The tradition of Marxism-Leninism focused on the class struggle, on the need for the workers to take power from the capitalist class, to form alternative structures of popular democracy, and to direct economic development in accordance with the interests of the workers and the popular sectors.  In contrast, the tradition of national liberation focused on the struggle of the colonized and neocolonized peoples against colonial domination, seeking self-determination and sovereignty (see “Third World and Marxism-Leninism” 7/24/2013). 

      Ho Chi Minh, having been formed in the Third World anti-colonial tradition of the Confucian scholars, and having encountered Marxism-Leninism in Paris and Moscow from 1917 to 1924, formed a synthesis of the two traditions.  See “Confucian scholars and nationalism” 4/29/2014; “Who was Ho Chi Minh?” 5/2/2014; “Ho encounters French socialism” 5/5/2014; and “Ho the delegate of the colonized” 5/6/2014. 

     For Ho Chi Minh, Marxism-Leninism had formulated self-evident truths: workers could not protect their interests without taking power and directing the political-economic system.  But these truths should be applied to Indochina with flexibility, because in the colonial situation, it was principally a class struggle not between workers and factory owners but between peasants and landholders, some of whom were Indochinese, and others of whom were French, as a result of colonialism.  So Ho understood the need to adapt Marxism-Leninism to the colonial situation.

     Ho discerned that the anti-colonial struggle and the class struggle were intertwined.  The anti-colonial struggle could not succeed in establishing the true sovereignty and independence of the nation without taking on the land question, because land was used to produce raw materials for export, in accordance with the interests of core capitalists, with whom the landholders were allied.  Thus, in order to break foreign control over the resources of the nation, it would be necessary to develop a program of agrarian reform that would take land from the landholders and distribute it to peasants, under one form of property or another.  This necessarily involved dislodging the national estate bourgeoisie and its allies in the Vietnamese imperial court from power, and placing the land and the political-economic system under the control of the peasants and their nationalist allies. Therefore, the national struggle for independence could not succeed without it including a class struggle of peasants and their allies against the landholding bourgeoisie. 

     For Ho, this intertwining of the anti-colonial and class struggles occurs not only in the colonies but also in the advanced societies.  He understood that the proletarian movement in the core could not take power without allying itself with and defending the interests of the colonized peoples, because imperialist exploitation of the colonies gave the international capitalist class the capacity to contain the worker’s movement in the core through reformist concessions. 

     In 1917, Lenin had initially believed that the proletarian revolution in the West would triumph first, and the politically triumphant working class in the core would support workers’ revolutions in the colonized regions.  But by 1920, Lenin understood what was beginning to emerge.  An alliance between core workers and national liberation struggles had not been formed, and core capitalists were beginning to utilize resources emerging from the superexploitation of colonized zones to channel the workers’ movement in the core toward reform, thus maintaining control of the political-economic system.  Lenin, therefore, advocated alliance of Western communists with the national liberation struggles of the colonized peoples, even when these struggles included the national bourgeoisie.  Ho Chi Minh would push Lenin’s concept of alliance to its fullest implications.  He envisioned a global democratic revolution consisting consisting of complementary movements of class struggle in the core and national liberation in the colonies, with both movements working in alliance, mutual support, and solidarity (see “Ho reformulates Lenin” 5/7/2014).  He saw the world of his time as divided between a democratic camp, formed by the socialist nations, the progressive forces in the advanced capitalist countries, and the movements of national liberation in the colonized regions; and an anti-democratic, imperialist and reactionary camp, headed by the United States.  He considered it certain that the democratic camp would eventually prevail, although he believed that the struggle would be long and hard.

      The creative synthesis of Ho Chi Minh was forged in the context of political practice, as we shall discuss in the next post.


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, Lenin

    Ho Chi Minh possessed a double social and experiential foundation for his understanding.  On the one hand, he was an intellectual and activist of the colonized world, formed in the tradition of the patriotic nationalism of the Confucian scholars.  On the other hand, he had experienced encounter with Marxism-Leninism and the communist movement in Paris and Moscow from 1917 to 1924 (see “Ho encounters French socialism” 5/5/2014; “Ho the delegate of the colonized” 5/6/2014). 

     Thus, Ho Chi Minh possessed the social foundation for a synthesis of Third World nationalism and Marxism-Leninism, and he had developed the basic components of this synthetic perspective by 1924.  Although his perspective necessarily involved a reformulation of Lenin on the basis of the colonial situation of Indochina, Ho did not announce a reformulation of Lenin’s thesis.  Rather, his strategy was to invoke Lenin, calling upon the international communist movement to take seriously Lenin’s thesis on the colonial question, and providing interpretations of Lenin’s thesis that were subtle reformulations.

       In its classical formulation, Marxism-Leninism viewed the industrial working class as the vanguard of the socialist revolution, since the factory workers had the most advanced revolutionary consciousness.  And it viewed the peasantry as prepared to support a worker-led socialist revolution, if the revolution unequivocally supported peasant interests in obtaining land (see “The proletarian vanguard” 1/24/2014).  

     At the time of the triumph of the October Revolution, Lenin believed that in order for the Russian Revolution to be able to sustain itself, a triumph of the proletarian revolutions in the advanced nations of Western Europe would be necessary (see “A permanent global revolution” 1/27/2014).  When the proletarian revolutions in the West did not triumph, Lenin reformulated his understanding of the global revolution, giving greater emphasis to the revolutions of national liberation in the colonies.  He understood that the profits obtained through the exploitation of the colonies increased the capacity of capitalism to make concessions to core workers, thus enabling the system to create a labor aristocracy in the advanced nations, thereby undermining the possibility of revolutionary transformation to a political-economic system governed by workers.  Lenin therefore called for the formation of alliances between the proletarian movements in the core and the national liberation movements in the colonies, even when the national liberation movements include the national bourgeoisie, with the intention of struggling against international imperialism and the imperialist exploitation of the colonies.  He believed, however, that the revolutions in the colonies ultimately must be led by a proletarian vanguard (Lenin 2010:130-37; 1972:55-60; 1993:261-65).

