In 1998, rooted in two decades of involvement in grassroots struggles, a group of activists formed the Parti Sosialis Malaysia (Malaysian Socialist Party, PSM) and sought to obtain official registration as a legal political organisation. They were refused, depriving the party of minimum legal protection. But the PSM wasn’t intimidated and carried on.
Also in 1998, Indonesian dictator Suharto was ousted by a mass student-led democracy movement. A similar reformasi movement also erupted in Malaysia, unprecedentedly propelled by the hitherto conservative Malay masses. Malaysia’s democratic space was thus broadened.

Taking advantage of this, the PSM pressed on with grass-root organising, and asserting its right to be able to operate publicly and legally. On September 9-11, the party audaciously held a public socialist conference, the country’s first in decades. It went ahead without any state repression, boosting the confidence of the Malaysian progressive milieu.

Assessing the conference, PSM central committee leader Dr Jeyakumar Devaraj told Green Left Weekly: “We raised the flag, saying ‘this is what Marx said, this is what Lenin and Luxembourg said... see, this is all true, this is happening before our eyes’. We’ve been organising along these lines. In a number of ways, [the PSM’s activities and the socialist conference] are a political statement. It is very loud.

“We raised the flag, saying in all seriousness, socialism is the way forward. It’s not an academic thing. It’s coming from a party that’s involved in the grassroots and working with the grassroots.”

The PSM started in the 1970s by working with some of the most oppressed groups in Malaysian society - plantation workers and shantytown dwellers. The latter included many low-income workers, who were evicted by profit-hungry property developers and corrupt officials. Today, these two groups of workers remain the party’s strongest base.
Once significant in the Malaysian economy, plantations have been dwindling. As well, the main product has switched from rubber to palm oil, which required less workers. As a result, many plantation workers were retrenched and displaced from the ramshackle shelters that were provided by the plantation owners for these workers and their families to live in.

Shantytowns are another flash point. Fuelled by massive rural-to-urban migration in recent decades, low-income workers and other impoverished people have been building shelters on disused or waterlogged land, old mines or dump sites on the cities’ far fringes. But these fringes are fringes no more, thanks to urban expansion, and evictions of shantytown dwellers have become rampant.

Jeyakumar explained: “They aren’t squatters, but urban pioneers. They developed the land, put in drains, planted trees and 15-20 years later, the land became more stable and rehabilitated because of their efforts.”

He told GLW that the evictions had become a very big social problem, producing many dysfunctional families, widespread youth delinquency and substance abuse.
The PSM has helped organise community resistance, involving direct actions such as the blocking the bulldozers, campaigning for fairer compensation, demanding officials respect the legal rights of the displaced and promoting the self-organisation of the community in the process. Developing cross-community networks is also a feature of the PSM’s work.

Jeyakumar explained that the PSM had for a long period been “primarily working with the marginalised communities”. He said the PSM would continue this as a prime area of its work. However, he also said that the PSM party congress two years ago recognised the need to expand its campaigning activity to take in broader social/political issues, as well as organising the broader working class.

Jeyakumar said that the party’s industrial work started about five years ago, of which some examples are:

– As part of the Oppressed People’s Network (Jerit), the PSM is involved in a national campaign for seven demands: a minimum wage act, affordable housing, no to privatisation, the right to form trade unions, abolishing draconian laws, land for farmers, and the eradication of poverty irrespective of race. The party organises in some 20 factory workers and members in the Sungai Siput district for twice monthly doorknocking in campaigning for those demands.

– In Sungai Siput, the PSM runs a “service centre’’ (a means to reach out), where PSM members assist workers on industrial issues.

– Nationally, the party has a working arrangement with the National Trade Union Congress under which the latter appoints PSM activists on some occasions to officially represent workers who have been sacked but who aren’t being assisted by unions.

– In a district in Ipoh, PSM activists are leading the unions in two factories.

These are still modest efforts at work organising, but they are a much needed start to confronting the mammoth problems of sweeping casualisation and job insecurity against a background of low unionisation (about 8% of the work force), and a weak and intimidated trade union movement.

Two million workers have been imported from poorer countries to help discipline Malaysia’s 10 million native-born workers.

According to Jeyakumar, the legacy of the 1948-49 British anti-independence movement crackdown - during which 95% of Malaysia’s unions, which organised nearly 80% of the workers, were closed down - still has its impact.

“Unions in Malaysia now are very [government-]controlled”, he said. Cross-sector unions became history after the crackdown, depriving workers of the ability to launch solidarity strikes. All unions must be registered with a government authority that imposes draconian strike rules (with long notice periods). As a result, there are few industrial actions that are deemed legal.

An ill-defined “threat to national security and the economy”, for example, is an adequate pretext for the authorities to declare any industrial action illegal. Any “illegal actions” can risk a union being deregistered or having its bank account frozen.
Though the PSM has less than 100 members, it has won considerable credibility from its years of mass work, giving it a certain mobilising power among a much bigger group of supporters. In addition, the party’s aggressive tactics have made the police reluctance to rough up its activists, although they often experience short detentions.

Jeyakumar said: “We can mobilise about 1500 for May Day from various parts of Malaysia. If tomorrow, someone got arrested, we can mobilise 200 or so within four to five hours and 400-500 by night time.”

During a struggle in Perak a few years ago when Jeyakumar was arrested, rather than being intimidated by the arrest, all those involved in protesting his arrest offered themselves for arrest as well, resulting in the arrest of 170. “Within two or three hours, 2000-3000 people came in support, flooding the police station, prompting them to panic and call in riot police’’, Jeyakumar recounted.

The PSM has long been active in the movement against the repressive ISA, with some of its leaders holding key positions of responsibility in that movement.

In a demonstration against the ISA about four years ago, thousands took part but “no-one was really in charge” when the police attacked the protest, making 36 arrests. According to Jeyakumar, PSM members rose to the occasion and came forward to negotiate with the police and defuse the crisis.

It’s hardly surprising then that Jeyakumar himself has been arrested at least five times, and PSM general secretary Arutchelvam and chairperson Nasir Hashim 10-12 times each.

After the release of party members or supporters from detention, the PSM would almost as a rule formally challenge the police’s decision to arrest its members or supporters. This seems to have kept in check excessive intimidation from the police.
Given the PSM’s traditional base is the plantations where the highly oppressed descendants of Indian Tamil indentured workers are concentrated, 80% of the party’s membership are of Tamil background. But Tamils only account for 7% of Malaysia’s population, compared to around 60% Malays and 24% Chinese.

The party has a conscious program to extend its influence to the other ethnic groups. It is opening its fifth branch soon, in which many activists are of Chinese ethnic background. All meetings, even internal ones, are conducted in Malay, and all of the PSM’s key publications are in all three key languages.