He served as a member of the Thai House of Representatives and was the first and only Secretary-General for the Future Forward Party, which he co-founded in 2018.

[6] Piyabutr resigned from his academic career at Thammasat University to create, with Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit, the Future Forward Party, with an aim towards promoting democracy in Thailand and opposing the military junta.

[10] In 2020, Piyabutr and other committee formed the Progressive Movement, an NGO, after the party was dissolved, in which he became a secretary general.

Same year, he cited Italian Marxist thinker Antonio Gramsci's idea as main key to established Future Forward Party.

[13] In 16 April 2024, he posted on his Facebook account by citing Antonio Gramsci and Vladimir Lenin that sustainable revolution have to establish dictatorship of the proletariat council in both parliament and extra-parliamentary[14] Piyabutr is married to Eugénie Mérieau, a French academic.