Vietnam-again? (1972)

From the December 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard

If one war can be more depraved and dehumanising than another, then only in these terms is there a winner in Vietnam. For more than thirty years, virtually non-stop, Vietnam has been ravaged by the modern military hardware of rival armies. Back in 1941 the Japanese; then the British, then the French, the Vietnamese themselves, and finally the Americans. The wholesale slaughter and destruction, and the indifference to human suffering has been common to them all. The lying and hypocrisy of the politicians on all sides has been outstripped only by their gory deeds.

In the name of peace, the war steadily escalated for eight years. In the name of freedom, brutal dictators were installed and people whose “freedom” was denied burned themselves alive in protest. In the name of democracy, elections were suspended. In the name of liberation, many hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children have been blown to pieces or burned alive with napalm. On the ideological pretence of stemming “communism” every conceivable horror and outrage has been practised. Regardless of how many Vietnamese were killed in the process, they had to be “saved”. The utter ruthlessness of governments purporting to be champions of the “free” world could hardly be surpassed by those of police-state dictatorships.

Humiliation & Protest

America has suffered the humiliation of having to bring members of her armed forces to trial, accused of atrocities against the people they were supposed to be defending, while those atrocities were condoned by the then deputy leader of British Labour government. We have witnessed the spectacle of returning military personnel denouncing the war and their own brutal conduct. The American Army has had to face the desertion of tens of thousands of its men, while the scale of drug-taking was so vast among those who remained in the war, it had to be virtually ignored.

There have been massive demonstrations against the war, throughout America’s largest cities, with the added irony that the same coercive State apparatus which carried on the war was frequently used against the demonstrators. In Britain, as in other parts of the world, there were also demonstrations. The British “left” which organised the protests here were not opposed to the war as such, but were anti-America, and favoured a Northern victory. They dragged out all the anti-working-class arguments about national independence and home-rule to justify their support for the bloody butchers on the other side. As with CND before them, the protest reached fever pitch and then fizzled out. Since October 1968 there has been hardly a peep out of them. Such movements inevitably dissipate the enthusiasm of the workers who support them. Capitalism mocks all such limited objectives when its vital interests are at stake. The tragedy is that this same enthusiasm coupled with Socialist ideas could rid the world of the scourge of capitalism itself.

Amazing Gracey

As the misery and the bombing drag on towards the end of another year, it is worth remembering that it was the post-war British Labour government who restarted the war after taking over from the Japanese in 1945. In September of that year 20,000 British troops arrived, and General Gracey was set up as military dictator.

Despite the fact that the Vietminh (the forerunners of today’s Vietcong) had control of Saigon, the Labour government co-operated with the French ruling class, who wanted their colony back. The Labour government helped ship back French troops. General Gracey closed down the press and used the Japanese army to post a proclamation saying: “I hereby warn all wrongdoers, especially looters and saboteurs of public property and those carrying out similar activities, that they will be summarily shot.”

After arming former French prisoners who immediately started shooting up the Vietminh, Gracey disarmed them, and used Japanese forces to put down the guerrilla war he had sparked off. He ordered British troops: “Always use the maximum force to ensure wiping out any hostiles we may meet”. Like the Americans, the British had no way of knowing “hostiles” from innocent people. A British and Japanese military operation followed before the British left it to the French to continue the slaughter in March 1946. It was thus that “liberation” came to the people of Vietnam. Even the great American butcher General MacArthur (who wanted to use A-bombs in Korea) condemned as “ignoble” the conduct of the British Labour government in Indo-China.

With Friends Like These …

The French government carried on the war for eight years with financial aid from America, and the active support of the French Communist Party, whose deputies consistently voted for increased arms expenditure, in full knowledge that the arms were being used for killing their own “comrades” in Indochina. During 1946 Charles Tillon, a Communist, was in fact Minister for Armaments. These same deputies including Thorez, the C.P. Vice-Premier, voted unanimous congratulations to General Leclere after the bombardment of Haiphong where 6,000 civilians were killed.

On the other side, Ho Chi Minh wasted no time proving himself at least as treacherous and murderous as his adversaries. After running phony elections in January 1946, where 70 seats were promised to non-Communists (provided they did not compete in the election) he spent the next ten months liquidating 202 out of 444 elected representatives. The Vietminh carried out wholesale murder of opponents, in particular Trotskyists. One popular Trotskyist leader Ta Tu Thau, had three trials and three acquittals before he was shot. As a result of Cardinal Spellman’s campaign of propaganda half a million Catholics left North Vietnam in the mid-1950’s. This helped create serious food shortages, which led to peasant uprisings in late 1956. Ho Chi Minn’s army crushed the “rebels” and killed or deported 6,000 farmers.

. . . who needs the Enemy?

The Chinese ruling class whilst pouring military aid into the North and conducting a propaganda war against “American Imperialism” has supplied steel for American army and air bases. The Russian bosses have done much the same thing, trading with both sides, and there have been the usual hypocritical accusations and counter-accusations hurled between the Chinese and Rusian rulers.

If Presidents Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon have been the wililng tools of American capitalism in prosecuting the war, (backed up by Wilson and Heath on behalf of British capitalism) Mao Tse Tung, Brezhnev and Ho Chi Minh were as soaked in the blood of the working class as their western counterparts.

Wilson’s Labour government supplied some of the napalm which American forces used to burn alive so many thousands of men, women, and children. They also trained South Vietnamese forces and built bases for the U.S. air force.

Workers Have no Country

If anyone doubts that the sordid economic motives of capitalism lie behind the war in Vietnam, the U.S. News and World Report for the 16 April 1954 said: “One of the world’s richest areas is open to the winner in Indo-China — tin, rubber, rice, key strategic raw materials are what the war is really about” (quoted in Solidarity Pamphlet, The Rape of Vietnam, from which other material in this article has been taken).

The fact that the world has absorbed the emotional shock waves of the war in Vietnam, and a generation has lived with the stock-piling of H-bombs, is a measure of the terrifying extent of capitalism’s conditioning. It is also a damning indictment of this system of society.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain and its companion parties including the World Socialist Party of the U.S. have consistently opposed all wars. Taking our stand on the basis of the interests of the world’s working class, we condemned the two world wars as thieves’-quarrels of rival capitalist classes. We declared that no war is worth the shedding of a single drop of workers’ blood. We re-affirm that attitude. Vietnam is likewise a thieves’ war. The workers and peasants own no country on either side. They will find themselves as firmly shackled to the juggernaut of exploitation, whoever emerges as their new masters. Neither can “peace” be long secure, for fresh conflicts and future wars are inseparable from continuing capitalism. Vast air bases and thousands of planes stand in readiness to continue the war, despite the much-trumpeted withdrawal of ground forces. More than three million dead for nothing. And how many more millions will be slaughtered before the working class gets rid of the slaughter-house, remains a very open question.

Harry Baldwin

Geneva and Indo-China (1954)

From the June 1954 issue of the Socialist Standard

The political all-in wrestling match which has been taking place at Geneva has been the focal point for the eyes of the world. It is not a simple struggle between two opposing sides but a free-for-all for any group with vested interests in S.E. Asia and/or world strategy. The various claims and counter-claims, the advances, retreats, feints, side-steps and trials of strength that precede the really getting down to grips have taken place in the glare of publicity and propaganda, although there is, in addition, the backstairs double-dealing and secret alignments which will, in due course, when put to practical use in the negotiating, have such telling effects. It is understandable that people should take an interest in the goings-on in Geneva, for it is in such trials of strength over the division and redivision of shares of wealth, which have been produced by the workers for their masters, that groupings of powers are formed which could plunge us into another war. For this fight at Geneva differs from some all-in wrestling bouts in that here the fight is a genuine one, with no holds barred.

