Despite his background as an geophysicist, Nguyen Thanh Giang is known inside and outside Vietnam for his political writings and protests on behalf of other dissidents being harassed by the Hanoi authorities. After his discourse Human Rights - The Vietnamese's Thousand-Year Aspiration was distributed in 1997, he was forced to early retirement from the Vietnam Geophysics Bureau. In March 1998, Nguyen Thanh Giang was arrested for possession of the banned collection of Bui Minh Quoc's poems, the Poetic Flashes in the Interrogation Room. Nguyen Thanh Giang went on a hunger strike to protest the Public Security's brutality and was released 4 days later.
Following is the translation of his latest writings -- a discussion on the entity called the "Vietnamese workers class". The article was written in September 1998 and has been widely circulated among the underground press since.
Reading the 1930 Political Discourse of the Indochinese Communist Party, one sees the following lines:
"In the opening phase, the revolution in Indochina will be one for private property rights and civil rights... Once the private property rights-and-civil rights revolution has succeeded and a workers-peasants government been established, the nation's industries will be developed, the proletarian organizations will be strengthened, and the balance of class power will tilt toward the proletarian side. Then the struggle will be deepened and widened so that the private property rights-and-civil rights revolution will advance to a proletarian revolution".
Despite its realization that the balance of class power would tilt toward the proletarian side only when the nation's industries have been developed, this document insists:
"In the private property rights-and-civil rights revolution, [both] the proletarian class and the peasants are the two main engines. The proletarians, however, must be in the leading position in order for the revolution to succeed".
At the Eighth Congress [of the Vietnamese Communist Party], despite its wishes to modernize the country to catch up with the world in the Information Era, the Party Secretary General Do Muoi continued to insist in his June 28, 1996 Political Report:
"[Our thinking need to] coalesce to one point: the Vietnamese Communist Party are the vanguards of the Vietnamese workers class", and "the common thread and most important thing to our Party at this time is to maintain and intensify the workers-class characteristics of our Party".
What, then, is the workers class ? Is the Vietnamese workers class the true entity that not only played a decisive role in advancing past revolutions in Vietnam but also is and will always be the best possible leaders of the Vietnamese people, who were described in 1428 (502 years before anyone claiming themselves leaders in the name of the workers) by Nguyen Trai as: "Despite rises and ebbs, good men always responded [to the calls of the country]" ?
1. The formation of the Vietnamese workers:
Since when has the Vietnamese workers class come into being ? Was there a workers class in Vietnam as defined by Marxism-Leninism ? If so, does that class still exist today? etc. These questions should have long been discussed seriously and scientifically, rather than being distorted under the pressure of the Leaders.
Since the Ly and Tran dynasties (in the 12th and 13th Century), industrial and handicraft workmanship in Vietnam has gotten more and more adept. Particularly when King Ly Thai To moved the capital to Thang Long, the nation's economy and culture took a significant leap. Industrial laborers and handicraft workers were gathered for the construction of pagodas, statues, bells, bridges, ships, etc. The ship building industry for both river and ocean transportation were highly evaluated by Dutch and Portuguese traders. In 1820, US Navy Colonel J. White visited Vietnam and observed: "Vietnamese are indeed very skillful shipbuilders. They accomplish a high degree of accuracy."
Based on historical accounts , such as those of Hong Duc Thien Chinh, Professor Phan Huy Le believes even during the monarchical time there existed the "old-styled workers", working for [wealthier] families. These hired hands were mentioned collectively in the King Court Civil Codes as "laborers and craftsmen". Also existed during this time were "miners". In 1831, near the end of the Le dynasty, about 1,000 miners worked at the gold mine Chien Dan in Quang Nam province. In 1833, 3,122 miners were hired for the gold mine Tien Kieu in Tuyen Quang province. By the time of King Tu Duc's reign, there were 124 active mines from Quang Nam province up to the northern borer. Among them were 3 gold mines, 29 iron, 14 silver, 9 copper, 7 zinc, 4 lead.
