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The imperialist lesson of Vietnam

5/30/2014

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     When the United States began its support of the South Vietnamese government, it was at the height of its power.  It was the culminating moment in the spectacular US ascent that began in the eighteenth century, fueled by: an expansionism that aggressively took land from indigenous nations and Mexico, establishing a nation “from sea to shining sea;” lucrative core-peripheral trading relations with the slave societies of the Caribbean and the US South, promoting the accumulation of capital; the conversion of capital into textile manufacturing in the nineteenth century and automobile and steel industries in the twentieth, thereby developing its manufacturing capacity; a migratory wave from Ireland and southern and eastern Europe, providing labor necessary for its geographic and economic expansion; and the development of imperialist policies during the twentieth century, establishing access to the raw materials, labor, and markets of Latin America, Africa and Asia.  During World War II, the United States converted its industries to the production of arms and military equipment.  With the infrastructure of its allies and enemies destroyed, it emerged from the war as the undisputed economic, financial, and military power of the world.  Inasmuch as the United States and its allies (including the Soviet Union) had defeated fascism, the nation understood itself as the leading force in defense of democracy.  In the post-World War II era, it formulated an anti-communist ideology to justify a permanent war economy, and it turned to defend democracy against the alleged expansion tendencies of the Soviet Union and communism.  It was the leader of the Free World.  Its dollars and its soldiers and sailors were everywhere.  Its virtue and its power were apparent for all to see. 

       In this culminating moment of self-confidence, very few in the United States could have predicted that its project to defend democracy against communism in Southeast Asia would encounter such formidable resistance.  The vulnerability of US power and purpose in the face of Vietnamese nationalism, among which communists were the most influential, was a surprise to many.  For some, the difficult and vexing situation of the war in Vietnam gave rise to reflection on the premises upon which the nation’s self-definition as a democratic nation was based, leading to an understanding that the United States, in its relations with the nations and peoples of the world, was an imperialist power and not a defender of democracy, as its leaders and its Cold War ideology proclaimed.  For many of those who could discern it, this was a shocking insight: Vietnamese nationalists were the ones who defended democracy, and not the United States, and this fact explained the tenacity and the determination of the Vietnamese nationalists.  They possessed the most powerful weapon of all: commitment to democracy and social justice.  Such understanding of the imperialist character of U.S. foreign policy, an understanding made possible as a result of questions provoked by the unexpected force of Vietnamese nationalism, is the most important lesson to be learned from the Vietnam War.

      African-Americans were the first to get it.  Since 1917, the African-American movement had exposed the contradictions between US claims to democracy and its actual practices, principally with respect to the structures of segregation and disenfranchisement in the Jim Crow South, but also in regard to US foreign policy concerning Africa.  So for African-Americans, the US negation of democracy in Vietnam was consistent with their own experiences.  By 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., had arrived to understand the imperialist character of U.S. foreign policy.  In 1967, King made three public addresses in opposition to the U.S. war in Vietnam.  His analysis of the war in these addresses, and his writings during the year, show that his understanding had evolved to an anti-colonial global perspective (McKelvey 1994:182-202).  “We are left standing before the world,” he asserted, “glutted by our barbarity.  We are engaged in a war that seeks to turn the clock of history back and perpetuate white colonialism” (King 1967b:6).  King understood the significance of national liberation movements in the Third World, and he lamented that the United States was continually suppressing these global democratic movements.  He maintained that the United States ought to support the world revolution of the poor.  “These are revolutionary times.  All over the globe men are revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression, and out of the wounds of a frail world, new systems of justice and equality are being born.  The shirtless and barefoot people of the land are rising up as never before.  The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light.  We in the West must support these revolutions” (King 1967a:15).

      But African-Americans were not alone.  White middle class students of the 1960s also were socially positioned to grasp the imperialist character of US policy.  Because of the ascent of the United States during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, many white middle class students came from upwardly-mobile families that had experienced the “American Dream,” and as a result, they had fully internalized US ideological pretensions to democracy.  Increasingly aware of the war in Vietnam, they asked, “Who are these people who are challenging our virtue and our power?”  Housed together in universities, they had the possibility to read about the history of Vietnam, or to talk to others who had, through which they learned of the nationalist anti-colonial struggle of the Vietminh and Ho Chi Minh.  To white middle class students, the realization that US policy in Vietnam was anti-democratic and pro-colonial was a shocking discovery, an obscene violation of what they believed the nation to be.  This anti-imperialist tendency in the white student anti-war movement was most clearly expressed by the Weatherman faction of the Students for a Democratic Society, which advocated the taking of power by a vanguard party that would be allied with the anti-colonial and anti-neocolonial governments and movements of the Third World (Sale 1974:364, 560; Jacobs 1997:30-31, 69, 160, 163; Varon 2004: 6-7, 50-51, 123).

      But the key lesson of Vietnam concerning the imperialist character of US foreign policy was soon forgotten.  The African-American movement, at the height of its black power stage, was brought to an end in a wave of repression by federal, state, and local governments (McKelvey 1994:147-51).  And the white student movement disintegrated as a result of its confusions and contradictions.  The Students for a Democratic Society was not able to sustain itself as an organization.  We as a nation still remember Dr. King, but we focus on his “I Have a Dream” speech of 1963, with its emphasis on the inclusion of all regardless of race, rather than his anti-imperialist speeches and writings of 1967.

     Although forgotten in the midst of our present confusions, the imperialist lesson of Vietnam can be recalled.  It is a part of our national cultural heritage of popular struggle, and it can be found in the texts of our charismatic leaders, studied as sacred texts that reveal the dignity of our people and its thirst for social justice.  The anti-imperialist lesson of Vietnam can be retaken by us the people of the United States.

     If we understand the imperialist character of our foreign policy, and if we the people of the United States are committed to democracy, then we have the obligation to form a popular movement and a political party that are anti-imperialist and that seek solidarity with the neocolonized peoples of the world, in search of a more just, democratic, and sustainable world-system.

      The imperialist lesson of Vietnam for the people of the United States has more relevance today than ever.  The peoples of the world are rising up against neocolonialism, in Latin America and in the Islamic World.  Popular governments are seeking a reorientation of structures of international relations: Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Cuba, Argentina, and Iran, for example.  China and Russia are developing cooperative relations with popular and progressive governments.  We can try to use our power to destroy progressive and socialist governments and eclipse the potential for the emergence of a more just and democratic world.  This is current US policy, and it is increasing the possibility that humanity will not be able to survive.  But we have a choice:  let us listen to what the renewed Third World movements are saying; and let us seek to understand their understandings, instead of interpreting their social and political movements from a vantage point rooted merely in our own experiences.  Increasing our understanding in this way, we can become morally and intellectually prepared to work with the colonized, the oppressed, and the poor in the construction of a more just, democratic, and sustainable world-system.

     A US foreign policy of North-South cooperation, proposed in the 1980s by Jesse Jackson, appears at first glance to be inconsistent with the interests of the people of the United States, inasmuch as its standard of living is sustained through the super-exploitation of the Third World.  But the interests of the people of the United States will not be served, in the long run, by alliance with a global elite that resorts to war, military intervention, torture, economic aggression, financial speculation, and ideological manipulation in a desperate effort to preserve its privileges and to sustain an unsustainable neocolonial world-system.  Our interests are best served by alliance with the peoples of the Third World, so that we can gradually come to live in a more just and sustainable world-system, less characterized by violence, conflict, confusion, insecurity, and fear.  During the course of the twentieth century, and especially since 1980, the global elite have exhibited the worst forms of human behavior.  On the other hand, during the course of the twentieth century, and especially since 1995, the peoples of the Third World have formed movements that define, uphold and defend universal human values, and in doing so, they have revealed the essential dignity of our species.  It is with the peoples and movements of the Third World that we the people of the United States can and must cast our lot.


References

Jacobs, Ron.  1997.   The Way the Wind Blew: A History of the Weather Underground.  London and New York: Verso.

King, Martin Luther, Jr. 1967a.  “Beyond Vietnam,” Speech to Clergy and Laity Concerned About the War in Vietnam,” Riverside Church, April 4.  Available in the Martin Luther King, Jr., Papers, Martin Luther King, Jr., Memorial Center for Non-Violent Social Change, Atlanta, Georgia.

__________.  1967b.  “The Casualties of the War in Vietnam.”  Address at the Nation Institute, Los Angeles, California, February 25.  Available in the Martin Luther King, Jr., Papers, Martin Luther King, Jr., Memorial Center for Non-Violent Social Change, Atlanta, Georgia.

McKelvey, Charles.  1994. The African-American Movement:  From Pan-Africanism to the Rainbow Coalition. Bayside, New York: General Hall.

Sale, Kirkpatrick.  1974.  SDS.  New York: Vintage Books, Random House.

Varon, Jeremy.  2004.  Bringing the War Home: The Weather Underground, the Red Army Faction, and Revolutionary Violence in the Sixties and Seventies.  Berkeley: University of California Press.


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, African-American movements, Martin Luther King, SDS, Weatherman, Weather Underground
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The teachings of Ho Chi Minh

5/29/2014

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      Born in 1890 in the French protectorate of Annam, Nguyen Ai Quoc (“Nguyen the Patriot”), the son of a nationalist Confucian scholar, was a Vietnamese nationalist who encountered French socialism and Marxism-Leninism in Paris from 1917 to 1923, and who worked for the Communist International and studied in Moscow in 1923 and 1924.  Beginning in 1924, he was a non-salaried member of the Communist International, assigned to work in Southeast Asia, and he was the principal figure in the founding of the Indochinese Communist Party in Hong Kong in 1930.  The Indochinese Communist Party (ICP), because of its clear identification with national independence and with peasant interests, emerged as the leading force in the Vietnamese nationalist movement.  In 1941, the ICP formed the Vietminh Front (Viet Nam Doc Lap Dong Minh, or League for the Independence of Vietnam), a coalition of nationalist organizations led by Quoc, who began using the name Ho Chi Minh.  The Vietminh took political power in the aftermath of the Japanese occupation and declared the independence of Vietnam on September 2, 1945.  Ho Chi Minh became the President of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, and he continued to lead the nation until his death in 1968 (see various posts on Ho Chi Minh and the Vietnamese struggle for independence beginning 5/2/2014).

      During his career, Ho Chi Minh was a teacher and journalist, professions that he practiced as an integral dimension of his revolutionary mission.  As leader of the Vietnamese nationalist movement and President of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, he was constantly giving discourses and writing essays that were pedagogical in nature.  Affectionately known by the Vietnamese people as “Uncle Ho,” he has left us with a legacy of practical wisdom.