The Viet-Minh
But there is a fresh young claimant in the ring challenging the French title to Indo-China—the native capitalists. Their interests are represented by the nationalist organisation known by its abbreviated name of Viet-minh, whose chief representative is the so-called Communist, Ho-chi-ming.

Viet-nam is the name given to the combined countries of Tongkin in the north, the empire of Annam in the centre and the former French colony of Cochin-China in the south. “Viet-nam for the Vietnamese” is one of the slogans of the nationalists. By this they really mean that the native ruling-class wish to exploit the workers there without having to share the loot with any other group. This attitude has the sympathy of many of the native governments of Asia who have only recently ousted the hated foreign masters themselves and one of them, India, has offered to act as referee at the Conference in order to help resolve the difference so that the claimants will not resort to war.

The internal situation of Viet-nam is complicated by the unrest in the native people and their desire for land reform. The native farmers operate such small segments of land and with insufficient capital that after they have paid the extortionate interest to the moneylenders there is usually insufficient left to maintain them in health. This, and the impact of revolutionary ideas inseparable from capitalism, have made of these people a force that must be placated. The Viet-minh have won their support by promising them reform if the Party succeed in seizing the reins of government.

Viet-nam
The existing native government, usually referred to in the newspapers as Viet-nam, headed by Emperor Bao Dai, is under the influence of the French. This puppet government tries unsuccessfully to steer a course which will satisfy firstly the foreign exploiters who hold much of the military power, secondly, that portion of the native ruling-class who wish for a greater measure of control for themselves but are prepared to leave the responsibility of keeping order to the French, and, thirdly, a native working population seething with unrest.

Russia
Though far removed geographically from the scene in S.E. Asia, the large and expanding economy of the U.S.S.R. has a vital interest in world strategy and it is this interest which may be affected by the forthcoming division of spoils being negotiated at Geneva. For France is a member of the European Defence Committee which seeks to combine those with a common interest in opposing the expansion of the Russian spheres of influence in Europe. The preoccupation with the trouble in Indo-China has, by weakening France, thereby weakened E.D.C. It is in the interests of the U.S.S.R. that the French and the other allied powers are pre-occupied with Asia for as long as possible. The Russians have practically nothing at stake there and thus gain greater freedom of action in Europe.

America

American interests are affected on two counts. One by reason of world strategy and the other arises from the need to safeguard their investments in S.E. Asia.

The American ruling-class regard Indo-China and Korea as bulwarks of democracy against the spread of Communism. To bring such high-sounding ideology down to earth it means that American capitalists wish to prevent their opposite numbers in China and Russia from extending their control of any more markets, sources of raw materials and exploitation of workers, at the expense of American-dominated Western Capitalism.

Apart from a considerable American investment in the French war in Indo-China the American government has invested in next-door neighbour Siam, which his a 900-mile river frontier with Indo-China. If Indo-China passes into the control of a hostile power Siam might be menaced too, and the Americans have no intention of allowing this to happen if they can avoid it.

Between Viet-nam and Siam lie the Buddhist kingdoms of Laos and Cambodia, both comparatively weak through being but sparsely populated, and almost undeveloped from the Capitalists' viewpoint.

With the absence of dangerous revolutionary ideas —and any political unrest—these two countries, therefore, make an ideal buffer state to protect American investment in Siam and this indicates the policy the U.S.A. may pursue at Geneva.

Great Britain

British Capitalism has different interests again and therefore employs different methods to attain these ends. Having a long experience in the East, H.M. Government uses this superiority with telling effect against its rivals in the ring. For instance, probably realising that Dien Bien Phu was past help anyway, they refused any co-operation with the American proposal to despatch without delay all possible air help to the French troops, but giving as their reason that they did not wish to jeopardise the Conference.

The American embargo on war materials to China was evaded by the British, according to American charges, by shipping these goods to the British colony of Hong Kong and then transferring them across the common frontier with China.

The British Capitalists have much invested in some of the countries of S.E. Asia but particularly in the mines and plantations of Malaya. Here there is guerrilla fighting with the adherents of the Communist Party among the large Chinese minority living in Malaya who have been trying to oust the British and seize power.. But the Chinese Communist Party has steadfastly refused to assist their comrades in Malaya in any way, although by reason of British diplomatic representation in Peking, they are entitled to establish consulates throughout Malaya. Consulates are recognised channels for assistance to fifth-columnists elsewhere. Perhaps it suits the Chinese not to take on a venture in Malaya which they are not sure will be successful. Failure would explode the carefully nurtured Communist legend of invincibility, that history is on their side, a policy of inevitability that counts so much with many Asiatics of a fatalistic turn of mind. But also Mao-tse-tung, being an Asiatic, evidently knows what is meant by a bargain and the British Capitalists are probably expecting that their services over the matter of wrecking the American proposal of air help to the French in Indo-China, and their recognition of the present regime in China, will be remembered when the time comes in the East to hand out trade contracts.

China

It is reported by some of those who have made a study of the subject that China has given no help to the Viet-minh. Whatever the latter have had from China has had to be paid for. The record of Chinese dealings with so-called Communist Parties in other countries of Asia seems to support this view. But nevertheless China has, at the least, a strategic interest in the outcome of the struggle in Indo-China. This country has access to Chinese territory through a common frontier and the Indo-China railway system extends into China for 300 miles. It would seem to be to China’s advantage to have a weak nationalist regime in Viet-nam rather than France and her powerful allies. China, the most experienced of all contestants, will probably make her weight felt to the greatest advantage.

The French

The French are the present holders of the title to exploit Indo-China, which title they have held since 1787. And what a prize they have! For this is a country of profitable mines and the lush countryside produces that valued contribution to Capitalist profits —cash crops—that is, rubber, tea, sugar, rice, coconuts, timber.

At Cam Pha in the north is the coalmine-owner’s dream come true. Here is a seam of anthracite coal of fantastic size lying on the surface, 300 ft wide, 370 ft. deep and over 20 miles long. All that the workers have to do is to shovel the coal into trucks. All the owners have to do is to take the profits. Ocean transport is available in that veritable fairyland of beauty-spots—the islet-studded Bay of Along.

Those who support French colonial policy in Indo-China could also point to the development that has taken place in Cochin China in the south.. In the last 60 years 4,800,000 acres of new land have been reclaimed for agriculture. Swamps have been drained and canals dug; 7 billion cubic feet of land were dredged. Fields under rice cultivation have increased from 912,000 acres in 1868 to 5,760,000 acres to-day. In other provinces even greater increases of land under cultivation has been noted. In all some 12 million acres of tillable soil has been added to the land of Indo-China.

From 1885 to 1940 France invested a total of 5,200 piastres in the country.

Apart from its intrinsic worth, Indo-China has a strategic value arising from its position as a peninsular athwart many of the trade routes to S.E. Asia.

Yet there are people who say that Indo-China is not worth fighting for!

The Workers enter the ring

But it is the workers who drain the swamps, grow the valuable crops and work the mines of Indo-China. It is also they who fight to protect French property which they have created by their own labour or to extend the rights of the rising Indo-China capitalists. But they are not represented at the Geneva Conference and their interests will not even be discussed. Whoever comes out on top in the struggle at Geneva the workers will still be the under-dogs. For them there will be no prize. It will not alter their class position in this capitalist jungle if the French are elbowed out by a native ruling-class.

