Socialist Party of Malaysia: Vietnam's dilemma

Will Vietnam and its people continue to be inspired by the
revolution previous generations sacrificed so much for or
will they be overwhelmed by market forces?

By S. Arutchelvan, secretary general, 
Socialist Party of Malaysia
May 12, 2012 -- Parti Sosialist Malaysia -- 
http://links.org.au/node/2891

It was a great and emotional experience to visit Vietnam
for an eight-day study tour in April 2011 as part of a
seven-member Parti Sosialist Malaysia (Socialist Party of
Malaysia) team. Vietnam has been the inspiration for many
since the 1970s. Many activists in the world today were
inspired by the great Vietnamese revolution, which ousted
the victor of World War II - the United States of America.
Many people in the West as well as in the Third World saw
the Vietnamese victory against all odds as a new hope for
humanity. Perhaps no nation in the current world has
undergone such a struggle for liberation and freedom.
Many people in today's world are inspired by Che Guevara
but Che himself was inspired by Vietnam. In his great
saying, Che said let's create two, three, many Vietnams.
Che said in his  "Message to the Tricontinental", which he
wrote in Cuba in 1966 before leaving for Bolivia where he
was ultimately killed:

And let us develop genuine proletarian internationalism,
with international proletarian armies. Let the flag under
which we fight be the sacred cause of the liberation of
humanity, so that to die under the colors of  Vietnam,
Venezuela, Guatemala, Laos, Guinea, Colombia, Bolivia,
Brazil -- to mention only the current scenes of armed
struggle -- will be equally glorious and desirable for a
Latin American, an Asian, an African and even a European.
Every drop of blood spilled in a land under whose flag one
was not born is an experience gathered by the survivors to
be applied later in the struggle of one's own country. And
every people that liberates itself is a step in the battle
for the liberation of one's own people.... We cannot evade
the call of the hour. Vietnam teaches us this with its
permanent lesson in heroism, its tragic daily lesson of
struggle and death in order to gain the final victory.

The Vietnamese struggle was a great achievement by any
standards. We visited the war remnants museum and reviewed
the history of Vietnam - it was  really amazing. The
liberation struggle against the Japanese and French in the
1940s culminating in the 1954 defeat of the French army at
Dien Bien Phu. This was documented in the museum we
visited. This was the first time in history that a
colonial power was militarily defeated and this defeat was
followed by massive decolonisation worldwide. The colonial
rulers had understood the writing was on the wall!
1965 saw the first ot the US aerial raids against the
North. The tonnage of bombs and chemical arms used during
the US intervention in Vietnam exceeded that used during
the whole of World War II. The numbers of US troops grew
to more than half a million, but once again the empire was
defeated when Saigon fell and South Vietnam was liberated
in 1975.

But the story of Vietnam did not end here. In 1979,
Vietnamese troops entered Phnom Penh to end the murderous
Pol Pot regime in Cambodia and then had to repel a
retaliatory invasion from China, a staunch ally of the
Khmer Rouge regime. Vietnam finally withdrew from Cambodia
in 1989 and since then has not been engaged in any war. So
it is amazing to note that Vietnam has been war-free only
for the last 20 years. As Ho Chi Minh said, "Nothing is
more precious than independence and liberty."

Malaysia shares historical links with Vietnam. On April
30, 1930, Ho Chi Minh launched the Communist Party of
Malaya (MCP). The MCP became the first political party to
call for the ouster of the British from Malaya. April 30
seems to have special significant for the left in Vietnam
as well as in Malaysia. On April 30, 1975, the last US
helicopter left US  embassy grounds and Saigon
surrendered. The North Vietnamese Army under the Communist
Party of Vietnam was finally in control. As for the PSM,
April 30 has its own significance as it was the day the
PSM was launched after socialism appeared to have been
wiped out in Malaysia, and then it took 11 years to win
[official] registration for the socialist party. Was this
hesitation of the Malaysian authorities due in part to the
fear that this could be the first step towards the
development of a socialist alternative in this country?

It was with a real feeling of pride and sadness that we
visited the mausoleum where Ho Chi Minh still lies
magnificently.  He continues to inspire thousands of
people who come daily from all over the world and from
various parts of Vietnam. Uncle Ho seems to be the only
remaining icon of Vietnam's revolutionary past and
tributes to him can be found all over Vietnam -- the huge
lakes where he used to walk, the mango trees which he
planted, and the mountain terrains he climbed. Every
government building and post office continues to have his
image and statue. With sadness, because back home in
Malaysia, for younger Malaysians, they only remember the
thousands of boat people who came to the Malaysia's shores
in the late 1970s and today reference to  Vietnam brings
to mind "dog-eating" migrant workers living in crowded
make-shift hostels. That is how this great nation and its
people have been portrayed in Malaysia today.

Former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir however saw the
openings for his coterie of national capitalists and
started doing business with Vietnam. Maybank and Petronas
are among the Malaysian capitalist companies that have
crept into socialist Vietnam. Many countries, including US
companies, have a footing now in Vietnam.

