Le Duan - Political Beliefs

Political Beliefs

In many ways Le Duan was a nationalist, and during the war, he claimed that the "nation and socialism were one". Since the Sino-Vietnamese War in 1979, Le Duan stressed the importance of building socialism politically, economically and culturally, and of defending the socialist fatherland itself. Ideologically he was often referred to as a pragmatist. He would often break with Marxism–Leninism and stress the uniqueness of Vietnam, as he did most notably in agriculture. Le Duan's own view of socialism was statist, highly centralised and managerial.

In one of his own works, Le Duan talked about "the right of collective mastery", but in practice he opposed this. For instance, party cadres, who represented the peasants' demands for higher prices for their products at the National Congress, were criticised by Le Duan, whose ideas of collective mastery were conceived in a hierarchical top-down manner; "Management by the state aims at ensuring the right of the masses to be the collective masters of the country. How then will the state manage its affairs so as to ensure this right of collective mastery?" His answer to this problem was both managerial and statist.

The concept "collective mastery", attributed to Le Duan, was featured in the 1980 Vietnamese Constitution as is the concept of "collective mastery" of society. The concept was Le Duan's version of popular sovereignty that advocated an active role for the people, so that they could become their own masters as well as masters of society, nature, and the nation. It stated that the people's collective mastery in all fields was assured by the state, and was implemented by permitting their participation in state affairs and in mass organisations. On paper, these organisations, to which almost all citizens belong, play an active role in government and have the right to introduce bills before the National Assembly.

According to orthodox thinking, there were only two alternatives in agriculture, collective or private ownership of the land. Le Duan said that these two differences entailed a "struggle between the two roads – collective production and private production; large-scale socialist production and small scattered production." This quote could easily have been taken as one from Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong or Trường Chinh in his radical years. Such a view had a direct impact on Vietnam. Since collective ownership was the only alternative to capitalism, it was introduced without controversy by the country's leadership.

Subcontracting of cooperatives to peasants became the norm by the late-1970s, and was legalised in 1981. For the conservatives this policy was similar to that of the New Economic Policy (NEP), a temporary break from the hardline socialist developmental strategy, in Lenin's Russia, and later, the Soviet Union. However, those who supported these reforms, saw it as another way of implementing socialism in agriculture, which was justified by the ideological tenet of the "three interests". This was an important ideological innovation, and it broke with Le Duan's "two roads" theory, which said it was either collective or private ownership, and nothing in between.

Le Duan made a departure from the Marxism–Leninism rationale when it came to practical policy, and stated that the country had to "carry out agricultural cooperation immediately, even before having built large industry." While he acknowledged that his view was a break with that of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels and Vladimir Lenin, Le Duan insisted that Vietnam was in a unique situation; "It seems that no country so far in history has been in a situation such as ours. We must lead the peasantry and agriculture immediately to socialism, without waiting for a developed industry, though we know very well that without the strong impact of industry, agriculture cannot achieve large-scale production and new relations of agriculture cannot be consolidated... To proceed from small-scale production to large-scale production is a new one." According to Le Duan the key to socialism was not mechanisation and industrialisation, but a new division of labour. He also believed that Cooperatives did not need to be autarkic, but rather "organically connected, through the process of production itself, with other cooperatives and with the state economic sector." Vietnam could achieve this through state intervention and control, according to Lê. He saw the economy as one whole directed by the state, and not many parts intertwined.

In his victory speech to the Vietnamese people in the aftermath of the 1976 parliamentary election, Le Duan talked about further perfecting the construction of socialism in the North by eliminating private ownership and the last vestiges of capitalism, and of the need to initiate a socialist transformation in the South. In the South the Party, according to Le Duan, would focus on abolishing the comprador bourgeoisie and the last "remnants of the feudal landlord classes. 'Comprador bourgeoisie' was a Vietnamese communist term for the bourgeois classes, which made a living by financial dealings and through business transactions with Westerners. Le Duan omitted to say that he was planning not only to remove the comprador bourgeoisie and the feudal landlord classes from the South, but also the national bourgeoisie as a whole.