The Socialist movement alone has a working-class policy which would give a knock-out blow to all of the exploiters and throw the whole lot of them out of the ring for all time. Then will the fullness of the earth and the valuable cultures of all peoples be freely avail- able for the whole of mankind. Socialists have a slogan which in its pithy way expresses our ideas—Workers of the world unite. You have only your chains to lose you have a world to win.

Frank Offord

Letters: What about Vietnam? (1970)

Letters to the Editors from the June 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

What about Vietnam?

Dear Sir,

As a practical expression of my personal disgust and repugnance I ask you to take the name of this organisation off your mailing list.

This protest is brought about by your article in your January issue which carries the odious title “The Issue at Pinkville”. To give to a Vietnamese village the same name as was given to it by the American aggressors is completely unforgiveable in a magazine which purports to be socialist. The lunatic right fringe may dub My Lai thus, they presumably know no better. You are supposed to be on the side of freedom and justice, yet you stoop to the same level as those who carried out the massacre.

Your references to the “Viet Cong” are also in bad taste and reflect the limitations of a mind which has been successfully brainwashed. “Viet Cong", for your information, was a term coined by Deim — a contemptuous term which dubbed anyone who opposed his bloody and dictatorial regime as “communists”. It is on a par with the name “Pinkville”.

You have the gall to speak of “ferocious Viet Cong atrocities". And who, may I ask., was responsible for this war which has forced the freedom fighters to defend their very existence? Do you equate the actions of a rapist and a murderer with a person who is being raped and murdered, and solemnly conclude that it is all a matter of which side you are on? Pity help the Vietnamese people if they have to rely on people like yourself for their moral support.

I cannot decide if your paper is a bogus front, unintelligent or lamentably ill-informed on the facts about Vietnam. I do not know if the writer is consciously reactionary or merely a poor deluded fool who has read too many Time magazines.

Not that I care very much. People who are ignorant enough to think in terms of "Pinkville" and "Viet Cong” atrocities may enjoy your paper. Those of us who are concerned with freedom and justice have better things to do than read it.

Stanley Moore 

(Minister, Melbourne Unitarian Peace Memorial Church. Melbourne. Aust.)

Reply:

When we have sifted out the abuse from Mr. Moore’s letter we find that it has only one serious point. In the fourth paragraph he more or less argues that any atrocities committed by the Viet-cong are justified because it was the Americans who started the war. This is of course a very old argument — it was used to excuse the obliteration of Hiroshima and in fact has always been used by capitalist states as part of their war propaganda.

It is true that the Americans interfered in Vietnam — in the same way as the North Koreans did in the South, and as the Russians did in Czechoslovakia, Finland and so on. In each case the inference has been justified by counter-accusations of threats from the subject of the interference. And so we go on — all the time avoiding the real issue, which is why wars, invasions and international interference take place. Why are they sometimes (not always) resisted? What interests are at stake? In Vietnam, we are seeing a struggle between rival capitalist groups for the control of an area of great economic and strategic importance. The interests in the war are those of capitalism; the people on both sides stand to gain nothing from the war and their interests are in keeping out of it as far as they can. Whoever wins, the people of Vietnam and of America will lose.

Mr. Moore, who accuses us of being deluded fools, thinks the North Vietnamese are fighting for freedom and justice. Is it part of freedom and justice to commit mass murder among the Vietnamese people? In war no one side is alone responsible for all the atrocities and this is widely accepted, with only a few people like the John Birchites on one side and Mr. Moore on the other closing their eyes to the evidence.

We thought the names “Pinkville” and "Vietcong” had passed so finally into common usage as to be acceptable to even the most touchy lefty. After all, there are plenty of protest banners which carry the slogan "Victory to the Vietcong”.

Two last points. First, why does Mr. Moore get so upset about trivial matters and ignore the main argument of the article in question, which was that capitalism is the cause of war and since war and atrocities are inseparable it is capitalism which causes the atrocities? Second—and here we probably find the answer to our first question — why is Mr. Moore so anxious to avoid reading the Socialist Standard, when his only complaint against it is that he disagrees with it?

Editorial Committee

Chomsky

Dear Sir,

In the February issue of the Socialist Standard Noam Chomsky is accused of confused, muddled and wishful thinking. This description would be more aptly applied to your writers.

  “Principled opposition to capitalism necessarily gives rise to principled opposition to war, which—and this should always be made clear means hostility to both ‘sides’ in every war.”
  “Whatever the outcome the workers will have gained nothing on either side”
  "In part it (this confusion within the shell of Chomsky’s glittering erudition) is due to his overpowering abhorrence of the war, and the sense of urgency he feels about it. Everything must be subjugated to the task of stopping the war."

May we examine these statements in the light of some of the facts?

First, here is a description of North Vietnam (‘no paradise” as you insist) in the time when it was a French colony:

   "Translated into the policies of empire, the French presence made of Vietnam at once a prison and a museum. Exquisite French scholarship explored the ancient history and archeology of Vietnam; exquisite French cruelty made it the most savage colony in Asia. In my youth in Asia, I remember it as the place where I first saw grown men strike other grown men and watched the stricken cringe —white Frenchmen had the right to slap awkward native waiters who spilled the soup, or slap native rickshawmen who argued about the fare. It was a place where the state monopoly’s purchase of opium exceeded by five times French expenditures on schools, libraries and hospitals combined . . .”

It is from Theodore White’s The Making of a President. But it is mild in comparison to Edgar Snow’s reports of Vietnam under French domination where there was a guillotine in every village.

One does not even need to go to communist sources—one has only to read The Peasants of North Vietnam by Chaliand—Mission To Hanoi by Atheker, or Cameron's or Burchett’s accounts to see that although it is not paradise, it is a new and better life for the people since Vietnam won independence from the French.

Would you have the Vietnamese still exploited by the French because we must oppose both sides in every war and the workers gain nothing on either side ?

Would they have the Vietnamese remain slaves under the French because in struggling for indpendence they might not achieve paradise and might fall under the influence of China or Russia? (Incidentally Jean Lacouiure in his study of Ho Chi Minh has described the diplomacy of Ho and his government in keeping a middle course between these two communist powers).

And what of South Vietnam:

  "The Army’s area handbook for South Vietnam (1967) says 2.5 percent of the landowners held half of the cultivated land, and more than 80 per cent of the land was cultivated by peasants owning no land at all whom the landlords could dispossess without cause . . . Former Secretary of Agriculture Orville Freeman told a reporter recently (Richard Critchfield in Washington Star March 16 ’69) that the US Embassy in Saigon ‘informed Washington it opposed land reform on the grounds that it would create political instability’.”

The NLF may not be creating paradise but it is doing something about land reform for the land hungry peasnats. Left in peace it would be able to do more. Are you aware of the corruption, exploitation, oppression and terror resulting from the series of Saigon regimes which America has backed financially and militarily? Were the people of the South to accept this because all wars are equally wrong and therefore both sides equally bad—all governments equally corrupt and all leaders equally bad?

Meanwhile, to have any sense of urgency about opposing the war, which we see as American aggression—to have any sense of guilt about what is being done to Vietnam is to have been hypnotized by some ‘immediate’ issue and to have indulged in the guilt of the flagellant!

The trouble with your writers is not that they are looking for paradise but that they think they have found it in their pure principles which are totally removed from realities. These socialists of Great Britain are very British in their outlook. Fair play, chaps—never take sides, and whatever you do, never get ruffled! This is the same attitude which permeates the British Government, the BBC, television and press whenever the war is mentioned. In the face of what Chomsky has rightly called "an enormous pattern of devastation which, if seen in its entirety, would have to be described as one of the most evil acts committed by any nation in modern times”, it is simply not done to take sides.

