China, Vietnam and the islands dispute: What is behind the rise of Chinese nationalism?
By Michael Karadjis
February 2, 2011 -- Over the last year or so, tensions have been heightened in the dispute over two island groups in the South China Sea (also known as the East Sea in Vietnam), involving rival claims to some or all of the islands by Vietnam, China, Taiwan, Malaysia, the Philippines and even Brunei. The first three of these countries claim all of both island groups.
The islands in question are known in English as the Paracels and the Spratlys, in Vietnamese as the Hoang Sa and Truong Sa, and in Chinese as the Xisha and the Nansha. Both island groups are uninhabited rocky islands and reefs; there is neither a Vietnamese population oppressed by the current Chinese occupation of the Hoang Sa nor a Chinese population oppressed by Vietnamese rule over most of the Truong Sa. Thus there are no questions of self-determination of actual peoples. Therefore, international law would seem to be the best way to judge the status question, unless further negotiations settle things differently.
Since international law is on the side of Vietnamese sovereignty, as will be shown below, this article will use the Vietnamese terms Hoang Sa and Truong Sa for the sake of simplicity. The Hoang Sa are the more northerly group, approximately equidistant from the central coast of Vietnam to their west and the far south Chinese island of Hai Nam to their north (hundreds of kilometres from both); the Truong Sa are far south of this, nowhere near China, off the south central coast of Vietnam but also a similar distance to the closest points in Malaysia in the south and the Philippines in the east.
At the outset, however, I wish to stress that the actual question of sovereignty is less important than the differing ways that China and Vietnam have treated the issue. Indeed, if someone were to say to me, “What does it matter who legally owns a bunch of rocky, uninhabited islands? Surely the dispute is about potential oil deposits underneath. The surrounding countries should jointly exploit them and share the potential wealth if it is shown to exist, or perhaps leave the regional environment alone”, I would say, “I agree completely.”
But I believe the Vietnamese government has a better stance, separate to my own sympathies, and its correctness is based on international law. Because the Vietnamese government is opposed to the militarisation of the conflict, believes that the defence of uninhabited islands can only be carried out diplomatically and that it is not worth a single soldier’s life. Vietnam clearly lacks the military power to enforce its rights anyway.
By contrast, the Chinese government does have the means to militarily enforce its imperial designs and is doing so aggressively. Its policy has consisted of military aggression, in 1956, 1974 and 1988, to seize the islands, and in recent years its growing militarisation of the dispute and aggressive actions towards Vietnamese people, mostly poor fisherfolk, on these seas, is pushing a confrontation regardless of what one thinks of the worth of fighting over the islands’ status. In the last few years, China has:
• moved its war fleet into both groups of islands as a permanent fixture, with activities that include mass kidnapping of Vietnamese fisherfolk for ransom
• declared that the two island groups now occupy the same strategic position in China’s international affairs as do Taiwan and Tibet, that is, something close to a declaration of war on Vietnam
• created a new province in southern China incorporating the two island groups.
To make this clear, it is well worth examining the gravity of this situation. In 2010, Chinese society was mobilised in a nationalistic paroxysm against Japan when just one Chinese captain was detained by the Japanese navy in another island group that is disputed between China and Japan. The nature of China’s aggression in the Hoang Sa and Truong Sa – and the extraordinary level of double standards shown by Beijing – was captured vividly in this piece by Greg Torode in the South China Morning Post (http://www.viet-studies.info/kinhte/DoubleStandards.htm) in reference to this other issue with Japan:
“With apologies to John Lennon, imagine that the Chinese fishing trawler captain now in detention in Japan was not a lone individual, but one of several hundred fishermen captured and held over the past 18 months or so. Imagine, too, that some of their boats had been rammed and sunk by Japanese patrols; others, meanwhile, had their catches seized.
“Or that once in detention, at times for months, Japan had offered their release only after the payment of thousands of dollars per head. Their government objected to the payment of ransoms, but some families were so desperate to see their fathers, sons and husbands that they quietly paid up. Rumours spread that some had been shot.
“I put such a scenario to a mainland student friend. He was shocked. ‘I cannot even imagine the outcome’, he said. ‘There would be such anger against the Japanese government that I cannot believe that ordinary Japanese would be safe in China.’ Certainly it does not bear thinking about, given the feverish pitch to the diplomatic and social pressure now building on Tokyo over the continued detention of the captain.
“Yet this scenario has happened, but not involving Japanese patrols against Chinese fishing boats over the disputed islets of the East China Sea. Instead, it represents the actions taken by Chinese vessels in the disputed South China Sea against Vietnamese fishermen. Instead of the Diaoyu Islands, most of the detentions have taken place in waters surrounding the Paracel archipelago – claimed by both countries but occupied by China since 1974.
“Vietnam's Foreign Ministry has lodged formal protests while its state press, a less sophisticated but equally unsubtle variant of the mainland model, has churned out tales of woe from grieving relatives waiting for news. Under pressure from annoyed Chinese diplomats, Vietnamese government officials have tried to keep nationalistic tensions from spilling over into street protests.”
This description is accurate in all respects – indeed, the ransoms demanded can be US$10,000 for one person. It goes without saying that the Chinese war fleet does not really feel so threatened by dirt-poor Vietnamese fisherfolk that such military action would be required, even if the islands in question were indisputably Chinese; it further goes without question that the mighty Chinese navy does not need these ransoms as a fundraiser. There is one reason for these actions: to humiliate, to show who is boss. And that is the kind of action that becomes necessary when a large capitalist power, such as China, begins to develop into a new imperial power in its own right. While that is another more complex issue, it is clearly related and ultimately is a question that will need to be confronted.
In any case, there is clearly going to be no “sharing” of any resources as long as China has its way, because that is a socialist concept, utterly foreign to the current Chinese leadership.
Now all that does not mean – to knock out a red herring – that socialists in the West should start launching public campaigns against “Chinese imperialism”, that we should be putting “Down with China!” on the front pages of our newspapers and campaigning in the streets. Our main enemy is at home, and in as much as Australia is connected to US imperialism, our key focus will always be – as it always has been – denouncing and exposing US imperialism. Note, of course, that in Australia’s case, our ruling class is somewhat more equidistant between the US and China, so it’s not that simple, but still is basically with the US. And all this also assumes some great clash between the US and China, which in my opinion is also overstated – there is clearly rivalry, but also a great deal of cooperation.
Nevertheless, the main point remains – denouncing China is hardly our main public concern. And for the record, though China may be morphing into an emerging imperial power in its own right, I would still strongly defend China from any direct attack by US imperialism.
‘Sinophobia’?
However, socialists are allowed to discuss our views on things that do not go on the front covers of our campaign material, in order to understand the world. Yet there has been a certain reaction from some quarters of the left to even discussing the issue; simply to do so can be greeted with accusations of “Sinophobia” (in the same way that any criticism of Israel is labelled by Zionists “anti-Semitism”) or of being unwitting servants of US imperialism. This way of thinking is often referred to as “Manichean”, that is, a biblical view whereby the world is divided into Good and Bad, so if it happens that some tyrannical capitalist regime falls out of favour with US imperialism for reasons having nothing to do with anything progressive, then such a regime is seen as having a silver lining, and criticism of it is henceforth banned. Such views are an embarrassment to those spouting them and an affront to socialism, and reflect an inability to cope with “complex” ideas such as Marxist analysis.
However, Manicheans can often get away with it by posing as thus being “anti-imperialist holier-than-thou” in an attempt to shut up their critics (e.g., “How dare you criticise Milosevic or Mugabe or the Burmese junta when US imperialism is also against them” etc., and other such arguments). But the problem for them in this case is that, since they have now decided that China’s current rivalry with the US makes everything China does Good, they find themselves in a most uncomfortable situation of being in direct opposition to the martyr socialist nation Vietnam, which waged the longest anti-imperialist war in history; a nation that they would also prefer not to criticise. Because it is none other than Vietnam – not capitalist Indonesia, Malaysia or elsewhere – that is in the front of the firing line of the implications of capitalist China’s growing emergence as an imperial power.
It must be a rather uncomfortable position to be in to feel forced to choose between two countries that many of these people consider to be socialist, let alone siding with the position of the one that is far richer, far more powerful on a world scale, and the one that has violated Vietnam’s sovereignty numerous times in the past, usually in open collaboration with imperialism. Indeed, China invaded Vietnam in the recent past with the direct support of US imperialism. China is currently moving its capital all over the developing world and replicating typically exploitative patterns well-worn by the imperialist powers before it. It must also be a rather uncomfortable position to be to stand with China against the position of a weak, bombed-back-to-the-stone-age, developing socialist country, even though Beijing is the first to militarise the conflict and push greater-power nationalism, while Vietnam is opposed to such militarisation and is trying to contain the partially justified local nationalism rising over the issue.
So keep this context in mind as we now analyse the actual issue in dispute.
Debate
One way of dealing with this problem is to pretend it does not exist and hope it goes away. A more unique way was recently presented on the Green Left discussion list (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/GreenLeft_discussion/). This was to openly take China’s position in the dispute, but in order to avoid the Vietnam elephant in the room, to also pretend that the Vietnamese government agrees with China’s view! While one particular post to a discussion list may be of little consequence, it is useful to quote it as an example of the problem while introducing some of the propaganda put out by the Chinese regime. The post read in part:
“As for all your smoke and mirrors and pretend concern for the ‘poor Vietnamese fishermen’ it would be more useful if you had looked for the views of the Vietnamese government itself on the subject of the Xisha and Nansha Islands.
“Nhan Dan of Viet Nam reported in great detail on September 6, 1958, the Chinese Government’s Declaration of September 4, 1958, that the breadth of the territorial sea of the People’s Republic of China should be 12 nautical miles and that this provision should apply to all territories of the People’s Republic of China, including all islands on the South China Sea. On September 14 the same year, Premier Pham Van Dong of the Vietnamese Government solemnly stated in his note to Premier Zhou Enlai that Viet Nam ‘recognizes and supports the Declaration of the Government of the People's Republic of China on China's territorial sea’.”
It is somewhat extraordinary that in order to “prove” such an absurd proposition, someone would quote what they think a Vietnamese prime minister said in 1958, 52 years ago, as evidence of the Vietnamese government’s view. But it is not so absurd when we consider that the poster got this quote from a Chinese propaganda site, and the reason the Chinese site needs to go back to 1958 is that there is simply nothing else in the intervening years to quote.
I will spare readers even a single quote from any Vietnamese government or Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) declaration from 2010, or 2000, or 1990, or 1980, or 1970 or any other time, because anyone who wants to know Vietnam’s view on the two island groups only has to Google for a minute or so to understand why the poster in question had to go back as far as 1958 to find a quote he thought justified his assertion.
But anyway, let’s now look at the propaganda itself, as an introduction to the development of the issue in the modern era.
Yes, China did make that declaration on September 4, 1958. Yes, Vietnamese prime minister Pham Van Dong did make that diplomatic reply 10 days later. I have the whole text of the reply. Yes, it supports China extending its territorial waters to 12 miles. But the reply studiously avoids saying anything about that part of the contents of the Chinese declaration which defines China’s territory as including the Hoang Sa and Truong Sa. For the sake of clarity, the islands are hundreds of miles away from China, so are not covered by China’s 12-mile territorial water boundaries, that is a separate issue; it just happens that the Chinese government used this declaration to push both issues. The non-mention of this part of China’s declaration in Pham Van Dong’s letter is very significant.
Nevertheless, why would Pham Van Dong write this diplomatic letter in such a way that has enabled both Chinese, and as we will see below, Vietnamese chauvinists and reactionaries to use it against Vietnam and the CPV? First we need to understand the context.
Context
In 1954, under massive Soviet and Chinese pressure, the CPV government in Hanoi signed the Geneva Accords, temporarily dividing Vietnam into north and south, with the proviso that elections would be held in 1956 to reunify the country. If the division had been drawn at where the actual forces on the ground had stopped fighting, the CPV-led (Vietminh) forces would have had about three-quarters of the country, not half. By 1956, the US and the puppet Diem regime installed in the south had cancelled the elections because it knew it would have resulted in an overwhelming vote for the CPV across both north and south.
These Geneva Accords defined Vietnamese territory as including both the Hoang Sa and the Truong Sa island groups. These accords were signed by China. Thus the last actual international treaty signed by both Vietnam and China on this issue clearly defined these island groups as Vietnamese. This is thus the standing international law. The reason both island groups were declared part of Vietnam’s territory was because they were part of the Vietnam colony of French imperialism, which had just been defeated by the Vietminh in 1954. The reason they were part of the French colony of Vietnam was not because France had conquered them from some mythical Chinese rule in the 19th century but, on the contrary, because the two island groups were a well-established part of Vietnam’s Nguyen Dynasty long before the arrival of the French, and the islands’ resources had been exploited by Vietnam’s Hoang Sa company since the 18th century. So France naturally got them by invading Vietnam. This is the modern history of the islands. As for whether Chinese maritime expeditions in the islands from the time of the “Song Dynasty” some 1000 years ago can be said to constitute some mythical prior Chinese “sovereignty” will be touched on in the section below on nationalism.
Getting back to the 20th century, the two archipelagos were put under the temporary control of “south Vietnam” in 1954. Once the US/Saigon cancelled the elections and launched barbarous attacks on the CPV-led Vietminh forces in the south, forcing the latter to re-launch the struggle some years later, the new CPV-led formations (in the south), the Provisional Revolutionary Government (PRG) and National Liberation Front (NLF), declared their aim to be the liberation of the whole territory of “south Vietnam” as defined in Geneva. They never said anything about giving part of their territory to China.
