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From: "Michael Albert" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: ZNet Commentary / Sept 4 / Vijay Prashad / Red Salute, comrade
Uncle Ho
Date sent: Fri, 3 Sep 1999 21:05:06 +0100
Red Salute, Comrade Uncle Ho!
By Vijay Prashad
In the late 1960s, the communists in Bengal allied with the left Congress
to form a United Front government in the state. These were heady times for
a region buffeted by two drought years, by the cataclysmic pressures of
international finance, and down-wind from the U. S. bombardment of
Vietnam. Nevertheless, the resoluteness of the Vietnamese struggle under
the able leadership of Ho Chi Minh and his comrades (most famously General
Vo Nguyen Giap) demanded solidarity from progressive forces around the
world. The reds in Calcutta obliged. Since the U. S. and British
consulates sat on the same street in the city, the red government gave the
street Ho Chi Minh's name and placed his statue at its entry. The act was
subversive, surrealistic, and also deeply conscious of the real power
relations that govern the world (the consulates remain despite their new
address). The reds did not blow-up the consulate, a quixotic and
anti-people act that would not have changed much. Instead, they offered
solidarity, they joined in a community of hard worn struggle against an
adversary that cannot easily be thwarted.
I'm thinking of Ho Chi Minh today, because he died three decades ago on 4
September, six years before the U. S. withdrawal from Vietnam. He left the
world as the U. S. dropped fifteen million tons of explosives from 1964 to
1972 (twice what was expended in World War II in all sectors). This act
may not have broken the will of the Vietnamese fighters, but it certainly
set back the possibility of Vietnam's rapid transition to socialism. I'm
thinking of Ho Chi Minh today, because I feel frustrated by my comrades
and friends in the U. S. who reserve a particular tone for their criticism
of the attempt to build socialism within the formerly colonized world,
regions that linger still in the realm of necessity. In the U.S. we allow
ourselves to make sophisticated arguments based on the narrow terrain of
maneuver -- even to champion someone so detached from political
organization as Michael Moore or Warren Beatty! When it comes to Cuba,
Vietnam, and West Bengal, we have no patience with the manifold difficulty
faced by the communist movement. I agree with Amilcar Cabral who warned us
in 1965 to 'tell no lies. Mask no difficulties, mistakes, failures. Claim
no easy victories.' Nevertheless, we should also not frown too earnestly
when faced with the barren fields of formerly colonized countries, whose
wealth allows us to be so genteel now.
Vietnam is a small independent country that ploughs the tough terrain of
human society toward socialism. Within the country fierce debate continues
over the nature of the path, particularly of the highly controversial Doi
Moi (market socialism) regime enacted under IMF pressure in 1986. In a
1924 article, Ho Chi Minh noted that 'colonialism is a leech with two
suckers, one of which sucks the metropolitan proletariat and the other
that of the colonies. If we want to kill this monster, we must cut off
both suckers at the same time. If only one is cut off, the other will
continue to suck the blood of the proletariat, the animal will continue to
live, and the cut-off sucker will grow again.' When we regard the Vietnam
Revolution, perhaps we should tend to these words and recognize that the
trials of the socialist experiment in places such as Vietnam have
something to do with errors there, but also, and decisively, to do with
our own inability to strike at capitalism's core.
Born in 1890, Ho Chi Minh left his country at age 21 to become a
revolutionary. He traveled through Garvey's Harlem, Lenin's Moscow and
Clara Zetkin's Paris. At the Fifth Congress of the Comintern (1924), Ho
Chi Minh foreshadowed his role in South East Asia. 'The revolt of the
colonial peasants is imminent. They have already risen in several
colonies, but each time their rebellions have been drowned in blood. If
they now seem resigned, that is solely for lack of organization and
leadership. It is the duty of the Communist International to work toward
that union.' Ho Chi Minh exercised a major role in uniting the left
fractions in Vietnam and forging the party that would lead the liberation
movement in the region. While he was not much of a theoretician, Ho Chi
Minh certainly left a major anti-bureaucratic legacy in Vietnam. The
theory of 'collective mastery' (lam chu tap the) was presented in his 1961
speech to the Second Congress of the Vietnam Workers' Party, a theory that
urged people to 'work on their own initiative and own accord,' to take
control of social relations. The 7th National Congress of the Communist
Party of Vietnam (1991) reiterated its faith in the broad outlines of this
policy.
