The legacies of Marx and Lenin in Vietnam: a historical and regional perspective

Abstract

In conversation with other essays in this collection but with a focus on Vietnam within a regional East Asian perspective, this essay explores the great significance of Marxist and Leninist legacies by reviewing the historical contexts in which Marxist and Leninist movements emerged as contenders in national politics, and the creation and evolution of socialist institutions where communists took power. Those institutions helped communist regimes dominate their societies for decades and remain important today. Yet how long these regimes can survive in the face of rapidly growing demands for political freedom is an open question.

Keywords:

• Marx
• Lenin
• socialism
• communism
• legacies
• Vietnam
• East Asia

Acknowledgements

The author thanks Harry Verhoeven and several anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 The letter can be found at https://baotiengdan.com/2018/12/19/yeu-sach-tam-diem-nam-2019-cua-nguoi-dan-viet-nam/

2 On Vietnamese elections, see Malesky and Schuler (2009).

3 On the controversy over the identity of the true Nguyen Ai Quac, see Duiker (2000, 59).

4 ‘Socialism’ and ‘communism’ in this essay are understood not as abstract ideals but as political movements and regimes inspired by the doctrines of Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin and applied in real historical contexts. The terms ‘communism’ and ‘socialism’ are used interchangeably here, with their subtle differences acknowledged. In line with the goals set out in the introduction to this collection on Marx and Lenin in Africa and Asia, I focus on the formative role of colonial institutions and post-colonial nation-building and the ways these have intersected with various understandings of socialism.

5 For the debate on China, see Shambaugh (2008) and Gilley (2004); for Vietnam see Kerkvliet (2019), Vu (2014a, 2014b) and Fforde (2013); for North Korea see Smith (2015, esp. ch. 1).

6 According to the former economic advisor to the Vietnamese Prime Minister, Pham Chi Lan, there are 2.8 million government officials and employees, accounting for about 3% of Vietnam’s total population, compared to the ratio of 2.8% in the much wealthier China. See http://viettimes.vn/viet-nam/thoi-su-chinh-tri/can-khoan-10-de-giam-ganh-nang-11-trieu-nguoi-an-luong-nha-nuoc-60790.html. On loss-making state-owned enterprises, see Vu Quang Viet, “Nhin lai chu truong lay quoc doanh lam chu dao,” February 16, 2016, http://www.diendan.org/viet-nam/nhin-lai-quoc-doanh.

7 For a comparison with the North Korean case: Byman and Lind (2010).

8 These processes were theorised and evidenced in Halliday (1999) and Roessler and Verhoeven (2016).

9 On minjung (common people), see Lee (2007). Hadiz (2020) highlights the emergence of radical Islamist groups from the old strongholds of the Indonesian Communist Party; see Vu (2009) on Indonesian anticapitalism.

10 For testimonies by survivors, see Freeman (1989).

11 For the transnational movement of the Vietnamese diaspora to promote democracy in Vietnam, see Duyen Bui (2020). On diasporic groups’ philanthropic activities in Vietnam, see Small (2020).

12 On peasant mobilisation in North Vietnam, see Holcombe (2020).

13 In 2014, Vietnam’s security forces accounted for 0.6% of the population; the ratio for China was 0.55% and for the US, 0.34%. Soldiers accounted for 0.47% of Vietnam’s population, which was the same as the US but twice the ratio for China. Vietnam’s security forces consumed 12% of the annual national budget (compared to 2% in the US), while its spending on education accounted for 16%. Vietnam’s military spending was 9% of its annual national budget (the same as in the US). See Vu Quang Viet, “Tai sao boi chi ngan sach qua lon va keo dai trong nhieu nam o Vietnam,” Thoi Dai Moi no. 16 (September 2017), 219, 232, 242, available at http://www.tapchithoidai.org/ThoiDai36/201736_VuQuangViet.pdf

14 This is clearly reflected in the rise of public criticisms, including mass protests, in recent years, as analysed by Kerkvliet (2014). For China, see O’Brien (2008).

15 See Fforde (2013) on Vietnam and Shirk (2007, esp. ch. 3) and Yuen (2014) on China.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Tuong Vu

Tuong Vu is Professor and Head of the Department of Political Science at the University of Oregon, USA. He has held visiting appointments at Princeton University and National University of Singapore and taught at the Naval Postgraduate School. Vu is the author or editor of five books, including most recently The Republic of Vietnam, 1955–1975: Vietnamese Perspectives on Nation-Building (Cornell, 2020) and Vietnam’s Communist Revolution: The Power and Limits of Ideology (Cambridge, 2017). He has also authored numerous articles on the politics of nationalism, communism and state-building in East and Southeast Asia.