However, in the late 1950s, just as the US/Diem regime was resuming its aggression in the south, backed by US arms and “advisors”, China sent its navy to seize the eastern part of the Hoang Sa, despite its signature at Geneva. Incidentally, at the same time Taiwan also laid claim to the islands and moved in and seized one of the larger islands in the Truong Sa – China and Taiwan may have been enemies, but preying on a weakened Vietnam was something they had in common.
Under this two-pronged pressure, Vietnam, seeing imperialism as its main enemy, wanted to soften things with China by not openly confronting it over its seizure of these islands; thus Dong’s letter simply avoided the issue.
But since US imperialism was also confronting China in this period, the Vietnamese government was completely sincere in agreeing with China’s extension of its territorial waters to 12 miles as a protective measure – thus Dong’s letter was not just diplomatic, but an act of solidarity, despite China’s clear lack of solidarity in seizing the islands while Vietnam was at war with imperialism and putting its renewed claim to the islands into this same declaration. Vietnam refused to play by the rules of anti-solidaristic Maoist tradition.
US-China anti-Vietnam alliance
China’s military conquest of the western part of the Hoang Sa in 1974 was even worse. Just as the most barbarous war against any country in history was coming to a close, and following US President Richard Nixon’s famous trip to Beijing at the height of the US genocide against Vietnam to announce the Maoist regime’s cynical betrayal, US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger met with China’s leaders. Given that by late 1974 it was clear to the US that Saigon would fall, and socialist Vietnam would thus inherit the islands, Kissinger gave the green light to “socialist” China to launch a full-scale military attack on the positions of his capitalist Saigon allies in the western Hoang Sa. So Chinese and Vietnamese troops were killed as part of a Machiavellian plan to prevent the coming unified socialist Vietnam from controlling the islands, and to kick sand in Hanoi’s face.
This US-China anti-Vietnam alliance stepped up in the second half of the 1970s and 1980s (including China’s 1979 invasion of Vietnam and joint US-Chinese backing of the genocidal Khmer Rouge’s war against Vietnam and the Cambodian people), and it incorporated all the US-backed capitalist military dictatorships of South-East Asia in an effort to strangle the Vietnamese revolution. In this context, first the Philippines in the late 1970s and early 1980s, then Malaysia in the mid-1980s, also militarily seized eight islands and three islands respectively of the Truong Sa (Spratleys) from Vietnam, while Taiwan also re-stated its claims. Then, in 1988, China again launched a full-scale naval attack against socialist Vietnam and seized six islands of the Truong Sa.
At present, the whole of the Hoang Sa is under Chinese occupation, while Vietnam controls most of the Truong Sa (21 islands), China controls six islands, the Philippines eight, Malaysia three and Taiwan one.
Vietnam’s reaction: Stand firm, but avoid nationalism
What then of Vietnam’s reaction to all this? Is Vietnam similarly just beating nationalist drums over a bunch of rocks? In fact, if we go back to the last paragraph quoted above from the Greg Torode article on the Chinese navy’s kidnapping of Vietnamese fisherfolk, we read:
“Vietnam’s Foreign Ministry has lodged formal protests while its state press, a less sophisticated but equally unsubtle variant of the mainland model, has churned out tales of woe from grieving relatives waiting for news. Under pressure from annoyed Chinese diplomats, Vietnamese government officials have tried to keep nationalistic tensions from spilling over into street protests.”
The indicates how differently Vietnam reacts – trying to keep down the nationalistic reaction – despite the massively greater provocation compared with the detention of a single Chinese captain by Japan, which produced a highly nationalistic response from the Chinese government. This difference regarding nationalism is a class difference.
And that is why I also oppose the “dissident” Vietnamese opposition. Indeed, going back to the famous Pham Van Dong letter of 1958, the distortion of this letter by Chinese propaganda mirrors the exact same distortion of it by right-wing Vietnamese “dissidents” and overseas reactionaries, who for years now have been campaigning for Vietnam to take a “tougher line” with China over the islands, and claim that the CPV is a “puppet” of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and a betrayer of Vietnam (wow, they should talk). They also seize on this letter to justify their views on alleged CPV treachery.
But since the CPV in fact continually and unambiguously claims the islands are Vietnamese, the only thing the right wing can really be objecting to is the Vietnamese government’s other view, that there is no military solution. The “dissidents” have thus turned themselves into the national chauvinist camp and are essentially advocating war with China. The difference between China and Vietnam on this issue is not so much who is right or wrong on the legal issues, but rather the fact that the equivalent of these Vietnamese chauvinists are already in power in Beijing.
They are playing the nationalist card because it is now available. Some sections of the “dissidents” are even ridiculously calling for a boycott of Chinese goods! However, this nationalist sentiment is being made available to the “dissidents” by China’s actions, as well as many of its exploitative investment practices inside Vietnam and other issues. It is not only the islands. China has become a major investor in Vietnam, and like other foreign capitalist investors, many investments show little regard for any social or environmental concerns. Like other investors, Chinese businesses develop special financial relations with certain politicians and sections of the state and government to push their business interests. That makes them no different to any other, but the fact that China is a giant neighbour with a history of aggression against Vietnam and a current bad policy on the islands tends to make Vietnamese more leery of the Chinese variety, however “unfair” that may seem to some well-meaning Western anti-imperialists.
In terms of labour, Chinese investors, like elsewhere in the Third World, import an army of skilled Chinese workers, leaving only jobs like sweepers for the Vietnamese, thus even the usual “employment gains” or skills development associated with foreign investment are largely missing. Chinese bosses in Vietnam openly say they prefer their own workers – who they can keep barrack-style away from Vietnamese labour laws – to “lazy” and “undisciplined” Vietnamese workers, i.e., workers who are more likely to strike and less likely to take shit from the boss than the imported workers, who are totally dependent on the bosses.
Also China’s massive damming of the upper reaches of the Mekong River in China itself, and also in Laos, Burma and Cambodia, is having a dramatic effect on downstream agriculture, and the most downstream is Vietnam’s Mekong rice bowl.
In a recent conversation with a friend who has a relative in the border police, a marked change of attitude of Chinese police in recent years was reported. A big problem in Vietnam is the smuggling of women and children to China. The guard reports a markedly reduced level of cooperation – Vietnam tells the Chinese police exactly which village a girl has been taken to, but the Chinese side at best brings back the girl but does nothing about the criminals responsible, who are sometimes found trying to re-enter Vietnam; at worst Chinese police do not even rescue the girl. Exaggerations? Perhaps? Anecdotal? Perhaps? But we need to recognise in such stories real feelings and beliefs among Vietnamese that are not entirely baseless. My friend’s point was not that Chinese police are evil and approve of this horrible trade. It was that this marked change of attitude to any honest and equal cooperation with Vietnamese police – like the deliberate and pointless humiliation at sea – was an attitude that reflects the rise of an imperial power that needs to demonstrate who is boss.
Ecological destruction fuels hostility
A major issue now is the massive bauxite-aluminium development in Vietnam’s central highlands, which is set to destroy the ecology of this region and wreck the lives of the ethnic minorities who live there. There is massive opposition in Vietnam to this development, including from many prominent scientists, from many in the National Assembly, from sections of the army and CPV, and from people more generally. No less than General Vo Nguyen Giap has written three open letters to the Vietnamese government protesting this development. Madame Nguyen Thi Binh, of 1972 Paris negotiations fame, has also signed one of the many petitions against it.
The foreign investor responsible is a huge Chinese company. In my opinion, that in itself should be irrelevant. The objection is environmental; it matters not which foreign investors are involved, and the Vietnamese state mining company is the local partner in any case. However, the nature of Chinese company labour practices described above has given an extra “security” angle to all this – the central highlands have vast strategic significance, being the region where the US-backed southern regime was decisively defeated in 1974-75. With China’s generally aggressive stance, having thousands of Chinese skilled workers barracked in the region under Chinese bosses with little or no reference to Vietnamese authorities has raised alarm bells.
Now I have something of a problem with this; it bends a little in the nationalist direction I am opposed to; and the “dissident” right wing is exploiting the issue. However, General Giap is not someone who can easily be classified as a simple-minded anti-China nationalist – his main objection is environmental, having been a strong partisan of the environment since the 1980s – but he has also spoken out on the “security” aspect, reflecting a widespread apprehension among war veterans, and the fact of his opinion is reason enough to at least take it seriously.
It is the Vietnamese government that is trying to contain all the popular nationalism associated with all these issues, which has some justice as its basis due to China’s actions, but which also has an ugly and reactionary potential of its own, like the kind now ruling China. Far from using the islands to promote an opposing nationalism, the Vietnamese government has, if anything, tended to overreact against this current, arresting countless bloggers and the like who peacefully spread their anti-China views, rather than confronting them politically. The government has also prevented anti-China demonstrations (in contrast to the weeks of anti-US demonstrations at the outset of the invasion of Iraq), and is still going out of its way to cultivate close political, economic, military and ideological relations with its powerful northern neighbour despite China’s open cynicism in these relations.
For example, when another poster on the Green Left discussion list tried to paint the recent visit by a US warship to Vietnam as the beginning of a US-Vietnam anti-China alliance, I was able to point to the absurdity of this by showing that, despite China’s aggressiveness, Vietnam has carried out nine full-scale sets of military naval manoeuvres with the Chinese navy in the region in recent years, all much more fully military exercises than the symbolic search and rescue exercise (and bi-cultural cooking lessons) on the US ship. Vietnam certainly has the right to manoeuvre, but the US ship visit was but one minor aspect of this; its far greater relations with China itself are also a necessary manoeuvre in its own way; and buying advanced military submarines from Russia, giving Russia the contract to build Vietnam’s first nuclear plant, and choosing Russian consultants and Russian technology to develop the former US base of Cam Ranh Bay into a service centre to repair submarines and civil and military vessels, represent another angle, that are likewise inconsistent with becoming a US ally.
There is plenty to criticise the Vietnamese government for, but its stance on this issue is not one of them.
Nationalism and class: National chauvinism of a rising imperial power
Which leads to me to a point about nationalism and class. Nationalism, in my admittedly harsh opinion, is the ideology of the bourgeoisie, and is essentially anti-working class and anti-internationalist, except when there is a genuine national struggle against oppression and only in as much as such “nationalism of the oppressed” temporarily aids that struggle and no further.
Internationalism is the ideology compatible with socialism. We have seen time and again that when nations have thrown off their failed bureaucratic state socialist projects, the emergent bourgeoisie has tended to adopt nationalism as its ideology, feeling the need for an ideology to preserve some kind of cross-class “national unity” when the old socialist and internationalist ideology is no longer relevant, and their class interests can no longer be contained even with the pretense of official socialist ideology. As 20 years of market socialism were coming to an end in the Yugoslav federation in the mid-1980s, we saw first the rise of a primitive, aggressive bourgeois national chauvinism in the dominant nation, Serbia, and soon after in the second most dominant nation, Croatia, both being expressions of the capitalist class that had arisen out of market socialism.
The fact that China is more advanced along the capitalist path than Vietnam is, in my opinion, reflected in this more aggressive nationalist position of the Chinese leadership, in sharp contrast to the Vietnamese CP’s attempt to battle this nationalism in Vietnam.
In 2006, this need to build a reactionary nationalism to replace socialism as a unifying ideology – when socialism has become irrelevant – was explained in unusually stark terms in an official Chinese journal, China and World Affairs, by Lin Zhibo, a deputy director of the commentary department of the official People’s Daily. This is from the WSWS site (http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/mar2006/cha2-m10_prn.shtml), which I wouldn’t usually quote, but as this is direct from the Chinese journal, it speaks for itself. First, regarding the paroxysm of chauvinism in both China and Japan in 2005, when Chinese mobs attacked Japanese civilian property in China in response to Japan’s fascistic revisionism about WWII in its textbooks, he wrote:
Our one-sided efforts at friendship [with Japan] have been totally useless. Chinese-Japanese relations will be better handled only if China’s stance is tougher than now. It’s not a totally bad thing to have an enemy country. Mencius [the ancient Chinese philosopher] said, “Without foes and external threats, a state will surely perish”. Having an enemy country and external peril forces us to strengthen ourselves.
But if that wasn’t bad enough, Lin Zhibo got even more theoretical about it, noting that, in the context of growing social inequality and the fact that the Communist Party can no longer claim to be socialist:
“Today in China an ideological vacuum is emerging. What can China rely on for cohesion? I believe that apart from nationalism, there is no other recourse.”
This rising bourgeois nationalism was evident not only in that conflict with Japan, but also, several months ago, in a similar mass event, over -- ironically enough -- the Japanese capture of one Chinese national in other islands disputed between Japan and China discussed above, and especially in the anti-Tibetan hysteria over the issue of the Olympic torch, when the whole of the bourgeois Chinese “dissident” blogosphere, which would normally be anti-CCP, swung into full “national” mood right behind the CCP.
Before concluding, I just want to extend the discussion of nationalism a little. The Chinese propaganda quoted above, apart from referring to the famous Pham Van Dong letter of 1958, also made the following claim:
“Vice Foreign Minister Dung Van Khiem of the Democratic Republic of Viet Nam received Mr. Li Zhimin, charge d'affaires ad interim of the Chinese Embassy in Viet Nam and told him that "according to Vietnamese data, the Xisha and Nansha Islands are historically part of Chinese territory." Mr. Le Doc, Acting Director of the Asian Department of the Vietnamese Foreign Ministry, who was present then, added that "judging from history, these islands were already part of China at the time of the Song Dynasty."
