The Socialist Party took a rather unpopular position during the Vietnam war. We opposed it on the grounds that it caused suffering and misery but we refrained from offering any succor or support to the Hanoi regime or to those so-called solidarity committees who campaigned for a Ho Chi Minh victory. A few anarchists who recalled the Stalinist collaboration with the British and the suppression of the Trotskyist Saigon uprising in 1945, which was conveniently overlooked by the Trotskyist left, occasionally joined us in predicting that the North Vietnamese victory would merely result in a continuation of capitalism (albeit in its State-owned guise) and its accompanying wage slavery and exploitation.
This article shows that a correct theory does indeed predict accurately outcomes. It describes the fruits of Doi Moi ("Renovation") of 1986 when a re-unified Vietnam sought integration within the world system of capitalism. It normalized diplomatic relations with the United States in 1995 (and in doing so with the rest of the world), and then formally joining the World Trade Organization in 2007.
The article describes Vietnam as a centralized, top-down, one-party state where its ruling elite embarked on Doi Moi of modernization and industrialization as a process of rebuilding of a war-ravaged and deeply impoverished country capable of competing on the world market. Vietnam is the poster child for the World Bank's idea of what development should look like. And the article goes inoto some detail of the environmental price the Vietnamese are paying and the prospect of an even higher toll from the future effects of climate change as the ruling class concentrate on maximising growth. It ranks sixth on the Climate Risk Index.
Not only did over three million Vietnamese die in vain for the “national liberation” of the sweat-shop but much the country itself is under threat of environmental destruction in capital's need to accumulate at any cost.
This article shows that a correct theory does indeed predict accurately outcomes. It describes the fruits of Doi Moi ("Renovation") of 1986 when a re-unified Vietnam sought integration within the world system of capitalism. It normalized diplomatic relations with the United States in 1995 (and in doing so with the rest of the world), and then formally joining the World Trade Organization in 2007.
The article describes Vietnam as a centralized, top-down, one-party state where its ruling elite embarked on Doi Moi of modernization and industrialization as a process of rebuilding of a war-ravaged and deeply impoverished country capable of competing on the world market. Vietnam is the poster child for the World Bank's idea of what development should look like. And the article goes inoto some detail of the environmental price the Vietnamese are paying and the prospect of an even higher toll from the future effects of climate change as the ruling class concentrate on maximising growth. It ranks sixth on the Climate Risk Index.
Not only did over three million Vietnamese die in vain for the “national liberation” of the sweat-shop but much the country itself is under threat of environmental destruction in capital's need to accumulate at any cost.
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