​     From April 23 to June 9, 2014, I posted 30 blog posts on Vietnam, the Vietnamese Revolution, and Ho Chi Minh.  They traced fundamental developments from the traditional Vietnamese kingdoms to the establishment of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam in 1975.  These posts did not include reflections on the subsequent evolution of the unified socialist nation.
 
     From March 28 to March 30, 2018, Nguyen Phu Trong, Secretary General of the Communist Party of Vietnam, visited Cuba as the head of a Vietnamese delegation.  Prior to and during the visit, Cuban newspapers and television news were full of commentaries concerning the historic relation between the two nations as well as on the development of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.  The occasion inspired me to write a long post (“Two heroic peoples in solidarity” 4/16/2018), which included reflections on the evolution of the Vietnamese socialist project.  I hope to be able to study this theme further and to write further posts, so these reflections should be taken as preliminary.
 
      I copy here the section of the April 16, 2018 post that reflects on the evolution of the Vietnamese socialist project.

     Please scroll down to find the thirty posts on Vietnam written from April 23 to June 9, 2014.  They are as follows:
“On the meaning of Vietnam” 04/23/2014;
“Vietnamese empires” 4/24/2014;
“French colonialism in Vietnam” 4/25/2014;
“What enabled French colonialism?” 4/28/2014;
“Confucian scholars and nationalism” 4/29/2014;
“On the charismatic leader” 4/30/2014;
“Who was Ho Chi Minh?” 5/2/2014;
“Ho encounters French socialism” 5/5/2014;
“Ho the delegate of the colonized” 5/6/2014;
“Ho reformulates Lenin” 5/7/2014;
“Ho synthesizes socialism and nationalism” 5/8/2014;
“Ho’s practical theoretical synthesis” 5/9/2014;
“The Indochinese Communist Party” 5/12/2014;
“The Vietminh and the taking of power” 5/13/2014;
“Vietnam declares independence” 5/14/2014;
“France seeks re-conquest of Vietnam” 5/15/2014;
“The French-Indochinese War” 5/16/2014;
“The Geneva Conference of 1954” 5/19/2014;
“South Vietnam” 5/20/2014;         
“The National Liberation Front (NLF)” 5/21/2014;
“Construction of socialism in the North” 5/22/2014;
“Agrarian reform in Vietnam” 5/23/2014;
“The failure of US military escalation” 5/26/2014;
“The ideology of anti-communism” 5/27/2014;
“Cold War ideology & US policy in Vietnam” 5/28/2014;
“The teachings of Ho Chi Minh” 5/29/2014;
“The imperialist lesson of Vietnam” 5/30/2014;
“US support for French war of reconquest” 6/5/2014;
“Nuclear weapons and Dien Bien Phu” 6/6/2014;
“Revolutionary sacrifice” 6/9/2014.

     George Snedeker has submitted the following message to the Progressive and Critical Sociologist Network with respect to the posts on Vietnam and comments submitted by members of the list.

     Georges raises a very important question:  Is there a point at which the sacrifices inherent in revolutionary change become too great?

     The people of Vietnam have paid a very high price to attain, in 1976, the sovereignty and unification of the country, which were violated by the French colonial process of 1859 to 1945, the Japanese occupation of 1940 to 1945, the French war of reconquest and neocolonial maneuvers from 1945 to 1954, and the US imperialist war and neocolonial strategies of 1954 to 1973.  Four million Vietnamese were killed during the stage of the US war.  I began my series of blog posts on Vietnam with a quotation from Fidel:  “No liberation movement, no people that has struggled for its independence, has had to carry out a struggle as long and heroic as the people of Vietnam.” 

     The national liberation movement in Vietnam is not a model for national liberation movements, because we expect and hope that no people will ever again have to pay so high a price to put into practice its right to be a sovereign and independent nation.  There is a sense, however, in which the Vietnamese national liberation revolution is a model, and this has to do with the question: How did they do it?  What enabled them to make such heroic sacrifices and to endure for so long in defense of the nation and the revolution?  I have implicitly argued in my various posts on Vietnam that this remarkable capacity of sacrifice and endurance was rooted in key factors that made the revolution advanced: the charismatic leadership of Ho Hi Minh, who provided a practical synthesis of the moral and intellectual traditions of Marxism-Leninism and Confucian nationalism, thus establishing an advanced understanding of objective conditions and possibilities.  Ho’s leadership enabled clear identification of the issues of national independence and distribution of land to peasants and made possible the formation of a committed vanguard with advanced understanding that was able to forge the united political and military action of the people.