Now I can find no references to judge whether this is even true, and nor is there any reference to which decade these alleged statements were made. However, the reference to the “Democratic Republic if Vietnam” suggests this was during the war years, when Vietnamese diplomats may have felt the need to be over-diplomatic to China at times. So let’s just assume the statements did in fact happen.
First, being “historically” part of Chinese territory has no meaning. Southern Vietnam was “historically” part of Cambodia, the empire of Angkor, in the 13th century. Vietnam itself was “historically” part of China, for a cool 1000 years up to around 1000 AD. Thus that diplomatic nicety was in fact saying nothing. Moreover, the second statement further stresses this point; by referring to the Song Dynasty, of some 1000 years ago, Le Doc was able to trivialise the Chinese claim while appearing to be diplomatic about it.
Let’s be clear: even in the Song Dynasty, the main evidence is Chinese maritime expeditions in the islands. That tells us nothing about any “sovereignty” of the Chinese empire at the time. Clearly, Chinese people never settled the islands. In any case, there are many Chinese maps over the last 1000 years which show the southern end of China’s border to be the large Chinese island of Hai Nam, and not including either island archipelago. Even the vague Chinese references that could be interpreted as showing a Chinese claim cease in the second half of the last millennium.
But in the end, so what? If Chinese maritime expeditions, or even maps, from the Song Dynasty of 1000 years ago make the islands part of China today, and if Chinese rule over Tibet for several hundred years over the last millennium mean Tibet must be subjugated forever, does not this also mean that 1000 years of Chinese rule over Vietnam gives China a claim to sovereignty over Vietnam? And that is precisely the problem with “historical” nonsense being dredged up to justify territorial claims, aggression and occupation today: they are irrational and obscurantist, and are generally only used by right-wing nationalist regimes to justify rule in regions where they have no business.
Thus references to the “Song Dynasty” remind one of Mussolini’s references to the Roman Empire to justify fascist aggression around the Mediterranean, of the Zionist movement’s references to the Kingdom of David and Solomon to justify the occupation of Palestine, of the Greek nationalist obsession with the empire of Alexander the Great to deny the rights of Macedonians today, of the Serbian nationalists’ obsession with a battle waged by a brief Serbian empire in the 1300s against the Ottomans to justify the occupation of Kosovo, of the Khmer Rouge’s raising of the ghost of Angkor to justify its claims and aggression against Vietnam’s Mekong region, of Hindu fanatics’ obsession with some temple that was turned into a mosque hundreds of years ago, which they destroyed in the 1990s with catastrophic consequences for all. The list is only short. So much for the “Song Dynasty” argument.
The big picture
There is of course a bigger picture to all this, which includes the fact that there is likely to be oil in the region of these islands; and US-China rivalry in the Asian region, which includes the question of who dominates the seaways of the region, though at this stage it is important to understand that no one is actually blocking anyone else in what are mostly international waters. Even if China’s claim to both island groups as a whole were acted upon, it would not block any ship beyond the 12 miles of territorial waters around them. US imperialism undoubtedly has an interest in trying to contain China’s rise, and as such is maneuvering with the ASEAN states, including Vietnam. Socialists and anti-imperialists oppose any US intervention into this conflict, which can only heighten tensions, and which is only motivated by its own imperialist interests. Indeed, it would tend to heighten tensions precisely by inflaming Chinese nationalism, whose first victim would be Vietnam.
However, there is a big difference between opposing US intervention in the conflict and taking a reflexive “pro-China” position on the issues that divide China from other countries in South-East Asia, especially Vietnam. This is where Manichean “anti-imperialism” has ended up: as China is now seen as a balance to US imperialism, even if its main conflict is not with pro-US regimes in the region but with socialist martyr Vietnam, a tendency emerges to “support China”, whatever that means, in this conflict.
This is a very wrong and anti-internationalist way of viewing the issue. However, beyond this, if there really is such significant rivalry between the US and China, as many now describe – and while real, I tend to find it exaggerated – then that begs the question of the nature of this rivalry: is this just the US trying to contain a large capitalist power, to keep it in its place, as we see elsewhere (e.g., Iran), or is it incipient inter-imperialist rivalry? It is well to remember how rapidly imperialist states rose in the past: it would have been inconceivable in 1870, when Germany and Italy had only just been unified, when Japan had only just emerged from a long sleep with the Meiji restoration, when feudal Russia had only just freed the serfs, that by 1900 these would all be major imperialist powers (and in Russia’s case, with a peasant population bigger than that still existing in China today). I have no firm opinion on this, but I believe signs exist that suggest such a scenario is not out of the question and should not be out of bounds of left discussion.
Here are a few articles worth considering in this context of my final remarks:
“Made in China”, http://www.newint.org/features/2009/06/01/keynote-china/, about what appears to be exploitation in Papua New Guinea of a typically imperialist nature.
“China and Rio Tinto in Guinea: A Wild Courtship”,
http://www.chinaafricarealstory.com/2010/03/china-and-rio-tinto-in-guinea-wild.html.
“Dam building equates to neo colonialism”,
http://www.nationmultimedia.com/2010/12/21/opinion/Dam-building-equates-to-neo-colonialism-30144817.html.
“Chinas billions reap rewards in Cambodia”,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/20/AR2010112003850_pf.html.
“Zambia Uneasily Balances Chinese Investment and Workers Resentment”,
www.nytimes.com/2010/11/21/world/africa/21zambia.html.
“China Squeezes Foreigners for Share of Global Riches”,
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203731004576045684068308042.html.
Friday, February 11, 2011
Monday, January 03, 2011
Discussion with Leading Left Cadre on Socialist Orientation in Vietnam
Discussion with Tran Dac Loi on Socialist Orientation in Vietnam
By Michael Karadjis
This post is based on some ideas put forward by Tran Dac Loi during discussions I had with him in Hanoi in May 2007. Loi is the Executive Vice President of the Vietnam Union of Friendship Organisations, the General-Secretary of the Vietnam Peace and Development Foundation (whose president is Madame Nguyen Thi Binh), and a member of the Presidium of the Vietnam Peace Committee.
Loi wants this to be the beginning of a process in which we help each other elaborate our ideas on socialist orientation in underdeveloped countries, obviously in particular in Vietnam. He wants to produce material that can help the international left understand what is going on in Vietnam better, but more importantly, intelligent material from the international left, together with his own views and those of like-minded cadres, on the true nature of capitalism, presented in a way to be convincing to CPV members, many of who now have illusions in capitalism or permanent market economy.
At this preliminary stage, it is largely a matter of him speaking and me writing up, with my own suggestions, as he feels he needs someone to help express his thoughts more clearly. Below is only the first conversation, on the question of socialist orientation, in bare outline; we have also began one on capitalism, but intend to do much more, even if over email at present. Thus I am not submitting this as an exhaustive presentation of his views but as a work in progress.
In posting this, I am not necessarily indicating that I agree with everything he says, though overwhelmingly I do. It is on some of the political aspects related to socialist democracy and the single party that some of the disagreements are likely to arise, though he has not yet gone into any depth on this, and this should not be understood to mean that he is not very open on these issues (he is, but within a certain framework), or that western leftists should react dogmatically from our perceived framework either.
From here on are Loi’s words (mine in parentheses).
It has been said that:
“Capitalism is a system that has a mechanism but no ideal, while socialism has an ideal but no mechanism”
Which is more or less true, if we exclude the “old mechanism” of socialism, which we rejected with Doi Moi
Doi Moi is based on two key aspects:
1. Firstly, and very importantly, we re-stated that socialism is necessary
2. Secondly, we recognised that we had been applying a system of distribution that was beyond the capacities of the forces of production we possessed at the time (ie, the post-1975 period). We had free education, free health, free housing etc – all excellent socialist ideals – but in reality we did not have the capacity to fully implement them
At the same time, regarding the second point, Loi emphasizes that the incorrect “mechanism” being applied was only one of five major causes of the systemic crisis of the mid-1980s that led to Doi Moi. In order, the five causes of the crisis were:
1. The decades of war and destruction of the country, without any reparations, with millions of people affected by war-injuries, loss of family members, Agent Orange etc
2. International embargo (from the US, Europe, Asian countries, China, Australia etc) lasting until the end of the 1980s (except the US embargo, which lasted until 1994)
3. The Khmer Rouge, its murderous attacks on Vietnam from 1975 to 1978, leading to Vietnamese intervention for self-defense and also to save the Cambodian people from genocide, meaning hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese troops in Cambodia right throughout the 1980s
4. China, not only its 1979 invasion, but the continual threat, requiring some half a million troops being stationed on the northern border
5. The incorrect mechanism of applying socialism
Doi Moi represents a kind of ‘withdrawal’ but not from the road to socialism, just back from the voluntarist road, to the recognition that we are in a stage of transition to socialism, requiring among other things the building of the productive forces, which includes among other methods, the utilization of the market and the private sector, and integration with the capitalist-dominated world economy. But if that was all we did, it could just as easily be a transition to capitalism (as most western academic “transition theory” regards it to be) as a transition to socialism.
Therefore, socialist orientation is very important.
There are three main aspects to socialist orientation: economic, social and political.
The economic aspect is based on four main concepts:
1. The market is a tool, not an end in itself. How the tool is used depends on who is using it. This leads to the question of the political nature of the state. If the state mainly serves the interests of the corporations, the management of the market will take a different form.
2. The market has a double face. Our market economy should not be a “free market” economy. The so-called “free market” is based on the law of the jungle. The market must be regulated, and our system must combine the market with planning. Economic planning does not have to only mean the old form of planning that existed before 1986, Planning incorporates both planning from the ‘top’ and from the grass-roots, as well as being combined with use of the market. A capitalist market economy always tends to what is nowadays called neo-liberalism, that is, the pursuit of profit at all cost will, when other factors are not involved, tend towards the most naked forms of capitalism. Capitalism does not always take this form of course, but this is mainly due to the struggles of working people, which have won many rights in the more advanced capitalist countries, often at a very high cost. But in general, the tendency is towards neo-liberalism. A socialist-oriented market economy must have the opposite tendency.
3. In capitalism, the private sector is not only the major sector, it is the sector which is absolutely dominant, which dictates everything. In a socialist-oriented market economy, the importance and key role of the public economy is stressed. A state-owned company is a multi-purpose organisation. While it needs to pursue profit to survive and not depend on subsidies, it must not be led solely by the profit motivation, but also has a social role. For example, at times during the rice harvest, the private sector will refuse to buy farmers’ rice in order to drive down the price; by contrast, when world prices fell very low in 2000-2001, the state companies were obliged to buy up huge quantities of farmers’ rice at a floor price higher than the world market price. This was obviously not good for company profits, but had a huge social benefit for poor farmers.
4. A fourth overall concept is that during the transition period, it is necessary to utilize market and non-market elements in harmony, while at the same time conserving, consolidating and gradually expanding non-market spaces in the socio-economy. One very important aspect of this, which we have not yet been able to implement, is that there is a need for a non-market space for labour. When someone is unemployed, it does not mean he or she does not want to work; it also does not mean that society does not need his or her labour. On the contrary, there is a great deal of work that needs to be performed, such as cleaning up the environment, building houses for poor people etc. We need an expanded non-market space for the public sector to employ these people who are made unemployed by the market in order to carry out socially useful work. Therefore, the labour market should not rule in an absolute and undiluted form, and its exploitative nature can gradually be overcome. (MK: presumably, the problem to date is mostly finance – this will require significant public investment which the state does not yet have?)
All these aspects are being discussed in the party, and there is by no means agreement with all of the above; the discussion remains very intensive.
Secondly, the social aspect of social orientation is that economic development must be combined with social progress at every step of the way. We see this in practice with the very rapid rate of poverty reduction and the continually improving health and education indicators, though of course we still have a long way to go. If in the past we tried to move too rapidly towards certain goals, which were not attainable at the time, this does not mean these goals, such as universal free education and health care, are not still our ideals. We must move towards them as our economy permits. So for example, we currently have 43 million with free health cover – around 20 million covered by the Health care for the Poor, 9 million children under 6, 12 million covered by enterprise-paid workplace-based health insurance, and some smaller categories (heroic mothers etc), not including the 9.3 million who have bought cheap voluntary health insurance. However, the party currently has a perspective of increasing this free cover to 55 million by 2010, as well as trying to extend health insurance (ie, including voluntary cover) to the entire population by then. This would represent a very concrete application of this principle.
Thirdly, the political aspect of socialist orientation is based on the fact that socialism can only be built via a conscious process, which in this period requires stable leadership. The CPV can remain in that position of leadership as long as two main conditions are met: firstly, that it represents the wisdom and the conscience of the time (Lenin), and secondly, that its members are an example of wisdom and ethics (Ho).
The party is attempting to confront some of the more negative ideological effects of the market. One recent example is the current campaign to follow Ho Chi Minh. However, it is not that simple. For any party in power, and particularly when the only party in power, corruption is always a danger. The tendency of the present Politburo is to strengthen the relationship between the leadership and the base of the party. Among other things it has also regulated that no-one on the Politburo is to have a villa, and that the must all attached to their grass-roots constituencies. There is also more democracy in the National Assembly, with the way members are grilled publicly etc, plus there is the grass-roots democracy legislation, which has made a great impact, of course, depending on the area and other factors.
