Communism and capital: Marxists literature in Southeast Asia

Abstract

This paper traces the history of reception of “Capital” and other texts of Marx and Engels in the Southeast Asian region in the backdrop of its twentiethcentury political history in which communism played an important role. However, the issues of anti-colonial struggles, nationalism and ethnic identification dented the influence of once-powerful communist parties in Southeast Asia and eventually led to the demise of those movements they steered. Moreover, the fact that these communist movements with their widely disparate agendas and sometimes idiosyncratic policies were at times only tangentially related to the ideas of Marx and Engels also contributed to this fall. Yet, 150 years after the publication of Capital, Marxism is not dead in Southeast Asia. It continues to influence young, and some old, activists and social reformers. In Myanmar as well as in Thailand, where the countries’ respective militaries are still powerful, Marxist theory is seen by many as an ‘antidote’ to military rule.