       In previous posts, I have written on the Haitian Revolution, the Russian Revolution, and the Mexican Revolution, in addition to the posts since 4/24/2014 on the Vietnamese Revolution.  In future posts, I will treat other Third World revolutions, including those in Tanzania, Chile, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador.  I am endeavoring to show that Third World revolutions that have attained their goals have had charismatic leaders who forged a synthesis of an anti-colonial national liberation perspective and Marxism-Leninism (or some variant of it), and who formed a committed vanguard with advanced understanding, which identified key issues of importance to the people and which led the people in united political action.  (On the role of charismatic leaders in revolutionary processes, see the posts in the section on Charismatic Leaders).

      There is a price to be paid.  Revolutionary processes challenge the structures of the neocolonial world-system, and they therefore unavoidably stimulate reaction and counterrevolution.  And the reaction knows no civilized limits: it includes mass violence, torture, repression, and economic sanctions.  Often, people are reluctant to participate in unfolding revolutions, because they understand that sacrifices will be required, and they fear that, in the end, the revolutionary goals will not be attained.  Revolutionary leaders endeavor to persuade the people that the goals can be attained, if the people unite, and if the people are prepared to endure necessary sacrifices.

      Here in Cuba we know something about having to sacrifice for the revolution.  People still suffer emotional pain as a result of having lost family members or dear friends fifty years ago during the campaign of terroristic violence inflicted on the young Cuban Revolution.  But the level of violence suffered by the Cuban people has been small in comparison to Vietnam.  In Cuba, the sacrifices have been primarily in the realm of material hardships, caused by the fifty-year campaign of the United States and other global powers to economically, financially, and diplomatically isolate Cuba.  In spite of the blockade, as Cubans calls the “embargo,” Cuba has remarkable gains in education and health.  But having given priority to investment in human resources, there are limitations in material conditions.  Sometimes necessary items are hard to get, and in general, housing and transportation are inadequate; access to Internet is expensive and limited, and connections are slow.  Cubans for the most part endure these difficulties with dignity, and I have learned from them to do the same.  Few think that it has not been worth it.  To the contrary, most Cubans are proud of their nation’s important role as a model of true independence in a neocolonial world-system.

      Since it attained reunificaton in 1975, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam has moved forward with its socialist project.  It made adjustments in its economic model in the 1980s, and in recent years, has attained high levels of growth.  It is developing cooperative relations with socialist and progressive governments that are seeking to develop an alternative more just and democratic world-system.  It continues to follow the road that fifty years ago provoked barbaric violence by the forces of reaction.  It may be a poor nation by some measures, but it is seeking to overcome its poverty through strategies and policies that it, as a sovereign nation, decides for itself.  It has paid a high price for its sovereignty, but it has attained it.

     Can sacrifice be too great, even when goals are attained?  My sense is that the response of the true revolutionary would be that no sacrifice in defense of the sovereignty and dignity of the nation is too great.  It perhaps is an extreme position, but it seems to me necessary, if a more just and democratic world is to be created.  For without such a conviction, we who struggle for a better world would be constantly thinking that perhaps we have paid enough, and it is time to give up; and the message to the reaction would be, if only it inflicts enough violence on us, it could get us to quit.  We must be fully committed to the principle that, no matter what price we have to pay, we will never surrender.  We must endure, until the reaction, beset by conflicts and problems provoked by its barbarity, recognizes that it must stop. 


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

     Carrol Cox submitted the following comment with respect to the posts on Vietnam to the Progressive and Critical Sociologist Network list.