The mass organisations need to do more to re-connect to the masses. They play a great role, but there are many limitations. For example, the Youth Union is not connected to the exploited young workers in the industrial zones. In some cases, individual unions in factories support the bosses instead of the workers, though this is not the policy of the VGCL.
(MK: This was the end of the ‘three aspects’. WE then proceeded to discuss a couple more issues):
Chavez is not only important for Venezuela, and not only for Latin America, but for the whole world. There are some hesitations about fully committing to Chavez among some sections of the CPV. Part of this is due to his origins – some were concerned that he was not a Communist and not completely ideologically clear (though this has changed since the formation of the PSUV); and partly because in today’s context, some of his approaches are seen as too radical or even that he is an ‘adventurer’. However, from my point of view, I am completely committed to Chavez and believe Venezuela has enormous lessons for Vietnam: on the walls of my office, I have only three photos: Ho Chi Minh, Vo Nguyen Giap and Hugo Chavez.
Confusion of popular consciousness
Confusion of popular consciousness, including among many cadres, is caused by a number of factors:
1. The old socialist model corresponded to years of war, destruction, embargo and horrendous poverty. The old model also contributed to these problems, but it is seen as much worse than it may have been due to the other factors. By contrast, the period of Doi Moi has corresponded to peace, the end of the Cambodian conflict, the end of the embargo etc, and has corresponded to continually rising growth and affluence. Of course this is due to the more correct polices under Doi Moi, but again the context is better. Therefore, popular consciousness sees the new elements introduced since Doi Moi – the market and private sector – as purely responsible for this growth, and therefore has illusions that advancing further in the same direction – towards capitalism – can make things even better, an undialectical way of seeing things. This is the line currently being pushed by international development and lending agencies, which have recognised Vietnam’s exceptional social indicators (compared to countries of similar and in many cases higher economic level) and poverty reduction and claim this is all the work of the market. What they neglect is that all these other poor third world countries that Vietnam is being compared favourably with have never lacked markets or private sectors, and what is different about Vietnam is precisely the socialistic elements that are combined with the market elements.
2. Over the years, large numbers of cadres and other young professionals have gone to study overseas, or to conferences, training etc overseas, bringing a great deal of benefit to the country. However, when they go abroad, they only ever mix with the upper and upper-middle layers in the West. They do not get a full perspective on the lives of working class, poor, unemployed and homeless people, and often come back with a glowing picture of what capitalism can deliver.
3. In the post-Cold War period, imperialism has launched a huge ideological offensive, from the “end of history” to the “war on terror”, in combination with launching global neo-liberalism as the only way forward nations are allowed. “There is no alternative” (TINA) has been widely accepted by many following the collapse of the old socialist model. For Vietnam, this means being told to “take it or leave it” – for example, either join the WTO on the basis of the neo-liberal rules laid down, or be condemned to isolation.
‘The old model’
Capitalism does not have a stagnant fixed form (the problem is more that of ‘capitalist nature’). Even in capitalist countries, there are ‘elements of socialism’ (due to struggle etc). This is part of the proof of Marx’s vision that at the end of the day socialism will replace capitalism in highly developed countries.
The ‘old model of socialism’ (specifically in Vietnam), a centrally planned economy based mostly on state ownership and cooperatives, played an essential role during the rime of the liberation struggle. Firstly, it allowed the country to mobilise the resources for the struggle. Secondly, it provided social equity, equal care for all. Basically it was a model of war communism, and was effective and necessary for victory.
But continuing the model after the war was a mistake which was one factor leading to the socio-economic crisis of the late 1970s and 1980s.
The problems of the old model can be looked at in three aspects:
Firstly, the question of ownership.
We applied a highly socialised form of relations of production, based on a very low level of development and primitive character of the forces of production existing in Vietnam. This contradicted the Marxist view that they should be in relative conformity. Collectivised agriculture, for example, was implemented, though agriculture was still based on manual labour; when there is mechanization, there is an objective need to cooperate. Even barbers were put into cooperatives.
Secondly, management.
A centrally planned form of management was implemented, despite the fact that production was mostly very small scale and mostly based on agriculture, so therefore this was not a rational form of management. This limited the initiative from the bottom.
Thirdly, distribution.
Being eager to get rid of exploitation and achieve equality and social progress, we applied a system of distribution that was beyond the capacity of the forces of production. Therefore, no resources remained for investment, for economic development. In Vietnam’s circumstances at the time, this form of distribution erased material motivation for productive work, resulting in very low productivity. But Lenin said that at the end of the day, socialism must defeat capitalism due to higher labour productivity, because workers are not exploited, but that did not happen. Being an agricultural country, we were always short of food, we had to import rice; but when land was distributed from the collective to the household, in only two years the country became self-sufficient in rice.
Factors leading to this incorrect thinking after 1975:
1. The very success of this model in achieving its aims under war communism gave rise to the incorrect assumption that it could also be successful in normal times
2. The existence of the USSR – an industrialized socialist country that could help us – meant we thought we could attempt to progress to socialist forms more quickly than otherwise.
3. Pressure from the Soviet leadership: Soviet advisors pressured the CPV to put everyone onto collectives (MK: he has studied the archives on this question; it is an interesting point that it would be good to get more information about; it challenges our standard views that it was the Soviet bureaucracy always trying to “hold back” more revolutionary development in favour of reformist approaches – at least in the later 1970s, and specifically in Vietnam, there is a good case to be made that bureaucratic ultraleftism in national economic policy was pushed by the Soviets just as much as it had earlier been pushed by the Maoists)
4. Voluntarism
The issue of socialist management still needs to be studied in depth. Not only ownership, but also management and distribution systems are necessary aspects of correct application in order to progress towards socialism. The issue is how to make workers feel the state enterprises are ‘theirs’, are run in their interests, when they are not the owners; this is a management issue, of workers’ participation. The problem of the wrong way of thinking about this results in some people saying, since some SOEs are inefficient, therefore we must change the form of ownership, via equitisation and privatisation. But the problem may not be ownership, the problem is not state-ownership, the problem may be management and distribution.
Political aspects of the old model
In all ruling Communist Parties, the first generation, the founders, are the outstanding people, intellectually, morally, organizationally, they wee leaders who attracted people by their ideas and example. But it is very difficult to renew the leadership, and somehow we see the downgrading of the capabilities of leadership in the new generations. This is related to the issue of internal party democracy.
(Ends here obviously on what are very interesting issues that need elaboration)
To be continued.
By Michael Karadjis
This post is based on some ideas put forward by Tran Dac Loi during discussions I had with him in Hanoi in May 2007. Loi is the Executive Vice President of the Vietnam Union of Friendship Organisations, the General-Secretary of the Vietnam Peace and Development Foundation (whose president is Madame Nguyen Thi Binh), and a member of the Presidium of the Vietnam Peace Committee.
Loi wants this to be the beginning of a process in which we help each other elaborate our ideas on socialist orientation in underdeveloped countries, obviously in particular in Vietnam. He wants to produce material that can help the international left understand what is going on in Vietnam better, but more importantly, intelligent material from the international left, together with his own views and those of like-minded cadres, on the true nature of capitalism, presented in a way to be convincing to CPV members, many of who now have illusions in capitalism or permanent market economy.
At this preliminary stage, it is largely a matter of him speaking and me writing up, with my own suggestions, as he feels he needs someone to help express his thoughts more clearly. Below is only the first conversation, on the question of socialist orientation, in bare outline; we have also began one on capitalism, but intend to do much more, even if over email at present. Thus I am not submitting this as an exhaustive presentation of his views but as a work in progress.
In posting this, I am not necessarily indicating that I agree with everything he says, though overwhelmingly I do. It is on some of the political aspects related to socialist democracy and the single party that some of the disagreements are likely to arise, though he has not yet gone into any depth on this, and this should not be understood to mean that he is not very open on these issues (he is, but within a certain framework), or that western leftists should react dogmatically from our perceived framework either.
From here on are Loi’s words (mine in parentheses).
It has been said that:
“Capitalism is a system that has a mechanism but no ideal, while socialism has an ideal but no mechanism”
Which is more or less true, if we exclude the “old mechanism” of socialism, which we rejected with Doi Moi
Doi Moi is based on two key aspects:
1. Firstly, and very importantly, we re-stated that socialism is necessary
2. Secondly, we recognised that we had been applying a system of distribution that was beyond the capacities of the forces of production we possessed at the time (ie, the post-1975 period). We had free education, free health, free housing etc – all excellent socialist ideals – but in reality we did not have the capacity to fully implement them
At the same time, regarding the second point, Loi emphasizes that the incorrect “mechanism” being applied was only one of five major causes of the systemic crisis of the mid-1980s that led to Doi Moi. In order, the five causes of the crisis were:
1. The decades of war and destruction of the country, without any reparations, with millions of people affected by war-injuries, loss of family members, Agent Orange etc
2. International embargo (from the US, Europe, Asian countries, China, Australia etc) lasting until the end of the 1980s (except the US embargo, which lasted until 1994)
3. The Khmer Rouge, its murderous attacks on Vietnam from 1975 to 1978, leading to Vietnamese intervention for self-defense and also to save the Cambodian people from genocide, meaning hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese troops in Cambodia right throughout the 1980s
4. China, not only its 1979 invasion, but the continual threat, requiring some half a million troops being stationed on the northern border
5. The incorrect mechanism of applying socialism
Doi Moi represents a kind of ‘withdrawal’ but not from the road to socialism, just back from the voluntarist road, to the recognition that we are in a stage of transition to socialism, requiring among other things the building of the productive forces, which includes among other methods, the utilization of the market and the private sector, and integration with the capitalist-dominated world economy. But if that was all we did, it could just as easily be a transition to capitalism (as most western academic “transition theory” regards it to be) as a transition to socialism.
Therefore, socialist orientation is very important.
There are three main aspects to socialist orientation: economic, social and political.
The economic aspect is based on four main concepts:
1. The market is a tool, not an end in itself. How the tool is used depends on who is using it. This leads to the question of the political nature of the state. If the state mainly serves the interests of the corporations, the management of the market will take a different form.
2. The market has a double face. Our market economy should not be a “free market” economy. The so-called “free market” is based on the law of the jungle. The market must be regulated, and our system must combine the market with planning. Economic planning does not have to only mean the old form of planning that existed before 1986, Planning incorporates both planning from the ‘top’ and from the grass-roots, as well as being combined with use of the market. A capitalist market economy always tends to what is nowadays called neo-liberalism, that is, the pursuit of profit at all cost will, when other factors are not involved, tend towards the most naked forms of capitalism. Capitalism does not always take this form of course, but this is mainly due to the struggles of working people, which have won many rights in the more advanced capitalist countries, often at a very high cost. But in general, the tendency is towards neo-liberalism. A socialist-oriented market economy must have the opposite tendency.
3. In capitalism, the private sector is not only the major sector, it is the sector which is absolutely dominant, which dictates everything. In a socialist-oriented market economy, the importance and key role of the public economy is stressed. A state-owned company is a multi-purpose organisation. While it needs to pursue profit to survive and not depend on subsidies, it must not be led solely by the profit motivation, but also has a social role. For example, at times during the rice harvest, the private sector will refuse to buy farmers’ rice in order to drive down the price; by contrast, when world prices fell very low in 2000-2001, the state companies were obliged to buy up huge quantities of farmers’ rice at a floor price higher than the world market price. This was obviously not good for company profits, but had a huge social benefit for poor farmers.
4. A fourth overall concept is that during the transition period, it is necessary to utilize market and non-market elements in harmony, while at the same time conserving, consolidating and gradually expanding non-market spaces in the socio-economy. One very important aspect of this, which we have not yet been able to implement, is that there is a need for a non-market space for labour. When someone is unemployed, it does not mean he or she does not want to work; it also does not mean that society does not need his or her labour. On the contrary, there is a great deal of work that needs to be performed, such as cleaning up the environment, building houses for poor people etc. We need an expanded non-market space for the public sector to employ these people who are made unemployed by the market in order to carry out socially useful work. Therefore, the labour market should not rule in an absolute and undiluted form, and its exploitative nature can gradually be overcome. (MK: presumably, the problem to date is mostly finance – this will require significant public investment which the state does not yet have?)
All these aspects are being discussed in the party, and there is by no means agreement with all of the above; the discussion remains very intensive.
Secondly, the social aspect of social orientation is that economic development must be combined with social progress at every step of the way. We see this in practice with the very rapid rate of poverty reduction and the continually improving health and education indicators, though of course we still have a long way to go. If in the past we tried to move too rapidly towards certain goals, which were not attainable at the time, this does not mean these goals, such as universal free education and health care, are not still our ideals. We must move towards them as our economy permits. So for example, we currently have 43 million with free health cover – around 20 million covered by the Health care for the Poor, 9 million children under 6, 12 million covered by enterprise-paid workplace-based health insurance, and some smaller categories (heroic mothers etc), not including the 9.3 million who have bought cheap voluntary health insurance. However, the party currently has a perspective of increasing this free cover to 55 million by 2010, as well as trying to extend health insurance (ie, including voluntary cover) to the entire population by then. This would represent a very concrete application of this principle.
Thirdly, the political aspect of socialist orientation is based on the fact that socialism can only be built via a conscious process, which in this period requires stable leadership. The CPV can remain in that position of leadership as long as two main conditions are met: firstly, that it represents the wisdom and the conscience of the time (Lenin), and secondly, that its members are an example of wisdom and ethics (Ho).