     Ho Chi Minh believed that the world was divided between a democratic and socialist camp, and an imperialist camp.  The democratic camp was headed by the Soviet Union, which had eliminated class exploitation and had socialized production, and it had established a foreign policy of support for the oppressed and colonized nations of the world.  The democratic camp included China, which had adapted the concepts of Lenin to Chinese conditions and had developed a socialist society.  It also included socialist Vietnam and the socialist republics of Eastern Europe.  In addition, the democratic camp included the national liberation movements of Africa and Asia, and it included the progressive and socialist movements in the advanced capitalist nations.  The democratic and socialist camp was seeking to end class exploitation, to develop a system of international relations based on respect for the rights of self-determination and sovereignty of nations, and to develop peace among nations.  In contrast, the imperialist camp, directed by the United States and including the Western European powers, was engaging in aggression against the peoples of the world in pursuit of its imperialist objectives.  Ho was convinced that the democratic camp would prevail (Fall 1967:127, 220-22, 259-61, 291, 296-97, 302, 310, 317-18, 323-27, 332-33, & 349).

     Ho Chi Minh’s view of the Soviet Union is fundamentally different from a Trotskyite perspective that sees the Russian Revolution as having been reversed by a bureaucratic counterrevolution following the death of Lenin (see “Reflections on the Russian Revolution” 1/29/2014).  But Ho’s view of the Soviet Union was based on his experiences.  He had entered the Communist International at a time when it was still under Lenin’s ideological influence.  He was one of many who benefitted from Marxist-Leninist training institutes for the education of leaders from Asia and other oppressed and colonized regions of the world, a process that continued to be developed for decades after the death of Lenin.  Although the Soviet Union in essence abandoned the policy of supporting global revolution and pursued a foreign policy in accordance with its national interests, these national interests led it to provide diplomatic and material support for the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.  From Ho’s vantage point, whatever its limitations may have been, the Soviet Union was definitively on the side of those nations and social movements that were seeking to construct an alternative and better world.  My orientation is to view both Ho’s interpretation and the Trotskyite interpretation as valid, with both identifying important and significant components of the complex reality that was the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

     In the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the socialist republics of Eastern Europe and the failure of various socialist and nationalist projects in Africa and Asia, many would be inclined to view Ho’s reading of the world situation as wrong.  Certainly, Ho appears to not have anticipated the collapse of the Soviet Union and the socialist bloc.  But we should not interpret Ho mechanistically.  He was discerning and naming in his time the forces and movements that represented potential for human emancipation from imperialism and colonial domination.  We should take this approach, and endeavor to identify the movements and forces of our time that are important examples of humanity seeking to liberate itself, and that therefore represent a potential for human emancipation.  These include: the persistence of socialist projects in China, Vietnam, North Korea, and Cuba; the process of change unfolding today in Latin America, led by Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador; the emergence of the Islamic Revolution; the re-vitalization of Russia as an actor in global dynamics; and the interrelation of all of these forces with each other.  At the same time, there has unfolded more clearly a factor that was only beginning to emerge in Ho’s time, namely, the terminal structural crisis of the world-system (“The terminal crisis of the world-system” 3/28/2014).  Let us follow the example of Ho; let us identify and support the human quest for emancipation, continuing to unfold in our time, although in a different historical context and with different characteristics.

      Ho Chi Minh taught that in the stage of monopoly capital, the imperialist powers have a greater capacity to financially penetrate colonies and benefit from their exploitation, thus strengthening the capitalist class in its struggle with the proletarian class in the advanced countries.  Imperialism, therefore, is the common enemy of both the proletarian struggles in the advanced countries and the national liberation struggles in the colonies.  The two types of social movements should support each other in a common struggle (Fall 1967:330-32). This insight has relevance in our time.  Imperialism, the most profoundly anti-democratic force of the modern era, is the common enemy of all humanity.  We must all be allies in a global anti-imperialist movement, even as we recognize that our national struggles take different forms, according to which side of the colonial divide we find ourselves.

     Based on his experiences in leading a national liberation movement that triumphed and that waged successful wars of liberation against French colonialism and US imperialism, Ho Chi Minh formulated the essential components of a successful national liberation struggle. According to Ho, to be successful, a national liberation movement must: establish a broad united front that includes diverse popular sectors and the progressive wing of the national bourgeoisie; address the interests of peasants; form an army of the people; have the material and diplomatic support of other nations and movements; and be led by a vanguard party of the working class (Fall 1967:334, 332, 291).

      We have previously discussed the issue of the proletarian vanguard in the history of Marxism-Leninism, noting that the notion of a revolution led by factory workers was formulated in the particular conditions of Western Europe, and that it ultimately would evolve today to a concept of a revolution forged by multiple popular sectors and led by a vanguard consisting of the most advanced and committed members of these popular sectors.  Ho tended to apply the concept of the working-class vanguard with flexibility, viewing the vanguard in practice as consisting of enlightened and committed intellectuals, peasants, and workers (see “Marx on the revolutionary proletariat” 1/14/2014; “Ho reformulates Lenin” 5/7/2014).

      But apart from the question of who belongs to the vanguard, the central point in Ho’s teaching on the vanguard is the notion that a successful revolution must have a vanguard that leads the people in the revolutionary process.  We in the societies of the North are so oriented toward an abstract notion of equality and a distrust of authoritarianism that we often fail to appreciate the concept of the vanguard.  The concept is based on certain undeniable truths: that social dynamics are complex and difficult to understand; that powerful sectors distort discussion of social dynamics by disseminating ideas that promote their particular interests; that most people are oriented to practical concerns, such as the price of food, rather than toward theoretical reflection; and that, nonetheless, some people are oriented to theoretical reflection, and some of them also are committed to seeking to understand social dynamics, are identified with the interests of the people, and are gifted with a capacity to lead the people.  This is not to say that the vanguard decides; the vanguard leads, but the people decide.  There is a relation between the vanguard and the people, in which the vanguard tries to lead the people in the correct course of action.  When revolutions take off, that is, when they begin to have victories, the vanguard increases its experience and therefore its capacity to discern the correct way, and the people acquire increasing trust and confidence in the vanguard.  But even when successful, it is the people, and not the vanguard, that ultimately decides.  If the vanguard were to lose the capacity to persuade the people, the revolution would die.  Thus, we find here an important teaching of Ho: when revolutions succeed, they are led by a vanguard that understands the national dynamics of domination and revolution, and that understands and has the support of the people

     People are human, and they have their shortcomings, and so do vanguard parties.  Ho was constantly exhorting the members of the vanguard party to work on overcoming their shortcomings.  He gave special emphasis to the need to study and to develop a theoretical understanding that is connected to political practice.  This would help to overcome common defects among party members, such as individualism, bureaucratism, and dogmatism.  He considered dogmatism particularly pernicious, because it negates a fundamental characteristic of Marxism-Leninism, namely, its capacity to adapt and evolve.  For Ho, the adaptation and evolution of Marxism-Leninism reflects the fact that theory and practice are unified.  The unity of theory and practice requires that theoretical concepts be applied in a form that gives consideration to particular conditions, and because of this, there is a natural process of adaptation and evolution in theory.  Accordingly, Ho understood the work of Lenin to be an evolution of the concepts of Marx, as Lenin adapted Marx to the conditions of the Russian Revolution.  And he considered Mao to be a further evolution of Marxism-Leninism, inasmuch as Mao adapted Marxism-Leninism to the conditions of China (Fall 1967: 317, 321, 341).

      This notion of the evolution of Marxism-Leninism is an important teaching of Ho Chi Minh.  We can further apply this insight.  Ho Chi Minh’s practical synthesis of Marxism-Leninism and Vietnamese nationalism was an important moment in the evolution of Marxism-Leninism, as he adapted Marxism-Leninism to the conditions of Vietnam and Indochina.  Fidel Castro’s formulation also was an important evolutionary advance, as he adapted Marxism-Leninism to the conditions of Cuba and Latin America.  And in the revolutions of Latin America today, charismatic leaders like Hugo Chávez, Rafael Correa, and Evo Morales are adapting Marxism-Leninism (and Maoism and Fidelism) to the conditions of Latin America in the twenty-first century.  Intertwined with practice and formulated by charismatic leaders, Marxism-Leninism continues to evolve.

     As we intellectuals and activists participate in the various national manifestations of the global revolution today, we should appreciate that we are participants in an historic process that began in the 1830s in Western Europe, unfolded in the early twentieth century in Russia, and continued to express itself during the course of the twentieth century in China, Indochina, South Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America.  This historic process of popular revolution and sacrifice has lifted up charismatic leaders, gifted with a capacity to lead and to teach us the people.  Among these charismatic leaders was a man of humble character and dignified bearing, the son of a Confucian scholar, and beloved leader of a heroic people, who was known to the world as Ho Chi Minh, which means “He Who Enlightens.”


References

Fall, Bernard B., Ed.  1967.  Ho Chi Minh On Revolution: Selected Writings, 1920-26.  New York: Frederick A. Praeger.


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, Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam
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Cold War ideology & US policy in Vietnam

5/28/2014

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     In reflecting on the US war in Vietnam thirty years later, Robert McNamara, Secretary of Defense from 1961 to 1968, maintains that there were two critical moments in the evolution of US policy in which policymakers made the wrong decision.  The first was in 1964, when the failure of the US strategy of providing military advisors to support the South Vietnamese army had become clear; McNamara, in retrospect, believes that the United States should have disengaged at that point (1996:164).  The second was in 1967, when the failure of the US escalation that began in 1965 had become evident; in retrospect, McNamara states that the United States should have begun to withdraw, either through negotiated settlement or unilateral action (1996:271).  

      McNamara maintains that US policymakers made the wrong decisions in 1964 and 1967, because they looked at Southeast Asia through the lens of the Cold War.  With reference to decisions made in 1964, McNamara writes:
“We saw a world where the Hanoi-supported Pathet Lao continued to push forward in Laos, where Sukarno appeared to be moving Indonesia even closer to the Communist orbit, where Malaysia faced immense pressure from Chinese-supported insurgents, where China had just detonated its first atomic device and continued to trumpet violent revolution, where Khrushchev and his successors in the Kremlin continued to make bellicose statements against the West.  In light of all those threats, we viewed unconditional withdrawal as clearly unacceptable” (1996:157-58).
       We have seen that ideologies are distortions of reality, and that they emerge because they are useful to the elite in the manipulation of the people (see “The ideology of anti-communism” 5/27/2014).  From the period of 1946 to 1990, anti-communism was a powerful ideology in US political culture, for it identified evil enemies, often invisible or at least hard to see, in order to justify foreign wars and domestic repression.  However, McNamara’s account of the decision-making process suggests that anti-communist ideology, in addition to manipulating the people, also was distorting the thinking of the policymakers, limiting their understanding of the situation.  I provide here examples of private and internal communication among key policymakers in the US government.
“[If the United States were to seek neutrality] in Southeast Asia, Laos would almost certainly come under North Vietnamese domination, Cambodia might exhibit a facade of neutrality but would in fact accept Communist Chinese domination, Thailand would become very shaky, and Malaysia, already beset by Indonesia, the same; even Burma would see the developments as a clear sign that the whole of the area now had to accommodate completely to Communism. . . .

