THAILAND: New socialist group emerging

[Christ was Socialist]

http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2004/581/581p20.htm

Good to see them coming along. However the group appears to be of marxist belief, which I am no fan of. I hope to hear more good things out of thailand.




http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2004/581/581p20.htm

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The Workers Democracy group began to develop when “seven years ago, a meeting was called by a number of activists, mainly in the trade union movement, who felt that, since over 15 years had passed since collapse of the Communist Party, there was a need to have some form of political organisation. People weren’t clear what sort.

“This organisation took a while to evolve, at first it was quite a loose group. It now has a very clear Marxist position, a revolutionary socialist position. We are Trotskyists and are affiliated to the International Socialist Tendency.

“To begin with, we had to be very hard on our Marxist politics, to actually argue there was an alternative socialist politics that wasn’t Maoist or Stalinist and, in some ways, we were fairly inward looking in order to establish a core, but it’s quite clear what is required now is much more an outgoing organisation to bring people into struggle against neoliberalism and imperialism.

“But in some ways, the defeats of the 1970s have meant that people were reluctant to talk about the left, were reluctant to call themselves socialists. I think this is actually changing. It partly I think reflects the level of the anti-capitalist struggle worldwide, it partly reflects the fact that we have called ourselves socialist and we haven’t all been killed or put in jail yet and that can give some encouragement to other people, even though we are fairly small.

“What is very important is the level of international struggle, the anti-war movement, the World Social Forums, the movements against neoliberalism, have actually encouraged people who never really wanted to believe that there was only capitalism, it’s encouraged them to become more active. There are signs of the younger generation, students, are prepared to be active, although the level of struggle is nothing like you’d see in South Korea or Western Europe or Latin America.