     Lenin’s “Thesis on the national and colonial questions” converted Ho Chi Minh into a Leninist.  Ho invoked Lenin’s concept in order to criticize the Western communist parties for ignoring the national liberation movements in the colonies.  Like Lenin, Ho believed that the colonies were decisive, because most of the strength of the capitalist class was derived from the exploitation of the colonies.  As we have seen (“Ho the delegate of the colonized” 5/6/2014), Ho believed that attacking capitalism via the industrial working class of the advanced countries was like trying “to kill a snake by stepping on its tail.”  He did not make the reverse error of believing that the capitalist snake could be killed by the movements of national liberation of the colonized. Rather, he advocated the forging of a global revolution through complementary movements of workers in the core and of national liberation in the colonized regions, working on a basis of alliance, solidarity, and mutual support.

        But Ho’s understanding involved a subtle reformulation of Lenin.  Lenin considered support for national liberation movements as a tactic in the global transition to socialism, which ultimately would require revolutionary movements in the colonies led by a proletarian vanguard.  Ho, however, viewed the global revolution as a having complementary dimensions: a proletarian struggle in the core, which would embrace and support national liberation movements; and national liberation struggles in the colonized region, which would seek not merely political independence but would pursue a class revolution within the nation.  For Ho, they were different but equal partners, and they would support each other in order to kill the capitalist snake.

      Ho Chi Minh’s view of the global revolution implied a reformulation of the concept of the vanguard, and here too Ho was subtle.  The vanguard in the Vietnamese revolution was composed of “workers,” but Ho had a dynamic concept of workers.  In his view, during the transition to socialism, agriculture would be modernized, and peasants therefore would be transformed into agricultural workers.  At the same time, intellectuals would learn to complement their intellectual work with manual labor (as Ho himself did during his life).  Thus peasants and intellectuals were workers, even though they were in a sense workers in formation.  But as potential workers, they could become part of the vanguard, if they possessed advanced political consciousness.  In practice, the Workers’ Party of Vietnam was composed of intellectuals, peasants, and workers, with intellectuals being in the majority, but with peasants and workers also playing a significant role.  In this way, Ho subtly reformulated the Marxist-Leninist concept of the proletarian vanguard, adapting it to the colonial situation of Vietnam (Ho 2007:155-57, 168, 170-71).

      Ho always presented himself as a disciple of Lenin, and he was.  But he reformulated Lenin’s insights in accordance with the colonial situation of Vietnam.  Whereas Lenin envisioned a proletarian vanguard, Ho developed a vanguard consisting of enlightened intellectuals, peasants, and workers.  Whereas Lenin distrusted the peasant as susceptible to bourgeois thinking, Ho discerned the revolutionary spontaneity of the peasant.  Whereas Lenin believed that petit bourgeois socialists betray the revolution (see “The role of the petit bourgeoisie” 1/28/2014), Ho saw the central role of the Confucian scholar-gentry class in the origin and development of Vietnamese revolutionary nationalism.  Whereas Lenin saw patriotism as an instrument of the bourgeoisie in manipulating the working class into participating in imperialist wars (see “Revolutionary patriotism” 8/15/2014), Ho saw genuine patriotism as a necessary component of the struggle against colonial domination. 

     In adapting Lenin to the colonial situation of Vietnam, Ho was following the recommendations of Lenin himself.  In his message to the communist organizations of the East, Lenin asserted, “Relying upon the general theory and practice of communism, you must adapt yourself to specific conditions such as do not exist in the European countries.  You must be able to apply that theory and practice to conditions in which the bulk of the population are peasants, and in which the task is to wage a struggle against medieval survivals and not against capitalism” (1993:263).

     Ho Chi Minh, therefore, was both Marxist-Leninist and nationalist, who forged in practice a theoretical synthesis of the two political-intellectual-moral traditions, a theme to which we discuss further in the next post.


References

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

Lenin, V.I.  1972.  “Report of the Commission on the National and Colonial Questions” in Speeches at Congresses of the Communist International.  Moscow: Progress Publishers.

__________.  1993.  “Address to the Second All-Russia Congress of Communist Organizations of the Peoples of the East” in John Ridell, Ed., To See the Dawn: Baku, 1920—First Congress of the Peoples of the East.  New York: Pathfinder Press.

__________.  2010.  “Tesis sobre la cuestión nacional y colonial” in La Internacional Comunista: Tesis, manifiestos, y resoluciones de los cuatro primeros congresos (1919-1922).  Madrid: Fundación Federico Engels.


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, Lenin

     As Ho Chi Minh, then known as Nguyen Ai Quoc, encountered Marxism-Leninism in Paris and Moscow from 1920 to 1924 (see “Ho encounters French socialism” 5/5/2014), he endeavored to bring the international communist movement to a more advanced stage of genuine internationalism, moving it beyond a context defined by the movements of Western and Eastern Europe.  He believed that the key was Lenin’s “Thesis on the National and Colonial Questions,” which affirmed the importance of the national liberation struggles in the colonized regions and the oppressed nations.

