Why I don't like the Selected Writings of Ho Chi Minh
For some reason or other, a few months ago I decided to read the Selected Writings of Ho Chi Minh. I did not like them. They were too information rare and a dull read. They do not make Ho Chi Minh look like someone very smart. But they were at least useful in helping to explain why Communists took over Vietnam and so few other poor countries.
As far as I can tell from the writings, Ho Chi Minh supported Communism for two reasons: the gross abuses of French colonial rule (and the capitalist inequality that went with it) and that socialism (strictly Stalinist; Ho Chi Minh condemned Trotskyists as “agents of fascism”) could provide an equitable path to economic development for peasant countries. As of 1960 Ho judged the future economic and developmental prospects for North Vietnam to be pretty good.
However, the gross abuses of Western imperialism were common in so many poor countries, yet, of former imperial territories only half a dozen or so countries in Africa plus South Yemen had Communist revolutions, this including military coups. Another dozen or so non-European countries had transitions to more moderate socialist governments, presumably to maintain more of those countries’ traditional class structure.
Absent a military coup, as, say, in Ethiopia and Benin, the Communist takeover of Vietnam, much like Yugoslavia’s fall to the Communists, could not be imagined without World War II. Ho Chi Minh rose to power in all Vietnam in 1945 due to the Communists’ leading role against the Japanese occupation. Even the Communist victory in China was unlikely to have happened without World War II and the Soviet Union’s gift of Manchukuo to Mao. Thus, the ascent of Communism in the world’s first, second, and third most populous (as of 1980) Communist countries was due to historical accidents. Were it not for a historical fluke, Vietnam might never have had a serious Communist movement stronger than that of, say, France (recall how many people fled North Vietnam in 1954-5).
Ultimately, Ho Chi Minh’s writings read more like those of a nationalist rather than someone committed to socialism above all. The first part of the works are clear as to his support for pragmatism in tactics. It is difficult to underestimate how much the continued poverty of socialist countries relative to neighboring capitalist countries contributed to the collapse of socialist economic models around the world. Ultimately, due to the rise of Thailand, South Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia, and Dengist China, the Vietnamese government (unlike the vastly more ideological Cuban one) wisely abandoned Communism in much of the economic sphere, and is today one of the most hopeful countries in Asia in regards to future economic growth.
The Communists in Vietnam in 1945, 1954, and 1975 ultimately won because starving peasants (unlike rich peasants and the middle class) naturally tend to Communism. After c. 1970, for instance, the Thai Communist movement was doomed due to rapid Thai economic growth.