Yours sincerely

Jo Janet

Reply:
Of course we would not have the workers and peasants of Vietnam exploited by French colonialism. Nor do we say that the people of South Vietnam should put up the series of corrupt American-imposed governments there. We are fully aware of what the world capitalist system has done, and is doing, to the people of Vietnam. The question is, however, how to deal with this: Is it by supporting the rise to power of a new state capitalist ruling class or is it by struggling to establish world Socialism?

The Socialist Party of Great Britain argues that capitalism (including the state capitalism of Russia and China) as a world system has become reactionary and that it has no progressive role to play anywhere in the world. This is because Socialism, the next stage in social development which will involve the emancipation of all mankind, is possible. Only Socialism is progressive, and this alone is what workers everywhere should strive to establish.

We do not deny that the NLF in Vietnam as carrying out land reforms and other changes necessary for the development of (state) capitalism there. What we do challenge is the assumption that, now Socialism is possible, Socialists should support this. What workers everywhere should be striving for is Socialism, not national state capitalism.

Our correspondent’s final paragraph is typical of the self-righteousness of many of our critics. Because Socialists do not support their pet struggles we are accused of being unconcerned about the suffering capitalism causes human beings. We could turn the tables on them by saying that in concentrating on single issues it is they who are prolonging the suffering capitalism brings by diverting attention from the struggle to over it.

Note also that our position is to oppose both sides, not neutrality as our correspondent suggests.

Editorial Committee

50 Years Ago: What about Vietnam? (2020)

The 50 Years Ago column from the June 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

Of course we would not have the workers and peasants of Vietnam exploited by French colonialism. Nor do we say that the people of South Vietnam should put up with the series of corrupt American-imposed governments there. We are fully aware of what the world capitalist system has done, and is doing, to the people of Vietnam. The question is, however, how to deal with this: is it by supporting the rise to power of a new state capitalist ruling class or is it by struggling to establish world Socialism?

The Socialist Party of Great Britain argues that capitalism (including the state capitalism of Russia and China) as a world system has become reactionary and that it has no progressive role to play anywhere in the world. This is because Socialism, the next stage in social development which will involve the emancipation of all mankind, is possible. Only Socialism is progressive, and this alone is what workers everywhere should strive to establish.

We do not deny that the NLF in Vietnam is carrying out land reforms and other changes necessary for the development of (state) capitalism there. What we do challenge is the assumption that, now Socialism is possible, Socialists should support this. What workers everywhere should be striving for is Socialism, not national state capitalism.

Our correspondent’s final paragraph is typical of the self-righteousness of many of our critics. Because Socialists do not support their pet struggles we are accused of being unconcerned about the suffering capitalism causes human beings. We could turn the tables on them by saying that in concentrating on single issues it is they who are prolonging the suffering capitalism brings by diverting attention from the struggle to overcome it.

Note also that our position is to oppose both sides, not neutrality as our correspondent suggests.

(from a reply to a letter, Socialist Standard, June 1970)

50 Years Ago: Slaughter in Vietnam (2020)

The 50 Years Ago column from the February 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialists look at war in a fundamentally different way from people with other political persuasions. We contend that war in the modern world is caused by the workings of capitalism with its struggles over trade, investments, oil and other resources.

The workers of the world have an identity of interests and have nothing at stake in the thieves’ quarrels of their masters. The working class owns no country. None of the resources are theirs; they have nothing to fight for and everything to gain by uniting to end the system that enslaves them and produces wars and other terrible problems.

Supporters of Trotskyism and the so-called Communist Party support war and take one side or the other, thus lending themselves to the shedding of working class blood for the profits of the capitalist class East or West.

In the case of Vietnam these people seek Victory for the Vietcong and line up behind the nationalist aspirations of developing Vietnamese capitalism.

If it could be shown that Vietnam was an exceptional incident to an otherwise peaceful and humane capitalism and if all that needed to be done was to end this war and all would be well in the world, all the talk and press comments about “this senseless war” might have some point. The fact is that no argument can be advanced condemning the war in Vietnam which would not be equally valid for the first and second world wars, for Korea and all other 73 conflicts that have taken place in the last twenty years. War is a normal condition of capitalism. An article in US. News and World Report (August 28, 1968) shows there have been no less than 128 wars since 1898 and that 57 per cent of these have taken place since the last world war. It must be clear from this that a particular war is an effect which cannot be dealt with in isolation. What we are confronting is a society that produces wars.

(Socialist Standard, February 1970)

“Uncle Sam is wicked” (1970)

Book Review from the February 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

This collection of essays (American Power and the New Mandarins, by Noam Chomsky, Penguin, 40p.) towers above the majority of polemics arising out of the Vietnam war. It is a withering exposure both of the scholars who use their abilities to expedite mass murder, and of those who criticise them on grounds of mere expediency. It deserves to be read with some of the care, honesty and clarity of thought which evidently went into writing it. For all that, its strength is mainly destructive. When it comes to Chomsky’s alternatives, the weaknesses emerge.

What sickens him is not just the American action in Vietnam, and the arguments for it — but the arguments against. These are often to the effect that the war is a costly blunder, in opposition to America’s long-term interest, that America has no hope of winning, or that more stress should be placed on aid. less on military means. Chomsky is even suspicious of anti-war arguments based on the suffering involved:

  The primary reason for opposition to the war is its cost to us. A second cause is the feeling that the cost to its victims is too great. At first glance this reaction seems to be at a higher moral level than the first, but this is questionable. The principle that we should retract our claws when the victim bleeds too much is hardly an elevated one. What about opposition to the war on grounds that we have no right to stabilise or restructure Vietnamese society . . .

Yet there is a curious discrepancy between his argument and his conclusions. [1] A piece like The Logic of Withdrawal takes up every cudgel available against US involvement in Vietnam, including the “national interest’’ and horror at the brutality of the war (both arguments which the author elsewhere declares to be unsatisfactory). He adds that the US is transgressing international law, and that the Vietcong has mass support in South Vietnam whereas the government does not. But here again, one can infer that Chomsky is not basing his case on these points. Occasional remarks scattered throughout the book make it clear that what really disgusts him is the arrogance of the US in presuming to intervene in far-flung lands as it sees fit, whatever the circumstances: America “has no unilateral right to determine by force the course of development of the nations of the Third World.’’

In short, he mobilises all the conventional arguments for American withdrawal, with great force and eloquence, whilst stating that these arguments won’t do, and offering tantalising hints of a much more radical indictment. But when we try to assemble from these hints what this radical critique amounts to, we find it to be preposterous:

  These scholars designate themselves as ‘the moderate segment of the academic community.’ The designation is accurate; they stand midway between the two varieties of extremism, one which demands that we destroy everyone who stands in our path, the other, that we adopt the principles of international behaviour we require of every other world power.

That is a good example of Chomsky’s bitter irony, but though the second form of “extremism”, which he embraces, might be expected to disturb some, it is patently so unrealistic as to be merely pious. Chomsky is more aware of this than most, for he has gone to great pains to draw parallels between the American Empire and its predecessors, notably Japan and Britain. The similarities are often startlingly close. After all, a nation’s foreign policy flows largely from its economic structure and its relationship, economic, political and military, with other countries. To make appeals to the most rich and powerful nation in history to behave decently is surely a waste of breath. The US did not attain its dominant position by a request for the rights of other nations, and could not maintain it by adopting such a principle. Yet Chomsky even goes so far as to speculate about “massive capital gifts” (from the US!) “to Cuba and China.”

