THE
Ideological Premise and and Practices
By Van Nguyen
Perceiving
problems and difficulties, the Fourth Congress of the Communist Party (1976),
first and foremost, focused on economic platforms. It vowed to carry out the
development of heavy industry, light industry, and industrialized agriculture.
It promised to build the socialist economic centralism and to develop the
regional economy within the framework of integration, weaving it into a
national unified economic structure, to promote coordination of all forces of
production, establishing and perfecting the systematic correlations between the
new modes of production. The motto was: "To
move fast, to move vigorously, to move sreadly toward socialism."
To attain these professed objectives, the Communist Party would determinedly
carry out the trade and industry reforms, the land reforms, and the change of
currency. It would appropriate the entirety of wealth and properties of the
bourgeoisie and transferred their ownership to the Party, abolish the private
trade and industry enterprises and create in its place a state collective
system of economy grounded on the workings of State industrial establishments,
trade companies, and networks of distribution of goods and commodities in
accordance with the Party's policy.
The
national August 1976 general elections nominally reunified the portioned
country. Vietnam became the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. In September 1976,
Premier Pham Van Dong declared that his compatriots, in both the North and the South,
were "translating their
revolutionary heroic fervor they had displayed during the war into a fight for creative
labor production in their actual acquisition of wealth and strength. On
March 29, 1976, Vice-premier Nguyen Duy Trinh issued in a declaration the State
policy of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam on private trade and industry in the
South. The new policy was destined to edify an economy, grounded on the principles
of progress of socialism for the whole country. thereby organizing it into a unified system, and gradually
effacing social inequality. bondage bound by ff0reign countries while re-organizing labor forces and creating
a new system of distribution of productions benefitting justice and guaranteeing
the economic life of the people, especially the people’s working class and
equally effacing the class of comprador capitalism and the remnants of the
exploiting class of feudalism in the South. In August 1978, after successive
campaigns for eliminating the comprador bourgeoisie and remnants of imperialism
and appropriating their properties, Vietnamese Communist leaders determinedly
carried out of its programs of reforms in the country’s economic system. The
programs began with a process of commutations designed to end up the economic
structures and practices of the old South.
The
Trade and Industry Reforms
The trade and Industry
practically began two years and a half after campaigns for appropriation of
private trade and industry properties, dislodging the comprador bourgeoisie,
The Communist administration then set to launch campaigns for trade and industry
reforms, drastically dismantling the comprador bourgeoisie and eradicating the
grass-roots petty bourgeoisie and remnants of imperialism. Do Muoi, the veteran chief architect for the campaigns
for dislocating the comprador bourgeoisie after the takeover of the North in
1954 was sent to the South by the Vietnamese Workers’ Party Politburo to activate
the campaign.
Do
Muoi was assigned, first, Chief of the Trade and Industry Reforms Bureau. Upon
his assignment, he immediately formed a Steering Committee and eleven task
force groups to carry out his task.
Members of the task force were recruited from the cadres in the army and
the security police. Six of the eleven task force groups were placed under the
command of Tran Van Danh, the Vice-commander of Military Zone 7--Saigon and the
surrounding areas. The other five groups were assigned to work under the
direction of Cao Dang Chiem, the chief of Security Service in Saigon. For two consecutive years, the operations for
trade and industry reforms were developed throughout the cities and provinces
in the South. The greatest amount of properties, which was valued at 6 billion
dollars, was reportedly was sized and divided among the corrupt nomenclature
(Bui Tin, Mat That, 1993: 79).
In a string of concerted
efforts, Do Muoi and his staff applied all measures to activate successive operations
to achieve the objectives set forth for the trade and industry reform,
similarly to the ones like Do Muoi had done in the campaign for confiscation of
private properties of the petty bourgeoisie following the partition of the
country in 1954. The goal, in general, was to reform private trade and industry,
restructuring and incorporating them into State establishments and corporations
operating under State control while alienating the imperialist-styled competition
and preventing economic crisis resulting from surplus and labor exploitation, thus
assuring the needs of the people, and securing self-sufficiency in agreement
with the principles of economic centralism.
