Was Ho Chi Minh, or the Vietnamese current of socialism, nationalistic?

[the last donut of the night]

I was talking with a friend, and he thought that Ho Chi Minh should be seen more of a nationalist than a communist -- or that although he was a communist, he didn't focus enough on class to be properly labeled so. What are your thoughts on this? Please, I don't want this to degenerate into a tendency between Maoists and Trotskyists, like many other threads here have.

[The Vegan Marxist]

I was talking with a friend, and he thought that Ho Chi Minh should be seen more of a nationalist than a communist -- or that although he was a communist, he didn't focus enough on class to be properly labeled so. What are your thoughts on this? Please, I don't want this to degenerate into a tendency between Maoists and Trotskyists, like many other threads here have.

Didn't his rebel group, the Viet Minh, imprison over 20,000 anti-communist nationalists though?

At least that's what was said in this book that I read called "Victory At Any Cost (http://www.amazon.com/Victory-Any-Cost-Genius-Nguyen/dp/1574881949)".

[RED DAVE]

Considering the fact that in less than forty years after the victory of the NLF Vietnamese is a full-fledged capitalist nation, the answer is obvious.

RED DAVE

[Crux]

I actually read some ho chi minh a while back. It was in fact very nationalistic. It was a collected works thing so I couldn't point you to a specific article, but suspect most were very much the same.

[Nosotros]

Considering the fact that in less than forty years after the victory of the NLF Vietnamese is a full-fledged capitalist nation, the answer is obvious.

RED DAVEThats a good point and initially he also appealed to the USA to accept his government as being another version of the US government.

[Raúl Duke]

Most anti-imperialist movements make appeal to nationalism, despite their ideology. Vietnam could be one example, another more notable one is Korea where even anarchists (although I don't know enough about them to be sure if they were for real or dubious) waved the Korean national flag (at least in this image I re-called).

[Red Commissar]

Ho Chi Minh was definitely had nationalist trappings. He began his life out as much. There's the well-known story of him at the proceedings of the Treaty of Versailles arguing for self-determination of the Vietnamese people. He had taken up Marxism while he was in France after coming into contact with the SFIO there. From what I read at wikipedia he also seemed to have been one of the founding members of the French Communist Party.

There is an oft-repeated quote from him where he says,

"It was patriotism, not communism, that inspired me."

I am not sure of its authenticity but it is repeated a lot.

For a lot of third-world revolutionaries fighting against imperialism, socialism/ communism was taken up more out of convenience than for genuine ideological commitment. Nationalism in general has been used by many political movements in order to gain support.

[Pirate Utopian]

Ho Chi Minh studied in France before starting the Viet Minh.

In France he became a member of the Socialist Party and an avid reader of Lenin.

http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/ho-chi-minh/works/1924/01/27.htm
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/ho-chi-minh/works/1960/04/x01.htm

[Crux]

For people of oppressed nationalities, nationalism is part of being communists.
national-liberation is, not nationalism as such.

[Crux]

Ho Chi Minh studied in France before starting the Viet Minh.

In France he became a member of the Socialist Party and an avid reader of Lenin.

http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/ho-chi-minh/works/1924/01/27.htm
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/ho-chi-minh/works/1960/04/x01.htm
Well, hero-worship and idealism, even if it's directed at lenin, does not make you a communist.

[Invincible Summer]

Considering the fact that in less than forty years after the victory of the NLF Vietnamese is a full-fledged capitalist nation, the answer is obvious.

RED DAVE

So ~60 years after the Russian Revolution, the USSR became state-capitalist.

Does this mean that the Russian Revolution was full of shit? No. It's not like if a nation devolves into capitalism after less than 40 years, it's bad, but longer it's okay.

There's only one (arguably) socialist country left. Does that mean socialism has failed? That we should all give up?

[danyboy27]

See what I did there?

are you really surprised that an authoritarian pyramid scheme end up in a capitalist system ?

[Kléber]

In its early years the ICP shifted its politics to keep up with the Comintern policy zigzags. During the Popular Front they dropped the demand for independence and replaced it with "broad democratic freedoms." So from 1934-39, the only legitimate anti-imperialist struggles (according to Moscow) were in Austria, Albania, Sudetenland etc. As for the Allied colonies of India, Southeast Asia etc. they had to limit themselves to demanding "broad democratic freedoms" instead of independence because their governments were allied with the USSR and thus part of an international "people's front" (with imperialism!)

Ho Chi Minh did gain a lot more freedom to maneuver politically after the Comintern was axed in 1943. However, in 1945, when Vietnam was being occupied by the Nationalist Chinese and French armies, the ICP actually welcomed the invaders, arguing they had to build up their forces. Other parties were not content to flee to the countryside, however - the Vietnamese Trotskyists and some nationalist groupings formed a united front to resist the French in South Vietnam and the former set up a short-lived workers' council in Saigon. Some ICP-affiliated militias gave tentative support to this united front, which freaked out the ICP leadership (which had been solidly defeated by the Trotskyists in Saigon local elections in 1939). In response, the ICP opportunistically helped the French colonial police round up the Trotskyists and nationalists and the ICP itself executed any they could find so that their organization could have a monopoly over national politics in the years to come.

After that, Ho successfully maneuvered between the revisionist regimes of Moscow and Beijing while pursuing his own national liberation struggle. So was he a nationalist, and a cunning politician? Yes. But that doesn't mean you have to put his poster in your room and "uphold" him any more than George Washington.


So ~60 years after the Russian Revolution, the USSR became state-capitalist.The USSR never got beyond state capitalism. The death of a single dude doesn't change the social system.

[scarletghoul]

Of course, the whole Vietnamese movement was highly nationalistic, and thats to be expected from any national liberation movement. The same is true of just about all other east Asian communist movements, which was/is understandable because they were all born in the struggle against imperialism.

In recent times it seems however that nationalism has been used by the Vietnamese government to override communism, or to distort it, as much of the vietnamese propaganda now has a strong message of national strength and construction, with socialism only being mentioned half as much.

So yeah I think nationalism wasnt reactionary in Ho Chi Minh's time, but it has since become a reactionary ideal used by the Dengist government.

[danyboy27]

Except they were not authoritarian pyramid schemes, whatever that is. They were workers states that were overthrown by reactionary capitalist roaders.

well, the vanguard control the bureaucrats, the bureaucrat and the vanguard control the army, the army control the population.

all that was replaced by:

capitalist oligarch+mafia control the bureaucrats,bureaucrat and capitalist oligarch control the army, the army control the population.

it soo different.