Letter: Calling the Pot black (1996)

Letter to the Editors from the October 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

Calling the Pot black

Dear Editors,

John Bissett's article in the August Socialist Standard was excellent. There was a curious parallel between the Ceausescu and the Pol Pot dictatorships at the time they were being given Western aid and tacit approval. Not only did the Queen dub the Rumanian ruler, Sir Nicolai but the British press was encouraged to spell his country as Romania so as to emphasise its historic link with Rome. Similarly newspapers began to spell Cambodia as Kampuchea as a sop to Pol Pot. This policy was quietly dropped when the scale of the Khmer Rouge massacres became more widely known. However, the public abhorrence of the Pol Pot regime has been insidiously used by defenders of the oppressive system operating in Vietnam founded by Ho Chi Minh. These people are loud in their condemnation of the Khmer Rouge but have maintained a fifty-year long silence with regard to Ho’s initial task on behalf of his masters in the Kremlin. That was to murder the entire leadership of Indo-China's substantial Trotskyist movement in the interregnum between the collapse of the WWII Japanese occupation and the re-establishment of French colonial rule.

Later, when the French were finally defeated at Dien Bien Phu, the Vietcong began their slow but sure mastery over the independent states that came into being in the wake of France losing her South-East Asian territories. American intervention in the Indo-Chinese civil war certainly introduced a massive increase in the technology of destruction but there was little they could teach the Vietcong by way of the cruel and treacherous methods of guerrilla warfare in which they eventually proved victorious.

Rivalry between Vietnamese and Cambodian nationalism goes back a long way. But a bone of contention which has been little commented upon by Western specialists on Asian affairs is the way Pol Pot claimed that his savage treatment of the population under his control was laying down the pre-conditions for a moneyless Communist society with no private property whatsoever. In my opinion these claims must have been a major irritant in Leninist circles where to be reminded of what their original aim was supposed to be was very uncomfortable indeed. Stalin sent people to Siberia for less!

Eddie Grant, 

London NW4

The Passing Show: Hay while the Sun Shines (1953)

The Passing Show Column from the June 1953 issue of the Socialist Standard

Hay while the Sun Shines

Recent events in Indo-China have provided an interesting object-lesson in the game of power politics as it is played in the middle of the 20th century. The protagonists have been the French Government on the one hand and the native rulers of Viet Nam, Laos and Cambodia on the other.

The Viet-Minh forces first crossed the boundary separating Viet Nam, to which they had previously confined their operations, and Laos, on or about April 13th. One of the disturbing features, from the French point of view, was that a number of Laotians joined in the fighting on the side of the rebels. The king of Cambodia, which is the third of the Indo-Chinese States, lost no time in pointing the moral. On his way home from Paris on April 19th, he gave an interview in New York, and complained about the powers of the French over the Cambodian judiciary, armed forces and economy generally. Unless the French took immediate steps towards granting “more independence to Cambodia” there was a real danger that the Cambodians would go over to Viet-Minh, he said. The French ruling class was more hurt than aggrieved at this open threat, if we may believe M. Letoumeau, the Minister for the Associated States. On April 22nd he said that “I am bound to state, with all the responsibility which rests on me, that the independence of Cambodia has been granted fully and without reservation.” What, then, were French forces doing in Cambodia ? Why, they were there merely to “watch over the independence of the Cambodian people,” said M. Letoumeau.

The Imperialists Misunderstood

On the same day decrees were issued in Paris under which the French Commissioners in Viet Nam, Laos and Cambodia were to be called High Commissioners in future; this move was said by the French to confirm the independence granted to these States within the French Union. On April 27th the French Commander-in-Chief in Indo-China, General Salan, issued a statement that “ the Indo-Chinese war was not always well understood.” General Salan was convinced that, “when doubts in the minds of the people of Viet Nam and of Cambodia about the nature of the independence that France had granted to these nations were cleared up, the threat of terrorism and the effect of propaganda would lose their power ” But two days later the Cambodian Prime Minister, unimpressed by the fact that he would now be able to take his orders from a High Commissioner instead of from a mere Commissioner, said that if France did not grant the Cambodian demands, the people would answer the call of the rebels and Cambodia would be lost to the French. Meanwhile, the native ruling class in Viet Nam had been making similar representations to the French, and on May 8th M. Letoumeau gave an “assurance, in the name of the French Government, that no initiative will be taken and no agreement made by France in any question concerning Viet Nam, or generally affecting the future of Indo-China, without first consulting and obtaining the formal agreement of the Viet Namese Government.”

Danger Past

But when this promise was given, events had already taken a turn which made it unnecessary. On May 7th it was reported that the Viet-Minh forces had begun to withdraw. And on May 10th the French Government, without asking anyone’s advice, announced the devaluation of the Indo-Chinese piastre from 17 French francs to 10. This drew strong protests from the Government of Laos and from the Prime Minister of Viet Nam, who said that devaluation would dislocate the economy of the country. So far, no French official spokesman has come forward to explain how this unilateral decision is consonant with the independence that is supposed to have been granted to the Indo-Chinese States; the official line is simply that the French treaties with the Associated States allow the French Government to act by itself in matters of this kind. Now that the external danger has disappeared, at least temporarily, there is no longer any need to represent the native ruling circles in Indo-China as free from French control. But if the Viet-Minh forces advance again when the rainy season has ended, we may see the whole shabby play revived for a further performance.

New Jerseys

Mr. Donnelly, the Labour M.P. for Pembroke, is concerned at the rumours in the Labour Party that "public ownership” would in future take the form of the acquisition of majority shareholdings. He said recently that “the Labour Party rank and file will say, ‘This is not Socialism, it is State Capitalism, it is the same team in new jerseys '. " Mr. Donnelly is right to be disturbed. Clearly the buying up of the majority of shares in any business by the State is not Socialism, nor has it anything to do with Socialism. But what essential difference is there between this form of State Capitalism and the form known as nationalisation ? In the former, as in the latter, the shareholders would be compensated with interest-bearing State-bonds, the workers would be allowed no voice in the running of the industry and would continue to be exploited, and the first concern would still be production for profit, not for use. If Mr. Donnelly wishes to convince us that, in spite of everything, he is a Socialist, he will have to follow up this statement with another one denouncing nationalisation in the same terms.

To Keep Operations on an Economic Basis

The real nature of nationalisation seems to be understood more clearly in India, where the Government recently introduced a Bill to nationalise the airlines. As reported in the British press, the Minister for Communications, in his introductory speech, made no pretence that this would be an advance for “Socialism,” nor did he allege that the workers in the industry would derive any benefit from the move. He advocated the change solely on the ground that the impending need to replace Dakotas in the services run by Indian air companies by more modern and expensive aircraft would need resources beyond the command of individual companies. To employ these new aircraft, and thus keep operations on an economic basis, “would be possible only if the present large number of operating units were substantially reduced," he said. Thus State industry was presented in its true light as an amalgamation of independent companies made necessary by the demands of 20th-century capitalism, and carried out for precisely the same reasons that lead private capitalists to form corporations, monopolies and cartels on their own initiative.

