The Coup in Burma and the False Promise of Democracy

The recent coup in Burma has overshadowed the much‑watched systematic relocation of ethnic minorities in the Burmese frontier lands, which the previous ruling party endorsed through funding infrastructure and capital expansion projects. While the liberal bourgeoisie in the country has ravaged the landscape and the people who live on it, the Burmese military has amassed massive capital holdings in two large conglomerates, which have exported substantial amounts of capital across the planet. These corporations are entrenched into every sector of the economy, from mining and manufacturing to commerce to entertainment and tourism. The military’s enterprises have been growing for decades, well before the push to democratize the country had solidified into the rule of the National League for Democracy (NLD), well before the National League for Democracy ignored the relocation activities in the frontier regions, and well before the military junta summarily overthrew the NLD‑led government at the beginning of February 2021. The sins of the one pile atop the sins of the other, yet the whole national bourgeoisie continues to profit from the situation as they have up until this point.

Other bourgeois states in the region see opportunity even as they clutch their pearls over the failure of the democratic facade. India seeks to finally begin the vast infrastructure projects that have been planned to connect the two nations, taking advantage of the displacement of the Rohingya people and the push for development the military and the National League of Democracy has called for. India is responding to the intense Belt and Road Initiative investment and development projects the Chinese state has implemented in Northern Burma and along the coast. With a new road paved for them through the north of the country, the coup has only poured gasoline on the fires of competition between the two countries. They now quietly deal with the more structured and formal military economic management system, despite the crisis of democracy that the political officials of India and China continue to denounce when speaking to their fellow countrymen and other nations of the world. Australian firms still seek to drill the massive natural gas reserves off the country’s shores, an enterprise the whole Burmese bourgeoisie welcomes, the coup not even registering for the Australian bourgeoisie.

The Chinese state watches this situation in a quiet and calculated manner. While the Burmese bourgeoisie attempts to divert the anger of the protestors in a racist and anti‑Chinese sense, rather than a class sense, much is happening on the class terrain even if it is not the immediate focus of the workers. In Burma some demonstrators attacked and destroyed factories run by Chinese state. The incident must have had some significance because the official CCP press wrote an article about it condemning these incidents, demanding exemplary punishment and even financial reparations. The targeted companies are in the Shwe Lin Ban Industrial Zone, Hlaing Thar Yar Township; most are clothing factories. With the increasing instability, China has given orders for Chinese nationals to leave the country and return to China.

In China, this is being framed as an economic attack on the Chinese State, citing the jobs the country has created in Burma. Yet again the Chinese state acts like the individual capitalist in less state‑run economies. The Chinese state has mostly played coy, or been relatively nonverbal about the situation of the coup unfolding, but with their economic holdings, they stand to gain in profits and control with the military in power in Burma.

Western nations see this supposed affront to the Burmese democratic state as an opportunity to maintain their own facades of democratic representation: the European Union joins the US government’s sanctions against the military junta, while making declarations in support of democracy to the rest of the world. However, EU officials have decided to only cut donations to Burma’s government reform programs, claiming that further economic action would only endanger the general population. Europe keeps its doors open to the military, which is not concerned about the slap on the wrist the Europeans have given them. Rather than engage with the content of the theater created by the international bourgeoisie, the new US presidential administration sees this more as a way to demonstrate the power of the US state. The Biden administration has cut off technology exports to Burma, and also barred the military junta from gaining access to financial holdings that are kept in the US; otherwise the US has only sanctioned individuals in the military government. The US State Department is careful not to bar the export of products from Burma, as consumer goods must still continue to flow into the US to satisfy the tired and irritated American consumer. Nation states around the world verbally express their displeasure with the situation; but despite their empty finger-wagging, the international bourgeoisie is resigned to the military’s abandonment of democracy. The death of democracy is condemned in words, but allowed in actions when money can be made off the tragedy of capitalist institutions!

The military is exercising an economic position it has slowly been building over the years, with which the liberal bourgeoisie has only recently been able to compete in a material manner. Still, the capital holdings of the bourgeoisie cannot be nullified by a democratic election. The democracy that the military and civilian government, as well as the ruling class of the world, sees is only the pageantry that happens on the floor of parliament. Not a calorie is spent on the conditions of the working class and minority ethnicities that continue to toil and are swept from their homes under the demands of an international capitalist economy. The reaction of the Burmese working class has taken the form of widespread activity across various economic categories, reflecting the amount of weight placed on their shoulders to continue industrial production, even through a raging pandemic and a ruthless but fragile economy. The first workers to strike were hospital and medical staff. This quickly spread to other workers and workplaces, such as the garment industry, which includes 600,000 workers and has been subject to wildcat strikes and militant organizing in recent years. Soon, many of Burma’s trade unions joined the protests, as did the civilian liberal bourgeoisie and their circus of parties.

The demonstrations that erupted have been loosely organized but massive in the number of participants, similar to the BLM protests in the US, the democratic demonstrations in Peru and Hong Kong, and the Yellow Vest protests in France. The working class still remains reactive, but is unconscious of the possibility for action on a larger scale. The working class has stayed caught in spontaneous activity that is easily controlled by cutting off social media networks; the bourgeoisie can take their toys away if they don’t like the way the working class uses them. However, the anger and desperation stemming from the working class’s economic conditions still motivate people across Burma to take to the streets and protest the coup. The conflict has been bloody indeed, as there have been over 500 proletarian deaths and counting in the demonstrations. It is up to the proletariat to make the next move, and currently the working class is attempting to defend a democracy that has already nullified itself. But this is the case when the energy the working class expends is channeled back into the very state that was only just forcefully undressed and then redressed again. Burmese garment workers are insistent that if the military junta commands political rule in the state, there will no longer be unions for them, as labor organizations are already being cracked down upon only a short time into the event. One garment worker and labor organizer, in an interview with the social-democratic rag Jacobin, says such things as: “We are fighting for the whole country. If the military leadership is to win, there will be no labor unions. And if there are labor unions, they will not be real labor unions: the government will intervene, and the union will become only for show.” Only to hope for the return of the coddling hand of bourgeois democracy, as another organizer stated: “Workers want democracy because we have thoughts, and we are not passive. We need freedom to ask for workers’ rights – protection and benefits. Only democracy can provide that”.

