The violent repression of pro-democracy demonstrations in Burma has recently made the news headlines, but the mainstream broadcast news has consistently failed to give any coherent analysis of events. Joanne Telfer, of Western Isles Solidarity offers her personal analysis, from a Marxist historical perspective.

The modern history of Burma is as fascinating as it is complex but it is also rich in examples of trends and twists in world history that are well worth studying. The tragedy unfolding in Rangoon and other Burmese cities should be understood within an historical context because democracy and human rights, whilst (aspirationally sound), may not necessarily be the short-term outcome of any struggle. Much depends upon the ingredients in the melting pot.

Burma has a population of about 47 million but still has a largely agrarian economy with harsh rural poverty. According to the CIA world fact book, 70% of the working population are involved in small scale farming. This compares with 1.4% in the UK and 5.1% in Cuba. Industry accounts for only 7%, compared with 18.2% UK and 27.2% Cuba. The service sector is 23%, compared with 80.4% UK and 67.6% Cuba. These figures give an indication of the probable class composition of the Burmese people in comparative terms.

Burma gained independence from British imperialism in1947, in the aftermath of the Second World War. However, the Japanese invasion in 1941 marked a significant change in the both the potency and composition of the Burmese military. Prior to the intervention of Japan, the formal Burmese army had been largely composed of soldiers from British India, supplemented by recruits from ethnic minorities within Burma. It was the Japanese who armed, trained and recruited on a larger scale but also did so from within the majority population.

Burma contains provinces, which are ethnically distinct, notably featuring Shan, Karen, Rakhine and Chinese. These other ethnic groups represent about 32% of the total population and were the preferred recruiting ground from the point of view of the British, who’s policy was classically “divide and rule”. In inverting the British recruitment approach, the Japanese sought to use Burmese soldiers as part of their war effort but this back-fired when the Burmese army changed sides.

Burma followed the standard prediction of Trotsky’s “Permanent Revolution”, originally published in 1905. Trotsky examined nationalist struggles emerging in the colonies of various empires and concluded that mass mobilization around demands for independence would create too much momentum to enable such revolutions to pause and crystallize out as bourgeois democracies (a situation where real power lies with a wealthy elite). Instead the question of public ownership would be thrown to the forefront and the ideas of socialism would prevail. Also a capitalist class too weak to take leadership of their own revolution would rapidly lose control, with leadership passing over to a nascent proletariat.

Throughout the post-colonial world, this theory has been repeatedly vindicated, Burma being no exception. Since independence in 1947, Burma has aspired towards a socialist model. However, political theories are tidy concepts, which rarely anticipate complications arising as the peculiar dialectics of any actual situation play out.

Essentially it is important to realize that Trotsky added to Marxist analysis but never claimed to seek to revise it. The military in Burma are currently seen shooting civilians and opposing democracy. This is not socialism by any stretch of the imagination. If the theories of Trotsky cannot fully explain this, then his mentor Karl Marx, can certainly throw some light on the subject.

My reference source is here is “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon”, published in 1852. The title represents a date (9 November 1799) regarded as a turning point in the French revolution (rather obscure now because Brumaire, the revolutionary new French name for the foggy month of November and the revised system of dates, were soon abandoned). Louis Napoleon (alias Napoleon the third) being the nephew of the better known General, defeated at Waterloo.
Marx used the term Bonapartism to refer to a situation in which counter-revolutionary military officers seize power from revolutionaries and then use selective reformism to co-opt the radicalism of the popular classes. In the process, Marx argued, Bonapartists preserve and mask the power of a weak ruling class. Such a regime according to Marx, appears to have great power but only because there is no class with sufficient influence to firmly establish its authority in its own name and because a leader who appears to stand above the struggle can assume the mantle of power.
Having described the ‘melting pot’ it’s time to return to the specific conditions of Burma. Why are demonstrations being led by monks and who is this great saviour Aung San Suu Kyi ?

Monks against riot police		Aungsan Suukyi

Literacy in Burma is surprisingly high at almost 90%, despite the low GDP, poor state educational provision and desperate poverty. However, whereas state provision is very inadequate, there is a strong tradition within the voluntary sector. The Buddhist establishment provides not just philosophical guidance but also a surprising range of study options from a young age. Literacy therefore is boosted by this sector but also the monasteries provide a breeding ground for free-thinking political dissent, comparable to the London School of Economics or the Parisian Sorbonne.

