Samudra, meaning the joining of oceans, is a journal, publisher and research vehicle created to explore proletarian currents and histories so as to map the cross-border parapolitical apparatuses that unite in their shared repression of the global south.

The South Seas Communist Party

At the 1926 Guomindang/Chinese Communist Party convention in Canton, delegates from across Southeast Asia planned an Overseas Chinese Communist Division. Its dual mission was to unify the Chinese diaspora in the “Nanyang” (South Seas – Southeast Asia) and spread the revolution among the local peoples. They embraced a hybrid model: their overseas branches functioned as both Chinese diaspora associations and a modern transborder political party.

Gaza, Our Complicity & The Ukrainian Nuisance

From the corn fields of Phrae to the streets of Jakarta, a stark dissonance defines our political reality. Our governments, including Thailand’s, perform a delicate dance: issuing cautious statements on Palestine while their material actions remain firmly anchored to...

Economy of Solidarity – How Socialism Rebuilt Cambodia After Genocide

The reality of Cambodian socialism was brutal, but it was made brutal by the forces of reaction sponsored by The West and its allies. For all its flaws, real Cambodian socialism did exist, if not in the halls of ministries of Phnom Penh, it existed in its purest form through the economy of solidarity. What else other than communism or socialism can we call a communal and social construction project alongside the revolutionary will to discard the previous system?

The Orange People

Som are the new Salim. How the self-described progressive movement in Thailand fell into the same political space as the reactionaries of old.

The ‘Grab’ Economy: Did We Ever Need It? And Who Pays for It?

Digital platforms have created jobs and economic activities, but largely at the expense of youth — those of us who drive and ride for platforms, and their economic futures. They have also created a lot of consumption that does not lead us to a better world of...

Newsletters

Each week, we share the newsletter from our partners at The Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research who provide a crisp analysis of contemporary developments and the struggles and conflicts of our time, highlights their newly launched publications, and offers a window into the work of left intellectuals and research institutes around the world.

Archive.

Featured

Euro-Fascism with Thai Characteristics

In the 1930s, Thailand began a project of mass homogeneity based on western Euro-Fascism. This project was refined by the monarchy in the 1950s, leading to a reactionary consensus lasting a half-century. However, many elements in the recent protest movement, so far, fail to recognise their own deep-seated Euro-fascist tendencies when challenging the contemporary Thai state.

The Class Consciousness of the Bus Station – Short

Everyone who takes the bus has these memories in some way or another, all at more or less the same bus station, be it in Chiang Rai or Songkhla, Ubon or Singburi. It’s strange to think that someone hundreds of kilometres across the country, who’s never been to the same bus station as you, will share nearly exactly those same memories. This is a shared anchored memory of some kind of another. Maybe we could call it a consciousness.

We Need More, Not Less Politics

Audi Ali Our society is characterized by two sentiments. First, noting the inequality that was made manifest by the conduct of the state and its apparatus recently, we are enraged. The guise of formal and legalistic notion of “equality” enshrined in the constitution...

Nationalism & Anti-Statehood In Thailand

Ceaseless doses of daily nationalism serve one purpose, to enforce the Thai identity and link it to the state, to make being Thai part of the Thai national state. This grand plan, however, did not come out of nowhere. It is, in fact, a direct response and attack on the long history of anti statehood found inside of Thailand’s borders.

Thalugaz Interview

For the past few weeks, there have been constant violent protests in the Din Daeng neighbourhood of Bangkok. Din Daeng is an extremely deprived area of the capital, particularly after strict lockdowns in the latest wave of the Covid pandemic were implemented with virtually no economic assistance. Since mid-august, predominantly young people have been fighting the police with improvised weapons like fireworks, small homemade bombs, slingshots and Molotov cocktails.

A Call For Spiritual Leftism

Spirituality provided us answers to these questions on suffering, which in a sense eased it. We are still suffering, the grounds on which we lay our pain are largely claimed by science and doctrinal organised religion– more often than not organised around the capital and capitalist state. Scientists tell us our bodies are sick, or our minds are mentally ill. While the monks tell us to devote ourselves to doctrine. Indeed, scientists follow a (supposedly secular) doctrine of their own.

Iconoclasm – The Futility of Thai Street Protest

Looking beyond the symbolic limitations of protest in an attempt to escape the seemingly omnipresent capitalist state superstructure in which our defiance lacks any material consequences.

Haji Sulong – Patani’s Reformer, Martyr and Father

The name Haji Sulong is little known in Thailand proper, despite being considered a hero and the founding father of the modern separatist movement in Thailand’s deep south ‘Patani’ region. Little is known outside the region about the conflict that erupted following his death, showing just how localised a civil war can be. This nescience is embodied in Haji Sulong, a man who lived an extraordinary life, was wildly influential and yet almost totally unknown to Thai society at large.