In the eyes of the rest of Asia and of key areas threatened by Communism in other areas as well, South Vietnam is both a test of U.S. firmness and specifically a test of U.S. capacity to deal with ‘wars of national liberation.’  Within Asia, there is evidence—for example, from Japan—that U.S. disengagement and the acceptance of Communist domination would have serious effect on confidence.  More broadly, there can be little doubt that any country threatened in the future would have reason to doubt whether we would really see the thing through.  This would apply even in such theoretically remote areas as Latin America” (Robert McNamara, Memorandum to the President, January 7, 1964; quoted in McNamara 1996:106-7). 

 “The loss of South Vietnam and Laos to the Communists would be profoundly damaging to the US position in the Far East, most especially because the US had committed itself persistently, emphatically, and publicly to preventing Communist takeover of the two countries.  Failure here would be damaging to US prestige, and would seriously debase the credibility of US will and capability to contain the spread of communism elsewhere in the area.  Our enemies would be encouraged and there would be an increased tendency among other states to move toward a greater degree of accommodation with the Communists. . . .  Aside from the immediate joy in North Vietnam over achievement of its national goals, the chief effect would be upon Communist China, both in boosting its already remarkable self-confidence and in raising its prestige as a leader of World Communism.  Peiping has already begun to advertise South Vietnam as proof of its thesis that the underdeveloped world is ripe for revolution, that the US is a paper tiger, and that local insurgency can be carried through to victory without undue risk of precipitating a major international war.  The outcome in South Vietnam and Laos would conspicuously support the aggressive tactical contentions of Peiping as contrasted with the more cautious position of the USSR.  To some degree this will tend to encourage and strengthen the more activist revolutionary movements in various parts of the underdeveloped world” (Board of National Estimates of the CIA, Memorandum to CIA Director McCone, June 9, 1964; quoted in McNamara 1996:124-25).

“The present attacks . . . are no isolated event.  They are part and parcel of a continuing Communist drive to conquer South Vietnam . . . and to eventually dominate and conquer other free nations of Southeast Asia” (Secretary of State Dean Rusk, prepared statement before a joint executive session of the Senate Foreign Relations and Armed Services committees, August 6, 1964; quoted in McNamara 1996:136).

“I am convinced that it would be disastrous for the United States and the Free World to permit Southeast Asia to be overrun by the Communist North. . . .  I am also convinced that everything possible should be done to throw back the Hanoi-Viet Cong aggression. . . .  Negotiation as a cover for the abandonment of Southeast Asia to the Communist North cannot be accepted”  (Secretary of State Dean Rusk, Memo to the President, February 23, 1965; quoted in McNamara 1996:173).

“The integrity of the U.S. commitment is the principal pillar of peace throughout the world.  If that commitment becomes unreliable, the communist world would draw conclusions that would lead to our ruin and almost certainly to a catastrophic war.  So long as the South Vietnamese are prepared to fight for themselves, we cannot abandon them without disaster to peace and to our interests throughout the world” (Secretary of State Dean Rusk, Memo to the President, July 1, 1965; quoted in McNamara 1996:195).
     These communications reveal a belief by policymakers that the nations of Southeast Asia and the underdeveloped world were vulnerable to communist domination, and that the United States had a responsibility to prevent a communist takeover.  But in fact, in Third World nations in which communism emerged as a strong political force, communist influence did not occur due to domination by a neighboring communist nation or to foreign subversion.  Communist influence occurred through a process in which nationalist leaders, formed in indigenous anti-colonial nationalist traditions, appropriated concepts of Marxism-Leninism, or perhaps socialist concepts from Western Europe, transforming them in the process, in order to formulate a political philosophy with enormous popular appeal.  These synthesized political philosophies had popular appeal because they: (1) advocated the full independence and sovereignty of the nation; (2) named the national bourgeoisie as collaborators with the colonial/neocolonial powers; (3) promised the empowerment of the people and a social transformation that would protect the social and economic rights of the people; and (4) responded to the patriotic sentiments of the people and its thirst for social justice.  As such, Third World communism and its charismatic leaders were indeed a threat, not to democracy, but to the established neocolonial world-system.

     US policymakers had sufficient understanding to be aware that something was breaking that was a threat to the established world-system.  But confused by the anti-communist discourse, they never really understood the force that they confronted.  They did not understand that the government of South Vietnam was a puppet regime that represented foreign interests, and it therefore could never become a viable force in defense of democracy.  As McNamara later wrote, “We viewed the people and leaders of South Vietnam in terms of our own experience.  We saw in them a thirst for—and a determination to fight for—freedom and democracy.  We totally misjudged the political forces within the country” (1996:322).  And US policymakers never understood “the power of nationalism to motivate a people (in this case, the North Vietnamese and Vietcong) to fight and die for their beliefs and values” (McNamara 1996:322).

     Ideological distortions, then, influence not only the people, but also key policymakers in the centers of power.  What is the corrective to the distortions of ideology?  How can we overcome the pernicious influence of ideology in the political culture?  How can the people arrive at an understanding of the right course of action that is not distorted by the interests of the powerful?  I have maintained in previous posts that the key is cross-horizon encounter, in which we listen to persons with other horizons from other cultures and intellectual and moral traditions, take seriously their understandings, and permit ourselves to become aware of relevant questions that previously had been blocked from our consciousness.  With respect to the structures of domination of the world-system, the key is encounter with the movements that have been organized by the oppressed, by the colonized peoples, by workers, peasants, women, and indigenous populations and ethnic minorities, and with the intellectuals who speak in their defense and in defense of nature.  I have maintained that cross-horizon encounter was behind the insights of Marx, Immanuel Wallerstein, and Ho Chi Minh.  I have argued that taking seriously the understanding of the Third World movements can enable us to formulate an historical-philosophical-social scientific understanding that is universal.  (See the following posts: “What is personal encounter?” 7/25/2013; “What is cross-horizon encounter?” 7/26/2013; “Overcoming the colonial denial” 7/29/2013; “Domination and ideology” 3/31/2014; “Reunified historical social science” 4/1/2014; “Universal philosophical historical social science” 4/2/2014; “We can know the true and the good” 4/3/2104; “How can knowledge be reorganized?” 4/4/2014; “Wallerstein, Marx, and knowledge” 4/14/2014; “Universal human values” 4/16/2014; “An alternative epistemology” 4/17/2014; “Ho encounters French socialism” 5/5/2014; “Ho reformulates Lenin” 5/7/2014).

      If we come to understand the Third World movements through personal encounter, we are led to the conclusion that, from the vantage point of democratic values and universal human values, the Third World socialist and national liberation movements should be supported, not resisted or attacked.  This would take us in an entirely different direction with respect to US foreign policy.  Instead of seeking to maintain US hegemony in an unsustainable neocolonial world-system, placing us in conflict with the peoples of the earth, we would seek to cooperate with the movements and governments of the Third World, working in solidarity to construct a world-system that would be more just, democratic and sustainable and less characterized by wars and military interventions.  A US foreign policy of North-South cooperation, proposed in the 1980s by Jesse Jackson, is in the long run the foreign policy most consistent with the interests of the people of the United States. 


References

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


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, communism, ideology, Cold War
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The ideology of anti-communism

5/27/2014

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      Following World War II, a reconversion of US war industries to a peacetime economy would have been difficult, because of high levels of employment, and because of the integral role of the war industries in the US economy (Arboleya 2008:132-33).  Thus, the United States turned to a permanent war economy, justified by the ideological construction of the Cold War.  

     In 1946, Winston Churchill proclaimed that an “Iron Curtain” had descended over Europe, as the army of the Soviet Union continued to occupy the countries of Eastern Europe, where they had advanced in securing a military victory over Nazi Germany in 1945.  Churchill also was concerned with the rapid growth of communist parties in France and Italy as well as the civil war in Greece.  There thus emerged the idea of the containment of communism, and the Marshall Plan was conceived as a project of economic assistance to help the nations of Western Europe to contain the communist threat (García Oliveras 2010:88-89). 

     What really was and is communism?  Nearly 100 years before Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” speech, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels began The Communist Manifesto with the words, “A spectre is haunting Europe—the spectre of communism.”  Marx and Engels were referring to the movement of workers, artisans, and socialist intellectuals, which they understood to be the foundation for a revolution from capitalism to socialism (see “Marx and the working class” 1/6/2014; “Marx on the revolutionary proletariat” 1/14/2014).  In the age of Marx and Engels, workers, especially factory workers, suffered long hours, inadequate pay, and terrible working conditions.  Communism was a movement that sought to organize workers for the collective self-defense of their rights and dignity.  And communism had a radical idea.  Rather than pressuring the capitalist class to make concessions, the communist intention was for the workers themselves to take power, to take control of the state, so that the state during a transitional socialist stage to communism would promote the interests of the workers and not the interests of the capitalist class.

    The Russian Revolution was the concrete manifestation of this hope.  Adapting Marx’s concepts to the conditions of Russia, which consisted mostly of peasants, Lenin formulated the notion of a revolution of workers and peasants, led by a vanguard of the industrial working class.  During the insurrection, the workers had developed soviets, or workers’ councils, in order to make decisions and organize actions. Lenin thus saw soviets of workers, peasants, and soldiers as the central mechanism for the expression of popular will, and as a more advanced alternative to bourgeois structures of representative democracy.  In addition, Lenin discerned that the advancing conditions of technology and commerce require that the socialist transformation be global in scope; socialism could not be developed in a single country.  Inasmuch as the majority of the peoples of the world were of the colonized and oppressed peoples and nations, Lenin recognized the importance of nationalist revolutions in these countries for the success of the global revolution.  He formulated the concept of the self-determination of peoples and nations, and the Russian Revolution came to the support of the oppressed and colonized nations in their struggles for self-determination (see “The Russian Revolution (February)” 1/22/2014; “The Russian Revolution (October)” 1/23/2014; “A permanent global revolution” 1/27/2014; “Ho reformulates Lenin” 5/7/2014; “Ho synthesizes socialism and nationalism” 5/8/2014).

     That Marxism-Leninism and political activity inspired by it are threats to the capitalist class is self-evident.  In response to this threat, anti-communism emerged as an ideology that functioned to defend the interests of the capitalist class through the discrediting and delegitimation of Marxism-Leninism.  The central ideological maneuver of anti-communism has been to focus on repressive measures in the Soviet Union after Lenin in order to portray communism as totalitarian, and to pretend that the repressive measures that emerged in the Soviet Union in the age of Stalin are characteristic of communism in all of its particular national expressions.  Anti-communism avoids analysis of the factors that led to the emergence of a bureaucratic counterrevolution in Russia, which placed Stalin at the head.  Similarly, it evades examination of the characteristics of the Russian Revolution in the time of Lenin or the characteristics of communist parties and nations in other lands.  It selectively gathers evidence in order to present a distorted image and to justify a political and military campaign against communism. 