It is because of all this that we had to visit Vietnam.
For a new socialist party like the PSM, we are inspired by
the great revolutions in the world. We cherish the victory
of each and every revolution as our own victory, likewise
we see the defeat of the left in any part of the world as
our own defeat. It was this quest for knowledge and
alternative models that prompted our party congress to
decide that we must organise a study tour of Vietnam. In
recent years we have been inspired by the great
revolutionary advancement made by Hugo Chavez in what is
called 21st century socialism. But many comrades felt that
while we know so much about certain countries so far away,
but we didn't know much about Vietnam - the only remaining
socialist republic in South-East Asia.

Our visit was an eye-opener. Whatever we had read did not
prepare us for what we saw. For a start, we were amazed by
the huge progress Vietnam has made physically. We expected
a war-torn country with dirt roads and scrappy
infrastructure. But we were pleasantly suprised to see
bustling modern cities. Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi are
well-developed metropolitan cities with state of the art
infrastructure, big roads and a very modern set-up. Even
the rural areas are well linked with roads to the main
roads etc. I have visited Jakarta, Manila and Bangkok
before. It was with great pride that we noted that there
were hardly any beggars in the streets of Hanoi and Ho Chi
Minh. It seems to indicate that the Communist party of
Vietnam (CPV) has accomplished much compared to the
capitalist-orientated government in other parts of
South-East Asia.

Vietnam's social indicators are far better than most other
developing countries, and in certain things they are far
better off than other countries including Malaysia. When
we walked along the streets, we saw that the people of
Vietnam seemed happy and free -- we hardly saw any police
or military personnel! The towns are bustling with
economic activity and the free market really seems to be
booming. We saw a street filled with shops selling shoes
competing with each other. The towns and villages were
clean and there seems to be a proper system of governance
in place.

A lot of this achievement is attributed to the CPV and its
leadership. Most people we met spoke very highly of the
CPV and this includes the people we met who were not on
our official itenary. There seems to be the general belief
that the party will lead them in the right way. Most
Vietnamese seem happy with the country opening up its
economy to the world. They say socialism means being
wealthy and not sharing out poverty. They believe that the
leadership of the CPV consciously opened up the Vietnamese
economy to break out of isolation and poverty.

As socialists, we are very worried at how fast Vietnam is
embracing the market economy. But at the same time we can
understand the dilemna facing the CPV in its quest to lift
the Vietnamese people out of poverty in a unipolar world
order dominated by corporate interests.

CPV officials told us, that what is important is not how
much FDI (foreign direct investment) flows into the
country but who controls the means of production. Most
leaders we met felt that the state enterprises remain the
main economic players. These state enterprises are seen as
being under the control of the CPV, which in turn is
viewed as a government representing the class interests of
the workers and peasants in Vietnam. We were told how laws
have been put in place to safeguard the people's interest
including a raise in minimum wages.

Vietnam had to take this road after the collapse of the
Berlin Wall. Without support from the Soviet Union and the
failure of communist and socialist parties to make inroads
in South-East Asia, what do you expect Vietnam to do? It
is an uphill task to build socialism in one country and we
in Malaysia are equally humbled that we were no help in
helping socialist reconstruction in Vietnam.

As for Thailand and Philippines, they participated in the
Vietnam war supporting the Americans in "bombing them back
to the Stone Ages!" A few years ago, I asked a senior
member of the Malayan Communist Party why the MCP didn't
seize permanent power after the defeat of the Japanese in
1945. Why did they allow British to come back? Why didn't
we wage a war like what was done by the Indonesians and
Vietnamese? The answer I got then was that the MCP cadres
were very young and that they didn't have a leader like Ho
Chi Minh.

But our anxieties for Vietnam grew during this trip. Ho
Chi Minh was truly a Marxist-Leninist and a member of the
Comintern. What would he have done over the past 20 years
had he been alive, we asked ourselves. With the way
Vietnam is going today, I won't be surprised that Vietnam
will emerge as one of the leading economies in South-East
Asia, even surpassing Malaysia. I say this because the
Vietnamese people are very hardworking and disciplined.
The war has developed their character and they have a
strong attitude to working hard.

The question is, will Vietnam end up like China? Will its
socialist ideals remain intact when the peoples' culture
and motivations are continuously assaulted by capitalism's
individualism and greed. We were told that the Communist
Party's biggest challenge is how to balance these forces.
The scenario is very similar in Venezuela where Chavez
talks about a revolutionary process in a capitalist
economy. But at least we see Venezuela moving left. Deep
down, we didn't have the same feeling about Vietnam.

for the rest of this article, go to
http://links.org.au/node/2891

___________________________________________

Portside aims to provide material of interest to people
on the left that will help them to interpret the world
and to change it.

Submit via email: [log in to unmask]

Submit via the Web: http://portside.org/submittous3

Frequently asked questions: http://portside.org/faq

Sub/Unsub: http://portside.org/subscribe-and-unsubscribe

Search Portside archives: http://portside.org/archive

Contribute to Portside: https://portside.org/donate