Freedom for the Few

The granting of independence to India, Pakistan and Ceylon in the years immediately following the war was hailed by the Labour Party as a great step forward. Socialists were unable to see that the substitution of one ruling class for another would be of any advantage to the workers. It was obvious that capitalism would continue, as it must, until the great majority of workers understand and want Socialism. And Socialists believed that political and social injustices, which have their origin in and are inseparable from the private property systems of society (although they are modified from country to country by the conditions prevailing locally) would also continue. This view has, in fact, been confirmed.

Tamils and Untouchables

The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council has approved as being intra vires, legislation passed in Ceylon which has the effect of depriving of the vote a large part of the Indian Tamil community resident there. The particular member of the Tamil community whose case was before them had, in fact, been on the electoral register from 1935 until 1950, when the Act in question was passed. Indian official circles have expressed themselves strongly on the question of this legislation and its discrimination against one part of the community ; but in India itself, on April 19th, several members of the House of the People made bitter protests against the continuing practice of untouchability, which is said to affect between seventy and eighty million Indians. One member said: “Mr. Nehru speaks frequently of the condition of Indians in South Africa. But you find South Africa in every village and every nook and comer of India.”

These examples go to show that while a system of society based on private property flourishes, it is useless to try to remove the social injustice which stems from it by reforms like the grant of Dominion status.

Bent on our Destruction

Advertisements are often distasteful. But few advertisements can be so objectionable as advertisements for armaments. The usual technique is followed. First, the consumer must be persuaded that he wants something, and wants it badly; then he must be convinced that the particular company advertising can supply the want he has begun to feel better than its rivals. A large group of aircraft companies has recently been advertising its warplanes in a series of half-page adverts., called “In Defence of Freedom.” It begins by building up the idea that arms are essential, by references to "that wilful group of men bent on our destruction,” and by insisting that “we must build up our strength to the point where no one will dare to attack us.” After five paragraphs of this, the reader is treated to a list of the excellent fighters, bombers, anti-submarine planes and the other instruments of destruction which this particular group is able to supply to cash customers.

Alwyn Edgar

Cambodia: the Abolition of Money (1978)

From the October 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

We have been asked to comment on the situation in Cambodia. “Here is a country three years without money”, writes one correspondent. “This is proof that the moneyless system works”.

On 17 April 1975 the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh was captured by the Khmers Rouges (Red Cambodians). The new state of Democratic Kampuchea (Cambodia) was established, with Norodom Sihanouk, who had been ruler from 1941 until the 1970 coup, as Head of State. The victory was followed by an immediate evacuation of Phnom Penh and other large cities, their entire populations being deported to the countryside to build their own dwellings and grow their own rice. The country is now controlled by the Angkar (Organisation, a euphemism for the Cambodian Communist Party), and has to a remarkable extent shut itself off from the rest of the world.

For this reason, information about what is going on in Cambodia is rather hard to come by, the main sources being official government statements and refugee accounts, neither of which can be regarded as fully reliable. Refugees often blacken the state they have left in order to justify their leaving, and say what they think their interviewers would like them to. But even when due allowance is made for this, there are independent accounts which give the impression of a slave-like system based on unremitting work, little food and arbitrary killings at the whim of the Angkar, making it impossible not to give some credence to them.

The refugees ‘stories could scarcely be more different from the government’s depiction of Cambodia as a society without money, classes, or exploitation. Here is the picture drawn by Sihanouk (interview in Far Eastern Economic Review 14.11.75):

“I am very proud that Cambodians are the first to create a classless society. The Khmer Rouge have introduced into Phnom Penh the same sort of regime they had in the countryside. Everything has been levelled. There are no longer rich or poor, exploiters and exploited; no longer any differentiation because of class or fortune. There is one single class—the Administration feeds and clothes everyone according to their needs. At present there is no money and no markets. Everyone works, repairing and running electric power and water supply, making bicycles and textiles; refining sugar; or transforming destroyed tanks into agricultural and kitchen implements. Within their working organisations, there are FUNK (United Front of Cambodia) committees at every level which draw the necessary supplies from the Minister of Trade. Equal distribution on a family per-head basis is made through the FUNK committee. If clothing is needed, Government stores are there to provide it.”

There is, however, plenty of evidence that “moneyless, classless Cambodia” is nothing but a myth.

Privileged

For one thing, Sihanouk himself is one of the privileged. When he “retired” from his post as Head of State in April 1976, the government voted to pay him an annual pension of eight thousand American dollars — an odd gesture in a society without money. Many refugees have reported that the Angkar and their soldiers are better fed and clothed and receive better medical attention than the ordinary population. As far as decision-making is concerned, the population at large is totally excluded, political power being firmly in the hands of the Angkar.

The distribution of food rations (mostly rice) may well be conducted without the intervention of money, but some exchange of goods still takes place. A Phnom Penh radio report stated that silk products not “needed” by local people are traded for goods from other co-operatives (Summary of World Broadcasts, Far East, Weekly Economic Report 7.4.76). Cambodia’s need to import raw materials, medicines, and the like has necessitated the setting-up of a trading company in Hong Kong. A large foreign-trade deficit has been financed by China, but certain Cambodian products are exported, including rubber to China and North Korea. At a time when the daily rice ration was a mere 250 grams per person, Deputy Prime Minister Ieng Sary stated that rice was being exported to earn foreign exchange (FEER 29.10.76. and 10.12.76). Most people live on little more than rice, yet according to Phnom Penh radio:

“We are boosting the production of our fresh and salt water fish for export. This will bring the money we need to buy various engines and motors for our factories and build the economy of cur new Cambodia” (SWB 25.6.75).

In their drive to industrialisation, Cambodia’s rulers are well aware that they cannot do entirely without money.

Rivalry with other newly-established regimes in Southeast Asia has led in recent months to a border conflict with Vietnam. The Vietnamese press has published accounts of Cambodian-committed atrocities which in their horror equal any of those recounted by refugees to Western journalists. One Hanoi paper described the new Cambodian villages as “forced labour brigades of the age of slavery” (Guardian 20.7.78).

Evil cities

While Cambodia is certainly not a moneyless society, dislike of money and other trappings of “civilization” in pre-revolutionary Phnom Penh seems to have been widespread among the Khmers Rouges. During the forced march from Phnom Penh, soldiers were reported to have searched evacuees for their money and then thrown notes in the air, saying that the Angkar had put an end to money (Francois Ponchaud: Cambodia Year Zero). At a commercial bank in the capital, notes were burned or just dumped by the victorious troops (John Barron and Anthony Paul: Peace with Horror). On the day of the Angkar takeover, one of their commissars told some foreign priests:

“Cities are evil. There are money and trade in cities, and both have a corrupting influence. People are good, but cities are evil. That is why we shall do away with cities”  (quoted in Peace with Horror).