      With the emergence of anti-colonial and anti-neocolonial movements in the Third World in the twentieth century, communism evolved to a new stage.  Communism arrived to be a synthesis of, on the one hand, Marxist-Leninist concepts that had been formulated in the context of the workers' revolutions in Western Europe and Russia; and on the other hand, a perspective rooted in the nationalist movements developed in response to European colonial domination of the peoples, nations, and kingdoms of the world.  The most advanced examples of this synthesis were formulated by Ho Chi Minh and Fidel Castro.  In the case of Vietnam, nationalism was formulated originally by the class of Confucian scholars, in which Ho was formed (see “Confucian scholars and nationalism” 4/29/2014; “Who was Ho Chi Minh?” 5/2/2014).  In the case of Cuba, nationalism was rooted in the thought and political leadership of José Martí; and it was further developed by the popular movement of the radical petit bourgeoisie, students, workers, women, and peasants during the era of the neocolonial republic, a movement that shaped the thinking and consciousness of Fidel (as we shall see in future posts).  Both Ho and Fidel forged creative syntheses of their particular nationalism with Marxism-Leninism.  They saw that the colonial domination of the nation and the exploitation of the popular classes were integrally tied, so that the nation could not be liberated without ending class exploitation, and class exploitation could not be eliminated without ending the domination of the nation by the colonial powers.  They led their nations in revolutionary struggles for genuine independence and social transformation, seeking to establish the protection of the social and economic rights of the people.  Both revolutionary projects undertook extensive land reform, necessary for social transformation, but which also became the source of significant opposition, since it represents a significant step in the transfer of power from an agricultural bourgeoisie to peasants, workers, and radical intellectuals.

     China is a unique case.  Since the Chinese empire was never conquered and peripheralized by the Western colonial powers, its revolution emerged in a context different from the Third World in general.  But in a manner similar to Ho Chi Minh and Fidel Castro, Mao Zedong contributed to the evolution of Marxism-Leninism by adapting it to Chinese conditions.  He led a communist movement in which the peasantry, and not the industrial working class, was the leading revolutionary class.  Following the triumph of the revolution in 1949, cooperatives and mass organizations were formed, and the Chinese Revolution adopted a policy of support for national liberation movements in Asia.  Accordingly, China provided arms and military advisors to the Democratic Republic of Vietnam during its wars with France and the United States.

     For Western capitalism, with the triumph of the Chinese Revolution in 1949, the communist threat in Asia became as serious as that of Europe.  In addition to communist governments in Vietnam and China, there also were significant communist movements in India and Indonesia, and a guerrilla war had emerged in Malaya.  With the initiation of the Korean War, US President Harry Truman proclaimed that communism had gone from a strategy of subversion to a strategy of armed invasion and the conquest of independent nations (García Oliveras 2010:89-90).  By 1952, the United States, Great Britain, and France were declaring their commitment to resist “communist intentions of conquest and subversion” as well as Chinese and Russian “aggression” (García Oliveras 2010:93-94).

     Thus, anti-communism evolved to apply the doctrine of the containment of communism, originally developed with respect to the Soviet Union, to Southeast Asia and the Third World.  Accordingly, anti-communist ideology portrayed a world in which newly independent nations were threatened by “communist subversion,” and in which nations that had not fallen to communism could be influenced by the Soviet Union or China and thus could become part of the “communist orbit.”  In accordance with these assumptions, Third World revolutions seeking national liberation from colonial and neocolonial domination were viewed as communist threats to democracy and to the West. 

     In reality, Third World manifestations of communism are not a threat to democracy, if we have an understanding of democracy that is freed from ideological distortions.  In developing popular councils, in seeking to protect the social and economic rights of the people, and in promoting the self-determination and sovereignty of nations, communist movements have developed a more advanced form of democracy.  In seeking to develop political structures that place the decision making process under the control of the popular sectors, communism challenges bourgeois representative democracy with the more profound alternative approach of popular democracy.  In seeking to establish an international system of sovereign nations, international communism threatens not democracy but the neocolonial world-system.  As a threat to the control of the political process by the capitalist class and to the systemic advantages provided to core nations by global neocolonial structures, communism must be attacked by all available means, including ideological means.  Thus, in an Orwellian inversion, the Western powers attacked communism, a more advanced form of democracy, justifying their actions by proclaiming that they are defending democracy from the threat of communism.  

     As an international movement that seeks to transform structures of domination, socialist and radical national liberation movements and governments develop relations with one another.  The anti-communist discourse portrays this as “communist subversion.”  But movements and governments that seek to develop alternative global structures have a right to develop relations with one another, in accordance the principles of the right of nations to sovereignty and the right of persons to freedom of association.  All nations have the right to support social movements in other lands, if they do not interfere in their political affairs.  For example, nations have the right to establish educational institutions for international students and activists, educating them in accordance with their political culture and revolutionary values, as was done by the Soviet Union in the case of Ho Chi Minh.  And nations have the sovereign right to provide military assistance to friendly nations that request it, as was done by the Soviet Union and China with respect to the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.  Such relations of solidarity and mutual support have historically occurred among socialist nations, and it continues to occur today among socialist, progressive and independent nations.   Their forming of such relations, in accordance with their rights, does not justify military aggression and political interventionism by global powers, whose ideological maneuvers convert the virtue of international solidarity into something subversive and sinister. 

      Ideologies are distortions.  They have an element of truth, as they must, if they to be credible.  But in gathering and marshaling evidence, they ignore important facts, thus creating a picture that is a fundamental distortion of reality.  Ideologies are functional: they serve the interests of the powerful and the privileged.  Ideologies function to manipulate the people in order to attain its support and participation in a foreign war of conquest or in a campaign of domestic repression. Ideologies can be used cynically by political elites, who themselves are not taken in by their distortions, but who appreciate their manipulative power.  But more commonly, elites have a strong psychological need to justify in their own consciences the privileges that they possess, so they also tend internalize the ideological distortions.  This occurred with respect to the policymakers who launched the US war in Vietnam, as we will see in the next post.  
References

Arboleya, Jesús.  2008.  La Revolución del Otro Mundo: Un análisis histórico de la Revolución Cubana.  La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales.

García Oliveras, Julio A. 2010.  Ho Chi Minh El Patriota: 60 años de lucha revolucionaria.  La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales.


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, communism, ideology

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The failure of US military escalation

5/26/2014

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     Writing retrospectively in 1995 on the Vietnam War from the vantage point of US policymakers, Robert McNamara, US Secretary of Defense from 1961 to 1968, maintains that from 1961 to 1964 US policy was based on the premise that South Vietnam must establish itself as a viable and stable nation, albeit with US support (McNamara 1996:40, 48-49).  This, however, was a mistaken premise.  South Vietnam could not establish itself as a viable nation, even with US support.  The South Vietnamese government was a puppet government installed by France and the United States to preserve a colonial presence in the face of the nationalist aspirations of a people who had become politically conscience and united.  The government of South Vietnam had effective practical control of only a small part of the nation.  It enjoyed the support of only the landholding class, the Catholic Church, the allies of the French, and assorted scoundrels, who lacked unity of purpose and who were dependent on US military and financial aid.

     During the period 1961-64, US policymakers found that US support of the government of South Vietnam was not leading to the intended results of political stability and government control of its territory.  They increasingly became aware that the government was politically unstable, characterized by internal conflict and corruption.  As a result, they concluded by 1965 that South Vietnam could not fulfill, at least with the existing level of military assistance, US political objectives in South Vietnam, which they defined as the containment of communism (McNamara 1996: 41-42, 111-12, 151, 154, 186).

     As US policymakers reflected on possible courses of action in early 1965, their decision making was shaped by the Cold War ideology, as we will explore further in subsequent posts.  Because of their anti-communist orientation, withdrawal was not an acceptable option.   At the same time, anti-communist ideology prevented them from seeing that the root of the problem was the puppet character of the South Vietnamese regime.  US policymakers thus arrived at an erroneous conclusion: that the South Vietnamese government could be strengthened by increasing US support.  They reasoned that the United States, in limiting its support to military advisors, was signaling a lack of commitment to the government of South Vietnam.  So US policymakers began to believe that US armed intervention with ground troops would increase the credibility and political strength of the government of South Vietnam, thus enabling it to more effectively carry out the pacification program and to assume the role assigned by US policy (McNamara 1996:157-58, 166-67, 170). 

    Thus, from January to July of 1965, US policymakers moved toward a decision to escalate the war, to send a greater number of US troops who would now engage in direct combat, and to launch air attacks against North Vietnam.  Whereas in the beginning of 1965 there were 23,000 US military advisers stationed in Vietnam, US military presence increased to 180,000 troops by the end of 1965 and to 280,000 by the end of 1966.  The South Vietnamese army also was expanded, increasing from 265,000 at the end of 1964 to 750,000 in 1966.  US troops would number 550,000 by 1968 (García Oliveras 2010:127; McNamara 1996:142; 169-206, 321). 

    But the belief of US policymakers that more US military support would politically strengthen the government of South Vietnam was not correct.  In fact, increased US military presence further undermined the legitimacy of the South Vietnamese government, in that it completely de-legitimated its claim to represent an independent nationalist force in Vietnam.  As Julio García Oliveras, chief of the Cuban Military Mission in Indochina from 1966 to 1969, writes: “The introduction of US forces produced a great change in the south.  Before the puppets could speak of nationalism, now it was made evident before the public that it was a question of an occupation by foreign troops” (García Oliveras 2010:134).  “In political terms, the inferiority of the United States was absolute.  The rapid increase of the number of puppet troops from 350,000 in 1961 to a half million in 1964 could not compensate for the intrinsic weakness of a mercenary army that had to combat under foreign command against their own compatriots” (García Oliveras 2010:158). 