The party is attempting to confront some of the more negative ideological effects of the market. One recent example is the current campaign to follow Ho Chi Minh. However, it is not that simple. For any party in power, and particularly when the only party in power, corruption is always a danger. The tendency of the present Politburo is to strengthen the relationship between the leadership and the base of the party. Among other things it has also regulated that no-one on the Politburo is to have a villa, and that the must all attached to their grass-roots constituencies. There is also more democracy in the National Assembly, with the way members are grilled publicly etc, plus there is the grass-roots democracy legislation, which has made a great impact, of course, depending on the area and other factors.
The mass organisations need to do more to re-connect to the masses. They play a great role, but there are many limitations. For example, the Youth Union is not connected to the exploited young workers in the industrial zones. In some cases, individual unions in factories support the bosses instead of the workers, though this is not the policy of the VGCL.
(MK: This was the end of the ‘three aspects’. WE then proceeded to discuss a couple more issues):
Chavez is not only important for Venezuela, and not only for Latin America, but for the whole world. There are some hesitations about fully committing to Chavez among some sections of the CPV. Part of this is due to his origins – some were concerned that he was not a Communist and not completely ideologically clear (though this has changed since the formation of the PSUV); and partly because in today’s context, some of his approaches are seen as too radical or even that he is an ‘adventurer’. However, from my point of view, I am completely committed to Chavez and believe Venezuela has enormous lessons for Vietnam: on the walls of my office, I have only three photos: Ho Chi Minh, Vo Nguyen Giap and Hugo Chavez.
Confusion of popular consciousness
Confusion of popular consciousness, including among many cadres, is caused by a number of factors:
1. The old socialist model corresponded to years of war, destruction, embargo and horrendous poverty. The old model also contributed to these problems, but it is seen as much worse than it may have been due to the other factors. By contrast, the period of Doi Moi has corresponded to peace, the end of the Cambodian conflict, the end of the embargo etc, and has corresponded to continually rising growth and affluence. Of course this is due to the more correct polices under Doi Moi, but again the context is better. Therefore, popular consciousness sees the new elements introduced since Doi Moi – the market and private sector – as purely responsible for this growth, and therefore has illusions that advancing further in the same direction – towards capitalism – can make things even better, an undialectical way of seeing things. This is the line currently being pushed by international development and lending agencies, which have recognised Vietnam’s exceptional social indicators (compared to countries of similar and in many cases higher economic level) and poverty reduction and claim this is all the work of the market. What they neglect is that all these other poor third world countries that Vietnam is being compared favourably with have never lacked markets or private sectors, and what is different about Vietnam is precisely the socialistic elements that are combined with the market elements.
2. Over the years, large numbers of cadres and other young professionals have gone to study overseas, or to conferences, training etc overseas, bringing a great deal of benefit to the country. However, when they go abroad, they only ever mix with the upper and upper-middle layers in the West. They do not get a full perspective on the lives of working class, poor, unemployed and homeless people, and often come back with a glowing picture of what capitalism can deliver.
3. In the post-Cold War period, imperialism has launched a huge ideological offensive, from the “end of history” to the “war on terror”, in combination with launching global neo-liberalism as the only way forward nations are allowed. “There is no alternative” (TINA) has been widely accepted by many following the collapse of the old socialist model. For Vietnam, this means being told to “take it or leave it” – for example, either join the WTO on the basis of the neo-liberal rules laid down, or be condemned to isolation.
‘The old model’
Capitalism does not have a stagnant fixed form (the problem is more that of ‘capitalist nature’). Even in capitalist countries, there are ‘elements of socialism’ (due to struggle etc). This is part of the proof of Marx’s vision that at the end of the day socialism will replace capitalism in highly developed countries.
The ‘old model of socialism’ (specifically in Vietnam), a centrally planned economy based mostly on state ownership and cooperatives, played an essential role during the rime of the liberation struggle. Firstly, it allowed the country to mobilise the resources for the struggle. Secondly, it provided social equity, equal care for all. Basically it was a model of war communism, and was effective and necessary for victory.
But continuing the model after the war was a mistake which was one factor leading to the socio-economic crisis of the late 1970s and 1980s.
The problems of the old model can be looked at in three aspects:
Firstly, the question of ownership.
We applied a highly socialised form of relations of production, based on a very low level of development and primitive character of the forces of production existing in Vietnam. This contradicted the Marxist view that they should be in relative conformity. Collectivised agriculture, for example, was implemented, though agriculture was still based on manual labour; when there is mechanization, there is an objective need to cooperate. Even barbers were put into cooperatives.
Secondly, management.
A centrally planned form of management was implemented, despite the fact that production was mostly very small scale and mostly based on agriculture, so therefore this was not a rational form of management. This limited the initiative from the bottom.
Thirdly, distribution.
Being eager to get rid of exploitation and achieve equality and social progress, we applied a system of distribution that was beyond the capacity of the forces of production. Therefore, no resources remained for investment, for economic development. In Vietnam’s circumstances at the time, this form of distribution erased material motivation for productive work, resulting in very low productivity. But Lenin said that at the end of the day, socialism must defeat capitalism due to higher labour productivity, because workers are not exploited, but that did not happen. Being an agricultural country, we were always short of food, we had to import rice; but when land was distributed from the collective to the household, in only two years the country became self-sufficient in rice.
Factors leading to this incorrect thinking after 1975:
1. The very success of this model in achieving its aims under war communism gave rise to the incorrect assumption that it could also be successful in normal times
2. The existence of the USSR – an industrialized socialist country that could help us – meant we thought we could attempt to progress to socialist forms more quickly than otherwise.
3. Pressure from the Soviet leadership: Soviet advisors pressured the CPV to put everyone onto collectives (MK: he has studied the archives on this question; it is an interesting point that it would be good to get more information about; it challenges our standard views that it was the Soviet bureaucracy always trying to “hold back” more revolutionary development in favour of reformist approaches – at least in the later 1970s, and specifically in Vietnam, there is a good case to be made that bureaucratic ultraleftism in national economic policy was pushed by the Soviets just as much as it had earlier been pushed by the Maoists)
4. Voluntarism
The issue of socialist management still needs to be studied in depth. Not only ownership, but also management and distribution systems are necessary aspects of correct application in order to progress towards socialism. The issue is how to make workers feel the state enterprises are ‘theirs’, are run in their interests, when they are not the owners; this is a management issue, of workers’ participation. The problem of the wrong way of thinking about this results in some people saying, since some SOEs are inefficient, therefore we must change the form of ownership, via equitisation and privatisation. But the problem may not be ownership, the problem is not state-ownership, the problem may be management and distribution.
Political aspects of the old model
In all ruling Communist Parties, the first generation, the founders, are the outstanding people, intellectually, morally, organizationally, they wee leaders who attracted people by their ideas and example. But it is very difficult to renew the leadership, and somehow we see the downgrading of the capabilities of leadership in the new generations. This is related to the issue of internal party democracy.
(Ends here obviously on what are very interesting issues that need elaboration)
To be continued.
Monday, May 03, 2010
Survey of Vietnamese attitudes 2010
The Associated Press released a new poll on April 30 (AP-GfK Poll: Vietnamese upbeat about future) that claims to be "one of the most exhaustive surveys to date of contemporary Vietnamese attitudes." It "underscores how rapidly life has changed in Vietnam. Under a single-party Communist government, the country has embraced market-oriented reforms and lifted tens of millions out of poverty."
Note the usual sleight of hand here in western commentary, indeed even in most academic commentary. It suggests that 10s of millions have been lifted out of poverty due to the market reforms. The fact that the period before "market reform" was also a period of the history's most desructive war ever, followed by no reparations, a new war forced on Vietnam in Cambodia, and an international embargo, while the period since the onset of "market reform" coincided with the end of the Cambodia war and of the embargo, is presumably irrelevant. Also presumably irrelevant is the fact that most other third world countries which have never had any lack of "markets" and capitalist classes have not had this kind of success in the social field as Vietnam has.
No, while the market reforms were necessary due to the extreme poverty of the state following all this destruction and underdevelopment, it is precisely the maintenance of significant aspects of the old socialist structure within which these market reforms have been introduced that is responsible for VN's almost unique success in poverty reduction and good social indicators by the standards of countries of its national income per capita or higher.
The AP dispatch continues:
"Eighty-five percent said the economy is stronger than it was five years ago, and 87 percent said they expect it to be even stronger in another five years. Eighty-one percent said the country is moving in the right direction."
This is a very interesting poll, which can be read here: http://www.ap-gfkpoll.com/pdf/AP-GfK%20Vietnam%20Poll%20FINAL%20Topline%204%2013%2010.pdf
But I'm really unsure about how representative it is, and whether it really tests anyone's opinions very much.
For example, to the question "Compared to 5 years ago, would you say that the condition of this country’s economy is better, worse, or about the same?", 85% allegedly answer "better", including 40% who answer "much better", 9% "the same" and only 3% answer "worse". Yet the last 5 years saw the country's biggest inflation crisis since the hyperinflation of the mid-1980s (which played its part in ending the old order), and during time prices of most basic good and much else doubled (wage rises were much lower), a crisis which was devastating for the poor (though no doubt many of the capitalists did well from rising prices). Vietnam struggled out of this crisis, partly by the Politburo putting the more extreme pro-market tendency on a leash in mid-2008, yet this was followed later that year by the world capitalist financial crisis. Vietnam did not suffer at the same level as many in the capitalist world, but throughout the capitalist sector - particularly the export-oriented, mass consumer goods production area, which employs millions of mostly rural to urban migrants - there were enormous mass redundancies, of several hundred thousand people. Now given that most Vietnamese peasants still have land to go back to, and thus food security, we can say that most were relatively cushioned compared to similar rural migrant workers in many other capitalist countries which feature mass landlessness. However, the idea that they would view the situation as "better" or even "the same" seems laughable to me. Even worse is the fact that this relative lack of landlessness that I say may have cushioned the shock has become less effective in precisely the last 5 years, as thousands of peasants are losing land to industry, and there are virtually no stories I am aware of where this has led to an improvement in the peasants' situation, or even an equal situation.
So while I would like to believe these findings, given my overall support for the CPV in the past and to some extent present, I think it would be intellectually dishonest for me to try to push these findings as evidence of anything. They certainly don't correspond to the views of anyone I know.
Another example that creates much suspicion (and in this case even suspicion of the poll's intentions), was the question (and answer) "What comes closest to you opinion on abortion?" where te options "abortion should be illegal in all cases" or "illegal in most cases" drew the absolute majority opinion (33% and 42% respectively), whereas "legal in most cases" drew only 10% and "legal in all cases" only 1% !!
For the record, abortion is completely legal in Vietnam, in all cases, always has been, is performed daily (indeed at too high a rate, but that's another issue), at both central state hospitals and at small private clinics and communal health centres and everywhere in between, and there has never been any discussion that I'm aware of of changing this situation, nor have I ever met anyone opposed to abortion. So this particular question, for me, puts a shadow over the worth of the entire survey.
On other things, many of the lists of things people think are serious problems seemed generally OK, but the questions were vague, and some things less believable than others. Certainly, the fairly low position given to access to health care and to transport/traffic issues as serious problems is frankly not believable.
If we are to take the survey at face value, however, there are a number of interesting points, though given what I've said above, this should be treated with caution as well.
Big majorities (55% and 58% respectively) oppose the US invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, while only 3% support either war (the rest allegedly don't know). This appears pretty accurate, if anything, the numbers clearly opposed are probably quite a bit higher.
In terms of positive views of foreign countries, Russia was viewed most favourably (by 49%), well ahead of China (32%), in turn well ahead of the US (19%). Seems pretty accurate. Again, despite generally favourable opinions about China, 33% thought the rise of Chinese military power was a bad thing, and only 8% thought it was good. That is pretty logical for Vietnamese. The very high opinion of Obama (35% favourable) is pretty spot on about current illusions, and the very low rating of George Bush (8% favourable) accurately reflects the inevitable unreformably stupid hard right in any society.
The most interesting point for me, which I would like to believe is accurate, is that only 56% of respondents thought there should be more private ownership of business and industry, while 25% thought there should be more state ownership. Some reading this might be surprised that I think these statistics are good. But you need to understand how far popular consciousness has drifted on this fundamental issue. In addition, given the state sector still holds all the most strategic parts of the economy, it is quite possible for many to want more private ownership, due to their illusions in the wonders of "the market" etc (and many may interpret this as smallish private ownership), yet still believe in a strong state economy. For me, 56% seemed a pleasantly smallish number. And the fact that a full quarter of respondents wanted not just the preservation of a strong state sector - the way it is usually put, including by party leaders and ideologists - but actually MORE state ownership is a stunning figure. If this is true, it is a good sign.
Another similar sign of socialist consciousness concerned a question about how business and industry "should be managed." 15% said "The government should be the owner and appoint the managers" while 11% said "The employees should own the business and should elect themanagers," 26% in total. Of the rest, 33% hel the social-democratic illusion that "The owners and the employees should participate in the selection of managers" (by the way, not such a social-democratic illusion in the case of businesses which are state-owned; on the contrary, co-management, a revolutionary concept - but tis underlines the problems with this kind of poll - did this question refer to private business only, or state business as well?). Only 14% said "The owners should run their businesses or appoint the managers."
