Before Thai kung muangkhưn: The early left intellectual movement of Udom Sisuwan in Thai politics after World War II, during 1947-1948

Abstract

Udom Sisuwan was a Thai left-wing intellectual best known for authoring Thai kung muangkhun (Semi-colonial Thailand) (1950) under the pen name "Aranya Phromchompoo," largely considered to be the first Thai history book written under Marxism's dialectical materialism philosophy. Few people are aware, however, that Udom had many previous written works prior to Thai kung muangkhun, particularly those released through Mahachon newspapers between 1947 and 1948. When their contents were examined in depth, it was discovered that Udom's works were crucial to a new perspective of the Thai leftist movement in many ways. In the first place, Udom was the first to try to pioneer the notion of literary art that would later be known as "Art for Life, Art for the People," rather than starting with Mao Zedong's influence as is commonly assumed. The second point is that, prior to writing Thai kung muangkhun in 1950, Udom had been describing Thai society as "semi-colonial". Udom had also written works on Thai politics and played a key role in spreading Marxism into Thai society by translating and creating Marxist terms from other languages into Thai. All of this demonstrates that Udom was a leftist intellectual who pioneered the forms and contents of early Thai communist movements' cultural politic activities.