True, domestic reaction against the war might conceivably help to hasten its end, but the great majority of American workers will not be prepared to subordinate what they imagine to be “their” national interest to some form of arbitrary morality. The major reason why dissent from the war effort has become so large (as Chomsky sadly indicates) is that there has been so much “responsible” criticism, i.e. criticism founded on costs, expediency and national interest.

In a recent interview (New Left Review, No. 57) Chomsky gave the following explanation of why America is in Vietnam:

  The United States fought the Second World War, in the Pacific theatre, primarily in order to prevent Japan from constructing its own independent, integrated imperial system which would be closed to America. That was the basic issue which lay behind the Japanese-American war. Well, the United States won. The result is that now it must develop a system in which Japan can function effectively as a junior partner. That means the United States has to grant Japan what it needs as a partner, namely markets and access to raw materials, which for Japan, unlike the United States, are desperate necessities. Now the United States can very well survive without South East Asia. But Japan cannot. So if the United States wants to keep Japan securely embedded within the American system, then it has to preserve South East Asia for Japan. Otherwise Japan has other alternatives. It would turn to China or to Siberia, but that would mean the United States had lost the Second World War, in its Pacific phase. Once again a substantial industrial power would be carving itself out an independent space which, taken to its logical conclusion, would be separate and partially sealed off from the American world system.

So the Vietnam war would seem to be in America’s economic interest. True, Chomsky gave other causes for America's continuing the war, including its “investment in error”, and in his review of Schlesinger’s Bitter Heritage he points out that whilst ideology has its roots in real or perceived interests it can have a life of its own that may sometimes conflict with the interests from which it arose (e.g. US policy towards Cuba, and arguably, Vietnam).

However, an argument on the basis of national interest is what Chomsky set out, quite rightly, to avoid. He is outraged at the notion that any calculation can justify America’s part in the Vietnam carnage, yet apparently feels unable to say: “To hell with the national interest.” It might of course be a useful exercise to examine all the arguments just to show that the case for the war will not hold water even within he terms of reference assumed by its advocates. But it is not at all clear that the Vietnam slaughter is, on balance, against the interest of American capitalism. And in any case, Chomsky fails to think through his own really rock-bottom case. What sort of a world would it be in which powerful nations were bound by the same rules of conduct as weaker nations; That is altogether absurd. Nations embody antagonism of interest: their very existence is a sign of that. [2]

Chomsky’s extreme radicalism has thus led him into a hopeless muddle, but if he became more extreme and more radical still, his inconsistency could be resolved. For a coherent, logically sound and morally acceptable indictment of war can be based only on a thoroughgoing anti-nationalism and anti-patriotism. This must entail a recognition that “the national interest” means the interest of the owning and ruling class, that the nation should not be equated with the people. “The national interest” is a term used to conceal the class division between employers and workers by superimposing a geographical division. It is waved in the face of striking workers at home, as well as foreign enemies.

Revolution can wait ?
What is the explanation for this core of confusion within the shell of Chomsky’s glittering erudition? In part it is due to his overpowering abhorrence of the war, and the sense of urgency he feels about it. Everything must be subjugated to the task of stopping the war. He is sympathetic to the idea of social revolution but :

  If the Vietnamese have to wait until we build a serious political movement against all forms of capitalist repression in the United States, then they are all going to be dead . . . we cannot delay on the Vietnam issue in order to build a movement on more long-term issues. . . . Principled opposition to the war will lead directly to principled opposition to imperialism and to the causes of imperialism and hence to the formation of a principled anti-capitalist movement. (NLR interview)

Now this is manifestly wishful thinking. Not any kind of principled opposition to war leads to opposition to capitalism. A pacifist, for example, taking the view that all physical violence is an unqualified evil in all circumstances, would certainly be opposed on principle to the Vietnam war, but there have been such people for generations, and many of them in other respects still support the capitalist system. Again, someone might oppose the US action in Vietnam on the principle that, whilst war itself must be tolerated, the US is at fault by the Geneva agreement. Or that killing soldiers is permissible whilst killing women and children is not. These are all “principles” but they do not, in historical fact, automatically lead to opposition to capitalism. So it all depends what Chomsky means by “principled opposition.” What principles?

Effective opposition to war must be based on revolutionary. Socialist principles. In this case, opposition to war does not “lead to” opposition to capitalism, but principled opposition to capitalism necessarily gives rise to principled opposition to war, which (this should always be made clear) means hostility to both “sides” in every war. [3]

The plea that we cannot delay on some vital topical issue in order to build up a movement to abolish capitalism is a cruel deception. Its unspoken premise is that a total change in society is very distant and somewhat airy-fairy, whereas something like stopping a particular war is hard, real, practical and down- to-earth. In actuality though, it is the attempt to adjust capitalism according to humane criteria which is Utopian, and the call for social revolution which is the only practical solution. For decades sincere people like Chomsky have been hypnotized by some “immediate” issue, and have fallen like him into the habit of talking as if, that issue once removed, the decks will be cleared at last, and some serious attention can then be paid to the task of abolishing capitalism. The fallacy is obvious: capitalism provides an unending procession of such immediate issues, and with each one a crop of new “realists” who argue that this pressing problem must be tackled first, and then, ultimately . . .

When the Vietnam war is over, new horrors of similar magnitude are in store for us. as long as capitalism lasts. [4] If the human species has to wait until all the Chomskys have sorted out all the Vietnams, then we are all going to be dead. One of the consequences of this relegation of revolution to the realm of the “ultimate” is that here is felt to be no need to argue for it in urgent and consistent terms. Thus, when the people who adopt this posture do mention social revolution, they usually discredit it, reinforcing the popular attitude that it is irrelevant to the here and now.

Guilty patriotism

But the real source of Chomsky’s muddles is his patriotism. The word may seem odd in this connection, conjuring up Curtis LeMay and his “Bomb them back to the Stone Age.” Chomsky’s however, is a guilty patriotism, the patriotism of the flagellant. His personal identification with the American nation is overwhelming. That is why his revulsion at the Vietnam butchery finds its expression in demands that the US reform itself.

Time and again he uses the expressions “we" and “us” to mean “America” or even “the American government.” It is alarming that one so sensitive to the implications of words should notice nothing strange about this:

  Like the German Kaiser we believe that everything must be put to fire and sword, so that the war will be more quickly finished — and we act on this belief. Unlike the German Kaiser, our soul is not torn. We manage a relative calm, as we continue, today, to write new chapters of history with the blood of the helpless and innocent.

Because he feels responsible for the actions of the American government he is paralysed when it comes to criticism of America’s antagonists. Thus, in an article on the Pacific war, he draws a convincing parallel between Japanese policy in China and subsequent US policy in Vietnam, but arriving at the subject of Japanese bombing of civilians in Nanking he merely states:

  For an American today to describe these events in the manner they deserve would be the ultimate in hypocrisy. For this reason I will say very little about them.

And that is presumably why he also says very little, in fact nothing, against the North Vietnamese regime or the Vietcong. Every conceivable argument, sound or not, must be mobilised against the American colossus. Therefore, when US policy is under attack, the idea that Chinese expansion might be a threat is vigorously pooh-poohed, but in another context, when it is necessary to stress the independence of Hanoi, the view that “the principle raison d’etre of such a powerful army in North Vietnam today is to protect North Vietnam against possible Chinese aggression” is quoted with approval.

This is dangerous because governments always try to make out that those who oppose their wars, are supporters of the enemy. There is no point in providing them with convincing evidence for their accusation. Chomsky is well aware that state capitalist Russia and China are only less brutal than the US to the extent (if at all) that they are less powerful. He knows that Victnam-style atrocities do not spring from any peculiarity of the American nation, except that it is on top. He knows too that North Vietnam is no paradise (to put it mildly), that it is dependent upon aid from Russia and China, and that an American withdrawal will amount to an extension of the Russian and/or Chinese spheres of influence. A call for American withdrawal is simply a call for a slightly different carve-up of the world by the big powers. It is time Chomsky faced up to the implications of these facts.