     His reading of Lenin’s “Thesis” was not only a moment of an intellectual conversion experience; it also provided him with a basis for active engagement in the communist movement, in which he in effect was functioning as a delegate of the colonized peoples.  He wrote in 1960 concerning the impact of his reading of the “Thesis on the National and Colonial Questions:”

      Nguyen Ai Quoc’s effort to broaden the perspective of the international communist movement to include the perspective of the colonized was constant in the years following his conversion experience.  In 1921, he was the driving force in the Communist Party’s forming of a new organization of colonial subjects living in France.  In 1922, he founded a new journal dedicated to the interests of the colonized peoples of the French empire.  As a delegate representing Indochina at the International Peasant Conference in Moscow in October 1923, Quoc maintained that the Comintern “would become a genuine Communist International only when it included representatives of the Asian peasantry as active participants” (Duiker 2000:91).  In an article published in 1924 in the International Press Correspondence, the official organ of the Comintern, Quoc argued that it may appear that the question of Indochina is of little interest to European workers, but in fact the international capitalist class draws its strength from the exploitation of the colonies, from which it obtains raw materials for its factories, a reserve army of cheap labor, and markets for its manufactured products.  In the same year, he wrote a report on the conditions of Annam, noting that the industrial proletariat comprised only 2% of the population; that the peasantry had revolutionary potential, because of its patriotism; and the intellectuals of the scholar-gentry class were the most politically active sector (Duiker 2000:78-79, 90-91, 97-98; Fall 1967:29).

     During his time in Moscow, Nguyen Ai Quoc wrote a book on the process of French colonialism (published in English as French Colonization on Trial), which he had begun in Paris (Duiker 2000:67, 96).  He describes the exorbitant rent, taxes and fines and the forced labor imposed on the colonized in Vietnam and in other regions of the French colonial empire.  He maintains that indiscriminate violence with impunity is a common practice in French colonialism, including patterns of violence against women.  He contends that colonialism presents itself in accordance with the ideals of fraternity and equality in order to hide its exploitative nature.  He asserts that French Catholic priests are among the abusers and exploiters (Fall 1967: 69, 71, 84-90, 93, 100, 106-10; Ho 1968: 200, 204, 236, 237, 241, 259-63).

       Addressing the Fifth Congress of the Communist International on June 23, 1924, Nguyen Ai Quoc asserted:

     In Nguyen Ai Quoc’s “Report on the National and Colonial Questions” at the Fifth Congress of the Communist International as well as other writings of 1924, he was critical of the communist parties of the West for lacking contact with the colonized peoples and for ignoring the colonial question, thus not following in practice the theory of Lenin on the colonial question.  He believed that the international proletarian movement could not attain success without alliance with the colonized peoples, which he viewed as constituting a considerable force of revolutionary opposition to world capitalism.  At the same time, he understood that Third World nationalism without communism would not liberate the colonized peasant.  Furthermore, he understood that the peasantry, while possessing an orientation toward spontaneous rebellion, was unaware of communism, and that the peasants needed organization and leadership in order to form an effective struggle.  He thus saw the need to educate Western workers and the Western communist parties on the importance of encounter and alliance with the anti-colonial struggles in the colonies, and at the same time he recognized the need for the spreading of communism among the peasants, workers, students, intellectuals, and merchants of the colonies (Ho 2007:24-38). 

     By 1924, Nguyen Ai Quoc had developed the basic components of a synthesis of Marxism-Lenin and the patriotic nationalism of the Confucian scholars, a synthesis that would involve a subtle reformulation of Lenin, as we will discuss in subsequent 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.

Ho Chi Minh.  1968.  Páginas Escogidas.  La Habana: Instituto del Libro.

__________.  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, Third International, communism

     Ho Chi Minh was attracted to socialism from the moment of his first encounter.  William Duiker attributes this to an affinity between Western socialism and the Confucian ethic.  He writes:

     Ho approached the French socialist movement from a vantage point principally defined by the colonial situation of the colonized peoples of Asia and Africa.  French socialism was at that moment characterized by a division between social democracy, organized in the Second International; and communism, led by Lenin and organized in the Third International.  As he encountered this debate, Ho learned of Lenin’s “Thesis on the National and Colonial Questions,” which, by virtue of its affirmation of the importance of the national liberation struggles in the colonies, converted Ho into a Leninist (García Oliveras 2010:25-27; Bello 2007:xii-xiv). 

     In an article written in 1960, “The Path Which Led Me to Leninism,” Ho describes his first encounter with Lenin’s analysis of the colonial question.  Describing the debates in the French Socialist Party concerning whether or not the party ought to join Lenin’s Third International, Ho writes:

     The conversion experience had long-term consequences for the political and intellectual development of Ho Chi Minh, then known as Nguyen Ai Quoc.  He joined with those members of the French Socialist Party who voted on December 29, 1920 to form the French Communist Party and to affiliate with Lenin’s Third International.  He subsequently became a part of the international communist movement, headquartered in Moscow.  He undertook a number of important activities in the name of the French Communist Party, as a representative of Indochina.  In 1923, he was invited to Moscow to work for the Communist International (Comintern), where he was assigned to work for a commission dedicated to analyzing the situation of the colonized peoples of Africa and Asia.  He was in the Soviet Union from June 1923 to October 1924, during which time he took courses at the Communist University of the Toilers of the East, “the leading institute for training Asian revolutionaries invited to Soviet Russia to study” (Duiker 2000:92); and he participated in various organizations established by the Russian Revolution, such as the Red Labor International, the Youth International, and the Women’s International (Duiker 73, 86-94, 104; Prina 2008:79; García Oliveras 2010:27-28). 

