Interview with a member of the CPT central committee
Question. What is the importance of the documents of the IVth Congress of the CPT, both for the organisation and for the Thai revolutionary movement?
Answer. These documents express the conclusions reached by our congress. In publishing them, we are not first of all looking to show that our party has changed, adopting a more progressive line. Above all what we want in making them known is to submit them to discussion and to the test of experience. We are publishing them so that people can study the conclusions we have arrived at and judge for themselves about the evolution of our party.
For example, we hope that everyone — whether Thai or not - will be able to discuss them in the light of their own experience and in a way that will shed some light on the correctness or the errors of the documents. It is possible that a reading of the documents will lead to miscomprehensions or disagreements, which will then spark off a discussion.
Q. Why were these documents, adopted in 1982, not published officially in English until now?
A. After the 1982 congress, we immediately circulated them study. They were sent to party cadres and distributed in the jungle camps to be explained and to educate the militants. But we weren't able to prepare a good English translation. Indeed, we have been through a diffieult period. We lost a lot of our network abroad who could help us with translation work.
More generally, with the leaving of too many activists and the arrests, our work has been disorganised. We have had big financial problems. A number of our members have had to deal with urgent tasks first of all: finding work in the towns and adapting to changes in the situation in the countryside, where the army has been particularly active militarily as well as politically with the amnesty programme and democratic promises.
At that time many activists were opposed to keeping too many forces in the jungle camps. They therefore decided to leave the jungle and return 16 to the towns, or sometimes to their villages. But the social implantation of our members was too weak, and this made it very difficult for these militants who were returning to a legal existence. In a hurry to find work or to restart their studies that were interrupted after the coup d'etat in 1976, assailed by multiple practical difficulties, many members then temporarily broke with the CPT. They left with the idea that they would contact the party again once their problems of social and political reintegration had been resolved.
In the period following the IVth Congress, we therefore had a thousand problems to resolve, such as the weakening of our economic resources, defence of our organization, reorganizing our apparatus, our mass work and so on. There was quite a lot of confusion and a number of militants were paralyzed, incapable of acting.
Having pinned great hopes on the IVth Congress, but not always being able to see the results coming, many sympathisers were discouraged.
However, two or three years after the congress, the positive results are being seen. A substantial recovery is apparent. It is very important. You could say, taking account of the crisis we have been through, that the conclusions of the IVth Congress have been put to their first practical test during some very difficult years. It has been a positive test. In fact, I think that if these conclusions had been wrong, we would not have been able to survive this test.
Q. Can you be more precise about the progress registered during this time?
A. Three years after the IVth Congress, we reorganized the basis of our urban and rural work. Organizations that had become useless were dissolved. New ones, better adapted to the situation, were developed. In general, you could say that the engine has begun to function again after having been seized up. A number of those who left the party have contacted us again.
Concerning publications, we now have a monthly review, Thong Tai
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3 GUIl of Thailand VaLS ("The Flag of Liberty"), aimed at everyone. It is printed centrally, with a print run of at least 500 copies, with more reproduced by local groups. About every two months we publish Pragai Fai ("The Spark"). Lastly, we have begun to publish the bulletin Thai Democratic Solidarity, in English, so as to ensure a regular flow of information abroad and to help with solidarity. We reckon on publishing Thai Democratic Solidarity three or four times a year. The first issue appeared at the beginning of this year, and the second will be out shortly.
Q. What is the present situation of the mass movement?
A. Oppression and exploitation are still there, still requiring a continuous struggle. In spite of the difficulties that we have met, it has to be emphasized that the experience of the 1970s has not been forgotten.
After the overthrow of the military dictatorship in 1973, there was an exceptional freedom of speech, a proliferation of free newspapers. The elections themselves, whether local or national, became occasions for educating the people. Election times became times for mass education. Similarly, the experience of the struggle that followed the bloody coup d'etat in 1976 has not disappeared. The people's general level of consciousness is clearly much higher than was the case ten years ago.
This level of popular consciousness can rise progressively, day after day. It is up to us to show we are capable of responding to the needs of the situation. New possibilities for action exist. But we face an important problem in that the mass movement remains fragmented. It is divided around multiple specific objectives. In the
absence of big central objectives, there is no spontaneous dynamic of unification of the mass movement, of unity in action. We hope that the day will soon come when there will be a new possibility to launch such a unitary dynamic around common objectives of struggle.
What are your international politics now? And what do you expect from international solidarity and from the contact you can establish with other movements?
A. On our international politics, I would refer you to the relevant points of our political resolution from the IVth Congress. Concerning interational solidarity, we are now On the structu society and th of the revoluti I. On the structure of Thai society: An initial conclusion.
Originating from the unequal treaties made with England in 1855 and with other Western countries, the incursion of imperialism transformed Thai feudalism into a virtual semi-colonial semi-feudal state.
After World War II, when the colonial system collapsed, imperialism employed a new form of colonialism as the most important method of intruding into various countries. In the last 20 years the Thai ruling class has opened the doors for investment by international monopoly capitalism, allowing the capitalist economy, especially foreign monopoly capitalism opening our party to an exchange of views with others. We hope to be able to develop relations of mutual solidarity. We want to have exchanges of opinion and, I stress, of experiences. Every party, every progressive group and every mass movement has its own experience. They deserve to be studied. We must study the lessons of history.