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A comrade from "socialist" Vietnam
Hello everyone.
As you can tell from the title, I'm from Vietnam. I'll be honest: I was born in the "market epoch", after the capitalist reforms were implemented in this country. So perhaps I'm younger than most Revleft members here.
I admit, I was born into a privileged position. I have a petty bourgeois (some may say bourgeois) background. No, Im not the son of a owner of a large corporation, but still fairly privileged compared to the majority of the Vietnamese population. My parents are shareholders of a family owned private limited company. Thus, they were able to provide me with education in private school, i learned to speak fluent English. How is this relevant you may ask? Well, just keep reading and you'll see why.
Growing up as a child, i saw my country riddled with problems: environmental destruction, poverty, corruption, a frankly reactionary education system, a population that uphold reactionary traditional values.
As a student, I got interested in politics. Much more so than the children of my age. I was seeking answers, the cause and the solution to the problems i see the country facing.
The natural reaction that me and many Vietnamese people had, was to blame communism for these problems. After all, it was convenient, especially when the ruling party claims to be the "communist party". Yes, I was an anti-communist. Partly because anti-communist writings were the only sources of anti-government information.
However, i soon found out it wasn't that simple. It all changed when I met my history teacher in 9th grade. He taught me about the social consequences of capitalism. I was confused. Back then, it didn't make any sense back then in my head. How come the social problems caused by capitalism is so similar to the problems "communist Vietnam" is facing? Of course, I didn't believe it at first. But as I do more and more research, I found out that much of what he says its true. I learned about sweatshops in India, China and of course in Vietnam. I became aware of what imperialist intervention had done to lives of people worldwide. I learned about BP destroying the environment,etc...
That, along with a trip to Denmark to see my relatives, changed my political outlook completely. I was told about the social welfare system of Denmark. I admired this, with all the idealism of teenager. Thus, I became a social democrat (who thought of himself as a socialist - much like the Bernie supporters today). I believed that Denmark was the model to follow.
Still, i was skeptical of Marxism. I thought that Marxism was "too extreme", that it was utopian. Nonetheless, at this point, I'm less hostile towards Marxism. I just thought it was a false and naive theory.
The second big change, was when i actually started to research Marxist theory itself. It was partly out of curiosity. There was the whole "anti-communist" hype all around me. So I decided to see what this whole communist thing is about. The other reason was, at this time Venezuela's economic crisis started to get worse. I was disillusioned with the social democratic model. But i didnt forget about the consequences of capitalism that i learned about.
So, capitalism didnt work, and the social democratic model i thought was perfect, didnt work. What other choices do i have? Using English language skills i got from my capitalist funded education, I started to read Marxist classics: The Communist Manifesto, Critique of the Gotha Programme, the State and Revolution, etc... and of course, Das Kapital.
Why English though, you may ask? This is Vietnam, arent there supposed to be loads of Vietnamese translations of Marxist theory?
From my experience, finding Marxist classics in Vietnamese is extremely hard.
The more Marxist theory I read, the more i found out that all my previous prejudices about Marxism were wrong. I expected to see a bunch of utopian blueprints, telling people to get "equal wages'. There were no utopian blueprints, and no "equal wages" either. Only scientific analysis about the systemic flaws of capitalism, how the new society emerge from the womb of the old instead of through pure will power.
After researching Marxism for 2 years, I became a Marxist. I finally understood, that "socialist Vietnam" was a joke. That the problems we faced, were in fact the inevitable result of the capitalist economy. Most importantly, i understood that capitalism isn't simply dysfunctional because its "unethical", but because of the internal contradictions of the capitalist economy.
However, that's only me. Millions of Vietnamese people out there, including working class people, are still stuck with the mentality that i used to have - that all of this is caused by "communism".
Thats my story. Thank you for taking the time to read all this rambling. If anyone has any question about the non-existent "socialist project" in Vietnam, feel free to ask.
Last edited by lequyan; 3rd June 2016 at 10:45.
Now that you are a convinced revolutionary, how do you intend to conduct your political activity, i.e find likeminded people, join an existing organisation, form a new marxist organisation, translate marxist works etc ?
Without education, people will accept anything. Without education, what you’ll have is neo-colonialism instead of the colonialism like you have now. Without education, people don’t know why they’re doing what they’re doing, you know what I mean? You might get people caught up in an emotionalist movement, might get them because they’re poor and they want something and then if they’re not educated, they’ll want more and before you know it, we’ll have Negro imperialism.
FRED HAMPTON
Yeah, I'll try. I'm planning to write marxist writings, and probably make a communist documentary in the near future. It'll be very difficult in the current hostile environment though. I'll discuss that in a different thread.
My advice would be to approach one of the many socialist/communist organizations that already exist, and join them. Of course find one who's views and analysis you agree with the most, and just as importantly are willing to help put you in contact with any other sympathizers and help you out if your in isolation. The resources they can provide will be helpful in the long run even if you find that at some point in the future you cant remain in the organization for political or other reasons.
Sectarianism within the communist movement can be a troublesome beast to put it mildly, a decisive issue may be for example your interpretation of the Vietnamese war and Ho chi Minh. For example a trotskyist (a position i am close to) would more than likely be highly critical regards communist persecution and murder of Vietnamese trotskyists, this may or may not be an issue immediately but much lesser issues have caused splits in organizations.
I have not met any Vietnamese communists, however i have met some very good comrades from Indonesia, who have in many ways had to build the traditions from the ground up. Getting in touch with others such as Indonesian communists might be good, to help with organizational advice and discuss regional issues of South Asia.
Without education, people will accept anything. Without education, what you’ll have is neo-colonialism instead of the colonialism like you have now. Without education, people don’t know why they’re doing what they’re doing, you know what I mean? You might get people caught up in an emotionalist movement, might get them because they’re poor and they want something and then if they’re not educated, they’ll want more and before you know it, we’ll have Negro imperialism.
FRED HAMPTON
I sympathize greatly with your position since Vietnam has been host to the degraded Stalinist "Communism". Not only has that led to millions of people being misinformed about the nature of the state in relation to the working class. However, I would also be particularly careful about organizing in Vietnam itself. There is a lot of censorship and tracking in Vietnam, the best thing you can do now is to keep quiet about it and continue writing. I think its best to connect to any Australian organizations.
Yeah..about that...There's no Vietnamese communist organization. None. Except for the ruling party of course - which technically doesn't count as the party members are mostly careerists and corrupted bureaucrats, capitalists. The left in Vietnam is non-existent. A start from scratch is a must now...
Edit: Might I add that the communist youth organization suffer from the same fate? Most of the people in youth organizations see Marxism as a joke, and just join to get a nice CV and such.
Last edited by lequyan; 4th June 2016 at 06:13.
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