I refer to the malaysiakini report The left wing's vanishing dream .

Political commentators have been making dire predictions about the PSM's chances of 'survival' ever since the time the idea of a new socialist party was mooted. Initially, the commentators predicted that the party would be stillborn as the word 'socialism' is an anathema to the Malaysian public who would link it to violence and terrorism. However they have been proven wrong time and again as PSM mobilised hundreds of people to come out to protest evictions, privatisation and anti worker laws.

PSM-organised cultural and social events are vibrant with many young participants. The people are not afraid when they know that its their own interests that they are upholding.

Then in 2004, when PSM-backed candidates were forced to stand in three-cornered contests in the general elections that year, again there were those who predicted that the PSM-backed candidates would be sunk as the DAP was a much more established party. However, the PSM candidate for the Sungai Siput parliamentary seat obtained three times the number votes of the DAP candidate and for the first time in umpteen contests for the Sungai Siput seat, the DAP lost its deposit.

Why is it that a 'miniscule' and as yet unregistered political party can sustain itself, draw in more and more supporters and continually develop its programmes? The answer is really quite simple but cannot be comprehended by political analysts such as Terence Netto who does not understand Marxism.

The answer? The collapse of the Socialist Block did not abolish the class struggle. In fact, the absence of the Soviet Bear has fed the arrogance and greed of the corporate class leading to dismantling of concessions granted to workers and ordinary people all over the world and to the intensifying of economic oppression of the majority of the world's population.

We can see it in our own country in the form of wages being kept low through the active importation of more than two million foreign workers; the rising cost of living due to the privatisation of transport, education, water, health care and the like; attempts to shift the tax burden onto the ordinary people through the GST (goods and services tax) and recently the alteration of labour laws to the advantage of employers.

It is this intensification of class oppression that is attracting ordinary people to PSM. The socialist analysis of current events makes sense to many for they already dimly perceive the same through their experiences of the system. This is the root of PSM's attraction and growing strength not the 'charisma' of its 'aging' leaders.

Netto is, however, right in one aspect the PSM is currently the torchbearer of a movement that stretches back over 70 years, the movement for an independent, equitable and non communal society in Malaysia. We are awed and inspired by the dedication and sacrifices of the leaders of the Putera AMCJA coalition of 1946 48 as well as those of the Labour Party-Parti Rakyat coalition that followed 10 years later.

We must remember that it was not the Malayan public which rejected the vision of these left wing coalitions but the powers-that-be then. The British brutally crushed the Putera AMCJA coalition and a decade later the Alliance did the same to the Socialist Front. Politics in Malaysia became increasingly communal with the crippling of the Left to the detriment of all of us.

Rosa Luxemburg once said that the choice facing us is either socialism or barbarism. Looking at the 'race to the bottom' that many countries have embarked upon in their quest to attract FDI to their countries, it is becoming more and more clear that Luxemberg's statement is not merely polemic.

PSM will continue standing with the ordinary people and help them understand the true nature of the forces oppressing them. PSM will only cease to exist when it becomes part of the larger, broader based social movement that is required to build a better, more fair and non communal society in Malaysia.