Modernity & Capitalism

Kan Yuenyong @sikkha

Siam Intelligence Unit (SIU) Marxism 2014 : March 21, 2014

Outline

• What’s modernity

• The hangover effect in Southeast Asia

• The contradiction of faith & reason

• Role of Buddhism in Thailand & Mainland ASEAN

• Modernity & Capitalism

• What is to be done?

What’s modernity

• Is this society modern? Modern world can't make them modern with instrument? What's modernity?

• "modernity" must be a relative concept. In other words: "modern" in respect to what?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLrtzktKJt0

The age of “enlightenment” : 1st wave

• The Thirty Years' War (1618–1648) -> Peace of Westphalia

• The Glorious Revolution (1688) -> Leviathan, The two treatises

• The American Revolution (1765–1783) -> Voltaire, Rousseau, Kant

• French Revolution (1789 - 1799) -> Hegel

The age of “enlightenment” : 2nd wave

• American civil war (1861 - 1865) -> Pax Americana

• Russian Revolution (1917) -> Soviet Union

• German Revolution (1918–19) -> Nazi

• World War II (1939 – 1945) -> Decolonization

Asian “revolution”

• The Meiji Restoration (1868 – 1912) -> Japanese Empire -> WW 2

• Taiping Rebellion (1850 - 1864) -> Civil War -> People’s Republic of China

• King Rama V (1868 - 1910) -> 1912/1932 -> 1947/1957

• [The Meiji Restoration accelerated industrialization in Japan, which led to its rise as a military power by the year 1905]

What’s the core thinking of Enlightenment

• condition of possibility and freedom of choices

• the statesman lives in time, necessarily reflecting accident and contingency, hoping only for relative security.

• free your soul from the recent superstructure by achieving at the boundary of the limitation of humanity, thus a true dignity.

The colonial hangover effect

• Nationalism in South East Asia

• Binding nationalism with the superstructure = taboo issue

• Lèse majesté, Bumiputera, Communist party, etc.

A brief of the colonial hangover effect in South East Asia to NISTPASS' staff from Vietnam

The leaf & the root of the bamboo

• The root = Asoka ideal • The leaf = A decoration of

“universal value” (i.e. human rights and democracy)

• The different side of the same coin : Monarchy & Buddhism

• The Revisions (สังคายนา) • A protection of the core

ideology (A blowing of the bamboo in the wind)

King by virtue: Reflections on the Life-long Endeavor of King Bhumbol of Thailand, published by the Thai Khadi research institute, Thammasart University, Thailand. First published September 2013: 2,000 copies.

The Buddhism Revisions

• #1. 956 B.E.

• #2. 2020 B.E.

• #3. 2331 B.E

• #4. (unofficial) Dhammayuttika Nikaya

• #5. (unofficial / mass movement) The Trio (Suan Mokkh, Santi Asoke, Dhammakaya)

Thailand’s parties have failed in democratic duty to unite nation. http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/834808.shtml

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/713591/TimeLine.xls

The failure of ‘secular’ state?

• Suan Mokkh & Buddhadasa Bhikku (Reason in Buddhism)

• Faith as an imperative is a veto against science -- in praxi, it means lies at any price. – Nietzsche

• It was not easy to 'reconcile science and belief' when it came to 'religious phenomena'. -- Gustave Belot p.598 Durkheim's biography.

• A democracy would be untrue to itself if it did not have faith in science. -- Durkheim p.23

• A country that aspires to governing itself needs 'enlightenment' above all else. -- Durkheim, ibid.

Questions of modern society

• Moral value?

• A contradiction between Liberalism & Democracy?

• A sustainable of capitalism?

• Or a problem of the “modern” itself?

‘Capitalism’

• Capitalist = Wealth accumulation (1709, 1792) • Original idea of ‘capitalism’ was in Thackeray’s novel

The Newcomes (1854) • Karl Marx further developed an idea: ‘The circulation

of commodities is the starting point of capital. Commodity productions, and developed commodity circulation, trade, start from the historical pre-conditions under which it arises. World trade and the world market open up in the seventeenth century the modern life-history of capital’

(from : Capitalism and Modernity : The great debate)

Japan rich list : A Proof of Information revolution?

• Young generations and new type of businesses are emerging in Japan.

• Yoshikazu Tanaka : GREE Inc. (Internet Media)

• Yusaku Maezawa : Zozotown (Online retail website)

• Tadashi Yanai : Fast Retailing, of which Uniqlo (ユニクロ, "unique clothing") is a subsidiary

Character of Information Goods

• Near zero marginal cost

• Network externalities

• Critical mass

• Public goods

• Consider OSS based business model

Thailand’s megatrend

• The ‘double play’ : Political reconciliation & Infrastructure reform

• The rising of governance : Efficiency & Participatory government

• The rising of China & US’ Asia pivot strategy

• ASEAN reality & architecture

Thailand double play (2013 – 2023)

• I. Political Reconciliation

• II. Infrastructure Reform

• Why?

High-Velocity Network

END Modernity & Capitalism by Kan Yuenyong (@sikkha)