The participation of the previous ruling party of Burma, the National League of Democracy, and other liberal bourgeois parties, is not foreign to any protest across the globe. If these situations are of any indication, then it is very clear that the Burmese liberal bourgeoisie has the influence to push these demonstrations back into the arms of the state, even if that state is now controlled by the military junta. The proletariat can’t afford to rely on the bourgeois state, as the growing labor movement in the country has demonstrated.

For decades earlier, the military junta had been able to drive the labor union organizations into illegal networks, but it was unable to prevent the working class from acting spontaneously in response to their conditions. During the labor strike wave of 2009, the state was able to isolate the working class to their respective workplaces, effectively preventing the proletariat from uniting to coordinate its own activity nationally. This, of course, is a situation the liberal bourgeoisie prosper in, especially now as they continue to make the call for a “redemocratization” of Burma. The working class had been deprived of national representation until the rule of the liberal bourgeoisie, and the flocking of disparate working class organizations to the democratization movement illustrates the liberal bourgeoisie’s strength to control the direction of the working class’ actions. It was the democratization movement that had allowed the trade unions to become legal institutions, but it also dragged the working class into the service of the liberal bourgeoisie. But the working class still suffered under the custodianship of this class. Even when the democratic government held its regular tripartite forum with labor and employer representatives in March of 2020, trade union demands for temporary shutdown of manufacturing facilities with full pay were completely disregarded. Since this forum first on Covid‑19, the government has used this space to further ensure that labor and production kept going. Both the military and NLD factions still hold their allegiance to capital and its fountain of wealth, kept flowing by a relationship that has been established between the ruling classes and the working class of Burma since the end of the World War II.

The military in Burma has a long standing tension with and opposition to the country’s working class. Numerous workers were killed in the 1988 uprising, and more proletarian deaths also occur now at the hands of the junta. Then and now, workers have been fired, had their salaries cut, and been squeezed into dire situations for the purpose of squashing worker organizations. All the while, the military had historically been part of an “anti‑fascist” front in the country – a farce as always! This relationship, the expenditure and instrumentalizing of human lives for the creation of profits and the expansion of economic influence is employed by the entire bourgeoisie of every country across the planet. In this the Burmese bourgeoisie are united, and it shows when the National League of Democracy denounces the undemocratic behavior of their adversary, while being responsible for the ethnic cleansing of minority populations and sacrificing workers to unsafe working conditions for the sake of profits. Furthermore, these endeavors are something the military is equally as interested in undertaking. This economic relationship is demonstrated, at an even higher level, by the callous nature with which the international bourgeoisie have treated the situation, effectively shaking their finger at the military while continuing to do business that only solidifies the hold both the military and the liberal bourgeoisie have over the economy of Burma. This is a recipe for a repeat of what we have seen over and over again, a struggle over democracy as one faction of the ruling class denounces the other for undemocratic behavior.

Such Sisyphean activity can only tire the working class, as workers return to the conditions inter-bourgeois conflict has perpetuated rather than changed. The different factions of the bourgeoisie continue their gentlemanly duels, while using the activity of the whole species for their capricious musings on the amount of money they will get in return. The proletariat disunited only works for the ruling class, repeating in their politics the exploitative attitude the bourgeoisie have in the economy. What transpired after 2009 in Burma will happen in the wake of these protests as well, and only because the proletariat remains organized into diffuse isolated groups.

Coordinated class action can only be reached through coordinated class organization, and this is something that runs against the interests of both the liberal bourgeoisie and the military; it runs against the interests of the international bourgeoisie as well. However, the working class will not be free of the conditions that create their motivation to take to the streets and express their dissent to a coup, or even a change in pension funds, by continuing to place its faith in the machinery of the state the bourgeoisie spar over. In Burma, the economy will still function to the profit of the military, the liberal bourgeoisie, and the international bourgeoisie, so long as the production of commodities is continued. The state is only how the ruling class is able to exercise its repressive capabilities in order to maintain its own economic position, as is demonstrated by the military swiftly apprehending the leadership of the previous ruling government, fabricating their justification for the arrests after the fact.

The Burmese working class will struggle admirably, and they do this because they know something needs to change. But change cannot be found in democratizing the Burmese state any longer. The struggle for democracy in Burma has entered a cyclical state, just as it has become across the planet: a situation that serves nothing but the interests of the bourgeoisie. This will only keep the proletariat from organizing a united and coordinated international action that will overthrow the rule of capital across the planet. The result is the same as it has been in other nations: the class will be lured into thinking that the solution lies at the level of the national government. This only because the democracy that is being struggled for is the democracy of the bourgeoisie, who defends this sacred freedom by employing the body of the bourgeois state, from social media control to economic intervention. The coordination required to challenge this situation, however, is not found at the level of nations, but at the international level of economic relations. It is found in the class party of the proletariat that has placed itself at the head of the international struggle.