Slogans used by the Khmers Rouges in “education” classes included: “We are building the only true communism . . . Our communism will be better than in Russia or China where there are still classes” (ibid).

Some of these views are probably best interpreted as a reaction to the corruption and inequality of the American-backed Republican regime which ruled Cambodia from 1970 to 1975. Many of the Khmers Rouges leaders are Paris-educated intellectuals who on the one hand look back to the pre-monetary agricultural economy of traditional Cambodia and on the other look forward to the country’s modernisation and “independence”. The radicalness of their policies has led to an almost unimaginable degree of suffering, with some estimates of the deaths since April 1975 exceeding one million, out of a population of about seven million. It should perhaps be said that many of these would have died of starvation in any case (the inhabitants of Phnom Penh were previously only fed by massive American airlifts of rice). But, as was shown above, food desperately needed by the Cambodian people is being exported for the sake of foreign exchange. As production in Cambodia increases, money will be reintroduced, together with wages and prices (Ieng Sary has accepted that a monetary system might be set up later, see FEER 23.3.76.). When that happens Cambodia will be more fully integrated into the world capitalist system.

In reply to our correspondent’s remark, we can point out that there have been many human societies which have functioned without money and even without exchange relations at all, so that the fact that people can live together without the intervention of money is incontestable. But Cambodia provides evidence of no such thing.

Paul Bennett

Letters: On the Abolition of Money in Cambodia (2022)

Letters to the Editors from the March 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

On the Abolition of Money in Cambodia

Dear Editors

In a recent issue of the Socialist Standard Paul Bennett correctly identifies that money was not abolished in Cambodia during the brief regime (1975-1979) of the Communist Party of Kampuchea. Rather, senior members of the CPK suspended currency with the intent to revisit their decision at a later point. The defeat of the Khmer Rouge at the hands of the People’s Republic of China precluded any evaluation of their policies; that said, the presumption that currency was abolished remains a stalwart of the historiography of Democratic Kampuchea (as Cambodia was renamed by the CPK). More broadly, Bennett’s commentary addresses a fundamental question: What exactly was the economic system established under the Khmer Rouge?

For many scholars, the question is moot. As a self-professed Marxist-Leninist party, the Khmer Rouge were absolutely communist; what matters is the supposed variant of ‘communism.’ However, too often, the terms ‘Marxist’, ‘socialist’, ‘Maoist,’ and even ‘Stalinist’ appear as empty signifiers when assessing the policies and practices of the Communist Party of Kampuchea. As such, much of my scholarship documents the ‘actually existing’ social and structural relations executed—often literally—under the Khmer Rouge. I’m grateful therefore that Bennett calls attention to my recent article on currency in Democratic Kampuchea. By-and-large, we are in agreement; a possible point of divergence, however, pivots on my assertion that the resultant economic order of Democratic Kampuchea resembled more so a hybrid form of state capitalism and non-market socialism. You write: ‘But there simply cannot be a mixture of state capitalism (or any form of capitalism) and socialism: the former has money, wages, profits, the latter has none of these.’ Here, it is helpful to think beyond idealized abstractions of economic systems and consider the historical and geographical material realities of Democratic Kampuchea.

Although some people find the phrase ‘mode of production’ antiquated, as a concept it effectively underscores the observation that myriad relations of production can coexist, however uneasily. In the United States, for example, capitalism of a particular sort remains dominant; that does not preclude the co-constitution of localized forms of exchange, for example, the so-called informal economy. So too in Democratic Kampuchea, where senior cadre formulated a spatially variegated economic policy that separated foreign and domestic activities in word but not in practice. To posit Democratic Kampuchea as capitalist or socialist presents a false dichotomy, for although capitalism and socialism in the abstract are indeed contradictory, such an assertion misses the ambiguities of an economy in violent transformation. And therein lies the crux of my argument. The social relations that comprise productive, distributive, and consumptive activities do not materialize fully formed. And despite rhetoric to the contrary, the revolution that culminated in military victory on April 17, 1975 did not translate into a coherent whole. Whatever was unfolding in Democratic Kampuchea was certainly not a functioning capitalist society; nor was it a socialist society. Perhaps it is best to follow Vilfredo Pareto and conclude that the political economy of Democratic Kampuchea was like a bat, for in it we can readily see both birds and mice.

James A. Tyner

Reply:

You object to our statement that there cannot be a mixture of capitalism and socialism, and point out that within capitalism there can be different relations of production, such as the informal economy. Certainly, capitalism can include workers’ co-operatives, but these still have to operate within the overall capitalist set-up, with wages, prices and the need to make a profit.

The question arises, however, whether what existed in ‘Democratic’ Kampuchea can really be described as some kind of hybrid between state capitalism and non-market socialism. This boils down to: was the domestic economy truly an example of socialism? Our answer is simply that no, it was not. As your original article notes, the vast majority of Cambodians were subjected to long working hours, high production quotas and insufficient rations, resulting in exhaustion, illness and death. As their productivity increased, the plan was not to increase the food rations they received.

Plainly this was not non-market socialism. If anything, a more apt comparison would be slavery or some kind of forced labour system, where those who perform the back-breaking toil are ‘rewarded’ with just enough to keep them alive and working away, producing the surplus that the rulers could, in Cambodia’s case, export in return for foreign exchange.

The Khmer Rouge takeover indeed ‘did not translate into a coherent whole’, given the differences between internal and external policies, but there was no connection to socialism. We cannot say what would have happened if they had remained in power for longer than four years, except that they would not have introduced the classless, stateless, moneyless society that you note Marx envisaged. Apart from the fact that such a socialist system will have to be global in scope, Cambodia lacked the essential conditions of being able to produce an effective abundance and having mass support for such a revolutionary change. – Editors

Sanctioned

I was recently sent on a ‘business course’ as part of the government ‘helping’ me back into employment. So after stomaching a week’s worth of nauseating bollocks about the virtues of capitalism, I informed the class that ‘earning’ a right to exist entailed being legally thieved off on a daily basis while making some parasitic cunt rich (not the exact words I used, but the words I wanted to use). For my trouble I was removed from the class and sanctioned. So there you have it. In this country of ‘free speech’ and ‘democracy’, it’s a sanctionable offence to speak the truth.

John Lakin, 

London

Material World: Was Money Abolished in Cambodia? (2022)

The Material World column from the February 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Khmer Rouge governed Cambodia from 1975 to 1979. It was an authoritarian regime, possibly responsible for as many as two million deaths, the result of famine and executions. One of its policies still sometimes remembered today is its supposed abolition of money. As self-proclaimed ‘Communists’, the Khmer Rouge leaders allegedly wanted a society with no wages or means of exchange, hence no money.