      As Nguyen Ai Quoc participated in the international communist movement, he did so as a true delegate of the colonized peoples, challenging the movement to fulfill in practice Lenin’s thesis on the colonial question.  This will be the topic of our next post.


References

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

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.

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, French socialism, Third International

     Nguyen Sinh Cung, the original name of the historic figure known as Ho Chi Minh, was born on May 19, 1890 in the protectorate of Annam in French Indochina.   His father, Nguyen Sinh Sac, became a Confucian scholar, even though he came from a family of poor peasants.  After years of study and retaking the rigorous examinations, Nguyen Sinh Sac attained the degree of doctorate, second class, in 1901, an unusual distinction for a person from a small village.  However, he did not pursue a career in the imperial bureaucracy, because of imperial collaboration with French colonialism; he established a small school instead.  In 1906, he relented and accepted a position in the government, but he was dismissed in 1910 for releasing prisoners who had been arrested for participating in demonstrations, for protecting peasants from the demands of landholders, and for imposing harsh punishment on an influential local figure (Duiker 2000:16-22, 27-29, 40-41).

     The child Nguyen Sinh Cung advanced quickly in his studies, and at the age of 11, his father gave him the name Nguyen Tat Thanh (meaning “he who will succeed”).  Thanh was socialized in the environment of the anti-colonial nationalist movement formed by the Confucian scholar-intellectual class.  His teachers for most of his formal education as a child and adolescent were Confucian scholars.  The renowned scholar and nationalist Phan Boi Chau (see “Confucian scholars and nationalism” 4/29/2014) was a close acquaintance of his father, and Phan asked Thanh to join his modernization movement, but Thanh declined, apparently having reservations in relation to its pro-Japanese orientation.  Thanh also studied briefly at a Franco-Vietnamese academy, where he was influenced by anti-French teachers, but he was dismissed from the school for his political activities.   At the age of 20, he taught in a patriotic nationalist school, but he disappeared after a year, fleeing colonial authorities (Duiker 2000: 23-27, 33-41).

     In 1911, at the age of 21, Thanh obtained employment as a kitchen assistant on a French steamship, which enabled him to see Paris as well as cities in Spain and various African and Asian countries.  His writing during these early travels shows that he was struck by the level of poverty and inequality in Paris.  And he noted the similarity of conditions in Africa to those of Vietnam, thus beginning to understand colonialism as a general global process.  He also lived temporarily in the United States and London and later lived in Paris, working at various working-class jobs, such as servant, gardener, and vender of newspapers.  In addition to his worldly experiences, he was a voracious reader, and his favorite works included Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, Victor Hugo, Emile Zola, Leo Tolstoy, Lu Xun, and Barbusse (Prina 2008:79; García Oliveras 2010:23-24; Duiker 2000:42-56). 

     When Thanh arrived in Paris in 1917 at the age of 27, he immediately became politically active in the city’s significant Vietnamese émigré community.  He was the guiding force in the creation of a new organization, the Association of Annamite Patriots, seeking to renovate Vietnamese nationalism, which had become stagnant in the émigré community during the World War.  Phan Chu Trinh, the most prominent member of the Vietnamese émigré community as a result of his letter to the French Governor General (see “Confucian scholars and nationalism” 4/29/2014), was one of the directors of the new organization.  On behalf of the organization, Thanh wrote a petition that was presented to the ministerial office of the Peace Conference in Versailles.  The petition demanded Vietnamese autonomy; freedoms of association, press, and movement; amnesty for political prisoners; equal rights for Vietnamese; the abolition of forced labor; and the abolition of taxes on salt, opium, and alcohol.  The petition, dated June 18, 1919, was signed by Nguyen Ai Quoc (“Nguyen the Patriot”), and thereafter Thanh would use this name.  News of the petition spread quickly in the émigré community, galvanizing the cause of Vietnamese nationalism.  At the age of 29, “Nguyen the Patriot” had become a prominent member of the Vietnamese émigré community in Paris (Prina 2008:79; García Oliveras 2010:24-27; Duiker 2000:54-62).

     Upon his arrival in Paris in 1917, Thanh began to attend meetings of the French Socialist Party.  Beginning in 1919, as the author of the famous petition, Nguyen the Patriot was received with great respect by French socialists (Duiker 2000:55, 62). 

     Since his childhood, Nguyen the Patriot had been formed in the political-intellectual-moral tradition of Vietnamese nationalism that had been developed by the Confucian scholar-intellectual class.  In Paris from 1917 to 1924, he continued to be politically active in Vietnamese nationalism, and indeed became one of its most prominent spokespersons.  At the same time, however, he began in 1917 a process of encounter with an alternative political-intellectual-moral tradition, that of French socialism, 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, Confucian scholars, Vietnamese nationalism, Ho Chi Minh

     In concluding his thorough biography of Ho Chi Minh, William J. Duiker, a US historian who specializes in East Asian Studies, writes: 

     I have maintained in previous posts that charismatic leaders emerge in revolutionary processes and that the charismatic leader is necessary for the success of the revolution (“Toussaint L’Ouverture” 12/10/2013; “Reflections on the Russian Revolution” 1/29/2014; “Lessons of the Mexican Revolution” 2/19/2014; “The dream renewed” 3/6/2014; “Is Marx today fulfilled?” 3/20/2014).  Drawing upon the formulation of the early twentieth century German sociologist Max Weber, I use the term “charismatic” not only to refer to a capacity to persuade and influence, but also to refer to an exceptional capacity to understand, particularly to discern structures of domination and the necessary steps for liberation.  In accordance with this definition, Hitler was influential, but he was not charismatic; he was a false prophet.  But there exist in our era charismatic leaders who stand in the tradition of the ancient prophet Amos, leaders who discern injustices and who denounce the complacency of the powerful and the privileged, and who sacrifice a normal personal life in order to dedicate themselves to lead the people in the quest for an alternative and more just social system.  Ho Chi Minh was one of them.

