PEACEFUL SOCIALIZATION

Confiscation of Lands and Properties

During the early stages of Land Reform, attempts were made to requisition the lands and properties of landlords. Article 4, Chapter II of Decree No. 197 SL of Dec. 10, 1953 stipulated that "only lands, livestock, and agricultural implements will be liable for requisition, and other property will be exempt." Nevertheless, the landlord and his family were forced to leave their house without possessions. Different forms of confiscation were applied to landlords of all categories, French colonialists, traitors, reactionaries, and non-reactionaries. Confiscation was total for the first category, might be total or partial for the second, and with redemption for the third. Application of the third form of confiscation nevertheless existed on paper.

The results published in a communique relating to the Hanoi suburban area by the Land Reform Committee announced that the oppressed peasants had confiscated or requisitioned from the landowning class 20,482 mau (18,220 acres) of rice-fields, 511 animals, 6,150 agricultural implements, 1,032 houses, and 346,903 kgs of foodstuffs. They had also compelled landlords to pay back as excesses of land-rent 155,o69 kgs of paddy, and 6,429,950 $VN dong. All these had been shared between 24,690 landless peasants and poor worker families, comprising 98,113 people. On average each landless peasant received 2 sao 9 thuoc (0.205 acres). However small, the gift of mre than 2 sao was a treasure to a landless peasant or poor workert.

The moment of joy soon dissipated. The State imposed a new progressive agricultural taxes on the lands the peasants received from the State. They were two and three times higher than the taxes they had previously paid. Other measures gradually conditioned them to adapt themselves to a pattern of life they had never experienced.

Collectivization

Following the repression of the peasants in Nghe An and the oppression against the intellectuals in Hanoi, the Vietnamese Workers’ Party carried out its policy of collectivization. In the countryside, the peasants were organized to work in collective farms for the State, from farming to building roads. After harvest, the peasant was given only one fourth of the crop. The other three fourths went to tax payment, the Trade Office, the National Bank and other State agencies. Every cooperative member was not starving but undernourished. He remained miserable as he had ever been. Having no incentive and individual profit, the peasant grew reluctant and careless in their work. The production decreased. As a result, the Communists were successful in destroying the class of exploiting landlords but were faced with serious economic problems. Of most significance, they could only condition with force the peasants to adapt to the Communist pattern of life.

Confiscation of Industrial and Business Enterprises

A few days after the takeover of Hanoi, the Ho Chi Minh government executed strict measures to ruin the market economy and the urban bourgeoisie. The first measure was to impose a special tax levied on goods called "the remaining-in-store-tax." Tax payment, which largely exceeded the price of the goods, were demanded without delay in Indochinese bank-notes. The second measure was to change the bank-notes. The government ordered the entire population to exchange its bank-notes for their newly issued currency. However, they only received a small amount of money in return. The same measure was applied to gold and sliver articles. The third measure was to collectivize private enterprises. Capitalist compradors and businessmen were to join the State. Private enterprises were transformed into State joint ventures where the former owners were kept as managers. (Hoang Van Chi, 1964: 241)

Collectivization

In 1959, having confiscated all private industry and business enterprises, the Vietnamese Workers’ Party launched a political campaign in to get rid of the remnant of capitalism and eradicate the spirit of petty bourgeoisie. Do Muoi, the secretary of Haiphong Party Committee, was vested with authority to direct the campaign. From the outset, factory owners and businessmen were categorized as capitalists compradors, bourgeois, and petty bourgeois. They were encouraged to offer their properties to the Revolution. In the major cities, Hanoi, Haiphong, and Nam Dinh, the sessions for categorization were uptight. Meetings soon became the sessions for crimes revelation and denunciation. Charges of exploitation of labor and oppression of workers were leveled at the traitors to the people and henchmen of imperialism.