Some writers claim that this abolition of money had, and still has, negative consequences for Cambodian society. For instance, an article by Sheridan Prasso (eastwestcenter.org, January 2001) claimed that, although money had by then been in use again in Cambodia for over twenty years, its former abolition had made people there distrustful of money, hence their preference for US dollars or gold and the ineffectiveness of the Cambodian financial system. More recently, Anirudh Bhati (mekongresearch.org, 19 June 2018) has argued that Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge had no money, private property or trade, and states that ‘without money — and therefore without effective trade — there is no possible freedom.’ As can be seen, supporters of capitalism have sometimes seen the abolition of money in Cambodia as an argument against socialism, against the very idea of a moneyless society based on free access.

But it simply is not true: the Khmer Rouge did not do away with money in Cambodia. This was pointed out by an article in the October 1978 Socialist Standard, citing contemporary reports of various kinds. There was still exchange of some goods, and rice, fish and rubber were exported in order to acquire foreign currency. Most Cambodians lived on little more than rice, and that probably was distributed without using money, but the Khmer Rouge and their soldiers were better fed and clothed than the rest of the population: privilege need not imply having greater access to money. Ieng Sary, a Khmer Rouge leader, had accepted in 1976 that a monetary system might be set up later, but in fact such a system already existed, even if ordinary Cambodians had few or no dealings with it. As Prasso says, Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot ‘apparently concluded that money was fine for the state but not for its people’.

This whole issue was recently raised again by James Tyner in an article ‘“Currency is a Most Poisonous Tool”: State Capitalism, Nonmarket Socialism, and the Elimination of Money during the Cambodian Genocide’ in the open-access on-line journal Genocide Studies and Prevention Volume 14, 2020. He notes correctly that, ‘Marx’s vision of a stateless, moneyless and classless society aimed to encourage the fullest development of human consciousness and creativity’, and then investigates to what extent the Khmer Rouge approached this goal.

Before seizing power, Khmer Rouge leaders had discussed abolishing money, and they announced its supposed elimination in September 1975, just five months after taking control. Workers received food rations, with more for those who performed the heaviest manual labour. Rations were fixed but the working day was expanded, resulting in an increase in what Marx termed absolute surplus value (see Capital Vol 1, chs 12 and 16). But the rulers still needed to ‘raise investment capital for a moribund industrial sector’, and this was done by exporting rice and other goods for sale. Tyner writes that ‘On the one hand, party leaders participated in the monetary-based global economy as state capitalists while, on the other hand, they instituted a non-monetary, non-market domestic economy’ and ‘the resultant economic order of Democratic Kampuchea resembled more so a hybrid form of state capitalism and non-market socialism than it did either a barter economy or an economy of associated producers as envisioned by Marx.’ But there simply cannot be a mixture of state capitalism (or any form of capitalism) and socialism: the former has money, wages, profits, the latter has none of these. The vast majority of Cambodians certainly did not live in a society of free access and democratic control: they were extremely poor and subject to brutal exploitation and oppression.

One noteworthy aspect of his article is the fact that the idea of state capitalism is almost seen as commonplace, not something that needs to be described or explained at length. A footnote defines it as ‘a political-economic system of governance whereby a ruling party controls the state apparatus and in turn manages the means of production in order to appropriate surplus value’, and refers to writers such as Tony Cliff and Richard Wolff.

Marx certainly advocated a society without money (see the Socialist Standard for April 1980), but he saw money’s disappearance as part and parcel of the establishment of common ownership and production for use by workers who supported this and were prepared to make it work. It was not something that could be done by itself, with few or no other changes in society, and certainly not after a military takeover of the state, as happened in Cambodia.

Paul Bennett

Pol Pot and his friends from the West (1996)

From the August 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

In early June came news that Pol Pot, the butcher of Cambodia and responsible for perhaps two million deaths, was dead. No doubt there are many who are hoping that this is one death that is not exaggerated and who would personally like to thank the mosquito that killed him. It is likely that many books will now appear relating to his "legacy", as well as hundreds of obituaries that chart his rise and fall.

What we are less likely to see is analysis that uncovers the complicity of western governments in the "genocide" he perpetrated and how Pol Pot was in fact a Frankenstein created by the capitalist and western power politics in particular, because this is exactly how it is.

Following independence from France in 1954, Cambodia came under the increasing influence of Washington which financed much of the French operation in Indochina. The US really began to interfere during the Vietnam War and especially after the right-wing pro-US Lon Nol regime was established in 1966. Not only where all anti-Americans expelled from political office, but over half-a-million Cambodians were unceremoniously conscripted to fight America's war with the North Vietnamese.

In 1969, President Nixon ordered the US airforce in. In the following four years, B52s and FI-11s dropped almost 280,000 bombs on Cambodia—the equivalent of 25 Hiroshimas. A quarter of this total and five times more than was dropped on Japan during the whole of World War Two was dropped between February and August 1973. Although the targets were supposed to be North Vietnamese supply bases, the vast majority of the imaginary sort, the devastation left 750,000 Cambodians dead, killed 75 percent of livestock, destroyed 40 percent of roads and 30 percent of bridges and almost wiped out the country’s small industrial sector.

Land that had been used for growing the country’s basic diet of rice was punctuated with bomb craters. The rice crops suffered and famine ensued. The regime back in Phnom Penh immediately ordered the confiscation of peasant food stocks to feed the now starving towns and cities, to the dismay and bewilderment of the long-suffering peasantry.

It is often said that Pol Pot’s faction of the Khmer Rouge were Marxists, inspired by Mao. and intent on taking Cambodia to a mythical harmonious pre-industrial past. In truth, the Khmer Rouge under Pol Pot were ultra-nationalists who rose in direct response to government confiscation of their food and the dire effects of America’s war with the North Vietnamese. Neither were their numbers made up of trained "communist guerrillas". The Khmer Rouge initially consisted of disgruntled peasants and the orphaned of US carpet-bombing who felt they had little to lose.

The mass murder and utter insanity that followed as Pol Pot rose to power was a pathetic attempt to punish those town and city dwellers thought responsible for backing the government that invited the US in and a vain bid to repopulate the countryside and replace the tens of thousands who had fled as refugees.

With the war over in Vietnam and the US nursing its bruises and recovering from the biggest humiliation in its history, the west watched on from the sidelines until the North Vietnamese army, fed up with Pol Pot's incursions into their territory, invaded and ousted him in 1979.

Again the west saw an opportunity to have another go at the “communist threat". The CIA despatched high-ranking personnel to assist Pol Pot and Britain sent the SAS to train the Khmer Rouge in various tactics of war, including minelaying.

