Global Learning
  • Home
  • Defenders of Cuban Socialism
    • UN Charter
    • Declaration of Human Rights
    • Bandung
    • New International Economic Order
    • Non-Aligned Movement
  • Substack editorial column
  • New Cold War articles
  • Friends of Socialist China articles
  • Global Research articles
  • Counterpunch articles
  • Cuba and the world-system
    • Table of Contents and chapter summaries
    • About the author
    • Endorsements
    • Obtaining your copy
  • Blog ¨The View from the South¨
    • Blog Index
    • Posts in reverse chronological order
  • The Voice of Third World Leaders
    • Asia >
      • Ho Chi Minh
      • Xi Jinping, President of China
    • Africa >
      • Kwame Nkrumah
      • Julius Nyerere
    • Latin America >
      • Fidel Castro
      • Hugo Chávez
      • Raúl Castro >
        • 55th anniversary speech, January 1, 1914
        • Opening Speech, CELAC
        • Address at G-77, June 15, 2014
        • Address to National Assembly, July 5, 2014
        • Address to National Assembly, December 20, 2014
        • Speech on Venezuela at ALBA, 3-17-2015
        • Declaration of December 18, 2015 on USA-Cuba relations
        • Speech at ALBA, March 5, 2018
      • Miguel Díaz-Canel >
        • UN address, September 26, 2018
        • 100th annivesary, CP of China
      • Evo Morales >
        • About Evo Morales
        • Address to G-77 plus China, January 8, 2014
        • Address to UN General Assembly, September 24, 2014
      • Rafael Correa >
        • About Rafael Correa
        • Speech at CELAC 1/29/2015
        • Speech at Summit of the Americas 2015
      • Nicolás Maduro
      • Cristina Fernández
      • Cuban Ministry of Foreign Relations >
        • Statement at re-opening of Cuban Embassy in USA, June 20, 2015
        • The visit of Barack Obama to Cuba
        • Declaration on parliamentary coup in Brazil, August 31, 2016
        • Declaration of the Revolutionary Government of Cuba on Venezuela, April 13, 2019
      • ALBA >
        • Declaration of ALBA Political Council, May 21, 2019
        • Declaration on Venezuela, March 17, 2015
        • Declaration on Venezuela, April 10, 2017
      • Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) >
        • Havana Declaration 2014
        • Declaration on Venezuela, March 26
    • Martin Luther King, Jr.
    • International >
      • Peoples’ Summit 2015
      • The Group of 77 >
        • Declaration on a New World Order 2014
        • Declaration on Venezuela 3/26/2015
      • BRICS
      • Non-Aligned Movement
  • Readings
    • Charles McKelvey, Cuba in Global Context
    • Piero Gleijeses, Cuba and Africa
    • Charles McKelvey, Chávez and the Revolution in Venezuela
    • Charles McKelvey, The unfinished agenda of race in USA
    • Charles McKelvey, Marxist-Leninist-Fidelist-Chavist Revolutionary
  • Recommended Books
  • Contact

Picture
Picture
Picture
Picture
Picture
Recommended books on Amazon.com; click on image of book to connect

Imperialism falters in Vietnam

9/27/2013

0 Comments

 
Posted September 30, 2013

     The war in Vietnam was a US imperialist and colonialist war that failed, unable to defeat a united popular movement that combined nationalism and socialism.

      The Vietnamese anti-colonial revolution began in the early twentieth century, with petty bourgeois intellectuals playing the leading role.  Ho Chi Minh was born in 1890 and was a product of this anti-colonial intellectual environment.  He arrived in Paris in 1917, where he lived for several years and was active in the Vietnamese émigré community and in the struggle against colonialism.  Ho also became  active in the French Socialist Party in Paris.  In the split between social democracy and communism, Ho sided with the communists, as a result of Lenin’s sensitivity to the oppression of the colonized peoples.  He traveled and studied in the Soviet Union in 1923 and 1924. 