     The underlying social forces to which Duiker refers indeed are present.  Charismatic leaders do not act in a social vacuum.  When social structures contradict cultural values, and when the objective conditions for social movement exist, social movements emerge.  These underlying social conditions have been present in the modern world-system since the last decades of the eighteenth century: the ideology of the world-system has proclaimed democratic values, but it has maintained colonial and neocolonial structures that negate democratic rights; and among the colonized and neocolonized, the human and material resources for the organization of social movements have been present.  But the social movements have been full of contradictions and confusions, which is to be expected, given the complex nature of social dynamics.  The gift of the charismatic leader is to discern, in the midst of the confusions and contradictions, the correct way from the wrong path and to unify the movement on the basis of the correct direction, thus bringing the movement to a more advanced stage.

      We in the societies of the North have gone down the path of cynicism.  We distrust authority in any form, including charismatic authority.  We doubt anyone’s capacity to discern the correct way from the wrong path, and we prefer self-expression to discipline.  But let me mention an example.  In the mass demonstration against the Vietnam War in 1969 in Washington, some demonstrators were dancing nude and smoking marijuana, a celebration that was recorded by television cameras.  A celebration of this form was an error.  The goal of the protest ought to have been the building of a sustained popular movement, and this would require bringing on board people of all ages and religious values, which cannot be accomplished with behavior that is insensitive to the values of many of the people.  The goal ought to have been the political education of the people, focusing on the imperialist character of US foreign policy.  If some felt the need to raise cultural issues pertaining to sexual mores and drug usage, the movement can arrange for such discussion, conducted responsibly in an appropriate context.  But the movement at that historic moment lacked a charismatic leader who could discern the correct path and lead the movement in the correct direction, bringing it to a more advanced stage.  The revolution of the 1960s did not succeed.

     In revolutionary processes that succeed, we observe a charismatic leader, teaching and exhorting the people with respect to issues ranging from concrete strategies to grand theoretical analyses.  In case of Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh possessed the capacity to discern the correct path for the Vietnamese Revolution and to lead the people toward the fulfillment of its mission.  Ho’s most important contribution was to adapt Marxism-Leninism to the colonial situation of French Indochina.  He discerned that it was not a question of class exploitation versus national domination, and that there is a double axis of domination, in which both class exploitation and national domination are intertwined.  Accordingly, liberation requires the transformation of both forms of domination. Unlike Marxism-Leninism, Ho was not suspicious of the peasantry, for he saw the revolutionary spontaneity of the peasant.  But he recognized that the peasants needed organization and leadership, and he thus grasped the need for the formation of a vanguard political party composed of enlightened members of the various popular sectors of intellectuals, peasants, and workers.  He understood that revolutionary steps could be taken only when national and international conditions are present, and he therefore paid careful attention to these conditions and was flexible in the implementation of the revolutionary program, often holding back militant members of the party who were anxious to proceed quickly.  And although he led his people in two wars of national liberation against global powers, and although he never wavered in his commitment to the principles that made the wars necessary (namely, Vietnamese national independence and reunification), his search for a peaceful resolution was constant. 

     We will be looking at subsequent posts at the son of a Confucian scholar who was born in 1890 in the French protectorate of Annam with the name of Nguyen Sing Cung, who was given the name of Nguyen Tat Thanh (meaning “he who will succeed”) at age 11 by his father, who took the name Nguyen Ai Quoc ( “Nguyen the Patriot”) at the age of 29 in Paris, and who became known to the world as Ho Chi Minh (“He Who Enlightens”).


References

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


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, Confucian scholars, Vietnamese nationalism, Ho Chi Minh

     The internal political process that led to accommodation to the French by the Vietnamese imperial court included the deposing of the young Emperor Ham Nghi and the installing of an accommodationist emperor.  Ham Nghi and his regent fled into the mountains, continuing to claim that he was the true monarch.  Many civilian and military officials did not accept the decision of the imperial court to surrender to the French, and they organized local armed forces seeking to restore Ham Nghi to power.  The scholar-official Phan Dinh Phung launched a Save the King Movement that sought the restoration of Ham Nghi, with the intention of driving the French from Vietnam (Duiker 2000:13-14).

      The scholar-gentry class from which Phan Dinh Phung originated was an important component of traditional Vietnamese society.  It consisted of men who had been educated in the Confucian classics in preparation for rigorous examinations that would qualify them for posts in the national and provincial governments.  Members of the class were government officials, teachers in government schools, founders of private schools, and private tutors.  They had a higher standard of living than most peasants, but they were not wealthy, and many supplemented their incomes with farming. 

      Drawing upon a tradition of nationalism rooted in the Vietnamese historic struggle against Chinese domination, the scholar-intellectuals played a leading role in the nationalist movement in opposition to French colonialism (García Oliveras 2010:21-22).  One of them was Phan Chu Trinh, who resigned his government post in 1905 in order to travel throughout the country and meet with scholars.  He maintained that, although the French claimed to be on a “civilizing mission,” in fact they were interested in the economic exploitation of Vietnam.  In an open letter to the French Governor General, Trinh conceded that the French had brought some advantages, such as introducing modern systems of transportation and communication; he argued, however, that the colonial regime was perpetuating a corrupt imperial bureaucracy.  He advocated a reform of colonialism on the basis of progressive Western and Chinese concepts (Duiker 29-31).