On February 16, 1978, Do Muoi
replaced Nguyen Van Linh, who was then the Head of the Central Committee for
Socialist Reforms in the South to head the campaign for Trade and Industry
Reforms. On March 23, 1978, the Saigon
press published the executive order 341/QD-UB of the city People's Council. According to the official daily the campaign
had achieved the great objectives of the task in compliance with the policy of
the State. City dwellers observed the laws obediently. All private trade transactions
and industry establishment stopped operations. Economic centralism entered, and
new economic practices were performed as directed by competent authorities.
In practice, practitioners of
all private trades and industry practices were ordered to stop services and activities.
Private business PR actioners were instructed to be ready for a general in-store
products inspection. They ought to adapt themselves to the new modes of economy
and activities. From early morning on the same day, small and large groups of vanguard
guards circulated the streets, surrounded, and watched business buildings,
houses, and offices of the comprador bourgeois suspected of economic sabotage.
Twenty-eight thousand seven handed and eighty-seven (28,787) bourgeoisie
households were placed under investigation and subject to management
rectifications and administrative control. Upon completion of the general inspection,
more than six thousand comprador bourgeoisie households and ten thousand small
business households were targeted with inspection and properties
dispossession.
Operations for Trade and Industry
Reforms in Saigon
The operations expanded to residential quarters to
“dig at the roots of the hidden wealth of the vile and cupid comprador
bourgeoisie.” Comprador bourgeois in residential quarters were
targeted with frequent visits of the local cadres. They were heartily
encouraged to offer their trade facilities and industry factories to the
State. Having offered their properties,
many of them were promised to favors and even positions in the State
enterprises. Many were invited to make a tour in the socialist North to see the
grandiose achievements of the Party. Nevertheless, the reality proved the
reverse to be true. Ngo Quang Thu, the
owner of Saigon Sloughing Tractors Company on Tran Hung Dao Boulevard sought by
all means to evade the country after his tour trip in the socialist North. The
multi-millionaire Hoang Kim Quy was sent to camp for reeducation and later died
of hard labor. The best known wealthiest comprador Ung Thi besought favors
beside the Saigon Military Administration Council to let him leave the country,
having offered to the State all his estate properties and hidden wealth.
“The
processes of voluntary offering of property to the State of the comprador bourgeois in the South
were, in general, similar to those applied under the direction of Do Muoi
during the appropriation of private industry and business enterprises in the North
during the years 1959-60. The proprietor had “the right” to offer to the State his properties, both real
estate and hidden wealth. The authorities declared that this “act of will” was
only done on a voluntary basis. No one was forced to do that. Property offer,
in reality, was done at the time of inventory taking and in the presence of the
presence of the local teams of inspection, the cadres, and guards! There were
procedures to be applied. The proprietor had to apply for a due application, to
follow the instructions as directed by the team of inspection of the board of
the local ward. Having completed the application, the proprietor had to wait
for the State's approval. He also had to apply for a job in a State
joint-venture company created by the local authorities and wait to see whether
or not if he would be hired. There was no official formula. The cadres would
also instruct the applicant how to write the application. This application must
be written in a frank and earnest manner, attesting by such statement as "his reeducation by the State has
granted him and his family a great honor and happiness and also given him an
opportunity for him to make himself to become a worker-- his ever-brooding desire
to serve. His offer of possessions to the State --establishments and business
enterprise-- was entirely
voluntary." Still, the asked the authorities in charge to accept
his offer and promised to willingly comply by all the State and Party's rules
and regulations. The difference in the properties dispossessions between the
campaigns of defeating the comprador capitalist in the South and those carried
out in the North during the years
1959-60 was that the wealth of the capitalists in the South was extremely
bountiful and was ready at hand and amazingly easy to grasp. Rows and rows of renting houses of the
landowning capitalists, assembles of trucks, long lines of steering boats of
the compradors in the transportation industry, large factories with hundreds of
power looms, agricultural equipment and machines, radios and televisions
assembling machines, manufacturing works for soap, cigarettes, light bulbs,
filters, canned condensed milk, fish sauce, and so on, were right there to be offered
to the Party and Government (Bui Tin, Mat
That, 1993: 83-84).
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