      Ho was critical of the communist parties of the West for lacking contact with the colonized peoples and for ignoring the colonial question, thus not following in practice the theoretical formulations of Lenin on the national question.  He believed that the  international proletarian movement could not attain success without alliance with the colonized peoples, which he viewed as constituting a considerable force  of revolutionary opposition to the structures of world capitalism.  At the same time, he understood that  Third World nationalism without communism would not liberate the colonized  peasant.  And he understood that the peasantry, while possessing an orientation toward spontaneous rebellion, was unaware of communism, and that the peasants needed organization and leadership in order to form an effective struggle.  He thus saw the need to educate Western workers and the Western communist parties on the importance of encounter and alliance with the anti-colonial struggles in the colonies, and at the same time he recognized the need for the spreading of communism among the peasants, workers, students, intellectuals, and merchants of the colonies.  Thus Ho developed a practical synthesis of Marxism-Leninism and a Third World  perspective.

     During the 1930s, Ho emerged as the charismatic leader of the Vietnamese movement for independence, which by the end of World War II had attained de facto control of the country.  On September 2, 1945, before a crowd of one-half million people, continually  shouting “independence,” in Ba Dinh square in Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh read the  Declaration of Independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. The French tried to reconquer the country, but they were defeated by 1954, setting the stage for the continually escalating US intervention in defnense of the world-system.  Both the French and the United States tried to support puppet and regional governments as alternatives to the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.

       US intervention was justified with the ideology of anti-communism. The nationalist and anti-colonial character of the Vietnamese Revolution was ignored, and emphasis was given to its Marxist-Leninist side.  And a distorted image of communism was presented, portraying it as a movement that seeks to eliminate democracy, rather than as a movement that seeks to replace bourgeois structures of democracy with alternative structures of popular democracy.

      But a neocolonial project is unsustainable in the face of a politically and theoretically advanced nationalist movement.  The various puppet governments lacked legitimacy among the people, necessitating greater US military and financial support.  Increasing US military presence further undermined the legitimacy of the puppet government, completely de-legitimating its claim to represent an independent nationalist force in Vietnam.  Trapped in a vicious  cycle of self-defeating military escalation, US policymakers had forgotten an insight relevant to their project of world domination: neocolonialism requires the appearance of independence.  
 
       The failure of the US imperialist war in Vietnam had a profound effect on the United States.  Among other effects, it stimulated an analysis among the people of the causes for the failure, leading to increased popular consciousness of the imperialist character of US foreign policy.  The emergence of anti-imperialism in the African-American movement and the student anti-war movement will be discussed in future posts.


Bibliography     
 

García Oliveras, Julio A. 2010.  Ho Chi Minh El Patriota: 60 años de lucha revolucionaria.  La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales.  
 
Ho Chi Minh.  2007. Down with Colonialism.  Introduction by Walden Bello.  London: Verso.

McNamara, Robert S., with Brian VanDeMark.  1996.  In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam.  New York: Random House, Vintage Books.

Prina, Agustín.  2008.  La Guerra de Vietnam.  Mexico: Ocean Sur.


Key words:  Third World, revolution, colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism, democracy, national liberation, sovereignty, self-determination, socialism, Marxism, Leninism, Cuba, Latin America, world-system, world-economy, development, underdevelopment, colonial, neocolonial, blog Third World perspective, Vietnam, Ho Chi  Minh



0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Author: Charles McKelvey

    Retired professor, writer,  and Marxist-Leninist-Fidelist-Chavist revolutionary

    Categories

    All
    American Revolution
    Blog Index
    Bolivia
    Charismatic Leaders
    China
    Critique Of The Left
    Cuban History
    Cuba Today
    Ecuador
    Environment
    French Revolution
    Gay Rights
    Haitian Revolution
    Knowledge
    Latin American History
    Latin American Right
    Latin American Unity
    Marx
    Marxism-Leninism
    Mexican Revolution
    Miscellaneous
    Neocolonialism
    Neoliberalism
    Nicaragua
    North-South Cooperation
    Presidential Elections 2016
    Press
    Public Debate In USA
    Race
    Religion And Revolution
    Revolution
    Russian Revolution
    South-South Cooperation
    Third World
    Trump
    US Ascent
    US Imperialism
    Vanguard
    Venezuela
    Vietnam
    Wallerstein
    Women And Revolution
    World History
    World-System
    World-System Crisis

    Archives

    August 2019
    July 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    December 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    January 2013

    RSS Feed

    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture

More Ads


website by Sierra Creation