The Burmese ways to socialism

Abstract

The death knell for Burmese socialism tolled an entire year before Tiananmen Square burned and the Berlin Wall crumbled, but few outside Burma heard it. Television news teams were not present to record the extraordinary events surrounding Burma's democracy movement in summer 1988. A year after the massive demonstrations against their government, the Burmese electorate rejected socialism and military rule. Candidates who even appeared to be connected to the discredited Burma Socialist Programme Party (BSPP) were routed. Twenty-one million voters gave an overwhelming mandate to the political party led by Aung San Suu Kyi, 46, although the nervous junta had placed her under solitary house arrest. That did not stop the Nobel Committee from conferring its prestigious Peace Prize for 1991 on her, and by doing so remind the world of the unfinished struggle for democracy in Burma. Nevertheless, the Nobel laureate, who is the daughter of Burma's revered national hero, General Aung San, remains under house arrest and the military firmly in control. Burma's failure to achieve a viable post-independent socialist state has as much to do with the ideological and structural constraints inherent in the system as with Burmese history, culture and personality of the head of government. This paper examines socialism as espoused by two dissimilar post-independent leaders-U Nu and General Ne Win-and the means through which each chose to implement his particular version of utopia. Discarding colonial rule for socialism was for Burma more than just a reaction to a foreign exploitative system. Burmese nationalism was deeply rooted in socialism, as British journalist Martin Smith states in his excellent book: 'Burma since independence, is, after all, that rarity, a country in which successive governments have been regarded as left wing, but in which the principal political opposition has come from the left'.' Many have noted the natural affinity of Buddhist notions of egalitarianism, redemption through social action and a healthy ambivalence to capital accumulation with such socialist ideals as equitable distribution of wealth in a classless society. Socialism and Burmese Buddhism further enjoyed the illusion of being closely linked, for only Buddhist terminology was available to explain Marxist philosophy to the general populace. Years before socialism was officially sanctioned, however, Burmese society had already evolved in a significantly 'socialist' manner. Colonial Britain's Commissioner Charles Crosthwaite, with only some exaggeration, complained of the challenge of colonising a country '. . . where one man is as good as another, where there are no landlords, no hereditary aristocracy and no tribal chiefs . . .2