Yes, Gabriel Kolko is right (in his 1997 <Vietnam: Anatomy of a Peace>)
that the injustices against the Vietnamese people today are heinous if one
remembers what was sacrificed by them. Their fight against imperialism
seemed to promise so much, both to them and to us. How horrified we all
became when we read of the South Korean subcontractor for Nike who slapped
fifteen workers as punishment for poor work in April 1996. A supervisor at
another South Korean firm topped this when she made 56 women run around
the factory floor in March 1997 on International Women's Day. These
stories made the front-page of the capitalist press. Meanwhile Nike's new
age sweatshops in Bangladesh and Indonesia (among other places) did not
find the spotlight although similar stories broke at the same time. East
Timorese workers at Nike's PT HASI plant outside Jakarta face massive
labor violations and Bangladeshi workers are routinely attacked by the
police for making complaints against Nike's Youngone subcontractor. These
capital collaborationist regimes did not even conduct routine
investigations. Vietnam was forthright in its actions against such
barbarism. When the 1997 story broke, the local government (of Dong Nai
province, on the outskirts of Ho Chi Minh City) requested that the South
Korean government compensate the women and charged the supervisor with
abuse. Nguyen Dinh Thang of the Dong Nai Confederation of Labor warned,
according to <Thanh Nien> (<Youth Newspaper>, 14 June 1997), that 'the
union will bring pressure to bear on Nike and its contractors unless their
labor practices are reformed. Companies looking to invest in Vietnam
should expect wages there to increase in the future.' This response comes
because the Vietnamese communists believe that the state 'has a very
important role to play in establishing macroeconomic controls, regulating
the market, preventing and tackling adverse occurrences, creating a normal
environment and conditions for production-business activities, ensuring
accommodation of economic growth with social justice and social progress'
(1991 political report of the Communist Party). The entire policy of
foreign investment has now come up for debate. In 1965 Che warned us that
'socialism is young and has its mistakes.'
To build socialism in the realm of necessity poses several challenges for
which we have little theory. Vietnam (as with West Bengal) has conducted
widespread land reforms, but it remains relatively underindustrialized and
many enterprises are undercapitalized. To revive these sectors and to
generate capital sums within the country, the Communists decided to draw
in foreign investment and techniques. 'To change a basically localised and
self-sufficient economy based on bureaucratic centralism and State
subsidies into a mixed commodity economy operating according to a market
system under State management is an absolutely correct and necessary
option with a view to releasing and developing the productive
potentialities of society. But it would be a mistake to assume that the
market economy is a panacea. While being a stimulus to the development of
production, the market economy also provides an environment for many
social ills to flourish.' This is the Communist Party in its 1991
political report, and it indicts several of its own members for those
'social ills.' The key word here is 'necessary.' Hold onto that one.
When Ho Chi Minh died three decades ago, the people of Vietnam chanted a
famous slogan, Ho chu tich muon nam, 'May President Ho Live a Thousand
Years!' I hope we will remember Comrade Uncle Ho not only for the war (and
Ken Post's bold three volume work is must reading on that). Let us also
remember him for the struggles in places like Vietnam, this while we, in
the realm of freedom, are spared the burdens of history. Their
'necessity,' we might want to recall, is partly due to our 'freedom' (as
Marx so nicely noted). Next time we feel like sneering at Vietnam, perhaps
we should join up and raise hell at Debt, Inc. (also known as the IMF) --
our constraint on the will of the world's left.
A<>E<>R
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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