Back at the UN, China and the US mounted pressure to ensure that Pol Pot would have a seat on the General Assembly and the British delegate, Lord Carrington, told the UN that Britain endorsed Pol Pot as the legitimate ruler of the Khmer people. Only the Soviet Union voiced disapproval.

With a Hanoi-backed regime in Phnom Penh and the North Vietnamese army preventing Pol Pot returning from his base across the Thai border, the UN posed a total embargo on Cambodia, barring the country from all agreements on international trade and commerce. In addition, development aid was withheld and the World Health Organisation were barred from the country.

All of this would rather be kept quiet by western governments. Indeed, Douglas Hurd, the former British Foreign Secretary once publicly declared: “we have never given and will never support the Khmer Rouge"—this in face of the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. However, so long as Pol Pot was anti-Vietnamese and anti-Soviet Union, the west was prepared to put up with any of his excesses. As the saying goes: “he might be a bastard, but he’s one of our bastards".

In the dangerous game of globo-politics, it has been proved time and time again that western capitalists will court any madman regardless, so long as it furthers their interests. Adolf Hider, Stalin. Papa Doc, Nicolae Ceausescu, Idi Amin and presently President Suharto of Indonesia, amongst countless others, have all found favour with the western capitalist élite . No doubt the future will throw up many more instances.

John Bissett

Voice From the Back: Political Posturing (2013)

The Voice From the Back column from the August 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

Political Posturing
Politicians love making grandiose claims that have nothing to do with reality and the president of the USA came up with a wild notion recently. ‘President Obama used the backdrop of the Brandenburg Gate yesterday to urge Russia to leave the Cold War behind by agreeing to a one-third reduction in its nuclear arsenal’ (Times, 20 June). The USA has 7,700 nuclear warheads and Russia has 8,500, so a one-third reduction would still leave enough nuclear warheads to burn the world to a crisp. Do you still listen to politicians’ ideas or give them any credence?


A Bleak Future
The following grim findings emerged from a poll carried out for the Association of British Insurers. YouGov asked 2,506 employees questions relating to retirement and welfare. ‘One in five working people believe that they will never retire. According to a survey being published today, of those who believe they will stop working full-time, more than four out of ten reckon they will have to keep a part-time job. Two thirds of those polled said they would struggle to meet the cost of paying for long-term care as they became infirm’ (Times, 9 July). Having suffered a lifetime of exploitation workers cannot even see some relief in old age.


Child Labour
In the industrial revolution British capitalism made its fortune on the exploitation of child labour, but the advent of the trade union movement, after a long hard struggle, saw that exploitation ended. Ever ready to make profits the British capitalist class have shifted their source of child exploitation to Asia. The British sugar giant Tate & Lyle has imported large volumes of sugar from Cambodia through a supplier that is accused of using child labour. ‘Tate & Lyle – which is the EU’s largest cane producer and whose ingredients are used in a wide range of foods around the world – has used the Thai KSL group since 2011 for its supplies from Cambodia. However KSL is alleged to have been complicit along with the Cambodian government, in the eviction of people from the land, arson and theft. ….. Children as young as nine years of age work on Cambodian plantations run by KSL.’ (Guardian, 9 July)


The Uncaring Society
Carers are being forced to cut back on essentials such as food and electricity because of the so-called bedroom tax. ‘Despite Government promises to protect them from the under-occupancy charge, one in six carers forced to pay it are falling behind on their rent and face eviction, research by Carer UK shows. …. Ministers pledged £25m in discretionary payments to protect carers and disabled people when the policy was introduced in April, but campaigners warned it would be only enough to support around 40,000 of the 420,000 disabled people affected by the cuts’ (Independent, 9 July). Just one in ten cases are receiving these discretionary payments on an ongoing basis, this latest research shows. When it comes to cutting welfare payments capitalism is ruthless even if you are disabled.


A Society Of Debtors
Politicians love to paint a picture of steadily improving living standards, but it is a complete illusion as a recent newspaper article by Christian Guy, Director of the Centre for Social Justice has revealed. ‘Yesterday’s grim figures revealed that more than 800,000 households will soon spend more than half their income on debt repayments. We already know that 274 people are declared insolvent or bankrupt every day, 88 properties are repossessed and average household debt, including mortgages, is almost £55,000’ (Times, 12 July). Hardly ‘steadily improving living standards’ is it?


A Grim Choice
In the city of Asbest in Russia workers face a grim choice – work to produce asbestos, which will probably kill you or else move somewhere else. Valentin K. Zemskov, who worked in the asbestos factory and developed asbestosis, a respiratory illness caused by breathing in  asbestos fibres summed up the position of workers in Asbest. ‘Still he said the city had no other choice. ‘If we didn’t have the factory, how could we live?’ he said gasping for air as he talked in the yard of a retirement home. ‘We need to keep it open so we have jobs’ (New York Times, 13 July). Inside a socialist society no one would have to endure such a hellish dilemma.

Running Commentary: No Tragedy, Cambodia (1980)

The Running Commentary Column from the February 1980 issue of the Socialist Standard

NO TRAGEDY, CAMBODIA

For years, Cambodia has been mauled over by the competing powers in South East Asia. Devastated by war, since 1975 four million people have died out of a population which was then eight million. Now tens of thousands make their desperate way along the refugee trail into Thailand.

Like ghosts they travel, limbs as thin as bamboo, ravaged by diseases of malnutrition - dysentery, tuberculosis, cholera. Skeleton-like mothers cradle children with swollen bellies, heads like skulls.

This is a situation beyond despair; it is estimated that, unless they get vast amounts of help, 2¼ million more Cambodians could die of starvation during the next few months.

There are many bitter ironies in this human hell. Cambodia was once a peaceful, fertile place. Infiltrated by the Victcong, it became the target of pitiless raids by the American bombers.

Then came the Khmer Rouge, with their policy of genocide. Now it agonises under invasion from Vietnam and an unrelenting guerilla war with what remains of the Khmer Rouge.

And this, for Cambodia is the grisly climax to the International Year of the Child, when capitalism vowed to pay special care to the wellbeing of children. And it came some time after Henry Kissinger had smugly accepted the Nobel Prize for supposedly bringing peace to the area.

Cambodia has been ravaged because it is in the middle of a typical power struggle of capitalism, involving some of the world’s great armed blocs. Capitalism habitually defiles, destroys, terrorises. Human beings are never of urgent account to capitalism and when the stakes in terms of material advantage are high enough they become worth little more than the mud they die in, among the refugee camps.

So Cambodia is not, as the media are so fond of calling it, a tragedy. A more correct description for it would be a symptom. In this case the disease is curable; only abolish capitalism and places like Cambodia will again be green and tranquil lands.