       The issue of a US proposal to use nuclear weapons to defend the French positions at Dien Bien Phu is discussed by Julio García Oliveras (2010:97-99), a Cuban intellectual who was chief of the Cuban military mission in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos from 1966 to 1969.  According to his account, when General Henry Eugene Navarre, supreme commander of French forces in Indochina, found that French troops were surrounded by the armed forces of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam at Dien Bien Phu, he sent urgent and desperate requests to Washington for immediate military support.  During discussions of the request in the Eisenhower Administration, Admiral Arthur W. Radford, Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staffs, recommended the use of tactical nuclear weapons.  However, Radford withdrew the proposal as a result of strong objections by Army Chief of Staff General Matthew Ridgeway.  Radford, accordingly, proposed massive air attacks against Vietnamese positions around Dien Bien Phu.  Eisenhower accepted the proposal, but on the condition that it be a joint operation with European allies.  The British cabinet, however, rejected the US request to participate in a joint military action.  The British wanted to pursue a diplomatic solution to the conflict in Indochina through the Geneva Conference, discussions for which were in progress as Dien Bien Phu was under siege.  The United States thus rejected the French request for immediate intervention in Dien Bien Phu, which in any event would not have included nuclear weapons, according to García.  The French troops at Dien Bien Phu, numbering 16,000, surrendered to the Vietnamese forces, directed by General Vo Nguyen Giap. 

      The “Agreement on the Cessation of Hostilities in Vietnam,” signed by France and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam at the Geneva Conference, divided Vietnam into two zones.  The “Final Declaration of the Conference of Geneva,” although it recognized the independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in the North and the government of Bao Dia in the South, called for elections to be held in July 1956 that would reunify Vietnam, and it called upon both the northern and southern zones to cooperate in the implementation of the elections.  However, the Final Declaration was not signed by any of the participating nations, so it was not binding on any government.  All parties concurred that Ho Chi Minh would win overwhelmingly such elections.  From 1954 to 1959, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam repeatedly called for elections, in accordance with the Final Declaration.  But Ngo Dinh Diem, who had been named Prime Minister of South Vietnam by Bao Dai in 1954, refused to negotiate the implementation of elections.  Immediately after the conference, the United States announced that it would promote the development South Vietnam.  By the end of the year, US officials were declaring the Diem government to be the legitimate government of Vietnam.  In 1960, the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam was established, and the armed struggle was taken up as a strategy to reunify the nation, with support in the form of arms and training supplied by the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in the North (see “The Geneva Conference of 1954” 5/19/2014).  

     From 1945 to 1976, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam continually insisted on the independence and reunification of Vietnam.  Reunification was a historic goal of the Vietnamese nationalist movement, in response to the French colonial division of the nation into three regions.  The Democratic Republic of Vietnam persistently demonstrated willingness to negotiate with the various interested parties, and it was willing to move toward independence and unification gradually and peacefully.  But it considered the ultimate attainment of independence and unification as non-negotiable, and it was prepared to turn to armed struggle to attain these goals (see “French colonialism in Vietnam” 4/25/2014; “France seeks re-conquest of Vietnam” 5/15/2014; “The Geneva Conference of 1954” 5/19/2014; “The National Liberation Front (NLF)” 5/21/2014).


References

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, Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh, Geneva Conference, tactical nuclear weapons

The following comments were submitted to the Progressive and Critical Sociologist Network list, in response to the blog posts on Vietnam.

     Yes, the United States was providing aid to the French in the early 1950s.   In 1949, the French established a government led by former emperor Bao Dai, intending it as an alternative to the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, led by the Indochinese Communist Party and Ho Chi Minh, which had declared its independence from French colonial rule on September 2, 1945.  Both the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and the puppet government of Bao Dai claimed to be the legitimate government of Vietnam, asserting jurisdiction over the territory that had been under the control of the empire of Vietnam prior to French colonialism.  The Democratic Republic of Vietnam was recognized by the Soviet Union, the People’s Republic of China, and the socialist bloc nations of Eastern Europe, whereas the government of Bao Dai was recognized by France, the United States, and Great Britain.  In 1950, the United States began a program of military aid to the Boa Dai government, but it was channeled through the French.  Direct US aid to the Bao Dai government began in 1951, and it included military and civilian advisors.  By 1954, US aid to France covered 80% of the costs of the French War in Indochina. 

     This information is found in a book published in 2010 in Havana and written by Julio García Oliveras, the chief of the Cuban military mission in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos from 1966 to 1969 (García Oliveras, Julio A. 2010.  Ho Chi Minh El Patriota: 60 años de lucha revolucionaria.  La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales).

     Charles McKelvey

     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

      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

     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 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.

     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

      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

     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:

     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:

     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:

      As the bombing campaign developed, the results showed its ineffectiveness in obtaining the intended goals.  McNamara writes:

      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

     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