Appropriation of Private Trade and Industry Properties

  

Ideological Premises

The process of appropriation of private Trade and industry and business enterprises were literally modeled on those applied during the nationalization of private properties in the North after the Communist takeover of Hanoi in 1954. In fact, the true nationalization of private enterprise began in 1959. The Communist rule launched a political struggle against what they called “the fight to eradicate the bourgeois ideology and petty freedom, which concepts are conceived in the Western democracies as free enterprise, Western parliamentary systems, freedoms of the press and of movement, and the like.  The aim of this political struggle  was simultaneously aimed to orientate all party-members, nonparty-members, workers and peasants to thoroughly understand  the goals of the “Revolution” on its path  towards assimilating the sooner the possible the socialist ideology after the Maoist-style agrarian reforms of 1954-1956. Party Secretary-general Truong Chinh, in his speech at the Third Congress of the Vietnamese Workers' Party (1960), asserted that “the aim of the present revolution is that the entire people, particularly the working people, should thoroughly absorb the socialist ideology, that they should abandon their previous outlook on life and on the world and replace it with Marxist viewpoint. Thus, Marxism-Leninism will assume a leading role in guiding the moral life of our country and will become the framework within which the thoughts of the whole nation are formed.  It will serve as the foundation upon which the ethics of our people will be built.”

  Appropriation of Private Trade and Industry Properties

On September 10, 1975, the military administration launched the first wave of campaigns for defeating the compradore bourgeois, coded X2. The campaign reportedly gained remarkable results The headquarters at the one time Independence Palace hailed it as great success with colossal seizures of tens million piasters in cash, tens of  kilograms of gold, “a treasure of diamonds,"  ten thousand meters of fabrics, and a paltry farm with a ten thousand chickens. Nguyen Van Linh, the Chairman of the Central Committee for Socialist Reforms, declared in a meeting that people in the private industry and business enterprises heartily lauded the achievements of the socialist reforms policy, calling it a victory of the “Revolution.” The new administration, in general, believed that the remaining difficulties would be successfully dealt with and called for contributions to the great task from all people in the private industry and business enterprises to reform themselves to build Vietnam into a rich and powerful country. Citations weighing on the work achievements of battalions of the campaign were still limited. They had yet achieved the objectives as determinedly established.

The developments of the campaign rolled on as planned without obstruction. On the early morning of September 10, Saigon, Cho Lon (Saigon Chinatown, and all suburban areas including Khan Hoi, Tan Dinh, Binh Dong, phu Lam, Ba Chieu and so on were agitated with operations of defeating the compradore bourgeoisie. Youth vanguards and volunteers with red armbands flanked by troopers indicated crossed roads and entrances to business centers and plant and factories quarters controlling order and directing circulation.  Large and small groups of armed uniforms troopers and plainclothes cadres were seen standing guards along large entrances to plants or factories and in front of doors of hundred innumerable business departments, stories, and facilities. Many were sealed with notices and warnings by authorities to be shut down, being subject to properties inventories taking processes. Resistance to orders resulted in detention. Owners were banned from business, and their family member faced expulsion No one was permitted to go in and out. Checkpoints were posited anywhere, at both ends of the street or even in the facility. No one knew when the operations would terminate.

Saigon Committee Party Secretary Mai Chi Tho reluctantly insisted that the task was only half-ended. The hidden away treasury of the South was still buried somewhere. The task force had energetically devoted to duty; it could only find a Chinese bourgeoisie with 500 t0 1,000 taels of gold. Although by careful search for and seizure of large possessions of the bourgeois this time, it could only achieve a preliminary step. It should keenly conduct search to find out hideouts of the hidden treasury and hunt down suspects that ever tried to control the market having completed the X2 campaign for delineating the comprador bourgeoisie in September 1975, the new administration declared that it had only achieved its immediate objectives, depriving 92 capitalists of their properties. Henchmen of imperialism and remnants of the comprador bourgeoisie were still aggressive without any regard to the rules and regulations to control the economy which thus became increasingly deteriorating. Prices soared. Products and commodities shortages became more and more acute. Peculation was pervasive. The market was again controlled by speculators and the market manipulation of remnants of compradore capitalism.