     The intrinsic political weakness of the South Vietnamese government and the de-legitimation of its army had consequences:
“Desertions became more and more frequent as the war intensified.  The puppet soldiers surrendered arms and provided information to the forces of liberation, and in many attacks against fortified posts, their complicity aided the patriots extraordinarily.  Gradually nationalist sentiments grew among the troops of Saigon, and an increasing quantity of soldiers went over to the ranks of the liberation army.  In this form, the puppet army was supplying men and arms to the popular forces” (García Oliveras 2010:158-59).
     Moreover, NLF regular troops successfully engaged US troops repeatedly.  From 1965 to 1967, the United States military command launched a number of operations, using a “search-and-destroy” strategy.  But the operations did not reduce the territory under NLF control, and US troops suffered many casualties.  Although the United States had far superior firepower, the NLF decided when, where, and how long to fight.  Often US troops would search for NLF forces but could not find them; later, US troops would be attacked suddenly, in disadvantageous conditions.  In 1965, the nationalist forces relied principally on guerrilla units, but by 1966 the NLF army had evolved into a well-equipped professional army, although it took advantage of the support of local guerrilla units.  Even though the war was evolving toward a confrontation between two regular armies, it continued to be different from a classic war.  It was a war without a front, and the NLF continued to choose when, where, and how long to fight.  Meanwhile, the South Vietnamese army had become unreliable for combat, as a result of military defeats and casualties as well as the growing number of desertions (García Oliveras 2010:165-75; McNamara 1996:238). 

     US casualties reached 100,000 (including dead and wounded) by April 1967, and this became an important factor in public opposition to the war in the United States.  Toward the end of 1967, the US military began to assume a defensive posture, protecting military bases and cities and initiating only small-scale operations.  NLF control of the territory of South Vietnam was sufficiently consolidated to make possible the implementation of an agrarian reform program, in which two and one-half million hectares of land were distributed.   On May 19, 1967, Secretary of Defense McNamara sent a memorandum to President Lyndon Johnson, describing a pessimistic political and military situation from the US point of view.  In an analysis of the war in September 1967, General Van Tieng Dung, Chief of General Staff of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, expressed the view that the war in the South had been won (García Oliveras 2010:208-17; Prina 2008: 86; McNamara 1996:266-67, 321).

     Nonetheless, General William C. Westmoreland, US field commander in Vietnam, and Ellsworth Bunker, US ambassador in Saigon, were optimistic.  Westmoreland maintained that that the NLF was losing the war, for it had suffered losses on such a scale that it was not able to replace them with new combatants.  Meanwhile, oriented to the 1968 elections, high officials in the Johnson administration were making public statements to the effect that the war was nearly won (García Oliveras 2010:223, 230).

     The Tet Offensive, launched on January 30, 1968, exposed this false optimism.  The NLF controlled 80% of the territory of the South, but the South Vietnamese regime controlled the cities.  The Tet offensive was the beginning of a new stage that sought to provoke the fall of the puppet government and the withdrawal of US and other foreign troops.  The offensive was multi-dimensional, including attacks on the cities and urban areas, demonstrating the vulnerability of the South Vietnamese regime in areas under its control; attacks on logistical bases and the destruction of supplies; and the cutting of transportation routes from the cities and bases, seeking to put a definitive end to the program of pacification.  During the Tet Offensive, the six most important cities of the south were attacked: Saigon, Hue, Danang, Dalat, Nha Trang, and Qui Nhon.  The assault on Saigon included dramatic attacks on the strongly-fortified US embassy and the Presidential Palace.  In Hue, the imperial capital, NLF troops occupied and controlled the city for 25 days.  In addition, 40 of 44 provincial capitals and 70 district centers were attacked (García Oliveras 2010:223-29; Ho 2007:211).

     In June 1968, Westmoreland made a request to supplement the 500,000 US troops with an additional 200,000 troops.  But the request was not approved.  The Tet offensive had been the death blow for US presence in Vietnam.  Johnson announced that he would not seek re-election, and that the United States agreed to peace negotiations (García Oliveras 2010:218, 230; McNamara 1996:315; Bello 2007:xxxvi).  

     In addition to the “search and destroy” strategy of US troops during the escalation of 1965-68, the United States also engaged in extensive bombing of North Vietnam.  During the three-year bombing campaign, more bombs were dropped on both North and South Vietnam than on all of Europe during World War II (García Oliveras 2010:189, 194-96; McNamara 1996:174, 243).  García Oliveras, head of the Cuban military mission in Indochina from 1966 to 1969, writes:
“As a result of the barbarous war of destruction carried out by the United States with its air attacks between 1965 and 1968 against the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, the statistics showed the following results: all the cities in the six most important provinces were bombed, three completely destroyed. Because of international considerations, the center of Hanoi was less affected, but the suburbs as well as other cities had to be nearly totally reconstructed.  Twenty-nine provincial centers were bombed (12 destroyed); ninety-six of 116 district centers were bombed, 51 of them destroyed; 4,000 villages and hamlets were bombed, two-thirds of them in the northern region of the country, with 300 destroyed” (García Oliveras 2010:196-97).
     The extensive bombing of North Vietnam required the mobilization of the people of the North into combat and self-defense units and an increase in the size of the popular armed forces.  In order to avoid the bombings, industry was dispersed, the economy was regionalized, and people were relocated from the zones most exposed to air attacks.  In addition to the loss of life, this situation imposed additional obstacles to the development of the economy (Prina 2008:59). 

     US Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara explains that the purpose of the bombing was to break the will of North Vietnam to support the insurgency in the South and to reduce the ability of North Vietnam to supply men and materiel to the South.  However, during the course of the air campaign, McNamara arrived at the conclusion that no amount of bombing of the North, short of total annihilation, which no one proposed, could accomplish these objectives (McNamara 1996:114, 118, 152, 162, 203-4, 210-11, 244-45, 286-89, 291-92).

     McNamara reports that there were doubts concerning the effectiveness of the bombing from the beginning.  However, since no better alternative appeared, most high military and civilian officials in the US government were inclined to initiate air attacks (McNamara 1996:114).  McNamara’s summary of a 1964 CIA report shows the prevailing doubts:
“[The CIA report] echoed the [military] chiefs’ view that North Vietnam’s transportation system and industrial base lay vulnerable to aerial attack.  But the CIA went on to stress that because North Vietnam’s economy was overwhelmingly agricultural and largely decentralized in a myriad of villages that were essentially self-sustaining, bombing would neither create insurmountable economic problems nor inhibit Hanoi’s ability to supply enough men and materiel to continue the guerrilla war in the South.  The CIA also observed that North Vietnam’s leaders saw the collapse of the Saigon government—and victory—as quite near.  Therefore, they would likely endure substantial bombing without changing course” (1996:162).
      As the bombing campaign developed, the results showed its ineffectiveness in obtaining the intended goals.  McNamara writes:
“The air war intensified.  Sorties against North Vietnam grew from 25,000 in 1965 to 79,000 in 1966 to 108,000 in 1967, and the tonnage of bombs dropped rose from 63,000 to 136,000 to 226,000. . . .  In the end, bombing did not achieve its basic goals:  as [the bombing] intensified, US intelligence estimated that infiltration increased from about 35,000 men in 1965 to as many as 90,000 in 1967, while Hanoi’s will to carry on the fight stayed firm” (1996:244).
      Including both the bombing campaign and the ground war in the South, US military intervention in Vietnam left approximately 4 million Vietnamese dead, nearly half of whom were civilians.  Nine thousand villages and towns and millions of productive acres were bombed, along with cities, bridges, dikes, reservoirs, railroads, roads, factories, bridges, hospitals, and schools.  The United States dropped on Vietnam more than 6,300,000 tons of bombs, far in excess of the 2,000,000 tons of bombs dropped by the United States during World War II.  In addition, fields, crops, animals, farms, and persons were sprayed with napalm and other poisonous chemicals (Prina2008:93-98).

      After 1968, the United States government was on the defensive before growing opposition to the war in US and world public opinion.  Richard Nixon, who had assumed the presidency in 1969, announced a policy of “Vietnamization,” in which the United States would gradually withdraw troops but would maintain economic and military support to the government of South Vietnam.  Peace talks were initiated, but they made little progress.  In 1970, the US invaded Laos and Cambodia, seeking to eliminate supply routes to the NLF, and it resumed bombing of North Vietnam.  These military actions provoked a new wave of massive student anti-war demonstrations in the United States.  In reaction to the continuous bombings, North Vietnam launched in 1972 an invasion of a part of South Vietnam.  In response, the US suspended peace talks and increased air attacks.  The city of Hanoi was severely damaged by the bombs, which were more massive than at any previous point.  In 1973, peace talks resumed, with delegations from the United States, the government of South Vietnam, the Provisional Revolutionary Government of South Vietnam (which had been established in 1969 and was under the control of the NLF), and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.  The four parties signed a peace accord that ended the war and mandated total US withdrawal, which was carried out by March of 1973 (Prina 2008:32-35, 137; Bello 2007:xxxvi).

     The final triumph of the Vietnamese revolution occurred as a result of the Great Spring Offensive of 1975.  The North Vietnamese army, commanded by General Tran Van Tra, and the NLF launched an offensive, rapidly taking control of the important cities of the South, including Hue and Saigon.  Officials of the government of South Vietnam resigned, and political power was assumed jointly by a Military Revolutionary Committee of North Vietnam and the Provisional Revolutionary Government of South Vietnam, directed by the NLF.  A constitutional assembly was held, and a unified nation, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, was established, with Hanoi as the capital city.  The name of the city of Saigon was changed to Ho Chi Minh City (Prina 2008:35; García Oliveras 2010:231).

     Thus ended the stage of struggle characterized by thirty years of tragically destructive wars with two colonial powers.  A new stage of struggle would now begin that would have challenges of a different order.  The new stage involved the reconstruction of a war-torn nation on a socialist foundation, a project undertaken as the neocolonial world system was about to enter its neoliberal stage.   Having overcome military aggression through armed struggle, socialist Vietnam and the Vietnamese people, like the rest of the neocolonized nations and peoples of the world, would now have to contend with the economic aggressions of the global powers in the context of a neocolonial world-system.  Socialist Vietnam today is cooperating with other autonomous nations that are seeking to construct a more just and democratic world-system.

References

Bello, Walden.  2007.  “Introduction: Ho Chi Minh: The Communist as Nationalist” in Ho Chi Minh, Down with Colonialism.  London: Verso.

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 War
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Agrarian reform in Vietnam

5/23/2014

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     Agrarian reform is the principal challenge confronted by revolutionary processes.  Land redistribution is necessary for social transformation, because the unequal distribution of land is a basic cause of extreme social inequality in the nation; and because the national agricultural bourgeoisie, seeking to maximize profits in the context of the capitalist world-economy, orients agricultural production toward export for the world market, which is not necessarily beneficial to the economic development of the nation.  Therefore, the protection of the social and economic rights of the people, and the promotion of the autonomous development and sovereignty of the nation, require that land be taken from the agricultural bourgeoisie and redistributed to individual peasant households, to peasant cooperatives, or to state enterprises in the context of a political process controlled by structures of popular power. 

