Il Programma Comunista 1971/18

BALANCE OF THE AGRARIAN REFORM

The agrarian reform launched in 1953 to meet the needs of the war and increase production was inevitably going to let the class struggle in the countryside loose.

Despite the hopes of the government, which indicated a range of measures differentiated according to the political position of the landowners, the action of the poor peasants was exercised in an uncontrolled manner. They did not follow ”political criteria”, but ”economic criteria”, and struck indiscriminately at the landowners, whatever their ideas, and also at the rich peasants. While the government had hoped to contain the movement within the narrow limits of its needs, both military and economic, it ”took over” the organs of the DRV and went far beyond the boundaries within which they wanted to imprison it.

In 1956 (after the war with the French) the government of the DRV had to backtrack, beginning what was called the ”orgy of self-criticism”. The main ”errors” committed during the reform are reviewed. Above all, they denounce the ”extremist tendencies” and the large number of ”innocent victims”.

The Vietnamese scholar Lê Châu, author of an analysis of Vietnam’s economic structures, summarizes the ”errors” as follows: ”poor classification of landowners and of the different categories of peasants, of enemies and friends…. Non-application of the preferential treatment reserved for the [resistant] owners with respect to the other owners… attack on religious freedom”, and adds: ”The errors of the agrarian reform have had a harmful influence on the politics of the United National Front. This influence has resulted in an extremely tense situation in the countryside…. The support of the masses seems to be soured by these trials” (Lê Châu, Socialist Vietnam).

As for the lands belonging to the church, which in 1953 still constituted 10% of all land, at the beginning of the reform, officials were ordered to abide by the decisions of the peasant assemblies in the villages and to absolutely refrain from giving imperative orders (it was dangerous, at that time, to upset the peasants). In 1955, the government, anxious to secure the support of the various churches, issued a decree aimed at the ”Protection of Religious Freedom”, which states:

”…Bishops, curates, bonzes, pastors, religious tari, who have personally owned lands to rent, like landowners, are not classified as landowners…. In order to ensure the exercise of worship by the people and to help the religious, the government makes solicitous efforts to relieve agricultural taxes on lands and paddy fields left in usufruct to churches, pagodas, shrines” (reported by Lê Châu).

Starting in 1956, the government undertook a series of measures to ”correct the errors” committed during the reform. To this end, the Tenth Session of the Party’s Central Committee decided, among other things: “…to rectify the classification of peasants and compensate innocent victims”; “the land reform committees…no longer have the right to leadership, but become study bodies…;” “the special people’s courts are abolished; religious freedoms and those of the national community must be respected”.

In 1958, official Truong Chinh, in a report to the National Front Congress, described some of the results of this ”correction” campaign; ”In 3,501 villages we have taken steps so that the beneficiaries of land reform allow compensation for innocent victims. The results obtained are valued at about half the value of the expropriated lands. Livestock has been compensated to the extent of 38.5%, 64% of real estate has been returned… Religious communities, who had been left with insufficient land, were given new land” (quoted by Lê Châu).

According to the figures reported by Lê Châu, in the North, 810,000 hectares of land, 107,000 draft animals, had been distributed to 2,200,000 families composed of 9,000,000 people (72% of the rural population) with the reform.

Average land allocation per mouth to feed – Before and after reform

This data is certainly not very reliable; furthermore, the determination of the area of land per mouth to be fed is a very dubious figure, of little significance and difficult to determine. It is certain, however, that big land ownership suffered a severe blow: which, of course, does not mean that social inequalities in the countryside had been eliminated.

The abolition of the burden of absentee land ownership was the indispensable premise for the development of productive forces. The Vietnamese state, like all ”third world” states, faced with the world market without a basic industry, had to draw all its resources from the land, and moreover had to do so with rudimentary means. Only by producing a surplus of agricultural products and exporting the products of the mines could they acquire on the world market the machinery and everything necessary to build a national industry. The development of the economy imposed a huge productive effort in the countryside, but this would inevitably lead to the strengthening of the class of rich peasants.

Who could accumulate productive surpluses? Certainly not the poor peasant, but only those who possessed the best land, draft animals and agricultural tools. Given the individual management of the land, it was therefore necessary to pass through the concentration of land, livestock, agricultural tools in the hands of a layer of rich peasants, which further impoverished and proletarianized the poorest peasants.

The action of the poor peasants, during the reform was directed not only against the landowners, their past exploiters, but also against the rich peasants, their future exploiters. The conditions of the poor peasants worsened in such a way that in the region of Nghe An, in 1956, a major insurrection broke out that was harshly repressed by the DRV army (Nghe An is the same region where, in 1930, the soviets were established).

”AGRICULTURAL COLLECTIVIZATION”

In order to boost production, the North Vietnamese government also tried to concentrate agricultural means of production through the cooperative form. There are three forms that cooperatives can take: ”mutual aid brigades”, ”semi-socialist cooperatives”, ”socialist cooperatives”.

The ”mutual aid brigades”, or labor exchange brigades, are based on a traditional practice (also widespread in China), that is, mutual aid that peasants lend to each other during periods of increased work. In this form, the means of production remain as private property; it is the work that is pooled; at the end of the day, the work provided by each is calculated according to a system of points.