Where now

The bulk of this book, in its dissection of mainstream American ideology, is excellent. The deceptions and self-deceptions of this school often read like self-parodies, for instance the solemn warning from one expert that a pacification programme requires survivors to be pacified. Or the reminder, addressed to an American commander bragging of the latest US “victories”, that the victories seemed to be getting closer to Saigon.

Yet “there is no particular merit in being more reasonable than a lunatic,” as Chomsky himself remarks. He must therefore be judged primarily on his recommendations for political action. He could sometimes be more explicit in his references to social revolution, though some of these are promising:

  A democratic revolution would take place when it is supported by the great mass of the people, when they know what they are doing and they know why they are doing it and they know what they want to see come into existence. Maybe not in detail but at least in some manner. A revolution is something that great masses of people have to understand and be personally committed to. (NLR interview).

This view is as alien to the anarchist tradition as to the bolshevik — though it is certainly a corollary of Marx’s assertion that the emancipation of the working-class must be the work of the workers themselves. All the more unfortunate that Chomsky is attracted to anarchism, and has apparently been put off Marxism by its misrepresentations. He quotes Bakunin's summary (which is all lies) of Marx’s doctrine with every indication that he believes it to be an accurate account.

His observations on Spain are (so far as the knowledge of this reviewer extends) substantially correct, but whatever the possibilities of the popular movement before it was crushed by the “Communists” it was undoubtedly (like the Makhno revolt in Russia, another prize exhibit in the anarchist pantheon) a product of backward agrarian conditions. consequently haunted by scarcity and doomed by the march of industry. This in no way belittles the heroism of many of those involved: it simply indicates the limited relevance of such events to the problems of an increasingly white-collar proletariat in vast conurbations during the second half of the century.

It is not likely that the evolution of Chomsky’s ideas has stopped. Hopefully, future writings may contain a more serious approach to the urgent need of today: worldwide social revolution. For all its flaws, even the present volume can be expected to put serious questions into many thousands of minds, and is therefore, with reservations, welcome.

Steele

[1] Not to be resolved by taking into account the dates of the separate articles, though this does reveal a trend towards greater clarity.
[2] A similar lack of realism is displayed by those who imagine the UN could ever cease to be in the pockets of the big powers.
[3] The double think of the US government is unsurpassed, but some elements of the "peace movement” have a good try, e.g. the sleight-of-tongue by which support for a pro-war demand (Viet- cong victory) is represented as “antiwar." See Why Socialist oppose the Vietcong in the Socialist Standard, October 68. Also useful is the pamphlet Rape of Vietnam by Bob Potter, though this writer is disturbed to find himself approaching the position of hostility to both sides, and evades it with the remark “One can’t be ‘neutral’ while aircraft are flying over one’s home dropping bombs.” an announcement for which both the German and British governments in the last war might well have commended him.
[4] When there is a Socialist movement of more than derisory strength it will of course unite across frontiers to use its influence to try and stop particular wars within capitalism. But its approaches would be made not to the governments, requesting them each to capitulate. but to the workers called upon to fight, pointing out that only their masters’ interests are at stake in the war. This has been the message of the Socialist Party in two World Wars and during Korea and Vietnam though with no expectation of achieving anything towards preventing these conflicts, given the solid support for capitalism of the great majority of workers. A situation where a massive Socialist movement, not yet a majority, was confronted with a war, might never arise. Firstly, because the rate of the spread of Socialist ideas might at that stage be expected to increase, so that world revolution would be imminent, with it the abolition of war. Secondly, because governments might be deterred from the initiation of wars by the knowledge that very substantial proportions of their populations could be relied upon to sabotage the war effort.

The War in Vietnam (1970)

From the November 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

American troops are not in Vietnam to defend Peace, Democracy, Liberty or any other high-sounding ideal. They are there for the same reason they are in Korea, Okinawa, Formosa, the Philippines, Laos and Thailand : to defend American domination of the Pacific Ocean. This was why America fought the second world war, but no sooner had one rival, Japan, been beaten than another, China, arose. The Vietnam War, like the Korean War, is just an aspect of the conflict between American imperialism and Chinese imperialism for control of the Eastern Pacific. Not an issue in which Socialists take sides.

Nor do Socialists support the many demonstrations that are said to be “against the Vietnam War”. The organisers of most of them do not try to disguise the fact that they are for a continuation of the war until the so-called National Liberation Front, the side they support, has won. In other words, these are pro-war, not peace demonstrations.

In any event, given the balance of power in South East Asia, “peace” would only be an armed truce which would give both sides the chance to start fighting somewhere else, in Laos or Thailand perhaps Whichever side wins the poor people of Vietnam will lose as the war is basically over who is going to govern and exploit them.

Why Socialists Oppose the Vietcong (1968)

From the October 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

Vietnam is the latest of the left-wingers’ adopted fatherlands. Before Vietnam it was Algeria, before that it was Cuba, and so on back to Russia. This support for the Vietcong does not depend on what is actually going on in Vietnam, but is rather an expression of the left-wingers’’ dissatisfaction with certain aspects of modern society. To that extent it is irrational.

Nevertheless those who support the Vietcong imagine that they are Marxists and it is in pseudo-Marxist terms that they rationalise their support for this nationalist movement whose aim is to set up a state capitalist regime in the South similar to that in the North. The Vietcong is not a socialist movement, and by no stretch of the imagination can it be said to have anything to do with Socialism. But since those who shout for “Victory for the Vietcong” have dragged in Marx and Socialism, we must at least refute their arguments and state why Socialists do not support the Vietcong.

Left-wingers’ use two basic arguments. First, that socialists should support any movement, even if it is not socialist, that weakens “American imperialism” which they say is the main threat to social revolution throughout the world, just as Marx supported moves against Tsarist Russia. Second, and this comes from Lenin, the Vietcong and workers in the West are fighting the same enemy – imperialism – and so we should support each other.

It is true that in the middle of the nineteenth century Marx saw Tsarist Russia, the “gendarme of Europe”, as a great threat to the further social progress of mankind. He felt that if Russia overran western Europe it would crush the democratic movement and put the social revolution back for years. Therefore, he was ready to support any moves that might weaken the power of Tsarist Russia. He supported Britain, France and Turkey in the Crimean war. He stood for an independent Polish state, to be a buffer between Russia and the rest of Europe. He did all he could to expose the pro-Russia policies and intrigues of Lord Palmerston. These may seem odd activities for a socialist – and, indeed, we have criticised Marx for them. Marx argued that before Socialism is possible society must pass through the capitalist stage. But this is no automatic process; it depends on the outcome of human struggles. Russia was “reactionary” in the proper sense of the word in that it was a threat to the development even of capitalism. Marx opposed Tsarist Russia, not because it was the strongest capitalist power, but because it was the strongest anti-capitalist power.

Looking back now we can see that Marx was over-optimistic as to the prospects of a socialist revolution in Europe. In time the capitalist states of western Europe grew stronger and the Tsarist Empire weaker, finally to be destroyed along with Austro-Hungary and Imperial Germany in the first world war. Before that even, Russia in a bid to keep its armed forces up to date had become indebted to the capitalists of France and Belgium. Well before the turn of the century we can say that conditions had changed since Marx’s day. Capitalism was firmly established as the new world order. Russia was no longer a threat. The task of socialists was even clearer: to oppose all wars and nationalist movements and to work to build up a world-wide workers’ movement with Socialism as its aim. This has always been the policy of the Socialist Party of Great Britain.