     But agrarian reform necessarily will provoke intense opposition from the agricultural bourgeoisie, since agrarian reform is inimical to its interests.  In many peripheralized nations, the agricultural bourgeoisie is the single most powerful sector.  And it has powerful allies in the world-economy, including transnational corporations that also are large-scale landholders, or that purchase the agricultural exports, or that find in the underdeveloped nation a market for its surplus manufactured goods. Moreover, the political leaders of core nations, who see their role as the protection of the interests of the corporations of the nation, will treat any nation that seeks autonomous development as a dangerous example.  Thus, agrarian reform measures, if they are not limited in nature, provoke opposition from powerful actors in the nation and the world, who will use all means at their disposal to discredit and undermine the revolutionary process.  In many revolutionary processes, opposition to agrarian reform and accusations of denials of rights of the agricultural bourgeoisie became the rallying cry of the counterrevolution.  As we observe revolutionary processes, we should be aware that conflict between revolution and counterrevolution over agrarian reform is a natural and unavoidable tendency.

        Since the Vietnamese nationalist revolution unfolded in the context of French colonialism and French military efforts to re-conquer its possessions in Indochina, it made a distinction between patriotic and collaborationist landholders, and it promised that patriotic landholders would be able to keep their land.  This distinction was necessary in order to obtain the support of landholders in the nationalist struggle, but it was a distinction difficult to implement in practice.  In general, one would expect a natural tendency for landlords to present themselves during the agrarian reform as having been patriotic during the anti-colonial struggle, and an equally natural tendency for peasant tenants to denounce unpatriotic landlords pretending to be patriotic.  In the case of the Vietnamese agrarian reform, there emerged conflict concerning the extent to which patriotic landlords had been unjustly treated.

     In 1946, the constitutionally-established National Assembly of the newly declared Democratic Republic of Vietnam approved a limited agrarian reform program, consistent with the agrarian reform proposal of the Indochinese Communist Party in 1930.  It confiscated land belonging to French colonialists and Vietnamese collaborators and distributed it to peasants; and it distributed common lands.  With respect to land not appropriated, there was rent reduction from 50% or more to 20%.  The great majority of land was not redistributed.  During this stage, agrarian reform did not generate conflict, but it also had limited impact on the social conditions of the peasantry (Ho 2007:165; Fall 1967:224, 265; Duiker 2000:444; Brocheux 2007:153-54).  

     Even though the war of national liberation was still raging in 1953 and the government of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam had not yet returned to Hanoi, the government controlled the countryside, and it was able to initiate a more extensive agrarian reform program than that of 1946.  Ho presented the land reform proposal in a report to the Third Session of the National Assembly on December 1, 1953. Describing the revolution as a “people’s democratic revolution against aggressive imperialism and its prop, feudalism,” he maintained that the liberation of peasants from feudalism is necessary in order to expand and deepen peasant support and obtain the military victory over imperialism.  He expressed the belief that the agrarian reform would serve as a stimulus and an encouragement to peasants in the free zones and well as those in the areas under French control, thus strengthening the worker-peasant alliance and the support of peasants for the revolution.  He noted that the government beginning in 1946 took significant steps to improve the conditions of peasants, but the peasants still do not have adequate land:  the landlord class is less than five percent of the population, yet they and the colonialists occupy seventy percent of arable land; whereas the peasants, who comprise ninety percent of the population, own thirty percent of arable land.  Land reform is necessary, he maintained, to liberate the productive forces in the countryside and overcome poverty and backwardness. The new agrarian reform was to confiscate all large landholdings, and the landlords would be permitted to retain only land necessary for their personal livelihood.  Patriotic landlords would be compensated through government bonds, but others would not be compensated.  Tribunals were to be established, with authority to punish landlords who had engaged in criminal behavior with impunity in the past.  Ho noted that specific decisions were to be made at the local village level, taking into account the political attitudes of individual landlords, and giving emphasis to those peasants most in need of land (Ho 2007:128-33).  

     The Cuban scholar Julio García Oliveras, who served as head of the Cuban military mission in Indochina from 1966 to 1969, maintains that the Agrarian Reform Law approved by the National Assembly on December 1, 1953, was enthusiastically received by the peasants and stimulated mass activity among the peasantry, although it also stimulated greater counterrevolutionary activity among the landlords, which the colonial power attempted to exploit (García Oliveras 2010:83).  In contrast, US historian William Duiker and French historian Pierre Brocheux have criticized the Vietnamese agrarian reform.  They maintain that popular tribunals were established throughout the countryside without protections of due process; that many small landholders were wrongly classified as large landholders; that the support of the Vietminh by patriotic landholders was ignored; and that many were wrongly punished for crimes, with the punishments including thousands of executions.  They also note Ho Chi Minh repeatedly criticized the excesses, and there emerged in 1956 a campaign of rectification of errors, during which landlords that had been wrongly imprisoned were released (Duiker 2000: 444-46, 474-88; Brocheux 2007:152-60).

      Both Duiker and Brocheux concede, however, that the land reform program essentially accomplished its goals.  Duiker writes, “In some respects, the land reform program could be viewed as a success by the regime.  More than two million acres (800,000 hectares) of land were distributed to over two million farm families, a total of well over half the total number of agricultural workers in the DRV.  The historic domination by the landed gentry at the village level was broken and a new leadership composed of poor and middle-level peasants emerged” (2000:488).  Brocheux maintains that the land reform “took effect progressively from 1953 to 1961, and gradually spread from the liberated zones of North Vietnam to the rest of the territory after the retreat of French troops.  In the end, the goal of rebalancing the land base and depolarizing society in order to bring about equality and freedom for the greatest number among the rural masses was essentially met.  It was a giant step toward resolving the problems within an agrarian system bequeathed by the French colonial regime” (2007:154).

     Duiker believes that the source of the errors and excesses in the land reform was the influence of the Chinese model and Chinese advisors, as a result of which leaders were encouraging poor peasants to speak out against tyrannical behavior of landlords (2000:444-45, 475-76).  My own inclination, however, is to think that the problem is rooted in the intrinsic nature of agrarian reform.  How do you empower those who have been subjugated, without unleashing a popular wrath for vengeance, which previously had been constrained by structures of social control?  Once the thirst for popular vengeance is unleashed, how do you control it?  Will not those who had been in power previously, and who had justified the indignities imposed on the people, feel frightened by the inversion of power, and will they not believe that the decisions now taken by popular power are unjust?  Can such class conflict be avoided, if structural social inequalities are to be transformed?  As Duiker acknowledges, “Undoubtedly, some of the violence associated with the land reform campaign was a natural and spontaneous consequence of the class anger emanating from the rice fields.  As such, it was a familiar, albeit tragic, by-product of revolution” (2000:477).

     Regardless of what decisions we may make with respect to the agrarian reform, we must not lose sight of fundamentals.  There is basic moral difference between a society whose structures are rooted in conquest, colonial domination, and the dispossession of the people of the land; and a society that seeks to negate the colonial process, restore the autonomy of the nation, and establish popular control over the land and other resources of the nation.


References

Brocheux, Pierre.  2007.  Ho Chi Minh: A Biography.  Translated by Claire Duiker.  Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.

Duiker, William J.  2000.  Ho Chi Minh.  New York:  Hyperion.

Fall, Bernard B., Ed.  1967.  Ho Chi Minh On Revolution: Selected Writings, 1920-26.  New York: Frederick A. Praeger.

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.


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, agrarian reform
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Construction of socialism in the North

5/22/2014

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     In the North, the Geneva Accords meant the withdrawal of French troops from the cities of the northern half of Vietnam and international recognition of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.  From 1955 to 1957, the emphasis of the government of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam was on the reconstruction of an economy whose infrastructure was severely damaged by the French Indochina War of 1946 to 1954. At the same time, the first steps toward the construction of a socialist society were undertaken in 1954, and they were intensified and expanded beginning in 1958.  A land redistribution program of 1954-55 brought agrarian reform to a stage beyond the limited reform of 1946, as we will discuss in the next post.  By December 1957, 40% of manufacturing and retail trade and nearly half of transportation were under collective or state ownership.  Lower-level agricultural cooperatives were formed, encompassing 43.9 percent of peasant households by 1959.  Fifty-three percent of craftsmen joined cooperatives by 1959.  State factories increased from 15 in 1955 to 107 in 1959 (Duiker 2000:473-81, 503-8, 521-23; Prina 2008: 70-71; Ho 2007:166-73, 181-84). 

      The socialist project of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam registered significant gains.  Agricultural production increased from 3.6 million tons in 1955 to 5.2 million tons in 1959.  Illiteracy was eliminated.  School enrollment increased from 540,000 in all of Indochina in 1939 to 1,522,200 in North Vietnam alone in 1959-60.  University enrollment increased from 582 in Indochina in 1939 to 8,518 in North Vietnam in 1959-60.  The number of hospitals in North and Central Vietnam in 1939 increased from 54 in 1939 to 138 in North Vietnam alone in 1959; village health centers, from 138 to 1,500; doctors, from 86 to 292; and nurses, from 968 to 6,020.  By 1959, North Vietnam had 169,000 public health personnel working in the countryside (Ho 2007:166, 182, 184).

     Speaking to the National Assembly on December 18, 1959, Ho reported that class dynamics were developing favorably.  The landlord class had been dislodged from power, and the working class was expanding in size and leadership capacity.  Many peasants were forming cooperatives, and the worker-peasant alliance was strengthened.  Revolutionary intellectuals were contributing to socialist construction, and for the most part the national bourgeoisie accepted socialist transformation (Ho 2007:166, 183-84).  
                                                        
     In his December 18, 1959 address, Ho reported on a draft of an amended Constitution.  He noted that amendments to the Constitution were required, inasmuch as the Vietnamese Revolution was passing to a new stage.  He described the one and one-half year process in the development of the Constitution.  In July 1958, the first draft of the amended Constitution was presented for discussion by high- and middle-level leaders in the army, mass organizations, administrative departments, and the Party.  Following changes introduced through this discussion, the draft was distributed for the entire people to discuss.  For a four-month period beginning on April 1, 1959, the draft was discussed in government offices, factories, schools, and other organizations of the people, in the cities, towns, and countryside.  This popular consultation led to further changes in the draft.  The Committee for the Amendment of the Constitution also received many letters expressing the views of many people and organizations, including Vietnamese nationals residing abroad.  The Committee was now presenting the draft of the amended Constitution to the National Assembly for consideration and approval (Ho 2007:162, 175-76).