HOT AND COLD

Blood pressure in the best gentlemen’s clubs and the most refined drawing rooms must have been forced several notches upward by the recent debates on issues of poverty in, of all places, the letter columns of the Daily Telegraph.

There was a discussion about whether there actually was any suffering from hunger and other deprivation during the slumps of the Twenties and the Thirties. This is not, one might think, a matter over which anyone could dispute for long, unless history is rewritten to wipe out all those records of unemployment, ill fed and ragged children, mouldering slums.

Then there was a rather more refined debate, over the rights and wrongs—or rather the existence or non-existence—of hypothermia among the elderly. This was started by a letter from an orthopaedic surgeon in Glamorgan, calling workers who want to live in a warm home in the winter “softies” and advocating “ . . . more physical activity in the elderly . . .  a good breakfast of porridge . . . several layers of lightweight loose clothing . . ."

There are, of course, plenty of countries with a climate which normally provides living temperatures as comfortable as a properly heated English house. No surgeon suggests that people in those countries have gone soft or have lost the use of vital, heat generating organs.

In truth, the debate was about the living conditions, and the alleged extravagance, of only one social set. It is the working class, whose life depends upon their earning a wage, who suffer conditions like hypothermia. When a worker is too old to work there is only reliance on a pension, or on charity, which often means cutting back on essentials like heating.

It is old workers who die, in silent misery, from the cold of an English winter. After a lifetime of exploitation the indignity of that death is all that capitalism has to offer them. For an expensively trained surgeon to debate whether they need a warm home where they can stay alive is to add cold insult to sick injury.

PEP PILLS

As the proprietor of any Health Food Store will tell you, ginseng is the greatest thing since natural, hundred per cent stone ground, wholemeal, unsliced bread.

This product from the root of the ginseng plant is reputed to be both a tranquiliser and a stimulant (an aphrodisiac no less) which sounds rather like having your cake (or whatever) and eating (or whatever) it.

It is perhaps a measure of the desperation of what is left of the British car industry, that one of its firms is turning to the ancient Chinese medicament as a way of casing its problems.

This firm is about to launch a controlled medical experiment on the effects of ginseng upon production, feeding genuine doses of the stuff to one lot of workers and dummy tablets to another. Success or failure will be measured, need we add, not just by whether the subjects of the experiment are happier, healthier, have a more satisfactory sex life—but on whether production goes up or down.

This trial is not without precedent. Two Japanese car firms supply free ginseng to their workers, as does the great new Lada plant in Russia. This meeting of the minds, of the avowedly capitalist and the allegedly socialist, on the issue of the more profitable exploitation of workers, is instructive as to the common, capitalist, nature of society in both those countries.

But what happens, if all the car manufacturers throughout the world are feeding ginseng to their workers? Who then will be the unprofitable ones? Will British Leyland magically revive? Will capitalism suddenly stop being a society where wealth is turned out for sale and profit?

In fact, profitability does not in the last analysis depend on the state of mind of a workforce. Capitalism’s goods have to be sold in order to realise a profit, which means that its prosperity relies upon the market. Nobody has yet discovered a way to eliminate the anarchic nature of the market, which is why capitalism's booms and slumps are not susceptible to control or to forecast.

Workers in the productive process can have no effect on the market; under capitalism production takes place blind, in the hope that the goods can be sold profitably. If they can’t, then production shuts down. And for an unemployed worker, there is not likely to be even the consolation of tranquilising, stimulating ginseng; like most stuff sold in the Health Food stores, it is pretty expensive.

Kampuchea now (1983)

From the May 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

A glance at the past and present of Kampuchea (Cambodia) suggests that this is a country where even world capitalism’s gruesome achievements have been surpassed. War, genocide and starvation have been the lot of a people who have been so unfortunate as to find themselves in a potentially fertile country located in a strategically-important area.

In 1975 the Khmers Rouges climaxed a four-year guerrilla struggle by conquering power from an American-backed dictatorship. Vast numbers of people were evacuated from the cities to the countryside, and forced to work in slave-like conditions by the new rulers. Nobody will ever know for sure, but it is widely estimated that three million people out of a total population of seven million died during this period, whether murdered or “just” starved to death. The official rhetoric was that a classless society was being established, and that goods were being distributed without the intermediary of money, on the basis of need. In fact trading did occur and foodstuffs, including rice, were exported to earn foreign exchange. Democratic Kampuchea, as the country was ironically called, had very capitalist priorities.

A number of Western leftists did their best to act as apologists for the Khmers Rouges, trying to discredit refugees’ accounts of atrocities and to justify the evacuations. Among those who were not fooled by these silly pleaders, however, were the governments of Vietnam and Russia. The Vietnamese press published tales of Kampuchean horrors, and a border conflict between the two countries eventually escalated. At the end of 1978 Vietnam launched a full-scale invasion of Kampuchea and in January 1979 installed a new regime, the People’s Republic of Kampuchea, under Heng Samrin. Another four years has gone by, marked by continual fighting between the new government and the Khmers Rouges, who have now returned to their earlier guerrilla status. It is now the turn of the Khmers Rouges to accuse the Vietnamese of atrocities, such as forced resettlement and the use of chemical weapons. (Beijing Review, 17 May 1982.)

Although it controls only a small part of the country’s territory, Democratic Kampuchea has retained its seat in the United Nations. Britain has managed to face both ways by supporting this situation but not recognising Democratic Kampuchea in the first place. In June last year an agreement was signed in Kuala Lumpur setting up the Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea. The signatories were Sihanouk (former ruler, and head of state during the first year of Khmer Rouge rule). Khieu Sampan (once of the Khmers Rouges) and Son Sann (a former prime minister). This motley crew of turncoats and mass-murderers now heads the resistance movement.

The so-called Government of Democratic Kampuchea still controls small areas of the country, which it defends against Vietnamese and official army assaults. Life in these districts is clearly a struggle, with backward production techniques and the ever-present threat of attack. Part of the resources must be put to the production of mines and other weapons. No attempt is made now to promote the image of a moneyless, classless society. A Chinese reporter noted the existence of privately-owned shops, and added: “The Government of Democratic Kampuchea does not levy commercial taxes so all the profits go to the owners”. (Beijing Review, 24 May 1982.)

The destruction and upheaval of the last eight years has inevitably led to a huge number of refugees, both within and beyond the borders of Kampuchea. Many squalid and disease-ridden refugee camps have been established, but even here the wretched Kampuchean peasants and workers are not free of the murderous social system they live under. For instance, at the end of January the Vietnamese army attacked and captured the Non Chan refugee camp on the border with Thailand. A rocket and mortar barrage rocked the camp, giving rise to many civilian casualties. (Guardian, 1 and 2 February 1983.)