An uncounted number of small traders in businessmen were subject to detention for investigation.. They were only released, having earnestly admitted their crimes and offered to the State their ill-gotten gains. Progressive bourgeois and capitalists who, after having voluntarily offered their entire wealth and properties to the State, were redeemed. Their status as citizen was restored. Among them were the former wealthiest businessmen and factory owners in the North, Ngo Tu Ha, Nguyen Gia Hung, Nguyen Son Ha, and Trinh Van Bo. The results of the campaign were so impressive that an article in the newspaper To Quoc (The Fatherland) published in February 1960 boasted that "our former private entrepreneurs, at present outwardly almost identical to comrade workers (Bui Tin, 1993: 241)

Peaceful Socialization

The State had all intents to dispossess the capitalist compradors’ and bourgeois’ wealth and properties. The truth is that other approaches were available. There was little sense in trying to nationalize rapidly. Factories could have been nationalized at a slower rate. Industrialization in the cities was not dictated by the circumstance. The Party leadership, in fact, wanted to create a social condition on which their political monopoly could rest securely. Old classes had to be abolished, and the new classes should be created through the systematic elimination of the former ones. By their victory over the French, the Communist leadership carried out the measures of a class struggle type to monopolize power. The realization thus called for the eradication of the bourgeoisie and the control of the economy. Mines, factories, small private enterprises, handicraft production --all had to be nationalized and turned into joint State and private cooperatives

Under the slogan peaceful socialization, the regime turned most enterprises into joint state and private enterprises. Capitalists whose skills were needed were kept in their former positions and eventually ended up as salaried employees of the State. This group of businessmen --the national bourgeoisie and former class of exploiters-- ceased to exist. Statistically, they had become part of the class of national and intellectual workers whose number was given was 750,000 at the end of 1961 (Buttinger, 1968: 424-425)

The Economic Life

The impressive achievements of Hanoi nonetheless failed to push the national economy forwards. The Communists were capable of ruining the capitalist class and the market economy under the most troublesome conditions, but they were unable to overcome the grave errors and basic faults resulting from their economic concentration policy. By sheer energy, persistence, and, especially, ruthlessness, they failed to achieve success, to produce spectacular achievements in the vast field of small-scale, nonagricultural activities in which the Vietnamese had always excelled. The prime motives were, first, the elimination of a property-owning middle class --the backbone of the economy production and, second, the establishment of government control over this sector of economy. Suspected enemies of the regime belonging to this class of exploiters were imprisoned and sent to labor camps, and their possessions confiscated. Many went out of business because the goods in which they traded were not available, and others were ruined through excessive taxation. The regime abolished every vestige of a free market by dictating the prices at which the small producer could buy and sell. In a word, the Communists successfully destroyed the old economy but failed to build a solid foundation for a new one.

In cities and towns, State and Private Joint Enterprises replaced the system of capitalist industry and commerce to function the economy. Failures in the economic life were apparent. however. A decline in the agricultural production, as a case in evidence, was deplorable. The country was in a severe food shortage. Workers of a spinning factory wished to buy their ration of rice. They had to take half a day’s leave from their factory. The consumption of meat per capita in 1961 was truly meager, 6.2 kgs of meat and of cotton cloth 4.8 m. (Nhan Dan, May 7, 1962). If these facts were reliable, the average North Vietnamese would have consumed 17 grams (more than half an ounce) a day and would have worn a single suit of pyjama al the year round..

In the beginning years of the 1960’s, when Hanoi began to wage the liberation war in South Vietnam, the economic situation in the North with the introduction of the agricultural commune lagged far behind the economic growth in the South. The government implemented a neo-Stalinist policy of economy at the macro-economic level, emphasizing the rapid development of heavy industry. The policy nevertheless only proved to be a vain dream. As a matter of fact, the increasingly costly war of liberation against the American-backed government in the South had to rely on massive military aids from other socialist countries, especially the People’s Republic of China, thus allowing North Vietnam to continue the war. By any objective standard, the economy of North Vietnam until 1975 was at a very low level of economic development (Adam FForde, 1989:14).