From ‘Constructing Socialism’ to a ‘Socialist-oriented Market Economy’ in Contemporary Vietnam: A Critique of Ideologies

Abstract

In power, the Vietnamese Communist Party has experienced three ‘moments’ of growth, each with some differences of detail and of meanings: ‘traditional communism’; the transition from a planned to a market economy in the 1980s; and, since 1992, a ‘socialist-oriented market economy’. For each, the article discusses the ideologically defined nature of change; intentionality—‘how growth was to happen’; and the quantitative data used. It suggests that critiques throughout the period have engaged with the intentionality issue: in the first moment, by isolating the socialist relations of production within socialist construction as the cause of difficulties; more recently, by engaging with the lack of effective policy despite contemporary ideology's unreliable belief in policy as key to growth.

Notes

1 I use the term ‘moment’ rather than potential alternatives such as ‘period’ because the latter requires clear stipulation of starting and end points, which is not only not needed but confusing. The article argues that ideas and practices change as processes, not as discrete events, at least in the Vietnamese context.

2 It must be noted that Mitchell sidesteps his 1991 position in his 2014 paper. Compare: ‘the statist approach always begins from the assumption that the state is a distinct entity’ (Mitchell 1991, p. 89) with ‘the term social construction gets us caught in ontological and historical claims and counterclaims about what existed before the economy. It is easier to talk about the economy as an effect’ (Mitchell 2014, p. 484).

3 A term, so far as I know, coined by two Vietnamese economists, Dam and Le (1981).

4 We know too little about Soviet-bloc advice in terms of such issues as the Kosygin reforms and the use of market forces in SOEs. See Fforde and Mazyrin (2018).

5 For further discussion, see Fforde (2017c).

6 Variation in these over time is interesting but not dealt with here. The copies in my possession were used at a number of teaching institutions, especially the Economics and Planning University, which eventually became the National Economics University, Hanoi. From the way they read, I doubt very much if they are translations, and there is a valuable piece of research to be done on the extent to which they map changing Soviet advice. For example, Tran (1968) is the third edition (the other two being for 1960 and 1965), and differences between these deserve research. By contrast, many documents from the third moment (such as, sectoral master plans) are often far less ‘Vietnamese’ in their content, perhaps as they were prepared with foreign consultants.

7 The term is political and was also used to refer to the ‘reformation’ of southern officers and other elements viewed with hostility by the Party after 1975.

8 Thus Bray (1983) argues that rice production, unlike wheat, usually lacked the returns to scale that agricultural cooperatives sought to exploit—scale without landlords.

9 This was gradual and evidently cautious: ‘on the basis of our discussions with Vietnamese who were involved in the reform process it is perhaps possible to identify two sets of principles on which their understanding of the traditional socialist model was based. One of these we could call definitional, the other operational. The first and most fundamental set, related to the traditional definition of socialism, comprised three principles: public ownership of the means of production, operational central planning, and distribution according to labour productivity. The second set was of secondary importance and comprised essentially principles’ (Beresford & Fforde 1997, p. 112). The discussions reported by Beresford and Fforde (1997) appear to ignore the political implications—Mitchell's ‘distinctive technique of the modern political order’ surely requires policy to matter, and in the third moment, for the VCP to govern through policy, framed in terms of economentality, rather than just ruling.

10 See Fforde and Paine (1987). The standard collections are the yearly So lieu Thong ke (statistical data), for example, GSO (1991).

11 The author, real name Nguyen Dinh Huan, as a young researcher had the vivid experience of presenting the results directly to the top VCP leadership (personal communication).

12 ‘Đường lối công nghiệp hóa của Đảng Cộng sản Việt Nam’, in Đường lối cách mạng của Đảng Cộng sản Việt Nam, available at: https://tusach.thuvienkhoahoc.com/wiki/%C4%90%C6%B0%E1%BB%9Dng_l%E1%BB%91i_c%C3%B4ng_nghi%E1%BB%87p_h%C3%B3a_c%E1%BB%A7a_%C4%90%E1%BA%A3ng_C%E1%BB%99ng_s%E1%BA%A3n_Vi%E1%BB%87t_Nam, accessed 23 November 2018.

