Economic crisis in Asia: The case of Thailand

The economic crisis in Asia has been analyzed by neoliberal and neo-Weberia n scholars as a financial crisis, with the neoliberals asserting that its c auses are internal to the countries in question, the neo-Weberians assertin g the causes to be external. This paper offers an alternative, Marxian expl anation of the crisis, focusing on the outbreak of the crisis in Thailand. Using Harvey's ideas about capitalist crises and capital switching, along w ith conceptions of crisis dynamics in peripheral societies based in the wor ks of economic geographers and dependent development theorists, I argue tha t the crises In Thailand was a fully economic crisis involving all circuits of the economy, linking domestic and international accumulation processes, and stemming in part from struggles over appropriation of the surplus. In order to demonstrate this, I analyze the crisis in Thailand at both nationa l and international scales and show that it was rooted in declining profita bility of manufacturing in a context of increased global export competition and overcapacity. This context created the strong likelihood of economic d ownturn throughout the region, with Thailand falling first because of its s pecific liabilities, and other countries being pulled into the maelstrom of devaluation through financial contagion effects.