On the other hand some three quarters said that competition is good "because it stimulates people to work hard" and, regarding inequality, that "larger income differences are OK as incentives for people to work harder." Only 10-12% had an opposing view on each, supposedly. Note however that the "value added" in both cases, about encouraging people to "work harder", was already in the loaded questions.
One final comment. In the section about who you would not want as a neighbour, there were, expectedly, very high figures for drug addicts, former criminals etc, but only 26% didn't want to live next door to a homosexual. Now that might still be unacceptably high, but have no illusions we are talking about an underdeveloped, largely peasant country; and also we needn't have any illusions the figures would be much better in our "advanced democratic" countries, and possibly worse. This fits in well with my perceptions (and this result is so much the opposite of the completely unbelievable "answers" regarding abortion) - in general, Vietnamese are simply not particularly hung up about gay people.
Readers here can expect a larger article shortly on current developments in Vietnam.
Note the usual sleight of hand here in western commentary, indeed even in most academic commentary. It suggests that 10s of millions have been lifted out of poverty due to the market reforms. The fact that the period before "market reform" was also a period of the history's most desructive war ever, followed by no reparations, a new war forced on Vietnam in Cambodia, and an international embargo, while the period since the onset of "market reform" coincided with the end of the Cambodia war and of the embargo, is presumably irrelevant. Also presumably irrelevant is the fact that most other third world countries which have never had any lack of "markets" and capitalist classes have not had this kind of success in the social field as Vietnam has.
No, while the market reforms were necessary due to the extreme poverty of the state following all this destruction and underdevelopment, it is precisely the maintenance of significant aspects of the old socialist structure within which these market reforms have been introduced that is responsible for VN's almost unique success in poverty reduction and good social indicators by the standards of countries of its national income per capita or higher.
The AP dispatch continues:
"Eighty-five percent said the economy is stronger than it was five years ago, and 87 percent said they expect it to be even stronger in another five years. Eighty-one percent said the country is moving in the right direction."
This is a very interesting poll, which can be read here: http://www.ap-gfkpoll.com/pdf/AP-GfK%20Vietnam%20Poll%20FINAL%20Topline%204%2013%2010.pdf
But I'm really unsure about how representative it is, and whether it really tests anyone's opinions very much.
For example, to the question "Compared to 5 years ago, would you say that the condition of this country’s economy is better, worse, or about the same?", 85% allegedly answer "better", including 40% who answer "much better", 9% "the same" and only 3% answer "worse". Yet the last 5 years saw the country's biggest inflation crisis since the hyperinflation of the mid-1980s (which played its part in ending the old order), and during time prices of most basic good and much else doubled (wage rises were much lower), a crisis which was devastating for the poor (though no doubt many of the capitalists did well from rising prices). Vietnam struggled out of this crisis, partly by the Politburo putting the more extreme pro-market tendency on a leash in mid-2008, yet this was followed later that year by the world capitalist financial crisis. Vietnam did not suffer at the same level as many in the capitalist world, but throughout the capitalist sector - particularly the export-oriented, mass consumer goods production area, which employs millions of mostly rural to urban migrants - there were enormous mass redundancies, of several hundred thousand people. Now given that most Vietnamese peasants still have land to go back to, and thus food security, we can say that most were relatively cushioned compared to similar rural migrant workers in many other capitalist countries which feature mass landlessness. However, the idea that they would view the situation as "better" or even "the same" seems laughable to me. Even worse is the fact that this relative lack of landlessness that I say may have cushioned the shock has become less effective in precisely the last 5 years, as thousands of peasants are losing land to industry, and there are virtually no stories I am aware of where this has led to an improvement in the peasants' situation, or even an equal situation.
So while I would like to believe these findings, given my overall support for the CPV in the past and to some extent present, I think it would be intellectually dishonest for me to try to push these findings as evidence of anything. They certainly don't correspond to the views of anyone I know.
Another example that creates much suspicion (and in this case even suspicion of the poll's intentions), was the question (and answer) "What comes closest to you opinion on abortion?" where te options "abortion should be illegal in all cases" or "illegal in most cases" drew the absolute majority opinion (33% and 42% respectively), whereas "legal in most cases" drew only 10% and "legal in all cases" only 1% !!
For the record, abortion is completely legal in Vietnam, in all cases, always has been, is performed daily (indeed at too high a rate, but that's another issue), at both central state hospitals and at small private clinics and communal health centres and everywhere in between, and there has never been any discussion that I'm aware of of changing this situation, nor have I ever met anyone opposed to abortion. So this particular question, for me, puts a shadow over the worth of the entire survey.
On other things, many of the lists of things people think are serious problems seemed generally OK, but the questions were vague, and some things less believable than others. Certainly, the fairly low position given to access to health care and to transport/traffic issues as serious problems is frankly not believable.
If we are to take the survey at face value, however, there are a number of interesting points, though given what I've said above, this should be treated with caution as well.
Big majorities (55% and 58% respectively) oppose the US invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, while only 3% support either war (the rest allegedly don't know). This appears pretty accurate, if anything, the numbers clearly opposed are probably quite a bit higher.
In terms of positive views of foreign countries, Russia was viewed most favourably (by 49%), well ahead of China (32%), in turn well ahead of the US (19%). Seems pretty accurate. Again, despite generally favourable opinions about China, 33% thought the rise of Chinese military power was a bad thing, and only 8% thought it was good. That is pretty logical for Vietnamese. The very high opinion of Obama (35% favourable) is pretty spot on about current illusions, and the very low rating of George Bush (8% favourable) accurately reflects the inevitable unreformably stupid hard right in any society.
The most interesting point for me, which I would like to believe is accurate, is that only 56% of respondents thought there should be more private ownership of business and industry, while 25% thought there should be more state ownership. Some reading this might be surprised that I think these statistics are good. But you need to understand how far popular consciousness has drifted on this fundamental issue. In addition, given the state sector still holds all the most strategic parts of the economy, it is quite possible for many to want more private ownership, due to their illusions in the wonders of "the market" etc (and many may interpret this as smallish private ownership), yet still believe in a strong state economy. For me, 56% seemed a pleasantly smallish number. And the fact that a full quarter of respondents wanted not just the preservation of a strong state sector - the way it is usually put, including by party leaders and ideologists - but actually MORE state ownership is a stunning figure. If this is true, it is a good sign.
Another similar sign of socialist consciousness concerned a question about how business and industry "should be managed." 15% said "The government should be the owner and appoint the managers" while 11% said "The employees should own the business and should elect themanagers," 26% in total. Of the rest, 33% hel the social-democratic illusion that "The owners and the employees should participate in the selection of managers" (by the way, not such a social-democratic illusion in the case of businesses which are state-owned; on the contrary, co-management, a revolutionary concept - but tis underlines the problems with this kind of poll - did this question refer to private business only, or state business as well?). Only 14% said "The owners should run their businesses or appoint the managers."
On the other hand some three quarters said that competition is good "because it stimulates people to work hard" and, regarding inequality, that "larger income differences are OK as incentives for people to work harder." Only 10-12% had an opposing view on each, supposedly. Note however that the "value added" in both cases, about encouraging people to "work harder", was already in the loaded questions.
One final comment. In the section about who you would not want as a neighbour, there were, expectedly, very high figures for drug addicts, former criminals etc, but only 26% didn't want to live next door to a homosexual. Now that might still be unacceptably high, but have no illusions we are talking about an underdeveloped, largely peasant country; and also we needn't have any illusions the figures would be much better in our "advanced democratic" countries, and possibly worse. This fits in well with my perceptions (and this result is so much the opposite of the completely unbelievable "answers" regarding abortion) - in general, Vietnamese are simply not particularly hung up about gay people.
Readers here can expect a larger article shortly on current developments in Vietnam.
Monday, August 25, 2008
Vietnam in the last two years: More drastic ascendancy of “the market”
Developments in Vietnam in the last two years: More drastic ascendancy of “the market”
By Michael Karadjis
The report is more of an update, so for comrades to fully understand it, they may need to read the article I wrote 2 years ago, ‘Vietnam’s ‘Market Economy with a Socialist Orientation’: Towards Capitalism or Socialism’ (http://mihalisvn.blogspot.com/2006/11/vietnams-market-economy-with-socialist.html).
In my 2005 report, I pointed to the increasing ideological weight of the ‘market’ throughout society, and its reflection in the drift towards openly pro-capitalist opinions among sections of the party and state leadership. Contrasting the process in Vietnam to that in both the former Soviet bloc and in China, I wrote:
“While much of the structure of a state-dominated economy, a Party with roots among the workers and peasants, a working class with a strong sense of its power both in the state sector and private and foreign enterprises, a highly equal land reform, and a powerful network of mass organisations, remains intact, or has even been strengthened, a new reality, the reality of the market-place, even if not yet dominated by a capitalist class, slowly eats away and corrodes this structure from below. Capitalist restoration is thus taking place by stealth.”
Saying it was “taking place” was not meant to indicate any conscious direction by the CPV leadership (though I certainly claimed that sections of it are consciously pro-capitalist), nor that there was no resistance to it. I pointed to opposition to this direction both from other sections of the party and state leadership, and from broad sections of society, including the working class, though this opposition tends to lack the overall political coherence of the right-wing. I also did not suggest that any completion of the process was likely in the short-term, but that short of other developments in the world revolution, it was likely to be inevitable:
“That (ie, the term “by stealth”) does not mean that there will be no need for ultimate class confrontation for the process to be completed, but I believe it will be largely completed on the ground before certain inevitable confrontations take place towards its completion. However, I should emphasise that I am not suggesting any timeline for this, nor any inevitability – but ultimately, this erosion of basic collective solidarity by the ‘morality’ of the market will make capitalist restoration inevitable short of new revolutionary developments in the region.”
In case any of that is unclear, when I wrote “completed on the ground” I essentially meant this “erosion of basic collective solidarity by the ‘morality’ of the market” and thus the snuffing out of socialist consciousness among the masses. What I meant by this was that the “inevitable confrontations” were likely to take place as largely defensive struggles by sections of the working class without the perspective of an overall socialist program for such defence; and that the ideological weakness of the more socialist wing of the party (and the age of many of them) would also make any clear ideological leadership of such struggles from these sections of the party with a clear perspective unlikely.
However, I judged that despite the many pro-capitalist changes and the ideological advance of the market, there were also some important pro-socialist changes, particularly in health care, and that the degree of capitalist takeover of the economy and the state was still far from what would be necessary to make any grand statements about completed capitalist restoration, or about declaring any change in the class nature of the state, or of the CPV, the party that actually led a revolution and is still led, not only at the top but throughout all parts of society, by a layer of people who were directly involved in the revolution (though of course, time continually changes this last factor).
Two years later I see no reason to change the final fundamental point. However, the ideological drift of the leadership, the increasing number of pro-capitalist measures, the ideological impact of the ‘market’ on society and popular consciousness, and the growth of the capitalist sector in the economy have all developed rapidly in the last two years. Vietnam’s entry into the WTO last December, while inevitable, naturally accelerates this process. While none of these points taken in isolation would be enough to suggest a major shift, taken all together, I believe they do, and so the overall outlook I regard to be distinctly less positive than in 2005.
Major developments 2004-2007: A significant shift to the right
The following are a number of major changes over 2004-2007:
As I outlined in my article back then, something of a turning point was the new privatisation (‘equitisation’) resolution of November 2004, which opened up nearly all of the large state corporations, which control all the strategic areas of the economy, to privatisation of their subsidiaries, mostly with majority state-owned stakes, depending on other factors such as the size of the company etc. While the parent company would not be equitised for the time being, they would later also be equitised with a state majority. So far this process has remained slow, in comparison with the great speed-up over the last two years of equitisation of smaller state companies, a process almost complete. However, there have been a number of larger state corps beginning the process. The most outstanding are the state milk company, Vinamilk, the main state insurance company, Bao Viet, a number of power stations etc. This year, the largest fertiliser plant also began equitisation, with one third of its equity opened to “the public.” Statements from certain leaders increasingly claim the state sector will eventually be limited to public services, major infrastructure, defense and security related industries and forestry. How far this goes is a question of the balance of forces.
At the 10th Party Congress last year, this issue of what kind of property ownership was fudged, unlike the more emphatic reassertion of the domination of state ownership at the 9th Congress. On the one hand, it did restate that the state sector plays the leading role and that over time as the forces of production grow the state and collective economies will gradually come to more and more dominate the economy. On the other hand, it for the first time laid out the view that “joint-stock” – ie shareholding – companies would become a more and more common form of ownership throughout all sectors. Congress resolutions are always statements of consensus between differing views, and whose interpretation comes to dominate in practice depends on the balance of forces. For the pro-capitalist leaders, a “leading state role” can be envisaged as meaning simply a dominant state share in all these increasing number of joint-stock, equitised former state companies. For some, “dominant” does not have to mean even 51%, but can mean “controlling”, ie about 20-25 percent. Naturally, for the pro-socialist wing, a completely different interpretation is possible.