     Another important member of the scholar-gentry class was Phan Boi Chau.  Rather than pursuing a career in the government bureaucracy, he traveled throughout the central provinces, seeking to organize among scholars a movement in opposition to the imperial court and French colonialism.  He believed that Vietnam ought to modernize, and he adopted as a model the modernization of Japan under the Emperor Meiji.  Whereas Phan Chu Trinh hoped for French cooperation in the reform of the French colonial system, Phan Boi Chou proposed violent resistance in order to drive out the French and establish a constitutional monarchy similar to that of Japan (Duiker 2000:25-26, 40).

     As a consequence of the objective conditions of French colonialism, opposition to French colonial rule was not confined to the scholar-gentry class.  Peasants were forced to pay high rents on land and new taxes on alcohol, salt, and opium, and they were subjected to forced labor requirements.  Conditions on the rubber plantations of Cochin China were especially harsh.  Factory workers and coal miners suffered low salaries and long working hours (Duiker 2000:31, 35-36, 110).

     French colonialism brought changes in the characteristics of the Vietnamese scholar-gentry class.  The Confucian examination for bureaucratic careers was abolished, and French educational institutions were established.  A new generation of educated Vietnamese emerged in the 1920s, who originated from the families of the traditional scholar-gentry class, but who were educated in the French educational system.  These Western educated intellectuals continued the tradition of the scholar-gentry class of opposition to French colonial domination, and they formed various patriotic nationalist political parties during the 1920s.  Most of the leaders of the new political parties originated from the traditional scholar-gentry class.  The most prominent was Nguyen An Ninh, the son of a Confucian scholar who had been educated in Paris and who had been a part of Phan Boi Chau’s movement.  Like Phan Chu Trinh, he believed that Western values could overcome the limitations of the traditional Confucian system, which, in his view, had stifled creativity and had contributed to French domination.  (Duiker 2002:107-12, 116, 138-39)

      In the earliest decades of the Vietnamese nationalist movement in opposition to French colonialism, we find a situation different in fundamental respects from revolutionary processes in Western Europe and Russia.  In Western Europe and Russia, the progressive members of the petit bourgeoisie espoused the goals of the popular movements from below, but not having objective interest in a political system governed by the popular classes, they ultimately betrayed the popular revolution.  But in the colonial situation of Vietnam, the national petit bourgeoisie is part of the oppressed social sector.  As a result, the traditional scholar-gentry class, a Southeast Asian expression of the petit bourgeoisie, possessed an objective interest in ending European domination.  They thus played a leading role in the emergence of the nationalist movement, and their commitment to it would be deeply rooted.  And this would occur in the context of a society in which the industrial working class was very small, and peasants comprised 90% of the population.  These differences would lead Ho Chi Minh to a reformulation of Marxism-Leninism, adapting it to the conditions of Southeast Asia, an issue to which we turn 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.


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, French colonialism, French Indochina, Confucian scholars, Vietnamese nationalism

     The French imposition of colonial rule on Vietnam was rooted in global historical factors.  The centralization of Western European states began to occur in the tenth century.  The revival of commerce led to the expansion of a merchant class that had an interest in overcoming feudal obstacles to the movement of goods and people.  At the same time, the monarchs, who under feudalism found their powers limited by local lords, also had an interest in overcoming the localism of feudalism and in centralizing power.  Thus, the monarchs, in alliance with an incipient commercial bourgeoisie, centralized state structures by raising armies, conquering territory, and taking effective political control.  This process was intertwined with the formation of nationality identities that coincided with the territories governed by the centralized states, thus establishing a cohesive nation-state (see “European feudalism” 8/13/2013; “The modern nation-state” 8/14/2013).

     The emergence of the modern nation-state was particularly advanced in Spain, England and France (see “The modern nation-state” 8/14/2013), with the result that by the end of the fifteenth century, these nations had developed a significant capacity for conquest.  The centralized Western European nation-states were still no match for China or Japan, but they had developed the capacity to conquer the indigenous empires and societies of America.    

     The Spanish conquest of America was aided by environmental factors.  The steel shields and swords of the Spanish were more advanced than the bronze and stone weaponry of the indigenous, who had not discovered iron.  And the Spanish had horses, the Sherman tanks of pre-modern warfare; whereas in America, large mammals had become extinct during human colonization.  And the Spanish conquest was aided by the relative lack of immunity to diseases carried by the European conquerors, a consequence of less contact among populations in America than in Africa, Asia, and Europe (see “What enables conquest?” 8/9/2013).

     The Spanish imposed a colonial system characterized by forced labor and the exportation of gold and silver to Spain.  The bullion was used by Spain to purchase manufactured goods from Northwestern Europe, thus facilitating the commercial expansion and agricultural modernization of Northwestern Europe.  These dynamics created a European-centered world-economy that encompassed Western Europe as its core and Latin America and Eastern Europe as its periphery, a territory much larger than that of the Chinese world-empire.  And it increased the economic and military power of the centralized states of Britain and France, which after 1750 began a conquest of vast regions of Africa and Asia, seeking to expand even further the geographical territory of the European-centered world-economy (see “What is a world-system?” 8/1/2013; “The origin of the modern world-economy” 8/6/2013; “Conquest, gold, and Western development” 8/8/2013).

