The document discusses the interplay of modernity and capitalism within Southeast Asia, particularly through the lens of historical events and local ideologies, such as Buddhism. It highlights the colonial hangover effect and the challenges facing democratic duties in Thailand, alongside critiques of secular governance and its relationship with science and faith. Additionally, it examines the rise of new business models in Japan and trends in Thailand, including political reconciliation and infrastructure reform.

1. Modernity & Capitalism
Kan Yuenyong
@sikkha
Siam Intelligence Unit (SIU)
Marxism 2014 : March 21, 2014

2. 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?

3. 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

4. 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

5. 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

6. 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]

7. 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.

8. 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

9. 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.

10. 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

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

12. 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.

13. Questions of modern society
• Moral value?
• A contradiction between Liberalism &
Democracy?
• A sustainable of capitalism?
• Or a problem of the “modern” itself?

14. ‘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)

15. 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

16. Character of Information Goods
• Near zero marginal cost
• Network externalities
• Critical mass
• Public goods
• Consider OSS based
business model

17. 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

18. Thailand double play (2013 – 2023)
• I. Political Reconciliation
• II. Infrastructure Reform
• Why?

19. High-Velocity Network

22. END
Modernity & Capitalism by Kan Yuenyong (@sikkha)