Today capitalism quite clearly dominates the world, in Russia and China as well as in the West. To talk of “American imperialism” as the main threat is to play the game of state capitalist Russia and China. Every up-and-coming capitalist power finds the world already carved up by the established powers. If it is to expand its influence it must clash with these powers, as Germany, Japan, Italy and Russia have found and as China is now finding. All of them, in their time, have beaten the “anti-imperialist” drum, that is, have opposed the domination of the world by Britain and France and later America. Mussolini talked of Italy as a “proletarian nation” in a class war against the “bourgeois nations”. Nazi Germany stirred up Arab and Latin American nationalism. Japan advanced the slogan of “Asia for the Asians”. Russia, too, and now China, like Germany before, vociferously denounce Anglo-French-American imperialism.

Naturally socialists, wittingly or unwittingly, do not allow themselves to be used as tools of some capitalist state, as most of those who shout for the Vietcong are (some know full well what they are doing). Socialists are opposed to world capitalism and to governments everywhere.

Lenin could not believe it when he learnt that the German Social Democrats had voted for the war credits in 1914. Later he worked out a theory to try to explain it, his theory of imperialism. Basically, he argued that as profits were greater in the undeveloped parts of the world capitalists were eager to invest there; this brought the capitalist states into continual conflict over the division of the world. Part of the “super-profits” of this imperialist exploitation, were used to pay higher wages and provide social reforms for sections of the workers at home. They were thus led away from revolutionary socialism towards opportunism.

This theory is mistaken on nearly all counts. It has not been proved that the rate of profit was higher in the colonial territories. There is a much simpler explanation for capitalist expansion into the undeveloped world in the forty or so years before the first world war: the need to secure sources of raw material for the expanding industries at home, and then to secure strategic points to protect these sources and the trade routes to and from them. As for Lenin’s explanation of reformism it is the purest nonsense. To suggest that workers share in the proceeds of colonial exploitation is to reject the Marxian theory of wages which says that wages are the price of labour-power.

But this argument was an essential part of Lenin’s theory. For on it he based his strategy of support for anti-imperialist nationalist movements. If they succeeded, he believed, they would deprive the imperialist state concerned of its super-profits and so also of its ability to buy off its workers. Deprived of their share the workers’ standard of living would drop and they would once again become revolutionary, affording a chance for a Bolshevik-type vanguard to seize power.

This is typical of Lenin’s thinking, to rely on some factor outside of the development of the working class itself to create the conditions for social revolution. It fits in well with his contempt for the abilities of workers and his view that they should be manipulated by a self-appointed vanguard. Needless to say this short-cut to Socialism is just as much a dead-end as all the others.

Of course defeat in Vietnam, and the whole of South East Asia, would have serious consequences for American capitalism. That is why they are fighting. It would deprive them of access to many raw materials, but more important it would shift the balance of power around the pacific in favour of Chinese state capitalism.

It is not true that the Vietcong and workers are fighting the same enemy. The Vietcong are fighting American capitalism. The interests of workers are opposed not only to American capitalism but to capitalism everywhere including Russia and China. Victory for the Vietcong, as we have already explained, would shift the world balance of power from America to other capitalist powers. This is not something that is in the interests of workers, or something that they should support. There is no issue at stake in Vietnam worth a single worker’s life.

The Socialist Party, then, is opposed to the Vietnam war, as to all wars. We do not take sides. Nor are we hypocrites like those who cynically use all normal people’s abhorrence of the burning of women and children (as if the Vietcong did not use flame-throwers) to get them to support one side in this war. Such people do not really want an end to the killing; they want it to go on till the side they support has won. Let them at least be honest and stop trying to fool people with their phoney anti-war sentiments.

Adam Buick

50 Years Ago: Why Socialists Oppose the Vietcong (2018)

The 50 Years Ago column from the October 2018 issue of the Socialist Standard

Vietnam is the latest of the leftwingers’ adopted fatherlands. Before Vietnam it was Algeria, before that it was Cuba, and so on back to Russia. This support for the Vietcong does not depend on what is actually going on in Vietnam, but is rather an expression of the leftwingers’ dissatisfaction with certain aspects of modern society. To that extent it is irrational.

Nevertheless those who support the Vietcong imagine that they are Marxists and it is in pseudo-Marxist terms that they rationalise their support for this nationalist movement whose aim is to set up a state capitalist regime in the South similar to that in the North. The Vietcong is not a socialist movement, and by no stretch of the imagination can it be said to have anything to do with Socialism. But since those who shout for “Victory for the Vietcong” have dragged in Marx and Socialism, we must at least refute their arguments and state why Socialists do not support the Vietcong. (. . . .)

It is not true that the Vietcong and workers are fighting the same enemy. The Vietcong are fighting American capitalism. The interests of workers are opposed not only to American capitalism but to capitalism everywhere including Russia and China. Victory for the Vietcong, as we have already explained, would shift the world balance of power from America to other capitalist powers. This is not something that is in the interests of workers, or something that they should support. There is no issue at stake in Vietnam worth a single worker’s life.

The Socialist Party, then, is opposed to the Vietnam war, as to all wars. We do not take sides. Nor are we hypocrites like those who cynically use all normal people’s abhorrence of the burning of women and children (as if the Vietcong did not use flame-throwers) to get them to support one

side in this war. Such people do not really want an end to the killing; they want it to go on till the side they support has won. Let them at least be honest and stop trying to fool people with their phoney anti-war sentiments.

(Socialist Standard, October 1968)

Gaspers: 'a basinful of bombs' (1967)

From the January 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

In Auckland, a heckler shouted "What about the children?” when New Zealand’s Defence Minister, Mr. Dean Eyre, said he would like to drop 'a basinful of bombs' on North Vietnam. Mr. Eyre told the heckler: “We are dealing with Oriental people. They are different from ourselves.”

Whatever Happened to 'The Viet Cong'? (2017)

From the November 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the 1960s leftwing demonstrators used to chant 'Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh' and 'Victory to the Vietcong'. We look at what sort of society emerged following their victory in 1976.

In 1956, during a brief relaxation of censorship, a Vietnamese literary journal published a story by Tran Duy entitled The Giants. The giants in the story are created by God to help mankind fight the devils, but they end up trampling and killing more people than devils. The allegory was readily deciphered: the giants were the 'communist' party leaders, while the devils were the hated French colonialists, recently defeated at Dien Bien Phu (1954).

The history of the 'communist' movement in Vietnam cannot be summarised in a short article, but the timeline will help the reader place events in context.

Top-down organisation

    

The Vietnamese 'communist' movement emerged from the struggle against French colonial rule as a top-down organisation. The leadership was a self-appointed and self-perpetuating group from the very start. The process of party formation began among Vietnamese emigrés in Canton – the French Sûreté (security police) made it too risky to place the central leadership inside the country. In 1925 Ho Chi Minh, backed by the Comintern, put together a group called the Vietnam Revolutionary Youth League, personally recruiting its members and deciding which of them should sit on its Central Committee (CC). In 1930 the League merged with other small groups to form the Indochinese Communist Party, later renamed the Vietnam Workers' Party or Lao Dong.

As with other vanguard parties of the Bolshevik type, the internal functioning of the Vietnamese 'communist' party has always been guided by the principle of 'democratic centralism'. Lower bodies are strictly subordinate to higher ones. Debate is allowed only until a definite policy is adopted, after which all members must support and implement that policy.