 The Measures

By van Nguyen




Change of Banknotes

Subsequent to the campaign for defeating the remnants of the imperialist compradore             bourgeoisie X2, the city Party Committee of Ho Chi Minh City, again, set to strike hard at the capitalist bourgeois, squeezing out their potential reaming financial wealth with which they would be lord over the people’s administration. This head office planned out a campaign of concerted operations, coded X3, consisting in establishing a new monetary system to prevent the bourgeoisie from using cash to control the market. It aimed, at the same time, to deprive of all financial sources for sabotage of the foreign intelligence and spies, ultimately pushing back their counterrevolutionary activities. On the eve of September 21, 1975, the National Bank had all its personnel consisting of more than three hundred thousand cadres, troopers, and local "volunteers" to engage in the task. Within hours, they were instructed to do their job, to collect and exchange the banknotes. To realize social justice and equal opportunity, each household was allowed to exchange up to South Vietnam 100,000 piasters, at the exchange fixed rate with one 5000- piaster bill of the old currency to one new piaster bill. Cadres, State employees, and the personnel of collective organization were apt to exchange each up to 15,000 piasters, households of the handicraft and small traders, 1000,000 piasters each, and large trade enterprises, 500,00 piasters, each.

A fine mess the new regime had made of this! Extremely poor and poor people who lived from hand to mouth could not even afford a five-hundred-piaster bill of the old currency to exchange for a 1- piaster bill in the new currency. Most middle- class households could not save enough money for this exchange of currency. The comprador bourgeoisie already became penniless following the campaign of "'dislodging the capitalist bourgeoisie." Miser merchants who could hide big sums of old currency could only commit suicide or burned them for the joy of watching them burning! The change of banknotes most benefitted cadres, State personnel, and State-affiliated organizations, and opportunists. Operations of X3 terminated. Quite a few cadres from the North could afford hundred thousand piasters of the new currency with which they could buy luxurious cars and houses in high-class residential quarters.  

The aftermath was alarming. As with the change of currency, the Party seized the financial resources of the country, defining the values of the new bills on no financial law, and monetary rules, and regulations. This unlawfulness resulted in disastrous consequences, nevertheless. The new currency lost value, and inflation galloped. The agricultural productions came to a standstill ad increasingly deteriorated.  Cities throughout the country became derelict. Inhabitants in the Mekong Delta, known to be the granary of Indochina, survived on horse-feeding grain. They could not afford rice for daily diet. People in the cities had to consume even rotten rice! After a few years, the administration had to adopt methods of production other than collectivization to help alleviate the economy of the South from collapse.

THE NORTHERNIZATION OF SOUTH VIRTNAM

THE NORTHERNIZATION OF SOUTH VIETNAM

By Van Nguyen

The takeover of South Vietnam on April 30, 1975 is a military victory. The Privy Government of the South Vietnam is the leader, and the Army of the Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam is the liberator. Both elements are one of the   three-party political compositions representing the people of the South “to decide the political future of South Vietnam through genuinely free and democratic election under international supervision (Article 9b, Agreement son Ending the War and Restoring the Peace in Vietnam, January 27, 1973).  North Vietnam or the Democratic Republic of Vietnam is the outsider, although both the Front and the Privy Government are only the instruments in its hands. Failure to stage a chain uprising leading to a change of political by a revolution as it happened in the North in August 1945, Hanoi faced an embroiling dilemma that cornered it at a death end. It fought hard for a solution. Following consecutive meetings of the Party leadership after the "liberation of the South" at the Conference for National Reunification was foreseen to take place

From November 15-21, 1975 a North-South consultative conference convened at the one-time Independence Palace. The delegation of the leadership of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam led by Patty Secretary-general Truong Chinh met with Pham Hung, a politburo member of the Communist Party of Vietnam in the South concurrently representative of the Committee Party of the Privy Government of the Republic of South Vietnam. The conference came to the agreement that the unification of the country was basically and ideologically the heart of the edification of South Vietnam. The country must be unified in accordance with the norms as predicated by the principles of the class struggle and the dictatorship of the proletariat. All differences should be nullified in the interests of the Revolution.

Nguyen Huu Tho, Chairman of the Front of Liberation of South Vietnam resigned from his position,’ On behalf of himself, he terminated the role of the Front, lauded the achievements of the "Revolution," and repeated in high glee the slogan “Vietnam is one country."  The Privy government and the Front for the Liberation of the South were dissolved accordingly. There was no mention of the respect of the right to self-determination of the people of the South provided by the International Agreements according to which the Agreements promised to honor the civil and political rights of Vietnamese people, with all citizens being equal and free to enjoy authentic democratic freedom (Article 11, Agreements on Ending the War and Restoring the Peace in Vietnam). The Democratic Republic of Vietnam openly annulled the Agreements by which it pledged to honor. The consultative conference between the Communists for reunification of the country was practically a political formality intending to blind public opinion. The world already knew that the Front for the Liberalization of the South and the Privy Government of Republic of South Vietnam were created but the Communist Party of Vietnam and a plaything in the hands of Hanoi until the of the Vietnam War. The reunification or "northernization" of the South had begun way before the "liberation of the South" on April 30, 1975. The political normalization in the South had been carried out as planned.