Thai Imperialism and Colonisation

An examination of Thailand’s internal ‘auto-imperialism’, how the state works to capture populations on the fringes of the kingdom and put them to use for the nation’s imperial core. Exploring the roots, history and present-day effects of Thai ‘auto-imperialism’.

Euro-Fascism with Thai Characteristics

To Stop Smog Pollution: Empower the Farmers

During the past two decades, the north of Thailand has been turned into a corn factory farm, pouring toxic smog into the sky. Government, business and environmental groups offer few solutions. The only way to free us from this poison cloud is to empower farmers, to give them more autonomy and bargaining power against monopolies in the agricultural industry.

Proletarian Revolution In The Global North Is Impossible

There is virtually no material production in the north, only service capital— debt and foreign holdings. The material existence of the northern proletariat is dependent on global south labour and continued material extraction. This raises the question of whether successful proletarian revolutions in the north are even remotely plausible.

The Real Face of Thai Feudalism Today TLDR – Part 2

In this second article, we will outline the different periods in Tai history, beginning in the ‘primitive communism era’ and concluding in the formation of the Saktina state, examining how they developed through Jit’s understanding of historical materialism.

State Racism in Thailand: Capitalism, China, and Ultranationalism

If in the United States, the police are shown to uphold systemic racism, what are some sources and examples of systemic racism in Thailand? Here Capitalism leads to the exploitation of migrant workers, the State alters attitudes towards Chinese people due to National Agenda changes, and the country’s history of Fascism…

The Orange People

Som are the new Salim. How the self-described progressive movement in Thailand fell into the same political space as the reactionaries of old.

The Real Face of Thai Feudalism Today TLDR – Part I

The purpose of the book was to expose how the plight of the rural Thai peasant in the 1950’s was a vestige rooted in the old feudal system, laying bare its horrors and its exploitative framework. Jit wrote this book as an antagonistic rebuttal against the revisionist history of the ruling classes taught to most Thai’s at the time (and still today), which typically depicts a utopian agrarian past, rather than the brutal exploitative reality.

Economy of Solidarity – How Socialism Rebuilt Cambodia After Genocide

Euro-Fascism with Thai Characteristics

Proletarian Revolution In The Global North Is Impossible

Coups, Violence and Coups – A Deep History of Deep State Governance in Thailand

LONG READ – Seismologists often shy away from predictions, likewise here, what the next earthquake will bring is near impossible to foresee. Not to disavow us of any agency, but when standing back and witnessing the scale and depth of these reactionary formations it can be daunting to imagine anything else. The Red Shirts imagined something else, as did the peasants of the Farmers Federation and the Communist Party. What’s important is to recognise this near-invisible yet ubiquitous power of reactionary violence, so as to brace ourselves for the inevitable.

To Stop Smog Pollution: Empower the Farmers

Thaksin

Thaksin Shinawatra defined Thai politics for a generation and forever reshaped it. Somehow, this elite capitalist billionaire became the unquestioned champion for a destitute peasantry. Thaksin’s politics defied left-right categorisations, creating an economic miracle, lifting millions out of poverty while further developing the very same mechanisms of capital that had placed them in said destitution.

Archive

The ‘Grab’ Economy: Did We Ever Need It? And Who Pays for It?

Why I Obsessively Study the Russian Revolution

Anyone who knows me knows I am obsessed with the Russian Revolution, I could talk about it labouriously for hours on end. My interest has been mostly confined to this very specific period from the 1917 February Revolution through to the death of Lenin in 1924 – don’t ask me about Stalinisation, the purge or De-Stalnisation (watch The Death of Stalin (2017) instead). I have invested an absolutely stupid amount of time and money into reading about this fascinating bit of Russian and Soviet history. Every October since 2017.

Post-Colonial Medicine and Biopolitical Warfare

Across the globe Western medicine is ubiquitous, it is the gatekeeper of medicine, stamping all that sits outside of its narrow realm as quackery. Despite its self-acknowledged limitations, Western medicine simultaneously sees itself as a hard science, like mathematics, while adhering to a tight epistemological dogma, like religion. Critics are labelled quacks and any alternative practices are considered to do more harm than help. Western medicine is an applied social construct, a complex interplay of social practices, riddled with institutionalised powers, bound by rigid histories and discourses that go beyond mere clinical interventions, rigidities that encompass broader issues of care, morality, power, identity and pain.

Coups, Violence and Coups – A Deep History of Deep State Governance in Thailand

The Failures of Youth Politics – Short

Youth movements have a clear sell-by-date. They can only last for but a few years before they need to be sublimated into a different kind of politics, be that the armchair politics of the NGO class, or full scale revolutionary insurgencies. This results in a cycle of Youth movements, which continually get recycled back into the NGO and parliamentary systems.