The fetishisation of equitisation as the one and only form of what is called “state enterprise reform” has had the ideological spin-off of experimentation of equitisation of a major state hospital, which does liver and kidney operations, in Saigon, ie, turning a state hospital into a share company. The newspaper of the Saigon branch of the Youth Union, Tuoi Tre, in an editorial called for generalized equitisation of education and health, a statement that I can only call an expression of unabashed far right neo-liberal ideology. On the other hand, the Fatherland Front, the name of the front of the mass and social organisations, which in effect forms a third tier of the regime after the government and the party, has come out against this move, reflecting the views expressed at the meetings it has called by its mass base. The labour newspaper Lao Dong then interviewed the minister, asking whether this was government policy or not. He had to admit it had been going on, but described it as a mere “experiment,” which is a difficult concept, given that shares had already been sold, and also given out to workers, some of who had already lost them. But that was his way of withdrawing. He said we first had to find what the opinions of the people were, and the opinions expressed he admitted were negative. Therefore, he said the government has made no decision. Of course, on the positive side, this also indicates the ability of the masses via sections of the ‘party-state’ itself – in this case the Fatherland Front – to continue to influence state policy, but the extreme nature of such a policy proposal also indicates just how defensive the nature of the struggle is becoming.
There has been a tremendous growth in both local and foreign capital. Local capital is more confident than at any time since Doi Moi began, and the scale of local capitalism is also growing, with many more medium and some large companies. Last year, Vietnam received 10 billion dollars in Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), and in the first four months of this year, another 4.3 billion had been pledged already, a big increase on last year. Combined, local and foreign private capital now run 65-70 percent of industry, the state left with some 30 percent. Of course, as the state also controls a larger share of major services, its share of GDP as a whole is higher than its share in industry. From some 30% of GDP in 1990 the state share grew to some 40% in 1995, and for the following decade remained stubbornly around that figure, as rapid growth of the state economy matched the growth of private and foreign investment. Now however it is most likely that the corner has been turned, given both the progress of equitisation and this huge progress of private capital outside the state sector. Though I’ve seen no new figures yet, it seems likely the state share of GDP has dropped to around 35%. Obviously, we make no grand statements regarding a drop from 40 to 35 percent of GDP – it may be that the lower level is what the state can realistically run at present. However, given the solid 40 percent level remained for a decade, it does indicate motion in a certain direction. In terms of overall social investment, where the state share includes both the state budget and the investments of state enterprises, for most of the last decade the state share has stood at some 55-60 percent of investment. Now however, it is the combined private sectors accounting for 55% and the combined state investment for 45%, again motion in a clear direction.
The most spectacular change has been the stock exchange. Two years ago it accounted for less than one percent of GDP, compared to 53% in China for example. However, in just 2006 it had lept to a value of 14 billion dollars, or 22% of GDP, and this rises to 22 billion dollars if we include government bonds. Most of this increased value has come from the equitisation of some larger and more significant SOEs I spoke of above. However, there are vastly different approximations of the real value, and most experts consider it to be extremely overheated, so the real figures may well be lower. Nevertheless, the rise is spectacular however it is looked at.
At the 10th Congress, the party ratified the earlier Plenum resolutions that party members could engage in private business, as long as they followed state laws, party statutes etc when they did this, but officially are under no other special social obligations as businesspeople (though unofficially they may be). The preamble to the statutes which had said that party members do not engage in “exploitation” was replaced with the statement that the party aims to move towards a society where exploitation will be abolished. However, an amendment which aimed to specifically add after the words “private business” the words “with no limitations on scale” was not passed. Of course, just saying “private business” in itself imposes no limitation on scale, hence the amendment was unnecessary, and so the purpose of the amendment was to give a specific invite to the large capitalist class. Clearly most members did not see this in a positive light, and so its rejection is a good thing. Nevertheless, the passing of the overall resolution opens up a new kind of potential struggle within the party, and given the ideological ascendancy of “the market” throughout society, it will not be an easy struggle. The issue is very complicated, and simply affording to live in urban areas necessitates a great many families having at least one member engaging in some kind of “business,” without this meaning “capitalist,” in the usual definition, ie, large-scale, business. Underdeveloped societies like Vietnam are based to a large extent on petty-bourgeois, small scale ownership, which many CPV members, not only the right, believed needed to be reflected in the statutes for them to catch up with “reality.” At this stage, we are not seeing anything like the developments we saw in China when we analysed the state had become bourgeois, eg, the presence of owners of gigantic capitalist enterprises not only as members but as leaders of the party in various regions, including as party leaders of state bodies in certain regions.
Last year, the Labour Ministry put amendments to the Labour Law to the National Assembly, which on the one hand made the conditions by which strikes were legal easier, responding to a long term campaign by the Vietnam General Confederation of Labour (VGCL), but on the other hand put extremely reactionary provisions against so-called “illegal” strikes, including that local governments would be given powers to force workers taking part in “illegal strikes” back to work, and that these workers would have to pay compensation to the boss. I’m still unclear on whether they have actually been put into the Labour Law, as media reports vary and are unreliable. My friend Binh in the VGCL told me “yeh the ministry made these laws but it hasn’t happened because the VGCL is opposed.” I’m not sure if he meant the laws weren’t passed or simply that they mean nothing anyway as long as the VGCL is opposed. He said it is obvious that they have not been applied. But of course, the repressive sections of the labour law have never been applied: according to this law, every strike since 1994 has been illegal, but there has never been any state action recorded against any strike, and VGCL leaders and their newspaper continually back and justify these “illegal” strikes. This again indicates the power of the masses when they use it, and in particular when sections of the ‘party-state’ support them, but again it also indicates just how boldly reactionary some of the proposals of the right are becoming.
There are many other aspects, but I won’t go into every detail. In general, we are seeing great wealth being created, with all sections of society benefiting to some extent, but it is the very visible rise in the wealth of rich minority that is most outstanding, with new very expensive villas and cars appearing everywhere, amid continuing general poverty. It is the ideological impact of all these developments which are most important. The “market”, capitalism, inequality, persistent poverty among all this is increasingly just seen as the “natural” way of the world. Among young people, any vestiges of socialist ideology are completely absent. Of 100 young people one speaks to, 99 want to go into business (and a great number of older people as well). That is understandable in its way: it’s not necessarily a criticism of the people. I believe it is even ‘organic’ in a way, given the nature of Vietnam’s socio-economic reality, something we need to understand more. However, ideology can only reflect, ultimately, this social reality.
I don’t want to present an entirely negative report, but as I am reporting on the changes over the last couple of years, the changes are mostly in one direction, and that is inevitable given the relationship of forces on a world scale, particularly in Asia.
Obviously, things have changed in the world, particularly in Latin America, and the impact of Chavez is finally being felt in Vietnam. He really exists now. Chavez is a huge inspiration to the left-wing of the party, right up to the leadership. That was obvious from the statements of party leader Nong Duc Manh in his recent visit to Venezuela, and the joint Vietnam-Venezuela declaration when he was there, in which he welcomed the advance of the socialist revolution in Latin America, stood in sharp contrast to the ‘business as usual’ joint declaration they had made last year when Chavez visited Vietnam. The deputy to Madame Binh, Tran Dac Loi, who I had many discussions with (and who attended the recent Melbourne conference), told me he has three photos on his office walls: Ho Chi Minh, General Giap and Hugo Chavez.
How much this can affect the course of events in Vietnam itself is a more difficult question, given the geographical distance and Vietnam’s closer integration with the capitalist economies of the Asian region. Nevertheless, it is a tremendously important reference point and encouragement for the socialist forces in Vietnam.
Overall, the more positive aspects of Vietnam that I have frequently written about remain completely valid. Free health care now covers some 60% of the population, the highest since Doi Moi, and the plans are to extend it to another 10 million or so people by 2010. As my friend Loi explains, this is precisely an example of one of the main aspects they claim represent ‘socialist orientation’: that economic growth must go hand in hand with social progress every step of the way, as the real economic potential opens those possibilities for such social progress to be real. Obviously, the extent of this in reality is highly debatable; there are still many extremely poor people while private wealth amasses, especially in the more remote mountainous regions, even though the numbers living in poverty have crashed from 58% in 1993 to 18% today. That’s a world class achievement, but 18% of 80 million is still a lot of people. Meanwhile, infant mortality according to reliable estimates is now down to 16, the best in the region, and life expectancy up to 72, both figures, like may other indicators, well above the level of other low income countries, and approaching first world figures.
Despite the advance of privatisation, the bulk of the major companies in the major economic sectors remain in state hands, and this is not only a product of bureaucratic slowness but also of clear political opposition from large sections of the party and resistance from sections of the established working class who do see themselves as co-managers of the state enterprises. In addition, the extraordinary combativity of the newer sections of the working class who are emerging from former rural dwellers now working in private and foreign export-oriented firms was plain to see in the upsurge early last year when tens of thousands struck and forced the bosses to implement the state resolutions for 40% wage rises. There have been further explosions this year.
In addition, the majority peasant population will not easily give up the egalitarian land reform that the revolution brought about, though without further advance to new forms of cooperative, neither is this petty land ownership ultimately a road out of poverty. Outside of the organised sections of the working class, especially in state industry, it is among the peasantry that the party has its social base, and the strong links of the party with the peasantry is an additional “conservative” pressure on a major section of the party. Leaders at various levels are often still those who dedicated their earlier lives to a struggle for a socially just society. Vietnamese-American left-wing academic Ngo Vinh Long, for example, claims “it is difficult for the government to carry out repression … Vietnam just came out of a revolution and many of the retired soldiers and retired colonels are living in the countryside, very close to the people.” In fact, he also notes that very often “they are the leaders of the protests,” meaning continual protests by peasants against corrupt officials trying to take over their land.
This nature of the party – a revolutionary party as we have long analysed it – is important to remember when we make comparisons between Vietnam and China. For example, the series of moves I have described above in the period 2004-2007 makes the situation resemble in many ways the juncture in China a decade or so earlier, around 1992-94, when the CCP was clearly shifting towards an openly capitalist restorationist course, but before the real advance of this capitalist restoration in practice which began in earnest with the 1997 Congress and the ensuing fire sale of a massive part of the state economy and retrenchment of some 50 million workers. But our different assessment of the two parties is a crucial factor to be taken into account when making such superficial, though useful, analogies
All this indicates the question is not settled. What we do have to recognise on the negative side, however, are two main points:
That the commercial environment of a market economy has a very negative ideological impact, that it pushes the kind of social motivations that are the opposite of the collectivist and solidarity-based motivations required for socialism, and eventually, as long as other things do not change, and the party leadership is incapable of politically challenging this, it eats away at everything, including the nominally non-market elements such as state enterprises and cooperatives and state land ownership and small peasant plots.
That the party itself is part of society and therefore not immune from all this: this means both at a material level, ie, corruption etc, but also at an ideological level: there is a consciously pro-capitalist element within the party leadership which is constantly becoming a more powerful and leading element, particularly as time goes on, since the more socialist elements of the party tend to be concentrated among older layers who lived the revolution themselves.
By Michael Karadjis
The report is more of an update, so for comrades to fully understand it, they may need to read the article I wrote 2 years ago, ‘Vietnam’s ‘Market Economy with a Socialist Orientation’: Towards Capitalism or Socialism’ (http://mihalisvn.blogspot.com/2006/11/vietnams-market-economy-with-socialist.html).
In my 2005 report, I pointed to the increasing ideological weight of the ‘market’ throughout society, and its reflection in the drift towards openly pro-capitalist opinions among sections of the party and state leadership. Contrasting the process in Vietnam to that in both the former Soviet bloc and in China, I wrote:
“While much of the structure of a state-dominated economy, a Party with roots among the workers and peasants, a working class with a strong sense of its power both in the state sector and private and foreign enterprises, a highly equal land reform, and a powerful network of mass organisations, remains intact, or has even been strengthened, a new reality, the reality of the market-place, even if not yet dominated by a capitalist class, slowly eats away and corrodes this structure from below. Capitalist restoration is thus taking place by stealth.”
Saying it was “taking place” was not meant to indicate any conscious direction by the CPV leadership (though I certainly claimed that sections of it are consciously pro-capitalist), nor that there was no resistance to it. I pointed to opposition to this direction both from other sections of the party and state leadership, and from broad sections of society, including the working class, though this opposition tends to lack the overall political coherence of the right-wing. I also did not suggest that any completion of the process was likely in the short-term, but that short of other developments in the world revolution, it was likely to be inevitable:
“That (ie, the term “by stealth”) does not mean that there will be no need for ultimate class confrontation for the process to be completed, but I believe it will be largely completed on the ground before certain inevitable confrontations take place towards its completion. However, I should emphasise that I am not suggesting any timeline for this, nor any inevitability – but ultimately, this erosion of basic collective solidarity by the ‘morality’ of the market will make capitalist restoration inevitable short of new revolutionary developments in the region.”
In case any of that is unclear, when I wrote “completed on the ground” I essentially meant this “erosion of basic collective solidarity by the ‘morality’ of the market” and thus the snuffing out of socialist consciousness among the masses. What I meant by this was that the “inevitable confrontations” were likely to take place as largely defensive struggles by sections of the working class without the perspective of an overall socialist program for such defence; and that the ideological weakness of the more socialist wing of the party (and the age of many of them) would also make any clear ideological leadership of such struggles from these sections of the party with a clear perspective unlikely.
However, I judged that despite the many pro-capitalist changes and the ideological advance of the market, there were also some important pro-socialist changes, particularly in health care, and that the degree of capitalist takeover of the economy and the state was still far from what would be necessary to make any grand statements about completed capitalist restoration, or about declaring any change in the class nature of the state, or of the CPV, the party that actually led a revolution and is still led, not only at the top but throughout all parts of society, by a layer of people who were directly involved in the revolution (though of course, time continually changes this last factor).
