BOHR International Journal of Business Ethics and Corporate Governance

This article is an original cultural anthropological study that is based on fieldwork done by the principal
investigator, Antonio L. Rappa, on groups of urban workers and peasant farmers of Bangkok, Chiangmai, and
Pattaya from 1998 to 2016. The focus of this article is on how these workers survive late modernity within the
neoliberal capitalist world scenario. The fieldwork also showed the importance of materialism among Thai workers
and how they remain trapped in giving up the surplus labor value of their work to the bourgeoisie (Marxian
Theory). Since 1932 (the Siamese and since 1946), the Thai workers have been suppressed and exploited by the ruling
elite (Power Elite Theory). Whether we use a Cultural Anthropological/Marxian, neo-Marxist Anthropological, or
Power Elite theory (C. Wright Mills’ Theory) approach, it remains clear in 2022 that the Thai people still continue
to be imprisoned by a desire for luxury goods and services (Thorstein Veblen). Then, there is the complication of
religion. At least 93% of all Thai people are Theravada Buddhists and staunchly believe in worshipping the Buddha
as well as in various superstitions. The remaining 5–7% are Muslims and Christians. It is only the Muslims who have
consistently given political trouble to the Bangkok capitalists but the Muslims are not socialists or communists since
they believe in the god known as Allah. Ever since the 1970s, Thailand came under serious threat from communism
like many Southeast Asian states. King Bhumiphon Adulyadej (Rama IX) was already a deeply respected monarch
and a virtual demi-God to the superstitious and animistic Thai Buddhists. Few Thais realized at that time that
the King was also a well-read scientist knowledgeable in urban planning and agriculture. Rama IX applied the
knowledge that he garnered from Switzerland and Cambridge, Massachusetts, toward building a new kind of
thinking, called Self-Sufficiency Economy (SSE). Rama IX’s SSE was not unique to Thailand and commonly practiced
to various effects in South Asia, the Far East, and Southeast Asia. Nevertheless, the king thought that the SSE would
be a good way out for his people. He believed that if each Tambon or village could cooperate using existing resources,
provincial assistance in agricultural knowledge, and the model-village concept, then the Thai people would be
self-sufficient in many aspects. This was also known as the One-Thambon, One-Product (OTOP) policy. This is
itself a manifestation of the materialist cultural anthropologic of Thai culture itself. The article concludes with an
analysis of the dual pricing system or two-tier pricing system, and why the Thai people appear to support Thorstein
Veblen’s Theory and C. Wright Mills’ Theory rather than any neo-Marxist theory of land distribution and property
ownership.