In practice, local party branches in Vietnam in the 1930s seem to have had considerable autonomy due to the difficulty of maintaining communication between them and the CC in China. However, once the leadership returned to Vietnam in 1945 control was tightened.

The activity of rank-and-file party members has almost always been confined to tasks assigned from above. On training courses they might be invited to raise objections to the policy of the leaders, but the purpose of this is merely to convince them that the leadership is right. Only during the brief thaws of 1956 and the late 1980s have they had greater freedom to criticize party policy.

At higher levels there has been freer discussion at certain periods, permitting the emergence of conflicting factions. (The most persistent though not the only important factional division has been that between supporters of a pro-China orientation and advocates of closer ties with European 'socialist' countries.) Such periods, however, alternate with others in which a narrow clique imposes rigid control. Thus the 'anti-revisionist' purge of the mid-1960s, in which hundreds of critical party and government officials and military officers were imprisoned without charge, inaugurated the 'rule of the two Le's' – Le Duan (general secretary) and Le Duc Tho (head of the CC's Organisation Department, in control of appointments, and negotiator at the Paris talks). This was just one of recurrent purges that frighten people and inhibit debate.

Relations with other political groups

The 'communist' party was not alone in fighting against French rule. There were also various 'bourgeois' nationalist parties, Trotskyist organisations and religious sects. At times the 'communists' judged it expedient to cooperate with this or that group. At other times they ruthlessly suppressed rivals who did not seem susceptible to their control, even resorting to assassinations and betrayal to the Sûreté (also a source of funds).  

Especially dramatic were relations between Stalinists and Trotskyists. In the early to mid-1930s the 'communists' in Saigon cooperated with local Trotskyists – a practice denounced by the Comintern in 1937 and Ho in 1939. After the Vietminh took power in Hanoi in 1945, Trotskyists were hunted down as 'traitors' and they were almost all killed.

A sole survivor, Ngo Van, escaped just in time to France, where he wrote a valuable memoir (In the Crossfire: Adventures of a Vietnamese Revolutionary, AK Press, 2010). His political views evolved in exile: he rejected Bolshevism and became a council communist.

The 'communists' again cooperated with other 'patriotic' forces in the fight against the Americans. Most members of the National Liberation Front (NLF) in the South were not 'communists' (the moniker 'Vietcong' – Vietnamese Communists – is misleading). After victory the NLF was suppressed (see: Truong Nhu Tang, A Vietcong Memoir: An Inside Account of the Vietnam War and Its Aftermath, Vintage Books, 1986). NLF veterans remained a disgruntled group in society. Taking advantage of the thaw of 1986, they set up a Club of Former Resistance Fighters, with a journal entitled Spirit of Resistance.    

   

Outer and inner power elites

Within the party we can identify an outer power elite of 150–200 members of the party's Central Committee (CC) and an inner power elite of 15–20 top leaders – members of the Politburo and occupants of important positions in the CC apparatus. The top leaders have chauffeur-driven cars and live in luxurious villas with guards, servants, and personal libraries. Other members of the CC have lesser though still substantial privileges, such as use of a special store in Hanoi stocked with goods not available to ordinary mortals and a spacious apartment (most people live in very crowded conditions).

There is also a graduated system of access to information. Certain periodicals are published specially for the power elite. A digest of the world press has a fairly wide circulation. Some documents like Politburo minutes, however, are restricted to the inner elite.

Ho Chi Minh

A few words on 'Uncle Ho'. He was the creator and symbol of Vietnamese 'communism' but he was not a dictator like Stalin or Mao, nor did he have any pretensions as a theorist. His power declined over time. In her novel The Zenith, Duong Thu Huong portrays the aging Ho as virtually a prisoner of his colleagues. Like Lenin, after death he was embalmed and placed on public display in a mausoleum in defiance of his expressed wishes (he wanted to be cremated, just as Lenin wanted to be buried). His last testament was published but in censored form (thus his call for a moratorium on the land tax was deleted).   

Doi moi

After Le Duan's death in 1986 the Vietnamese leaders embarked on a policy called doi moi, meaning 'renovation'. Initially, like Gorbachev's perestroika, this was envisaged as a process of political as well as economic reform. Later, wishing to avoid the fate of the Soviet elite, they switched to the Chinese strategy of encouraging private enterprise and foreign investment while consolidating the power structure.

As we have seen, the old state-capitalist system had its inequalities. However, the new mixed system of state and private capitalism has generated inequalities that are more extreme and, perhaps above all, more conspicuous. This has given rise to feelings of nostalgia for the old days. In particular, the period of the war against America, for all its hardships and suffering, is recalled as a time of sharing and mutual aid.

I was told of a man who was surprised one day to find on his doorstep someone who had served with him in the same unit. His pleasure turned into shame when his old comrade-in-arms told him that he was destitute and begged him to take him in as a servant. He said that he was not asking for money: he would be satisfied with food to eat and a roof over his head.

The more things change...

The Vietnamese Revolution certainly brought changes in the composition, structure and ideology of the ruling class. But what changes did it bring to working people?

Many changes were more apparent than real. Here are a couple of examples.

One of the main demands raised by 'communists' and others under French rule was abolition of the corvée – a feudal institution that made peasants toil without pay on public works for a certain number of days per year. Under the Vietminh the same practice continued under a new name – citizen labour service.

Again, after 'land reform' (1954–56) peasants no longer had to pay rent to a landlord for the land they tilled. But instead they had to pay a land tax to the state. And the amount of the land tax happened to be about the same as the rent previously paid to the landlord. Later, after the collectivisation of agriculture, the same surplus was extracted by the state from the collective farms.

As the proverb says: 'The more things change, the more they remain the same.'

The French colonialists and their American successors placed little value on the lives of the 'natives'. But the 'communist' leaders too placed little value on the lives of their people. Even if one accepts the dubious propositions that the country had to be reunited and that this could be achieved only by war, the goal could have been reached at a much lower price in blood. For instance, the 'Easter offensive' of 1972, which cost the lives of almost an entire cohort of poorly trained 16-year-old boys, served no rational strategic objective. It was already clear that the US was withdrawing – all that was needed was a little more patience.

Impoverished by decades of war and devastation, Vietnam now lies alongside Bangladesh on the bottom tier of the global economic hierarchy, with wage levels only one half of those now prevailing in China. Chased out at such vast cost, the 'imperialists' are welcomed back to exploit Vietnamese workers and resources as foreign investors.    

Stefan

VIETNAMESE 'COMMUNISM' TIMELINE

1880s French complete conquest of Indochina

1925 Ho Chi Minh sets up Vietnam Revolutionary Youth League (VRYL) in Canton

1930 VRYL merges with other groups to form Indochinese Communist Party (ICP)

1941 Ho creates Vietnam Independence League (Vietminh)

1945 Japan surrenders. Vietminh takes power in Hanoi. Ho proclaims Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV). ICP officially disbands

1945–54 Resistance War Against France

1951 ICP reappears as Vietnam Workers' Party (Lao Dong)

1954 Geneva Agreement divides Vietnam into northern zone (DRV) and southern zone (Republic of Vietnam)

1954–56 'Land reform' in DRV

1959 Collectivisation of agriculture begins in DRV

1960 National Liberation Front (Vietcong) established in South

1960–75 Resistance War Against America

1969 Ho dies. Le Duan becomes general secretary of party Central Committee

1976 Country reunified as Socialist Republic of Vietnam

1977 Collectivisation of agriculture begins in South

1978 Vietnam invades Cambodia

1979 Border war with China

1986 Le Duan dies. Start of doi moi (renovation)

1988 De-collectivisation of agriculture legalized