Is reflected in a crucial text, the Announcement of the People's Party, issued during the revolution. The Announcement criticized the monarchical state as dishonest, corrupt and indifferent to the people's sufferings. Furthermore The king's government held people as slaves animals, and did not consider them as human beings. Thus, instead of helping them, it continued to plant rice on the back of the people.'46 The Announcement further attacked the arbitrary and nepotistic rot of the monarchical state 47 It also marked a forceful reconceptualization of the relations between the state and the people People! Let it be known that our country belongs to the people and not to the king as was deceived. Our forefathers had rescued the freedom of the country from the hands of the enemy. The royalty only took advan- tage and gathered millions for themselves. In this same declaration the six principles of the People's Party were outlined, the main features of which were to maintain sovereignty of the nation, to provide employment, to formulate a national economic plan and for all to have equal rights, freedom and liberty and a promise of full educa- tion While abstractly embracing the people as the sovereign basis of govern- ment, Pridi also exhibited the "civilizing' tendencies of the elite. In his 1933 economic reform plan that promised "equality of opportunity' and govern ment employment for all, Pridi revealed the modernizing disposition that the revolutionaries held in their assumed role of guardians of the people.50 This role entailed a modification of the principle of liberty. Speaking of the economic wellbeing of the people as a prior principle to complete liberty Complete personal liberty is not possible under any social notes: system, such liberty is always limited by the good of society 51 In Pridi's the people needed to be led in their economic development up a higher civilizational scale. 52 As Pridi put it: