Contemporary political crises in Thailand in the past decade─the present─are traditionally conceived
of as crises of political morality. The conservative social forces within the Thai state perceived exPrime
Minister Thaksin Shinawatra and his social and political allies as a major threat to the nation
only because of their lack of political integrity. This chapter contests this political ‘common sense’
perspective and argues against a conservative conception of the world that the crisis of the Thai
state, in fact, is an organic, and also ongoing, crisis. This ‘organic crisis’ view has been constituted for
several structural reasons and should be seen against ‘history’ ─the past─ of the Thai state in both
political economy and social-ideological terrains. The structural crisis in Thailand should be seen as,
what Gramsci calls, a crisis of hegemony ─that the old is dying and the new cannot be born─ which
contains three crucial underlying crisis-ridden features including social and economic disparity,
overwhelming roles of royalism-nationalism, and harsh applications of the lèse majesté laws. To
overcome the political common sense view of Thaksin held the Thai rightists, and to restore long
term social and political orders of the Thai state, it is necessary to bring these three fundamental
problems to the fore and critically examine, discuss, and debate them. In short, while it might not be
an absolute way to achieve a more just and fairer society for the Thai state, thinking in a ‘Gramscian
way’ is crucial as a first step to critique the conservative common sense view and to imagine, with
hope, for long term solutions to the organic crisis of the Thai state.