The most recent developments have taken place in response to the oldest of capitalism's needs — trade. Towards the end of March, Common Market Foreign Ministers visited Bangkok to discuss with the members of the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN). Vietnam is not a member of ASEAN, which does not recognise the Heng Samrin government. But advantage was taken of the spotlight being on Bangkok for Vietnam to suggest talks with ASEAN on Kampuchea without the participation of the Heng Samrin regime. There are all sorts of possible motives here: in particular, the Vietnamese may be wishing to achieve closer relations with ASEAN (and attendant possibilities of increased trade with the West), with a view to reduced dependence on Russia. The fate of the ordinary Kampuchean people is, as ever, dependent on great power politicking.

Socialists opposed both the Vietcong and the Khmers Rouges while they were fighting for political power under the guise of “liberation movements". We pointed out that in the context of world capitalism the idea of “national independence" is a myth, and that being ruled and exploited by people of one’s “own" nationality makes no difference. Nothing that these and similar organisations have done on gaining power suggests that our opposition was misguided. Quite apart from the Khmers Rouges' genocide, there is the Vietnamese government’s vicious internal policies, their invasion of Kampuchea and their attacks on refugee camps. The Mugabe government in Zimbabwe is demonstrating equally clearly that nationalist governments can be just as murderous and tyrannical as any colonialist power. The workers and peasants of developing countries should not place their faith in leaders or would-be liberators. Kampuchea shows only too well the fatal consequences of such misplaced trust.

Paul Bennett

Blood on their hands (1979)

From the December 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

On 7 January this year Pol Pot was toppled from power, and a few days later the founding of the People's Republic of Kampuchea was announced, the president being Heng Samrin. The new government was installed in power with the help of Vietnamese troops, and was very much a Vietnamese creation. The Heng Samrin regime was immediately recognised by the Russian-bloc states, but most countries still regard the Khmers Rouges as the "legitimate" rulers, in spite of the horrors they inflicted on the country and manifest fact that they control no more than a small part of its territory. Norodom Sihanouk, who has distinguished himself solely by often and abruptly changing sides. has prostrated himself before the United Nations, begging for international assistance and support for the barbarians who helped destroy his country. Kampuchea and its people have become entangled in a web of hypocrisy, deceit and suffering which is remarkable even by capitalism's gruesome standards.

China supported and supports the Khmers Rouges, hence those western capitalist states which are becoming increasingly friendly with China and foresee better trade opportunities there are unwilling to upset them by supporting Heng Samrin. The Americans, having done their best to "bomb Vietnam back into the Stone Age", as one of their more candid generals put it, raise their hands in horror at the sudden discovery that wars kill people. Meanwhile the Vietnamese rulers have taken a leaf out of Uncle Sam's book and installed a puppet regime in Kampuchea. A treaty signed in March allows Vietnamese troops to be stationed in Laos and Kampuchea, enabling Vietnam (and its Russian mentor) to dominate Indo-China. This is basically what the dispute is about: over the last thirty years a succession of ruling classes have striven for control of Southeast Asia. After the defeat of the French and then of the Americans, the region was up for grabs between Russia and China. In spite of the Chinese attempt to force a Vietnamese withdrawal from Kampuchea by invading Vietnam, the Russians and their satellites have, for the moment at least, won the contest.

The losers, as ever, are the ordinary people, the peasants and workers of Kampuchea. Out of a 1975 population of around seven million, about three million are now believed to have died under Pol Pot. A further two million are currently starving as a result of the disruptions caused by evacuation and fighting. Only five per cent of the the country's arable land is under cultivation, and the food situation is likely to be even worse next year. Millions of pounds' worth of aid has been sitting around unused while presidents and prime ministers play their deadly games. Heng Samrin's regime has refused to allow the Red Cross to distribute aid to the Kampuchean population, on the grounds that this would mean sharing it with the Khmers Rouges and their supporters. And all the while, countless human beings die and suffer horribly, with their safest place the overcrowded and insanitary refugee camps in Thailand.

Anyone who thought that the defeat of American imperialism would lead to peace and prosperity for Southeast Asia has now been disillusioned. Post-"liberation" Vietnam has turned into such a paradise that hundreds have been prepared to risk drowning in order to escape, after the government has thoughtfully reduced the weight of the ships by relieving them of large sums of gold. Capitalist states like Vietnam and China are now exposed, to all but the willfully blind, as hypocritical murderers and oppressors no more deserving of support than Britain or the United States.

An "independent" country is simply one where a home-grown ruling class lord it over their subjects, to whom the nationality of their exploiters should be of no concern at all. Under capitalism, all countries are forced to behave like predators, including those that have but recently thrown off the "imperialist yoke".

No one who has seen, on their television, or in newspapers, the walking skeletons of Kampuchean children could fail to be moved. The instinctive response may be to dig into one's pocket, but charity will not prevent such horrors happening again and again. Starvation may be rare in industrialised countries nowadays, but for a large proportion of humanity it is it is either an everyday experience or an ever-present threat. It is capitalism, with its inequalities and its wars and its artificial shortages, that is responsible for this situation.

Paul Bennett

The Class Struggle in Cambodia (2014)

From the February 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

In some parts of the world workers are still being shot down for asking for higher wages.

During 2013 in Cambodia (the Khmer name is Kampuchea), the Khmer working class – particularly the half million garment factory workers – were active in the class struggle between capital and labour, clashing with the authoritarian government of Hun Sen and the repressive forces of the Cambodian police and military. The resistance of the garment factory workers to the downward economic pressures of the capitalist class culminated after a two week national strike in the New Year of 2014 with four workers killed and twenty seven injured when police and a deployment of an elite unit of soldiers, Special Command Unit 911 opened fire with AK-47s into a group of workers.

The workers' economic struggle has become allied with the protest movement for liberalism and bourgeois democracy in Cambodia which is associated with Sam Rainsy and his 'Party of Rescuing the Nation.' They allege electoral fraud in the July 2013 elections and claim they were cheated out of winning the election. This liberal political grouping have promised the garment factory workers their desired wage increase to $263 per month. In September 2013 20,000 workers including garment workers, students, civil servants, teachers, farmers, and Buddhist monks protesting against the government's 'rigging' of the election clashed with police and one worker was killed and others injured. 

Cambodia's government has been described by Human Rights Watch's Southeast Asian Director, David Roberts, as a 'vaguely communist free-market state with a relatively authoritarian coalition ruling over a superficial democracy' (Political Transition in Cambodia 1991-1999, Curzon Publishers, 2001) which is quite accurate except Cambodia has nothing to do with 'communism'. Cambodia operates a capitalist market economy. It is notorious for corruption, ignoring human rights and suppressing political dissent. Hun Sen, a former Khmer Rouge soldier, has been Prime Minister since 1985 and is leader of the Cambodia People's Party which is the renamed Kampuchea People's Revolutionary Party which was the sole party in the People's Republic of Kampuchea 1979-89 when Cambodia was occupied by the Vietnamese army. This Party had a Leninist ideology and Cambodia was run economically on Russian state capitalist lines. In the 1990s Hun Sen adopted free market capitalism, privatized state industries, and established private property rights.