Two years later I see no reason to change the final fundamental point. However, the ideological drift of the leadership, the increasing number of pro-capitalist measures, the ideological impact of the ‘market’ on society and popular consciousness, and the growth of the capitalist sector in the economy have all developed rapidly in the last two years. Vietnam’s entry into the WTO last December, while inevitable, naturally accelerates this process. While none of these points taken in isolation would be enough to suggest a major shift, taken all together, I believe they do, and so the overall outlook I regard to be distinctly less positive than in 2005.
Major developments 2004-2007: A significant shift to the right
The following are a number of major changes over 2004-2007:
As I outlined in my article back then, something of a turning point was the new privatisation (‘equitisation’) resolution of November 2004, which opened up nearly all of the large state corporations, which control all the strategic areas of the economy, to privatisation of their subsidiaries, mostly with majority state-owned stakes, depending on other factors such as the size of the company etc. While the parent company would not be equitised for the time being, they would later also be equitised with a state majority. So far this process has remained slow, in comparison with the great speed-up over the last two years of equitisation of smaller state companies, a process almost complete. However, there have been a number of larger state corps beginning the process. The most outstanding are the state milk company, Vinamilk, the main state insurance company, Bao Viet, a number of power stations etc. This year, the largest fertiliser plant also began equitisation, with one third of its equity opened to “the public.” Statements from certain leaders increasingly claim the state sector will eventually be limited to public services, major infrastructure, defense and security related industries and forestry. How far this goes is a question of the balance of forces.
At the 10th Party Congress last year, this issue of what kind of property ownership was fudged, unlike the more emphatic reassertion of the domination of state ownership at the 9th Congress. On the one hand, it did restate that the state sector plays the leading role and that over time as the forces of production grow the state and collective economies will gradually come to more and more dominate the economy. On the other hand, it for the first time laid out the view that “joint-stock” – ie shareholding – companies would become a more and more common form of ownership throughout all sectors. Congress resolutions are always statements of consensus between differing views, and whose interpretation comes to dominate in practice depends on the balance of forces. For the pro-capitalist leaders, a “leading state role” can be envisaged as meaning simply a dominant state share in all these increasing number of joint-stock, equitised former state companies. For some, “dominant” does not have to mean even 51%, but can mean “controlling”, ie about 20-25 percent. Naturally, for the pro-socialist wing, a completely different interpretation is possible.
The fetishisation of equitisation as the one and only form of what is called “state enterprise reform” has had the ideological spin-off of experimentation of equitisation of a major state hospital, which does liver and kidney operations, in Saigon, ie, turning a state hospital into a share company. The newspaper of the Saigon branch of the Youth Union, Tuoi Tre, in an editorial called for generalized equitisation of education and health, a statement that I can only call an expression of unabashed far right neo-liberal ideology. On the other hand, the Fatherland Front, the name of the front of the mass and social organisations, which in effect forms a third tier of the regime after the government and the party, has come out against this move, reflecting the views expressed at the meetings it has called by its mass base. The labour newspaper Lao Dong then interviewed the minister, asking whether this was government policy or not. He had to admit it had been going on, but described it as a mere “experiment,” which is a difficult concept, given that shares had already been sold, and also given out to workers, some of who had already lost them. But that was his way of withdrawing. He said we first had to find what the opinions of the people were, and the opinions expressed he admitted were negative. Therefore, he said the government has made no decision. Of course, on the positive side, this also indicates the ability of the masses via sections of the ‘party-state’ itself – in this case the Fatherland Front – to continue to influence state policy, but the extreme nature of such a policy proposal also indicates just how defensive the nature of the struggle is becoming.
There has been a tremendous growth in both local and foreign capital. Local capital is more confident than at any time since Doi Moi began, and the scale of local capitalism is also growing, with many more medium and some large companies. Last year, Vietnam received 10 billion dollars in Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), and in the first four months of this year, another 4.3 billion had been pledged already, a big increase on last year. Combined, local and foreign private capital now run 65-70 percent of industry, the state left with some 30 percent. Of course, as the state also controls a larger share of major services, its share of GDP as a whole is higher than its share in industry. From some 30% of GDP in 1990 the state share grew to some 40% in 1995, and for the following decade remained stubbornly around that figure, as rapid growth of the state economy matched the growth of private and foreign investment. Now however it is most likely that the corner has been turned, given both the progress of equitisation and this huge progress of private capital outside the state sector. Though I’ve seen no new figures yet, it seems likely the state share of GDP has dropped to around 35%. Obviously, we make no grand statements regarding a drop from 40 to 35 percent of GDP – it may be that the lower level is what the state can realistically run at present. However, given the solid 40 percent level remained for a decade, it does indicate motion in a certain direction. In terms of overall social investment, where the state share includes both the state budget and the investments of state enterprises, for most of the last decade the state share has stood at some 55-60 percent of investment. Now however, it is the combined private sectors accounting for 55% and the combined state investment for 45%, again motion in a clear direction.
The most spectacular change has been the stock exchange. Two years ago it accounted for less than one percent of GDP, compared to 53% in China for example. However, in just 2006 it had lept to a value of 14 billion dollars, or 22% of GDP, and this rises to 22 billion dollars if we include government bonds. Most of this increased value has come from the equitisation of some larger and more significant SOEs I spoke of above. However, there are vastly different approximations of the real value, and most experts consider it to be extremely overheated, so the real figures may well be lower. Nevertheless, the rise is spectacular however it is looked at.
At the 10th Congress, the party ratified the earlier Plenum resolutions that party members could engage in private business, as long as they followed state laws, party statutes etc when they did this, but officially are under no other special social obligations as businesspeople (though unofficially they may be). The preamble to the statutes which had said that party members do not engage in “exploitation” was replaced with the statement that the party aims to move towards a society where exploitation will be abolished. However, an amendment which aimed to specifically add after the words “private business” the words “with no limitations on scale” was not passed. Of course, just saying “private business” in itself imposes no limitation on scale, hence the amendment was unnecessary, and so the purpose of the amendment was to give a specific invite to the large capitalist class. Clearly most members did not see this in a positive light, and so its rejection is a good thing. Nevertheless, the passing of the overall resolution opens up a new kind of potential struggle within the party, and given the ideological ascendancy of “the market” throughout society, it will not be an easy struggle. The issue is very complicated, and simply affording to live in urban areas necessitates a great many families having at least one member engaging in some kind of “business,” without this meaning “capitalist,” in the usual definition, ie, large-scale, business. Underdeveloped societies like Vietnam are based to a large extent on petty-bourgeois, small scale ownership, which many CPV members, not only the right, believed needed to be reflected in the statutes for them to catch up with “reality.” At this stage, we are not seeing anything like the developments we saw in China when we analysed the state had become bourgeois, eg, the presence of owners of gigantic capitalist enterprises not only as members but as leaders of the party in various regions, including as party leaders of state bodies in certain regions.
Last year, the Labour Ministry put amendments to the Labour Law to the National Assembly, which on the one hand made the conditions by which strikes were legal easier, responding to a long term campaign by the Vietnam General Confederation of Labour (VGCL), but on the other hand put extremely reactionary provisions against so-called “illegal” strikes, including that local governments would be given powers to force workers taking part in “illegal strikes” back to work, and that these workers would have to pay compensation to the boss. I’m still unclear on whether they have actually been put into the Labour Law, as media reports vary and are unreliable. My friend Binh in the VGCL told me “yeh the ministry made these laws but it hasn’t happened because the VGCL is opposed.” I’m not sure if he meant the laws weren’t passed or simply that they mean nothing anyway as long as the VGCL is opposed. He said it is obvious that they have not been applied. But of course, the repressive sections of the labour law have never been applied: according to this law, every strike since 1994 has been illegal, but there has never been any state action recorded against any strike, and VGCL leaders and their newspaper continually back and justify these “illegal” strikes. This again indicates the power of the masses when they use it, and in particular when sections of the ‘party-state’ support them, but again it also indicates just how boldly reactionary some of the proposals of the right are becoming.
There are many other aspects, but I won’t go into every detail. In general, we are seeing great wealth being created, with all sections of society benefiting to some extent, but it is the very visible rise in the wealth of rich minority that is most outstanding, with new very expensive villas and cars appearing everywhere, amid continuing general poverty. It is the ideological impact of all these developments which are most important. The “market”, capitalism, inequality, persistent poverty among all this is increasingly just seen as the “natural” way of the world. Among young people, any vestiges of socialist ideology are completely absent. Of 100 young people one speaks to, 99 want to go into business (and a great number of older people as well). That is understandable in its way: it’s not necessarily a criticism of the people. I believe it is even ‘organic’ in a way, given the nature of Vietnam’s socio-economic reality, something we need to understand more. However, ideology can only reflect, ultimately, this social reality.
I don’t want to present an entirely negative report, but as I am reporting on the changes over the last couple of years, the changes are mostly in one direction, and that is inevitable given the relationship of forces on a world scale, particularly in Asia.
Obviously, things have changed in the world, particularly in Latin America, and the impact of Chavez is finally being felt in Vietnam. He really exists now. Chavez is a huge inspiration to the left-wing of the party, right up to the leadership. That was obvious from the statements of party leader Nong Duc Manh in his recent visit to Venezuela, and the joint Vietnam-Venezuela declaration when he was there, in which he welcomed the advance of the socialist revolution in Latin America, stood in sharp contrast to the ‘business as usual’ joint declaration they had made last year when Chavez visited Vietnam. The deputy to Madame Binh, Tran Dac Loi, who I had many discussions with (and who attended the recent Melbourne conference), told me he has three photos on his office walls: Ho Chi Minh, General Giap and Hugo Chavez.
How much this can affect the course of events in Vietnam itself is a more difficult question, given the geographical distance and Vietnam’s closer integration with the capitalist economies of the Asian region. Nevertheless, it is a tremendously important reference point and encouragement for the socialist forces in Vietnam.
Overall, the more positive aspects of Vietnam that I have frequently written about remain completely valid. Free health care now covers some 60% of the population, the highest since Doi Moi, and the plans are to extend it to another 10 million or so people by 2010. As my friend Loi explains, this is precisely an example of one of the main aspects they claim represent ‘socialist orientation’: that economic growth must go hand in hand with social progress every step of the way, as the real economic potential opens those possibilities for such social progress to be real. Obviously, the extent of this in reality is highly debatable; there are still many extremely poor people while private wealth amasses, especially in the more remote mountainous regions, even though the numbers living in poverty have crashed from 58% in 1993 to 18% today. That’s a world class achievement, but 18% of 80 million is still a lot of people. Meanwhile, infant mortality according to reliable estimates is now down to 16, the best in the region, and life expectancy up to 72, both figures, like may other indicators, well above the level of other low income countries, and approaching first world figures.
Despite the advance of privatisation, the bulk of the major companies in the major economic sectors remain in state hands, and this is not only a product of bureaucratic slowness but also of clear political opposition from large sections of the party and resistance from sections of the established working class who do see themselves as co-managers of the state enterprises. In addition, the extraordinary combativity of the newer sections of the working class who are emerging from former rural dwellers now working in private and foreign export-oriented firms was plain to see in the upsurge early last year when tens of thousands struck and forced the bosses to implement the state resolutions for 40% wage rises. There have been further explosions this year.
In addition, the majority peasant population will not easily give up the egalitarian land reform that the revolution brought about, though without further advance to new forms of cooperative, neither is this petty land ownership ultimately a road out of poverty. Outside of the organised sections of the working class, especially in state industry, it is among the peasantry that the party has its social base, and the strong links of the party with the peasantry is an additional “conservative” pressure on a major section of the party. Leaders at various levels are often still those who dedicated their earlier lives to a struggle for a socially just society. Vietnamese-American left-wing academic Ngo Vinh Long, for example, claims “it is difficult for the government to carry out repression … Vietnam just came out of a revolution and many of the retired soldiers and retired colonels are living in the countryside, very close to the people.” In fact, he also notes that very often “they are the leaders of the protests,” meaning continual protests by peasants against corrupt officials trying to take over their land.
This nature of the party – a revolutionary party as we have long analysed it – is important to remember when we make comparisons between Vietnam and China. For example, the series of moves I have described above in the period 2004-2007 makes the situation resemble in many ways the juncture in China a decade or so earlier, around 1992-94, when the CCP was clearly shifting towards an openly capitalist restorationist course, but before the real advance of this capitalist restoration in practice which began in earnest with the 1997 Congress and the ensuing fire sale of a massive part of the state economy and retrenchment of some 50 million workers. But our different assessment of the two parties is a crucial factor to be taken into account when making such superficial, though useful, analogies
All this indicates the question is not settled. What we do have to recognise on the negative side, however, are two main points:
That the commercial environment of a market economy has a very negative ideological impact, that it pushes the kind of social motivations that are the opposite of the collectivist and solidarity-based motivations required for socialism, and eventually, as long as other things do not change, and the party leadership is incapable of politically challenging this, it eats away at everything, including the nominally non-market elements such as state enterprises and cooperatives and state land ownership and small peasant plots.
That the party itself is part of society and therefore not immune from all this: this means both at a material level, ie, corruption etc, but also at an ideological level: there is a consciously pro-capitalist element within the party leadership which is constantly becoming a more powerful and leading element, particularly as time goes on, since the more socialist elements of the party tend to be concentrated among older layers who lived the revolution themselves.
Monday, February 05, 2007
Community Disease Control (CDC) and Reproductive Health from a Gender Perspective in Vietnam
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