     In his report, Ho summarized the important characteristics of the draft of the amended Constitution.  The amended Constitution recognizes the Vietnamese state as “a people’s democratic state based on the worker-peasant alliance and led by the working class” (quoted in Ho 2007:168). The Constitution affirms that “The Democratic Republic of Vietnam will advance step by step from people’s democracy to socialism by developing and transforming the national economy along socialist lines, transforming its backward economy into a socialist economy with modern industry and agriculture and advanced science and technology”  (quoted in Ho 2007:170).  Thus, the state will seek to eliminate non-socialist forms of property, characterized by individual ownership by workers and ownership of means of production by the national bourgeoisie.  The state will seek to expand socialist forms of ownership, in the form of state ownership, producer’s cooperatives in agriculture and craft industry, and joint ventures with national bourgeois merchants and industrialists.  The formation of cooperatives as well as joint ventures is done on a voluntary basis.  The state encourages movement in this direction, but it does not mandate it (Ho 2007:170-71). The amended Constitution affirms that the organizing principle is democratic centralism, allowing for the fullest development of democratic participation, while at the same time following the principle of centralism in order to enable the leadership of the people in the construction of socialism (Ho 2007:173).  Given that Vietnam is a multinational country, the Constitution recognizes autonomous regions (Ho 2007:169).  The amended Constitution affirms citizens’ rights to work, study, freedom of opinion, freedom of religious belief, and gender equality (Ho 2007:173-74). 

     Prina describes the Vietnamese conception of socialism as one that gives emphasis to the formation of a new person through education and ideological work, which is done by members of the party, who by their example cultivate revolutionary virtues.  Through this process, the peasants can come to understand the advantages of cooperative work over individual work and the importance of industry for the nation as a whole.  The formation of the new person is attained without authoritarianism and through educational and ideological work. It is central to socialist transformation, because the human being is the foundation of socialist reconstruction.  The formation of the new person also includes a transformation of the daily life in the villages, so that customs of gender oppression can be eliminated and a society characterized by the equality of men and women can be developed (Prina 2008:70-78).

      In the development of the socialist project of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, we can observe the important components of socialism: the development of new constitutions through a process of active popular participation; the development of structures of popular political participation, involving local citizens councils that elect delegates to provincial and national assemblies, which are alternatives to bourgeois representative democracy; agrarian reform, taking land from an agricultural capitalist class that, acting in alliance with the core bourgeoisie, orients production toward a peripheral role in the world economy; the development of state ownership, cooperatives, and joint ventures, while at the same time leaving space for small-scale private ownership or even large-scale private ownership that is consistent with a national development plan; decisive state action to protect the social and economic rights of the people in such areas as education and health care; the development of a new person that understands and is committed to the revolutionary and socialist transformation; the protection of the rights of ethnic minorities; and the promotion of gender equality.  And we can see that socialism is a process that unfolds step-by-step, with each step taken insofar as national and international political conditions permit.  As we observe the various popular revolutions of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, we find that these characteristics, in varying degrees and in one form or another, are present.


References

Duiker, William J.  2000.  Ho Chi Minh.  New York:  Hyperion.

Ho Chi Minh.  2007.  Down with Colonialism.  Introduction by Walden Bello.  London: Verso.

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, Democratic Republic of Vietnam, North Vietnam
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The National Liberation Front (NLF)

5/21/2014

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     The collapse of the Geneva project for the reunification of the country through elections, the repressiveness and anti-popular policy of the Diem government, and increasing US military aid (see “South Vietnam” 5/20/2014) led to the reemergence of the armed struggle in the South.  

     Because of the repression by the Diem regime, there emerged by 1957 the widespread view among the masses and the Party leaders of the South that the continuation of the armed struggle would be necessary.  Clandestine networks were formed.  Consciousness-raising activities among the people were carried out.  Armed self-defense units were organized (García Oliveras 2010:140-44; Duiker 2000:516). 

     During the campaign of repression against communists by the Diem regime, 120,000 civil leaders and combatants from the South had gone to the North in order to regroup under the protection of the North and to prepare for the continuation of the armed struggle, in the event that the general elections unifying the country were not held.  In 1959, the Vietnamese Workers’ Party endorsed a political-military struggle for the liberation of South Vietnam.  It called for the creation of units of leaders and combatants, all natives of the South, to be sent to the South, supplied with arms and equipment.  In accordance with this recommendation of the Party, the government of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam created in May of 1959 the Office of Studies of Military Aid to the South, under the authority of the General Chief of Staff.  As a result, 500 men, all natives of the South, supplied with 7000 arms, were transported to the South (García Oliveras 2010:140-41, 144-45; Duiker 2000:516-17). 

     In 1960, the armed struggle was renewed.  Armed guerrilla groups ambushed and annihilated South Vietnamese Army units, with women and children helping with information and supplies.  The first uprising occurred in the Ben Tre province, a rich province of the Mekong Delta with 600,000 inhabitants.  The week-long uprising resulted in the destruction or surrender of 20 posts of the South Vietnamese Army, and structures of popular power were developed in many localities.  A second uprising in Ben Tre involved an attack on the provincial capital in which 60,000 people participated.  Similar uprisings occurred throughout 1960 in many other localities in the South (García Oliveras 2010: 146-48; Duiker 2000:518-19). 

     By the end of 1960, half the villages and towns of the South were under popular administration.  In order to organize this administration, the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam (NLF) was created.  The NLF was established on December 20, 1960 at a conference of representatives of various progressive social sectors of the South. The conference was organized by the Vietnamese Workers’ Party, and it was held in a collection of small buildings in a forested area in South Vietnam near the Cambodian border.  The conference created committees at the level of the town, district, and province, and it named Nguyen Hu Tho, a lawyer of great prestige in the South, as president.  Like the Vietminh (see “The Vietminh and the taking of power” 5/13/2014), the National Liberation Front consisted of progressive groups representing various social classes, political parties, and religions.  It proposed universal suffrage, improvement in the standard of living of the population, greater access to education and health care, an independent economy that responds to national interests, and agrarian reform.  It proposed the elimination of all foreign influence and the establishment of a democratic, national coalition government.  It advocated the overthrow of the Diem regime by means of armed struggle.  It directed the formation of popular armed forces, which enabled the peasants to defend themselves and their villages against the government army, using weapons captured from government soldiers (García Oliveras 2010:117, 149; Prina 2008: 24, 54-56, 85, 135; Duiker 2000:525-26).

      In addition, in order to manage military operations, the Vietnamese Workers’ Party re-established the Central Office for South Vietnam, which had operated in the South during the war of national independence of 1946-54 and had been closed following the Geneva Conference of 1954.  In February 1961, paramilitary units in the Mekong Delta and the Central Highlands were merged to form the People’s Liberation Armed Forces (PLAF), which would function as the military arm of the NLF.  The PLAF would be called the “Viet Cong” by the Saigon regime, and so it would be known to the world. Benefitting from hostility to the Diem regime as well as from the return of southern militants from the North, the PLAF grew to 15,000 troops by the end of 1961.  It had carved out a liberated base area in the Central Highlands, and it had established roots in villages and towns throughout South Vietnam (Duiker 2000:526-28). 

     Thus, we see that important dynamics emerged during 1959-60: mass sentiment in support of rebellion; the emergence of popular organizations in the South in preparation for a renewal of armed struggle; a call by the Party, a nationwide organization with most of its leaders in the North, for a retaking of the armed struggle in the South; a decision by the government in the North to provide support for the struggle in the South, sending trained cadres from the South and supplies; popular uprising and the taking of power in localities in the South; and the organization by the Party of political and military structures, giving organization and unity to the spontaneous movement of the people, while including progressive sectors of various political currents.  The struggle thus possessed the necessary combination of spontaneous popular movement, providing energy; and leadership by a vanguard party, providing direction.  We must keep in mind that the territory of South Vietnam was part of the pre-colonial empire of Vietnam.  From the Vietnamese nationalist point of view, North and South Vietnam were not separate nations; all of Vietnam was seen as one nation and one people.  In accordance with this nationalist perspective, the people and the Party were retaking the armed struggle in pursuit of the goals of national reunification and national sovereignty, a collective decision taken in light of the evident failure of the Geneva Accords and the violation of the accords by the governments of South Vietnam and the United States.

      Even though the NLF included various political and social sectors of the South, and even though it was supported by the majority of the people in the South, the program of the NLF was unacceptable to the United States, because it was incompatible with the neocolonial world-system.  It called for agrarian reform, which, if implemented in a radical rather than limited form, would dislodge the landowning bourgeoisie and break the peripheral role of the nation in the world-economy.  And it envisioned national unity, which, given prevailing political tendencies in the North, would strengthen the political dynamics in favor of radical agrarian reform and true independence.

     During the period of 1961 to 1964, in response to the rapid growth of the PLAF and the success of the nationalist guerrilla struggle, the United States began to utilize Special Forces known as the Green Berets, which were heterodox military forces that had been trained in counter-guerrilla activities.  The Special Forces trained South Vietnamese troops, and they took direct part in combat in coordination with South Vietnamese troops.   Operating principally in the Mekong Delta and in a zone of ethnic minorities near the Laotian frontier, the Special Forces carried out a pacification program, involving forced relocation of the people to “strategic hamlets,” which were enclosed by bamboo fences of 2.5 meters in height, and where the people were required to present identification cards and could leave and enter only at fixed hours.  Some have described the strategic hamlets as concentration camps, whereas others have called them self-defense communities.  They were hampered by inefficiency, and US Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara was persistently frustrated by the slow rate in which they were established.  Ultimately, most were infiltrated or dismantled by the PLAF (García Oliveras 2010: 116, 117, 143-44, 149-55; Duiker 509, 518, 528-31; McNamara 1996). 

     US strategy included clandestine activities in North Vietnam. Sabotage directed against the transportation, electrical, and water systems began in July 1954, several weeks prior to the signing of the Geneva Accords.  Clandestine activities directed against the Democratic Republic of Vietnam were expanded during the period of 1961-63.  These activities were carried out by principally by South Vietnamese operatives, following plans developed by the US Joint Chiefs of Staff and authorized by the President.  From the point of view of the Kennedy administration, clandestine activities had the advantage of communicating to North Vietnam the seriousness of US commitment and intentions, without having to submit them to public debate in the United States (García Oliveras 2010:139-40, 190-92; McNamara 1996:103-5, 129-30).

     As a result of widespread popular discontent, the failure of the pacification program, and equivocating US support for Diem, there was a coup d’état, to some extent encouraged by the United States, that deposed and murdered Diem in 1963.  But this worsened the political situation.  For the next two years there was a succession of 10 governments, until there was established in 1965 the National Directory Council, headed jointly by Nguyen Van Thieu and Nguyen Cao Ky (Prina 2008: 28; García Oliveras 2010:119-22; McNamara 1996:52-61, 75-85).

     Neither the Special Forces in the South, nor the clandestine activities in the North, nor changes in the government of South Vietnam could turn the tide of the political-military popular struggle directed by the NLF.  By 1964, the NLF controlled 80% of the territory of South Vietnam, dismantling strategic hamlets in areas under its control.  And the NLF had the support of the great majority of the population of the South.  By 1965, it was clear that the US war carried out by US Special Forces in cooperation with the South Vietnamese army had been lost, a fact that was confirmed thirty years later by Robert McNamara (García Oliveras 2010:155-63; Prina 2008: 54-56, 135; McNamara 1996:166, 187).

