Modernity and capitalism
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Transcript of Modernity and capitalism
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)