Leaders who champion democracy do not appear out of thin air and there is little doubt that Aung San Suu Kyi, educated at Oxford etc., did not emerge from the peasantry. A Nobel peace prize winner and de facto head of state elect, she is the daughter of former nationalist, Aung San who negotiated the treaty of independence in 1947. Her ballot box victory in 1990 was ignored by the military Junta and she remains under house arrest.

Given her social position and educational privileges, she can probably be safely regarded as middle class, in scientific terms she would probably represent the indigenouus capitalist class. Her ideological background is connected with aspirations of socialism but she is no Hugo Chavez. My best guess is that she would lean towards the American model and trade her strong Nationalist aspirations for a hollow promise of partnership, rather than seek a renewal of a Burmese revolution.

On the other side of the conflict, we have the ruling junta.. Their position is ostensibly Bonapartist but this may not be apparent. Like any conventional military organisation the Burmese army have a heirarchical structure but the figurehead national ‘saviour’ of classical Bonapartism, acheives greater acceptibility by replacing the one great leader by a small clique, serving the same purpose.

The link between Buddhism and the struggle for independence was undoubtedly strengthened by the attempts on the part of the British colonialists to impose Christianity. The evidence suggests that this cultural strength of Buddhism has left its mark in all spheres of Burmese society to this day.

The ruling junta in Burma represent a synthesis of disparate ingredients. They are Japanese trained militarists, they subscribe to a distorted notion of socialism which is based on a Maoist version of Stalinism, they are fiercely nationalistic and fear a return to colonial subservience. They are not therefore well disposed towards any ‘democracy’ movement which could in turn, usher in a new age of supplication to America.

The ruling junta pay lip service towards an overwhelming support for Buddhism but do this (in the main) by cynically and symbolically funding the erection of monuments. However the (ethos) of Buddhism is fundamentally in conflict with any trite attempts to use this belief system as a tool of manipulation (unlike the Judo-Christian traditions, Buddhism weighs heavily upon the concept of karma which is highly individualistic)


Ne Win’s rule lasted until 1988 and I doubt whether the chronology is unconnected with other world events such as the collapse of the Soviet Union. The process which lead to the destruction of the Berlin wall in 1989 began in the late eighties and the Burmese protests of 1988 were undoubtedly influenced by the same global movements.. The reaction of the Burmese military was to ratchet up oppression and that policy survived until this year.

The current unrest seems to have been initiated by the withdrawal of fuel subsidies and quite ironically this seems to have been done in accordance with the recommendations of the IMF and World Bank. I say ironically because the abstract demand for democracy might lead Burma back into the sphere of US imperialism.

If the Junta resigns in accordance with popular demands and International influence then the conditions of Burma’s middle class may improve as the domestic markets are opened up to merge with the project of globalisation. The economic conditions of the Buddhist clergy may also improve but the agrarian population will probably endure even greater hardships.

Clearly the soldiers who are shooting and killing demonstrators, have no current sense of solidarity with the protests. They are largely recruited from rural areas and generally garrisoned away from population centers. Their allegiance to their command structure is currently much stronger than any sense of class-consciousness or temptation to abandon what they may see as ‘the national interest’ in exchange for the unknown.

People aspire towards democracy and towards independence but you cannot have real democracy without rejecting gross inequality. Neither is the converse situation a realistic proposition. Trotsky once said that “socialism without democracy is like a body without oxygen” and this phrase is worth remembering when dealing with opponents of socialism who attempt to sully Trotsky’s and socialism’s reputation via association with Stalinism.

In some sense the struggle in Burma reflects residual elements of the cold war, where irrespective of the unique performances of principal actors in this theatre, the same plot is repeated. A struggle between the social strangle hold of Stalinism and the fatuous vacuum of free-market social negligence.

The nationalist aspiration seems to be firmly stuck in a conservative approach with reliance upon the military regime, whereas the highly individualistic Buddhist culture might easily be wooed towards the ‘American dream’, especially if that alternative was considered to be benign.

Clearly the missing element in Burma and with the exception of Latin America, in many regions throughout the world in the current period, is a resurgent socialist movement with the aim of restoring democracy but also capable of defending self-determination and eliminating poverty. Perhaps the Buddha would have acknowledged such a proposition as ‘the middle way’.