Class and the election II

A previous post was about where a deeper analysis of the crisis that underpins the upcoming election. A reader points out that while it is not a class-based discussion, the Financial Times produced a passable analysis of Thailand’s crisis. It is paywalled, The Nation has an account. Decline, stagnation, manufacturing stalled, and a decade of decay.

There’s no real effort to get to the underlying reasons for this, but “thank” the ruling class that brought all of this in an effort to stop reform. Another politics-focused account puts it this way: “the foundational issue persists: the functional class divide between the rural and the urban, with the kingdom always under the thumb of the elite classes and their military enforcers.”

It adds:

The Thai state, established on the foundations of big capitalists, the military and the monarchy after WWII was a conscious anti-peasant, anti-worker, and anti-communist project led by the United States and colonial powers at the onset of the Cold War. This led to the formation of a tight cabal of the deep state powers, the big capitalists, the military, and the monarchy – against the progressive and revolutionary forces within the Kingdom….

Today, the current state of affairs allows the deep state to potentially orchestrate a coup without a coup as the non-military organs of the Thai state -judiciary and the bureaucracy – have been captured.

In another Tricontinental Asia article, the 2026 election is described as a contest between Puea Thai’s “disruptive populism, the liberal Peoples Party’s westernised idealism, and Bhumjaithai Party’s reactionary clientelism.” While the article seeks a class analysis based in a somewhat crude dependency theory depiction of a bipolar world (Global North/Global South), this leads it to plump for Puea Thai’s “disruptive populism,” harking back a decade, to champion the party’s tangible results for the poor and working classes.

We don’t find any of this analysis wholly convincing, but at least the narrative is broader than the latest opinion poll.