8-17-05, 12:18 am
Tran Doc Loi is a leader of the Ho Chi Minh Communist Youth Union and helped lead the youth delegation at the recent 16th Festival of Youth and Students in Caracas, Venezuela.
Vietnam, says Tran, is working its way through the second of two stages of struggle since declaring its independence from Japanese domination at the end of World War II. The first stage, Tran explains, was the armed struggle first against French efforts to reestablish colonial rule and then, after successfully ousting the French in 1954, Vietnam was forced into a protracted war against US intervention. This liberation struggle lasted until 1975, when finally forces financed and controlled by the US were compelled to surrender or withdraw.
The second stage began in 1975. From that time, Vietnam, led by the Communist Party of Vietnam, has worked for economic development and the unity of the whole people to establish socialism, hold interventionist forces a bay, and maintain economic independence from global capitalism.
During this time, the Communist Party has led the effort to lay the groundwork for socialism and overcome the enormous legacy of the destructive war against the imperialist powers. During the war with the US alone, nearly 3 million people were killed and millions of acres of land were destroyed by US bombs and Agent Orange, a highly toxic substance that the US claimed was meant to defoliate forested areas that hid guerilla fighters but in the process also massacred hundreds of thousands of people. The adverse health effects from Agent Orange are still felt today in Vietnam with no apology, reparations, or aid from the US for its illegal use of a weapon of mass destruction.
Despite this legacy, Tran proudly asserts, Vietnam has managed to develop the economy 'to improve the life of the people, with education, health care, increasing life expectancy, and unite the people in the common cause of building socialism in the country.'
Tran adds, 'The experience shows that the socialist movement is viable, is economically effective, and is systematically solving social problems.'
While Vietnam has had great success in improving the quality of life and living standards for most of the people, Tran continues, it remains a very poor country. While it fought at great cost for its independence, it continues to struggle to remain free of the financial imperialism imposed by international organizations such as the IMF and World Bank.
In fact, the poverty of the country and the continual need for development caused the Communist Party in 1986 to reevaluate its methods of organizing the economy and to adopt a market mechanism to stimulate development and increase the distribution of goods and services.
This policy has dramatically improved the quantity and quality of food supplies, access to public services such as health care, stimulated agricultural development and produce and more.
Tran explains that Vietnam has an economy almost entirely based on small production and agriculture. Until these conditions change, there is little reason to impose a centralized planning mechanism on the economy there.
Since Tran and I were sitting in a large and beautiful, naturally cooled auditorium near Caracas’ government palaces, I asked him for his thoughts on the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela.
'We find many similarities in terms of our objectives,' Tran notes. The Venezuelan government is trying to develop education for ordinary working people, to expand health care, to provide land for the peasants and is creating basic services for all the people. The revolution is giving people the reasons and the ability to participate in the political process of struggle for the country’s future, Tran added.
In fact, the Bolivarian Revolution is 'based on the power of the people,' says Tran.
President Hugo Chávez is leading a movement that is 'building a society in which economic development will be a means of not only providing profits for the few rich.' It is creating a 'political system where the power actually belongs to the people not only to those who are financially powerful.'
Finally, Tran argues that the revolution in Venezuela is important on a global scale for two reasons. First, it may lead successfully to a broad global unity of nations that can check the advance of US imperialism. Second, the means of Chavez’s rise to leadership and the democratic election of the revolution’s reforms and programs show the new possibility of making a successful revolution, Tran states, without the negative effects of armed struggle and that protects, deepens, and broadens democratic institutions. 'This is a major international development,' Tran concludes, 'and encourages all progressive forces around the world.'
--Joel Wendland is managing editor of Political Affairs and may be reached at jwendland@politicalaffairs.net.