13 This Congress is the subject of a wide range of cribs and sources of information for Vietnamese students, see for example: ‘Đại hội Đảng toàn quốc lần thứ sáu’, Vietnam Youth Union, Historical Events, available at: https://thanhnien.vn/thoi-su/dai-hoi-dang-toan-quoc-lan-thu-sau-498588.html, accessed 23 November 2018.

14 For a more detailed discussion of these two documents, see Fforde (2017b).

15 For further details of these articles in the VCP press, see Fforde (2007).

16 Thus, Dam and Le (1981) so far as I know are the first in print to refer to ‘fence-breaking’—a term that has become rather widely-used to refer to SOEs’ behaviour in getting around prohibitions on direct market-based relationships with other SOEs as well as various sources of supplies and market outlets.

17 A good example can be found in the table in de Vylder and Fforde (1996, p. 213).

18 See, for example, ‘Vietnam: Achieving Success as a Middle-income Country’, World Bank, 12 April 2013, available at: http://www.worldbank.org/en/results/2013/04/12/vietnam-achieving-success-as-a-middle-income-country, accessed 23 November 2018.

19 See the above-mentioned studies by Pham et al. (2008) and Giesecke and Tran (2008) in which quantitative work shows little policy influence.

20 See, for example, the World Bank and other bilateral donors’ support for the Comprehensive Poverty Reduction and Growth Strategy put together in the late 1990s. The Final report is available at: http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTVIETNAM/Overview/20270134/cprgs_finalreport_Nov03.pdf, accessed 23 November 2018.

21 Some INGOs also aligned with this strategy. The view of a leading INGO Vietnam country director, that formal structures—state as well as mass organisations such as the Women’s Union—were the correct development partners for INGOs in Vietnam is reflected in McCall (1998).

22 These were bodies that grouped individual SOEs in various ways.

23 Bao cao ket qua giam sat ‘Viec thuc hien chinh sach … tai cac tap doan, tong cong ty nha nuoc’ (Hanoi, National Assembly, 2009, p. 20).

24 ‘Công nghiệp hóa, hiện đại hóa và yêu cầu đối với giáo dục đại học hiện nay’, Nhan Dan Dien Tu, 2015, available at: http://www.nhandan.com.vn/giaoduc/dien-dan/item/27199202-cong-nghiep-hoa-hien-dai-hoa-va-yeu-cau-doi-voi-giao-duc-dai-hoc-hien-nay.html , accessed 9 March 2016.

25 ‘Công nghiệp hóa, hiện đại hóa và yêu cầu đối với giáo dục đại học hiện nay’, Nhan Dan Dien Tu, 2015, available at: http://www.nhandan.com.vn/giaoduc/dien-dan/item/27199202-cong-nghiep-hoa-hien-dai-hoa-va-yeu-cau-doi-voi-giao-duc-dai-hoc-hien-nay.html, accessed 9 March 2016.

26 ‘Lý luận về công nghiệp hóa, hiện đại hóa … gắn với kinh tế trí thức’, Wattpad, p. 1, available at: https://www.wattpad.com/2927500-l%C3%BD-lu%E1%BA%ADn-v%E1%BB%81-c%C3%B4ng-nghi%E1%BB%87p-h%C3%B3a-hi%E1%BB%87n-%C4%91%E1%BA%A1i-h%C3%B3a-g%E1%BA%AFn-v%E1%BB%9Bi, accessed 9 March 2016.

27 Compare Kornai (1985).

28 Zink (2013) is a valuable study of the realities of research activities in Vietnam.

29 National Income Accounting, the basis of GDP, sums incomes of labour and capital (‘factor incomes’) to produce a measure of national income, which is therefore not a measure of ‘output’.

30 Huy's book (2012) was only published overseas but the e-book and pdf copies were easily available in Viet Nam.

31 Fluent in Vietnamese and half-Vietnamese, Greenfield had unprecedented access to the political economy of the state in the very early 1990s.

32 It is not easy analytically to find a suitable term, because whilst they appear in part simply as bribes, they are also, arguably, and because they are so large, a reflection of some form of informal ownership right.

33 Or they were happy just over a decade ago. Goertzel (2006) reports, based upon the Pew Global Attitudes Project, that 95.4% of Vietnamese agreed that ‘most people are better off in a free market economy, even though some people are rich and some are poor’, compared for example to 72.1% in the United States (Goertzel 2006, pp. 4–5).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Adam Fforde

ADAM FFORDE, Victoria Institute of Strategic Economic Studies, Victoria University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.