Plans for political and economic pacification for the South were to be carried out. The entire country should then move forward “fast and steadily towards socialism ‘as repeatedly prompted by Truong Chinh and fellow ideologues. It should be transformed in every aspect. The political and economic life in the South should be developed in accordance with new modes of life to catch up with the socialist North, ideologically and culturally. The people of South were necessarily re-educated, culturally, socially, and politically. All layers of the population at all levels from the district to the hamlet  were all to be reeducated to learn and practice new “revolutionary” way of life Ordinary people, former personnel of the administration and the military of the old regime, the comprador bourgeoisie, the intelligentsia, members of reactionary political parties land followers of all  religions were to attend sessions or courses of thought reform to get to understand the vile nature of imperialism, the crimes of treason committed by the American henchmen against the Vietnamese people. Owing to revolution consciousness, they came to realize the great achievements of the Communist Party of Vietnam, and particularly, the glory of the "Revolution" in the work for liberation of the South from the American imperialists and the PUPPET administration. Having had this sense of magnanimity, they would get to understand the goals and policy of the "Revolution “and get rid of all remnants of imperialism to move towards building a prosperous socialist Vietnam.  

Eradication of Remnants of Capitalism and Imperialist Bourgeoisie

In line with the principle of class struggle and dictatorship of the proletariat, Party leaders all agreed to eradicate, first and foremost, all elements that they considered as the most dangerous enemies of the class of workers and the people. Parallel to launching operations of eradicating the remnants of the American imperialists, the "revolutionary administration” executed political and administrative  measures to transform the South in accordance with ideological premises and by graded programs and plans of "national unification." To mete out all possible "counter-revolutionary opposition," hundreds of thousand officers and officials of the administration and military personnel of the old Republic of Vietnam were sent to concentration camps for re-education. Most importantly, in building the "People's Democracy," the new regime, first AND foremost, must devote itself to defeating within three years the comprador capitalist bourgeoisie, ultimately erasing the one-time exploiting class of the South.

       The Transfer of  the Rights to  Private Property Ownership

The “People's ’Democracy” is essentially labeled for the transition period in the move the South closer to the “socialist North.” integrating the “liberated South’ into  the intricate political and economic systems of administration already existent in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. It is practically the process of political and economic normalization or simply “the northernization” of the South.  On the economic plane, all systems, forms, and vestiges of economy created or left by the imperialists, capitalists, and trade and industry compradors must necessarily be eradicated.  As long as they are in existence, the “Revolution” will not achieve ultimate success. Therefore, right after the takeover of South Vietnam, the new political regime found itself in face of a society that was abysmally dissimilar in every aspect to the one under "the first Democratic Republic of Southeast Asia."  It is out of these differences that, in the years that immediately followed 1975, theoreticians of the Communist Party of Vietnam and State devoted themselves to activating inquiries into the socio-political problems in the “newly-liberated” regions.   They would only be saved, in the Marxist viewpoints, by the realization of a systematic transformation of the society of South modeled on that of the North in the period following the takeover of Hanoi in July 1954. This transformation consisted of evaluating, extenuating, and delineating all means of productions and the production relationship of the economy and all private social, cultural, educational, and religious institutions that had existed in the South before April 30, 1975.

To achieve their purposes, the Communists, first, carried out the appropriation of properties of the bourgeoisie, landlords, and religions and then transferred their rights to legal ownership to the working class and the peasantry. They called this the transfer of private ownership of properties to the people’s ownership of properties, achieving the objectives for "the People's Democracy." They established priorities and criteria for the dispossession of private properties, liquidating one by one the properties belonging to the comprador bourgeoisie and remnants of the imperialists and capitalists in the South--the counter-revolutionary elements—, and members of the religions were included. By dint of this coercive nationalization of all private trade and industry properties--, business enterprises, trade corporations, commercial establishments and cultural, educational, and humanitarian institutions and facilities of the religions, and civil organizations, the Communist administration believed they would gradually and drastically eradicate both the supra- and infra- structures of the South, hence the desperation of the deep-seated exploiting class in the South.

 The elimination of imperialism and the bourgeoisie began three months after the fall of Saigon. Modeling on Marxist-Leninist principles and programs of socialist transformation applied in the North  during the first years after the takeover of Hanoi in 1974 of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, the Military Administration Council of Saigon issued a "Declaration of the Privy Government of  Republic of South Vietnam," ordering the arrest of comprador bourgeois who  it charged with crimes of having viciously controlled the  market with speculations, Among them were  the tycoons Luu Tu Dan, Bui Van Lu, and Hoang Kim Quy. An uncountable number of owners of small trade and industry were summoned to the headquarters of the Military Councils, put in custody, or sent to reeducation camps.