      Given the failure of the US war, and given the refusal of US leaders to accept what they understood as the fall of South Vietnam and possibly Southeast Asia to communism, the stage was sent for US escalation, involving the commitment of US ground troops and the bombing of the North Vietnam.  Meanwhile, in the North, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam was seeking to construct socialism.  We continue this unfolding story in subsequent posts.


References

Duiker, William J.  2000.  Ho Chi Minh.  New York:  Hyperion.

García Oliveras, Julio A. 2010.  Ho Chi Minh El Patriota: 60 años de lucha revolucionaria.  La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales.

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, Ngo Dinh Diem, Republic of Vietnam, South Vietnam, strategic hamlets, Special Forces, Green Berets
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South Vietnam

5/20/2014

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     Following World War II, the United States turned to a permanent war economy, justified by the ideological construction of the Cold War.  The Cold War ideology defined communism in the Soviet Union, China, and Eastern Europe as totalitarianism and as expansionist threats to Western democracy, and it interpreted radical Third World national liberation movements as manifestations of communist subversion and expansionism.  We will discuss the anti-communist ideology and its central role in the shaping of US policy in Indochina in subsequent posts.

     Following the Cold War dictates of the containment of the spread of communism, the United States (and Great Britain) recognized the government of former emperor Bao Dai in 1949, when the French established it as an alternative to the government of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, led by the Indochinese Communist Party (see “Indochinese Communist Party” 5/12/2014; “The Vietminh and the taking of power” 5/13/2014; “Vietnam declares independence” 5/14/2014).  Direct US economic aid to the Bao Dai government, including the sending of military and civilian advisors, began in 1951. By 1953, US aid to France covered 60% of the costs of the French Indochina War; by 1954, US aid reached 80% of the war costs.  US generals participated directly in the development of war strategies, and high US officials, including Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and Vice President Richard Nixon, traveled to Indochina (García Oliveras 2010:80, 91-92). 

     Prior to the Geneva Accords of 1954, however, the US government was reluctant to involve itself extensively in the conflict.  But in 1955, the United States became more actively involved, placing its hopes on Ngo Dinh Diem, who had been named Prime Minister by Bao Dai in 1954.  Diem had travelled to the United States from 1950 to 1953, presenting himself as an independent nationalist alternative to the communists led by Ho Chi Minh.  After the Geneva Accords, Diem and the United States began to define South Vietnam as a separate and permanent government, and they ignored the Geneva proposal for national elections unifying the northern and southern zones of Vietnam.   In November 1954, for example, General J. Lawton Collins, sent to Indochina by President Eisenhower, declared that the United States would give all aid possible to the government of Diem, asserting that it is “the legal government of Vietnam.”  In order to try to give some legitimacy to the Diem government, elections of questionable validity were held, with less than 15% of the people participating (Prina 2008:21-23; García Oliveras 2010:105-7; Ho 2007:139-40; Duiker 2000:468-69).

      During the Diem regime, popular demonstrations and protests emerged.  They represented a wide variety of political organizations and religious groups, and they were harshly repressed (Prina 2008:24; García Oliveras 2010:118). 

     The government of Diem was a repressive regime (García Oliveras 2010:155).   US historian William Duiker writes:
“That summer [1955], Diem launched a ‘denounce the Communists’ campaign to destroy the remnants of the Vietminh movement throughout the South.  Thousands were arrested on suspicion of taking part in subversive activities.  Some were sent to concentration camps—or incarcerated in the infamous ‘tiger cages’ once used by the French colonial regime on Poulo Condore Island—while others were executed” (2000:472).

“Between 1957 and 1959, more than two thousand suspected Communists were executed, often by guillotine after being convicted by roving tribunals that circulated throughout rural regions of the RVN [Republic of Vietnam, or South Vietnam]; thousands more who were suspected of sympathy with the revolutionary cause were arrested and placed in prison” (2000:510).
     The Diem government reversed agrarian reforms that had been implemented in territory previously controlled by the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and subsequently placed under the control of the Bao Dai government by the Geneva Accords.  The Democratic Republic of Vietnam had distributed land to many peasants, first through the limited agrarian reform program of 1946, and then through the more extensive agrarian reform program of 1954 (as we will discuss in a subsequent post).  During the agrarian reform, many landlords fled to the cities, living under the protection of the French occupation forces.  However, after the Geneva Accords and with the support of the Diem government, many landlords south of the seventeenth parallel returned to their villages and reestablished political and administrative control, re-taking possession of the land (García Oliveras 2010:115).

     In relation to the issue of land distribution in South Vietnam, Duiker writes:
“Perhaps Diem’s worst failing was his inability to comprehend the needs of the peasants, who made up more than 80 percent of the population of the RVN.  At U.S. urging, the Saigon regime launched a land reform program of its own to rectify the vast inequalities in the distribution of land (about 1 percent of the population owned half the cultivated acreage in the country and poor peasants often paid up to one third of their annual harvest in rent to absentee landlords).  Wealthy landholders or the affluent bourgeoisie in the large cities, who could be expected to oppose a land reform program as inimical to their own interests, were among the government’s most fervent supporters.  As a consequence, the land reform legislation was written with loopholes large enough to make it easy for landlords to evade its provisions, and after several years of operation, only about 10 percent of eligible tenant farmers had received any land.  In many instances, families living in previously Vietminh-held areas were now forced to return land they had received during the Franco-Vietminh conflict to its previous owners, often at gunpoint.  For them, as for many of their compatriots throughout the country, the Diem regime represented little improvement over the colonial era.  By the end of the 1950s, much of the countryside in South Vietnam was increasingly receptive to the demand for radical change” (2000:511).
     By 1956, US aid to South Vietnam reached 250 million dollars, including more than 21,000 tons of arms.  A South Vietnamese army was rapidly trained and equipped, reaching 150,000 troops by 1956 as well as thousands of security guards, militias, and police stationed in urban and rural areas throughout the territory.  Following 1956, US aid continued to increase.  The number of shipments of arms rose from 82 in 1956 to 187 in 1959.  A highway network and ports were constructed.  By the end of 1957, South Vietnam had 46 airports (García Oliveras 2010: 141-43).

     In this context of a repressive government in alliance with the landholding class and supported by the United States, an armed struggle emerged in the South, as we will discuss in the next post.


References

Duiker, William J.  2000.  Ho Chi Minh.  New York:  Hyperion.

García Oliveras, Julio A. 2010.  Ho Chi Minh El Patriota: 60 años de lucha revolucionaria.  La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales.

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, Bao Dai, Ngo Dinh Diem, Republic of Vietnam, South Vietnam
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The Geneva Conference of 1954

5/19/2014

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     The Geneva Conference was convened on April 26, 1954, and peace talks on Indochina began on May 7, the day following the French surrender at Dien Bien Phu (see “The French-Indochinese War” 5/16/2014).  Participating in the peace talks were delegations from France, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, the United States, Great Britain, China, and the Soviet Union as well as the governments of Bao Dai and the French Indochinese associated states of Laos and Cambodia.  The Democratic Republic of Vietnam (see “Vietnam declares independence” 5/14/2014) demanded full sovereignty for Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia; the withdrawal of French troops from Indochina; and the holding of free elections in the newly independent nations.  But the Western powers were insistent on the division of Vietnam into two temporary zones, one under the authority of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and the other under the control of the Bao Dai government.  The division of Vietnam was supported by the Soviet Union and China, who wanted to reach a settlement that would avoid direct US military intervention.  Zhou Enlai, the head of the Chinese delegation, persuaded Ho Chi Minh to accept the division.  Ho understood it to be a temporary division in preparation for nationwide elections that would unify the country.  On July 21, the “Agreement on the Cessation of Hostilities in Vietnam” was signed by France and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.  It defined the seventeenth parallel as the line of demarcation between the two zones, and it prohibited the establishment of new military bases in the country (García Oliveras 2010:100-1; Duiker 2000:452, 455-59; Ho 2007:134-37).

     Significant political questions were formulated and incorporated in a separate document, the “Final Declaration of the Conference of Geneva.”  The Declaration recognized the total independence of Cambodia and Laos in the French Union.  It also recognized the independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, located north of the seventeenth parallel, and of the government of the emperor Bao Dai, located south of the parallel.  It recognized that the final solution of Vietnam remained undefined, pending general elections to be held in July 1956 that would reunify the country, and it mandated consultations between the two zones for implementing the elections.  The Final Declaration was presented on July 21, and all expressed support, but US Undersecretary of State Bedell Smith rose to say that his government could not sign the agreement in its present form.  In the end, none of the participants signed the Final Declaration that had emerged through the negotiations, so that the 1956 elections in Vietnam were simply a proposed project without obligatory commitment by any government  (García Oliveras 2010:12-13, 102-4; Duiker 2000:459). 

     All parties agreed that Ho Chi Minh would win overwhelmingly the proposed elections, as US President Dwight Eisenhower later confirmed in his memoirs, and this factor was driving US opposition to the Final Declaration.  A few days following the conference, US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles announced that the United States would promote the development of non-communist states in South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia.  At the same time, Ngo Dinh Diem, a staunch anti-communist who had been named Prime Minister by Bao Dai, maintained that South Vietnam would not negotiate with communists concerning the holding of elections.  His government closed offices in South Vietnam that had been established by the Vietminh for promoting the proposed national elections of 1956 (Duiker 2000: 459, 468-71; García Oliveras 2010:102-4).  

     Ho Chi Minh viewed the Final Declaration of the Geneva Accords as the foundation for the reunification of Vietnam.  Accordingly, from 1954 to 1960, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam repeatedly called for the holding of national elections, in accordance with the Final Declaration.  It was not until February 14, 1959, that the Vietnamese Workers’ Party (formerly the Indochinese Communist Party) approved a resolution calling for an armed struggle in the South as a strategy of national reunification, which was the first step in the establishment of the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam (NLF) on December 20, 1960.  In the internal political dynamics of the Party from 1954 to 1960, Ho Chi Minh was a persistent voice saying, “give peace a chance,” but by 1960, even he had abandoned hope in the peaceful reunification of the country (Duiker 2000:460-61, 467, 470-71, 495, 508, 511-16, & 524-25; Fall 1967: 271-72, 275-76, 285-86, & 294).

     We will discuss South Vietnam and the NLF in the following posts.


References

Duiker, William J.  2000.  Ho Chi Minh.  New York:  Hyperion.

Fall, Bernard B., Ed.  1967.  Ho Chi Minh On Revolution: Selected Writings, 1920-26.  New York: Frederick A. Praeger.

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.


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, Geneva Conference, Indochina
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    Author: Charles McKelvey

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