     Thus, we can see in sum the dynamics that enabled Western European conquest and domination of the world, which reached its culmination during the twentieth century.  The common interests of the monarchs and a rising merchant class created the modern nation-state, a centralized state with an advanced capacity for conquest, but not as advanced as the empires of Southeast Asia.  Spain proceeded to conquer the empires and societies of America, leading to the formation of a European-centered world-economy, which further increased the capacity for conquest of the Western European states, particularly Britain and France.  After 1750, the European nation-states, increasingly powerful, undertook a project of conquest and domination of vast regions of Asia and Africa, which was dialectically related to the modernization of industry and further increased the power of the Western European nation-states.

     But the European nation-states would find formidable resistance in the world-empires of Southeast Asia.  The region had developed food production early, and its empires were advanced (see “Food production and conquest” 8/12/2013).  For centuries, China was by far the largest and most advanced world-empire, and its conquests had included the empire of Vietnam.  As a result of its considerable strength, European powers deferred invasions of China until the nineteenth century.  Because of European invasions beginning in 1839, China was compelled to accept treaties that led to her partial de-industrialization, but China was never conquered, colonized, and peripheralized like most of Southeast Asia, South Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean (Fairbank 1986; 1992; Frank 1979). 

     For its part, Japan was not invaded by the European powers during the period of the expansion of the European-centered world-economy from 1750 to 1914.  As a result, Japan experienced “independent national development” (quoted in Frank 1979:153).  Its project for a Japanese-centered world-system in Asia clashed with the European-centered world-system in the twentieth century, and it was brought to an end by the Japanese defeat in World War II and the subsequent occupation by the United States, leading to Japan’s incorporation as a core nation in the European-centered world-economy.

      French invasions of Vietnam were selective, and its conquest of Vietnam was partial.  French troops had landed in Da Nang in central Vietnam in 1858, but imperial troops compelled the French to withdraw.  Beginning in 1859, the southern region was occupied by French troops, and Cochin China was developed as a colony directly administered by the French.  As a result, in the south, French settlers developed plantations, and Saigon emerged as a commercial and industrial center.  And in the northern region, Hanoi was attacked and several cities along the Red River were occupied by French troops in the 1880s.  The French protectorate of Tonkin in the north in effect functioned as a French colony, although Cochin China was more attractive to most French settlers and investors.  But most of the empire of Vietnam, stretching between Tonkin and Cochin China and including the imperial capital of Hue, had not been conquered by the French.  The Vietnamese emperor ceded political influence over this central region to the French, and it became the French protectorate of Annam, with the Vietnamese imperial court and bureaucracy functioning as a puppet government.  To be sure, the emperor was compelled to concede the transformation of the countryside into the production of rice for export and to provide labor for the plantations, thus fulfilling the economic goals of the French colonial project.  Nevertheless, because of the indirect form of French rule, which was in effect a concession to the Vietnamese emperor, the peripheralization of Annam was less thorough than in Cochin China (Duiker 2000:9, 12-13, 42, 110-11; see “French colonialism in Vietnam” 4/25/2013).

      The ceding of political influence and territory to the French by the emperor was opposed at the outset by a faction in the imperial court and by the Confucian scholar-gentry class, many of whom favored continued military resistance against French aggression.  A movement of opposition to French colonialism began immediately.  It would be a movement not only in opposition to French colonialism but also in opposition to the collaboration with French colonial rule by the Vietnamese imperial court.  This will be the subject of our next post.


References

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

Fairbank, John King.  1986.  The Great Chinese Revolution: 1800-1985.  New York:  Harper & Row.

__________.  1992.  China:  A New History.  Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

Frank, Andre Gunder.  1979.  Dependent Accumulation and Underdevelopment.  New York:  Monthly Review 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, French colonialism, French Indochina, Cochin China

     We have seen in previous posts that after 1750, European nations conquered vast regions of Africa and Asia, incorporating the conquered regions into the European-centered capitalist world-economy (see “New peripheralization, 1750-1850” 8/20/2013; “The world-economy becomes global, 1815-1914” 8/21/2013).  As a particular manifestation of this global process, the French conquest of Vietnam began in 1859, when French troops attacked Saigon, a commercial port in the southern region of the empire of Vietnam.  The French overcame the resistance of the imperial troops, whose weapons were less advanced.  The emperor Tu Duc negotiated in 1862 the ceding to the French of three southern provinces, which later would become part of the French colony of Cochin China (Duiker 2000:12).

     The French invasion of Vietnam resumed in the 1880s, when the French attacked Hanoi and occupied several major cities along the Red River in the North.  This occurred shortly after the death of Tu Duc, and it threw an imperial court already in division over succession into further division concerning how to respond to the renewed French aggression.  An accommodationist faction came to dominate the court, and it ceded political influence to France over the remaining territory of Vietnam.  The French divided Vietnam into the protectorate of Tonkin in the far north, where the traditional capital city of Hanoi was located; and the protectorate of Annam, which included the imperial capital of Hue and stretched from Tonkin to the French colony of Cochin China in the far south.  The Vietnamese imperial court and its bureaucracy were allowed to govern in the protectorate of Annam, functioning as a puppet authority under the direction of the French (Duiker 2000:12-13).

     We have seen in previous posts that conquest and colonial domination involved peripheralization, where the newly conquered regions were converted into exporters of raw materials on a base of forced labor (see “New peripheralization, 1750-1850” 8/20/2013; “The world-economy becomes global, 1815-1914” 8/21/2013; “The modern world-economy” 8/2/2013; “Unequal exchange” 8/5/2013).  This pattern was followed in Vietnam, as feudal Vietnamese communal agriculture was transformed into a system characterized by privately-owned large-scale plantations and mines oriented to the exportation of rubber, rice, and minerals.  The plantations and mines were in the hands of a small number of owners, principally foreigners; and the puppet Vietnamese authority was required to supply forced laborers for them.  In addition, during colonial rule many small farmers became tenant farmers burdened by debt peonage (Prina 2008:14; Duiker 2000:173-76; Fall 1967:69; Ho 1968:236-237).

