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.