they're aware of this, the establishment is aware of this, and they're afraid of it, which is why the yellow shirts are insisting on this as quickly as possible, this unelected people's council to try and purge all these progressive elements from Thai politics. So really, the question comes down to the subjective factor. It requires independent movement, a clear socialist program, demands for the abolition of the monarchy, a new constitution be written that allows proper representation in some form of constituent assembly from all areas of Thailand. And that's really the only way that the workers and peasants are going to be able to mobilize themselves in any kind of revolutionary movement. Thank you very much, Ben. Thanks for joining us today, and speak to you soon. Bye.