     The peripheralization of Vietnam was concentrated in the French colony of Cochin China, in part because it was a colony directly administered by the French rather than a protectorate administered indirectly through a Vietnamese government under French direction.  The production of rubber and rice for export, on a base of forced and super-exploited labor, provided the economic foundation for the colony of Cochin China.  Rubber seedlings had been imported from Brazil, and rubber plantations under French ownership were developed along the Cambodian border.  In the Mekong River delta, the French drained the marshlands, and rice was cultivated by sharecroppers who paid exorbitant rents to absentee Vietnamese landlords living in Saigon.  The rice was processed in plants owned by Chinese descendants of settlers of previous centuries, as Cochin China became the third largest rice exporter in the world. In addition to owning rice mills, the Chinese controlled banking, and they were an important force as merchants in Saigon and other cities of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia.  They lived in separate Chinese sections that maintained significant components of Chinese culture.  In addition, several thousand Europeans settled in Saigon, attracted by nearby rubber, tea, and coffee plantations as well as opportunities vis-á-vis factory ownership and the import-export trade.  Saigon became the largest industrial and commercial city of Vietnam, as textile mills, cement factories, and food processing plants emerged (Duiker 2000:42, 110-11).

     The accommodation of the emperor and the imperial court to French colonial domination undermined the prestige and authority of the emperor.  And it led to a decline of fidelity to the Confucian ethic, which stressed service to the community, personal right conduct, and benevolence.  Corruption became endemic among bureaucratic officials, and land that was previously reserved for poor families was now seized by the wealthy.  The Vietnamese imperial system was in decadence (Duiker 2000:29).

     What historic social, political, and environmental factors enabled the French to impose colonialism on Vietnam?  This will be the subject of our next post.


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.

Ho Chi Minh.  1968.  Páginas Escogidas.  La Habana: Instituto del Libro.

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, French colonialism, French Indochina, Cochin China

     The first human populations arrived in Vietnam nearly 500,000 years ago.  Food cultivation emerged around 12,000 B.C.E.  By the third century B.C.E., the ancient state of Van Lang reached its fullest development on an economic foundation of fishing, agriculture, cattle breeding, and cloth manufacturing.  Van Lang was conquered by Nam Cuong, an empire located in Southern China and Northern Vietnam.  The Chinese conquerors established Au Lac, a slave-based civilization dedicated to the exploitation of copper mines and the manufacturing of copper products.  Thus began ten centuries of Chinese domination of Vietnam, under which emerged a feudal economy and a class of Vietnamese landholders.  The period was characterized by struggles against Chinese domination, in which both the peasants and the landholders participated.  These struggles succeeded in expelling the Chinese governors on two occasions, establishing two brief periods of Vietnamese independence (43-46 C.E. and 544-632).  Finally, in 938, Ngo Quyen expelled the Chinese and established the Ngo dynasty (939-68), which initiated a period of Vietnamese independence that lasted until the French conquest of the nineteenth century.  But during the period of Vietnamese independence, the Vietnamese empires had to resist repeated Chinese attempts to re-conquer the territory, which did result in a brief period of renewed Chinese domination in the early fifteenth century.  There also were efforts to conquer the territory by other foreign invaders, including the Mongols and Siam (García Oliveras 2010:14-17).

     Two types of military operations emerged during this long history of resistance to foreign domination: small-scale guerrilla attacks with dispersed forces; and larger battles with massive concentrations of troops.  The Vietnamese military tradition included a received wisdom concerning the conditions in which these alternate strategies should be used, taking into account a variety factors.  A fundamental lesson had been learned:  an invading force of greater technical power and numerical superiority can be defeated by an organized movement that is struggling for a just cause, that is advanced politically and morally, and that has the support of the people (García Oliveras 2010:18-20).  

     The independent Vietnamese empires were feudal societies dominated by large landholders and bureaucratic officials.  Popular uprisings were common.  During the fifteenth century, the Le dynasty initiated reforms involving the abolition of large-scale landholdings and the distribution of land.  The reforms led to economic growth, the development of national literature, the spread of Confucianism, and the height of the centralized power of the state.  However, economic decline occurred during the sixteenth century, accompanied by division of the national territory among the royal families and competition for land among local tyrants.  Popular uprisings occurred continuously, and they reached their height in the eighteenth century, when the Tay Son uprising led to the reunification of the country.  But in the nineteenth century, a reactionary feudal system of the Nguyen dynasty was established, provoking popular resistance from various social sectors, especially the peasants (García Oliveras 2010:17-18).

     Thus, we can see that, alongside the tradition of military resistance to conquest by foreign powers, the people of Vietnam had developed a tradition of popular resistance in defense of the rights of the people and in opposition to a landholding elite that promoted its particular interests at the expense of the needs of the majority, sometimes in collusion with foreign powers.  These traditions of military and popular resistance provided the foundation for the successful struggle during the twentieth century, first, against French colonial domination and its collaborators in the Vietnamese imperial court, and secondly, against the efforts of the United States and its puppet regime to establish a neocolonial bulwark in order to confront the upsurge of popular movements in Southeast Asia.

      We shall proceed in the next post with discussion of French colonialism.


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