In ”semi-socialist cooperatives”, or lower-form cooperatives, the peasants hand over their main means of production, as shares, to collective management. Each, however, remains the owner of the land, livestock and tools, which they rent to the cooperative. The product, after deducting a share of accumulation for social funds, operating expenses, reuse, and rent of the means of production, is distributed to members in proportion to the work provided by each. The distribution of income in this type of cooperative is very difficult to achieve: the peasants will leave their land and their tools to the collective management, only on condition of obtaining a profit at least equal to that which can be obtained from free renting. For this reason (according to what Lê Châu reveals), the cooperative pays for the rent of the land a rather high quota, equal to about 25-30% of the total gross production. On the other hand, the rent of the estimate and tools is calculated on the basis of current local market prices.

In this type of cooperatives, the total gross production is divided on average in the following parts: 28% rent of land, livestock and tools; 5% social funds of accumulation; 6% operating expenses (purchased raw materials, taxes, etc.); 1% products re-used in the co-op; 60% remuneration of labor.

The members are not only remunerated as workers, but also as owners of land and working capital; nothing else could induce them to hand over their goods to collective management. Of course, within cooperatives, considerable inequalities persist between those who own the best land and the most cattle and those who derive their income more from their labor than from the rent of their property.

”Socialist cooperatives”, or higher-form cooperatives, correspond to Soviet kolkhoz. The overall income is distributed among the members according to the principle ”to each according to his labor”. Small plots of land remain individually owned, but these must not exceed 5% of the average area per inhabitant in the municipality.

In 1959, ”socialist” cooperatives accounted for just 2.4% of agricultural production units, while semi-socialist cooperatives covered 43.01% of production units. The area of land collectivized in both forms represented 37% of the total.

Agricultural collectivization did not have the desired results. The rich peasants had no interest in joining the ”socialist” cooperatives, where the distribution of income was based on the work provided, nor in the ”semi-socialist” ones, where free rent was higher than that paid by the cooperative.

They could profit from the ruin of the poorest peasants, either by exploiting them as wage earners or by buying their land and spare capital for a pittance.

THE VIETNAMESE ”SOCIALISM”

After the Geneva Accords, the already weak North Vietnamese industry had lost 85% of its production capacity.

In the large cities, the permanence of the French expeditionary corps gave impetus to many activities. The withdrawal of the French immediately caused a high degree of unemployment. There was also a vertiginous increase in prices; for example, in 1957 pork cost 4.5 ND per kg on the free market; the monthly salary of a worker was then 30 ND; and with 30 ND one could buy less than 7 kg of pork.

Given the non-existence of a class of bourgeois entrepreneurs, industrialization could only happen in one way: in the form of state capitalism. Therefore, North Vietnam proclaimed itself a ”socialist state”: in 1958, a resolution of the Central Committee of the Party of Labor ”establishes” that: ”North Vietnam has entered the phase of transition to socialism” and ”must ensure its march towards socialism on two solid bases: a socialist industry and agriculture organized in cooperatives” (quoted by Lê Châu).

Agricultural cooperatives and State monopoly in industry and foreign trade; this is socialism for the North Vietnamese leaders and for all affiliates of the Russian or Chinese bloc.

The ”socialism” they smuggle in is a socialism established by decree, a socialism in which the wages, profit and the market continue to prevail.

Could a small country like North Vietnam possibly escape the laws of the world market? Certainly not. Even in the revolutionary Russia of 1920, wage labor continued to exist and a considerable part of the products was destined for the market. It is clear that, in an economically backward country, it was not possible to move suddenly to the elimination of capitalist relations of production; it was necessary to proceed to a gradual transformation of the economy. But this took place under the strict direction of the proletarian party. The Bolshevik party (and Lenin first of all) never dreamed of declaring the relations of production in force at that time ”socialist”; on the contrary, it repeatedly affirmed that the development of state-owned industry and the creation of cooperative farms in agriculture were not socialism and should not be called such. The shame of the leaders of the DRV is not in being subject to the strict laws of economics, but in declaring capitalist relations of production to be socialist, in an economy still dominated by small-scale production, and in attaching the label of ”socialist” to a State that knows only the needs of capital accumulation.

In 1958, the government of the DRV launched a three-year plan that foresaw an increase of 12.7% in agricultural production. In 1960, however, agricultural production had decreased by 10.9% compared to 59. This fact, of course, had repercussions on all other productive sectors, with their development much slower than expected. For agriculture specially, the plan was an abject failure, as can be seen from the following table (taken from Lê Châu, op. cit).

Forecast and achievements of the three-year plan
in agriculture

The so-called ”aid from the socialist sister countries” (USSR and co) is no better than the ”aid” provided by the USA to the countries they control. North Vietnam is forced to import more and more machines and products of heavy industry and to export products of mining, agriculture, handicrafts, light industry (textiles, shoes, etc.).

Steel production, which in 1939 was 130 thousand tons, in 1964 halts to just 50 thousand. Coal mining, on the other hand, went from 2,615 thousand in 1939 to 641 thousand in 1955 and to 3,200 thousand in 1964. The share of inputs in total imports was 20% in 1939, 44.7% in 1955, 85.3% in 1959, and 91.1% in 1960. In 1959 compared with 1957, the export of mining products had increased by 25%, that of forest products by 731%, that of agricultural products by 99%.

Under these conditions, it is ridiculous to talk about the DRV’s “national independence”, and infinitely more ridiculous to talk about socialism!