During 2013 the Khmer working class have realised that their employers had contracted  their standard of living  at a time of increased productivity and profits in the garment industry. Strikes are necessary if the working class are to prevent themselves being driven into the ground by the never-satisfied demands of profit. The working class must organise to defend and improve wages and conditions of work or even just to keep pace with an inflationary standard of living.

The Garment Manufacturers Association of Cambodia estimates that over a quarter of working days in the last two years have been lost due to strikes. The garment industry supplying clothes and footwear mainly to the European and American markets represents the largest portion of Cambodia's manufacturing sector, accounting for 80 percent of the country's exports. The garment industry manufactures clothes for a huge range of British high street companies, including H&M, Gap, Marks and Spencer, Tesco and Levis. In 2012, the exports grew to $4.61 billion, up 8 percent over 2011, and in the period from January to November 2013 the garment industry made $5.1 billion, a 22 percent increase on 2012.

More savvy than assumed

David Webb, Cambodian programme director at the Solidarity Centre said 'Workers are, frankly, far more savvy than they get credit for, and can see these vast amounts of money being made off the backs of some of the poorest workers in the region and how little they get back in return' (Guardian 16 December). A woman worker called Khmon is quoted saying 'There is no work in the countryside, so I have to work in the factories. The factories don't care about us. They pay us so little, work us so hard and throw us away when we cannot work for a moment' (Guardian 16 December). On May Day 2013 a garment factory worker named Chao Sinoun told Radio Free Asia 'The factory owner is exploiting my labour' (Sonorng Khe for Radio Free Asia Khmer Service, 1 May).

The May Day rally in Phnom Penh saw 10,000 garment and footwear factory workers with teachers and civil servants demanding wage increases, retirement pensions, reduced petrol prices, and the arrest of the killers of trade union activist Chea Victea in 2004. The same month saw two workers killed in a factory collapse at Wing Star Shoes owned by a Taiwanese company who make running shoes for Asics. A wage protest at a Nike Factory run by Sabrina Garment Manufacturing in the Kampang Speu province, west of Phnom Penh, involved 3,000 workers mostly women. They were seeking a $14 pay rise to cover transport, rent and healthcare on top of the $74 minimum wage but were attacked by riot police with stun batons and 23 workers were injured.

A July 2013 Report on Working Conditions in Cambodia's Garment Sector produced by Better Factories Cambodia, an ILO project found inadequate working conditions, fire safety, health and safety violations and child labour. Ath Thorn, President, Coalition of Cambodian Apparel Workers Democratic Union pointed out that Cambodia’s Ministry of Labour found that garment workers needed at least $156 per month to cover the cost of living. He added 'The current wages are too little and can't meet workers' needs' (Morning Star 28 December). 'The government and the factory owners know that workers cannot survive with the current salary' said Chea Mony, President, Free Trade Union of Workers (Morning Star 27 December).

The minimum wage per month was increased in May 2013 from $60 to $75 a month plus $5 living allowance but the increase was swallowed up in rent increases and other expenses of living in the capital city such as inflation, rent increases, and job insecurity. The value of labour power may change because the values of the necessities the worker and their family consume has changed. If their value increased, then a wage increase would merely restore the position and allow the workers to consume the same amount.

Race to the bottom

Cambodia's garment industry continues to grow rapidly which can be attributed to the country's open economic policy which has drawn large amounts of foreign investment into this sector of the economy. Nearly 80 percent of the garment factories are owned by Chinese, Taiwanese and South Korean companies with only 5 percent owned by the Cambodian capitalist class. The capitalist class say the onus was on Western clothing chains to pay more for the garments they were buying from Cambodia's factories. Ken Loo, Secretary-General of the Garment Manufacturers Association of Cambodia said 'The garment industry is a footloose industry, it is not difficult for any investor to uproot and move its investment elsewhere. In Cambodia the industry is made up of predominantly foreign investors. If investors decide to relocate, there would be no local factories that would rise to take these places. We do not own the brand of the items we are producing so our profits are determined by the brands and retailers who place orders with us, they have the ability and the finances to increase the minimum wage, not us. The focus has to be on the brands and retailers to start paying factories more, so that in return we have the ability to pay our workers more' (Guardian 16 December).

After the killing of workers in the New Year the Cambodian police forced 1,000 workers from their rally camp in Phnom Penh, and banned any further protests against the government. The State Prosecutors issued warrants for Sam Rainsy and his deputy to appear in court on 14 January on charges of inciting social unrest. On 7 January thousands of garment workers returned to work after the two week national strike. The strikes cost the garment industry approximately $20 million in lost revenue, and orders could decline by 20 to 30 percent in 2014. Sam Rainsy said 'Now we are working on the diplomatic front, on the commercial front, on the legal front. We are in touch with unions and workers’ organisations all over the world to condemn violence on workers and to help workers to achieve the minimum wage' (Morning Star 8 January).

The close relations of the trade unions in Cambodia with this liberal party led by Rainsy is effectively a non-revolutionary approach for the Khmer working class. The Cambodian trade unions should not depart from the principle of an antagonism of interests between the working class and the capitalist class. When they collaborate with the capitalist class, the state or political parties such as the National Rescue Party they are departing from this principle. As well as campaigning for an increase in the minimum wage the garment workers trade unions should aim for the 'Abolition of the wages system.'

The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Cambodia, Surya P. Subedi said 'All parties, the Government, striking workers, trade unions, the factories and buyers needed to reassure protesting workers that they would develop a realistic wage structure' (United Nations Radio 27 December 2013). Van Son Leng, Chairman of Cambodia's Garment Manufacturers Association concluded 'It's bad that there were deaths and injuries but when there's violence and force is used, there's always going to be collateral damage. It's difficult to avoid' (Wall Street Journal 7 January).

The Khmer garment factory worker Khmon said 'The poor are always unlucky' (Guardian 16 December 2013) but, as our comrades in the Socialist Party of Canada have pointed out, there is a way-out for the trap the working class in Cambodia find themselves in:

'The capitalist apologists have a hard time explaining the nineteenth century wage rates and conditions that capital is flocking to. Isn’t capitalism supposed to bring widespread prosperity? If there is something lower, capital will flow there naturally like water flowing downhill. China is outsourcing its clothing orders to Bangladesh. If Cambodia can’t get lower than Bangladesh in wages, conditions of work, labour and safety legislation, etc, you are out of luck. There are always greener pastures for capital, until, that is, we, the workers wake up and make all property and the resources therein the common heritage of all mankind' (The Socialist Party of Canada Secretary’s Reports for November 1 and December 1, 2013).

Steve Clayton