The Big and Small L Left & The Death Thai Class Politics

There is a very tangible divide between the working class and those who consider themselves to be the Left. Class politics is the synthesis of these two L/lefts, the large L and small l, a synthesis to the point where there is no possible distinction between them, whereas a divide between the two forms the absence of working-class politics. In Thailand, this divide is nothing short of a chasm.

The Great Corn Conspiracy – Long Read

Every year, for 2-3 months, the entire Northern region of Thailand, Laos and Burma, suffocate under smoke. This annual climate apocalypse is a relatively new phenomenon, beginning around 20-30 years ago and seemingly increasing in intensity. The cause, in our opinion, is a conspiracy, a product of decades-long interplay between state and capital, the birthing of mass agribusiness, monopolisation of markets, of coups, of massacres in the streets and of networks of dark finance and patronage.

The Labour of Love

The search for love, dating, is often described as a marketplace, another market where commodities are bought, sold and traded. Love, then, becomes just another commodity to be fetishised. How can we find love under the capitalist patriarchal system and more importantly how can that love ever be reciprocal?

Kafka & Mass Politics at Chang Wattana – Short Read

The modern Muang system pervades 21st-century Thailand. The bureaucratic imperial castle of Chang Wattana oversees its regional Muangs in the provinces. The gates to the palace of paperwork are guarded by disinterested receptionists sipping from their Amazon ice coffee cups. They form the same system that prevents farmers from owning their land and prevents the ascension of democratically elected governments. The secretaries themselves, like Kafka’s bureaucrats, hold no actual power, you can not get angry at them, just frustrated at the system that lurks behind them.

The Death Of Class Politics – Move Forward

Move Forward Party’s success in the election is a disaster for class-based politics in Thailand. They have achieved precisely what the capitalist elite have dreamed of for decades; to push Thailand away from the class-conscious politics of the 2000s/2010s, and towards a politics of aesthetics. Finally, Thailand has a respectable party for the middle class, one capable of defeating the red shirts.

To Stop Smog Pollution: Empower the Farmers

The Invisible People

You consume invisible labour but the labour you sell is invisible too. We are detached and alienated from both our production and consumption. How can we begin to see labour through the haze of obfuscation? Who grew my rice? Who killed my chicken? Who made my clothes?

Periphery, Core & Reconciliation

Here, we sit on the event horizon between core and periphery, if there is anywhere it can be reconciled, surely it must be here. Not just Thailand, but other regions that fall into the same global economic bracket of the middle-income trap. Can there be any interaction between the periphery and the core?

A Call For Spiritual Leftism

A Short History of LAWAN – Malaysia

The Lawan (to fight or oppose) Protests will be remembered by many in Malaysia as a critical voice of dissent during this tumultuous period of our history. Its capacity to mobilise and execute so many actions in such a short period of time is certainly remarkable. More so, is the engagement and participation that was engendered from outside activist circles. Its demobilisation and possible demise should also be understood from the perspective of wider failures within progressive and left movements.

UBI The Highest Stage of Imperialism

The concept of Universal Basic Income was designed by global north economists for global north economies and cannot be applied to the global south. The principles of UBI mean that it pays people in the global north to consume while workers in the global south continue to suffer to produce the north’s commodities.

A Blurred History of Insurgency – Patani

We spoke to Noor Netusha Nusaybah, a Malaysian Patani historian, about how today’s insurgency is connected and shaped by its post-WWII roots, which are often shrouded in misunderstandings, conflicting or competing narratives and secrecy.

In Remembrance of Kru Krong Chandavong

May is our month of memory. Beginning with International Workers’ Day, it marches past several anniversaries—the gunning down of Jit Phumisak on the 5th, the Rajprasong crackdown on Red Shirt protesters in mid-May, the 2014 coup on the 22th—only to end with the anniversary of the execution of schoolteacher-turned-politician Krong Chandavong in 1961 on the orders of Field Marshal Sarit Thanarat. Here, a poetic ode to Chandavong is translated on the anniversary of his death.

ความแปลกแยก Alienation [TH/EN]

มาร์กซ์กล่าวไว้ว่าแรงงานทั้งปวงล้วนแปลกแยก (Alienated) นั่นเป็นสาเหตุว่าทำไมคุณถึงรู้สึกหดหู่ตลอดเวลา และ นั่นไม่ใช่ความผิดของคุณ จะว่าเป็นโชคร้ายก็ได้นะ แต่คุณต้องเป็นคนหนึ่งที่แก้ไขมัน We have to become aware of our alienation, gain alienation consciousness, so as to fight it with solidarity and comradeship. Caring for others, for no other reason than we would hope someone else cares for us.

Thaksin

No Sweat

In the late ’90s, the horrors of sweatshops became a focal point of concern in the global North. However, in the past two decades, they’ve faded from public attention. We spoke to No Sweat, a campaign to abolish sweatshops, about labour organising, campaigning, consumer culture and approaches to tackling the global North-South wealth divide.

Featured

Long Reads