By December 19, 1946, the total number of workers in Northern and north Central Vietnam was 100,000. Among them were 25,000 employees of various French and foreign companies. There might be many more workers in the South but they were dispersed or converted into other lines of work by the time the [anti-colonist] war broke out. The War further dislocated workers as it became more intense in the later years.
In October, 1950, as a result of the success of the Border Campaign, 5 province capitals, 13 cities, and many areas along 750 km border were liberated along with a population of 350,000 people. With this addition, the total number of workers in the liberated zones increased to 346,000, mostly handicraft workers. The number of handicraft workers continued to escalate, especially in the ending years of the War, but the number of industrial workers (in defense-related industries and state-owned enterprises) remained very low, just about 10% of the total.
In that history, at what point did the Vietnamese workers class come into being?
[The communist theorist] Professor Tran Van Giau stated: "Even though there were only about 100,000 people that earned their living from selling their skilled labor [in Vietnam], we think the Vietnamese proletarians had become a class by the time the First World War started ... That was a 'class in itself', not a 'class for itself' yet". He further concluded: "When Nguyen Ai Quoc left home to find a way to rescue the country, the Vietnamese workers class began to form a 'class in itself'."
The writer of this article does not wish to argue with the accomplished Professor but remember that upon being asked about the birth of the workers class, Engels responded: "The workers class was born out of the Industrial Revolution". Before Marx and Engels, people were not aware of the proletarian class and misconstrued them as just lazy and ignorant people. As a result, they suffered from poverty, oppression, and exploitation in handicraft and industrial workplaces. They were grouped with gangsters and vagrants. The Vietnamese Communist Party's Proclamation, reprinted in 1988, clearly stated: "The proletarian class is the class of the modern hired workers, who have lost their own manufacturing capital and are forced to sell their labor for a living."
When did the Industrial Revolution take place in Vietnam?
How many modern hired workers were there and how did they form the class?
Had they really lost their own manufacturing capital and were forced to sell their labor; or were they just mostly peasants who left home in search of better lives in the cities?
2. The classification of the workers class in Vietnam:
The Indochinese Communist Party's Political Discourse asserted: "The Party are the vanguards of the proletarian class, with the Marxism-Leninism as its foundation. [The Party] represents the main and long term common interests of the entire proletarian class in Indochina. [The Party] leads the Indochinese proletarian class in the struggle to achieve the ultimate goal of the proletarians - the [implementation of] Communism". Meanwhile, Marxism-Leninism considers class theory and class struggle as its foundation. Without them, the doctrine would have no bases to stand on.
[In that around-the-circle reasoning,] what is the entity[, called the workers class,] that they have assigned all kinds of extraordinary characteristics to, really? And what does that say about the self-proclaimed mandate for its vanguards !
Maybe that is why they must maintain at all costs and by all means the existence of a workers class -- at least as long as Communism yet achieved. [They insist] this class is not only real but also among the most progressive in the international proletarian movement. Once the decision has been made on the existence of such class, they are now obliged to fill it with numbers, albeit virtual ones! From there, all kinds of new definitions were invented to blind some people, puzzle others, and make many smile silently.
As presented above, Marx and Engels had always defined the workers class as the community of industrial laborers, as the direct product of the industrial manufacturing process . The workers class was born and developed along with the major industries. Lenin himself said: "Workers are laborers in major industries"; and even more specifically, "In order to be considered a worker, he must have been hired as a regular laborer in a major industry for at least 10 years [before the Revolution] and has been working for 2 to 3 years [since the Revolution]."
How many workers in Vietnam met that standards?
Not until 1896 when the French government sent the new governor Paul Dumere to Indochina to intensify the exploitation of the colony that tens of thousands of people were drafted to work on the construction of the Huong River bridge (1900), the Long Bien bridge (1902), the railroad from Hanoi to Lang Son (1902), from Da Nang to Hue (1906), from Saigon to Nha Trang (1910), and from Hai Phong to Van Nam (1910), etc. Most of the laborers were peasants paying their yearly taxes in the form of public work. Among the 3500 laborers assigned to the building of railroads, there were only 100 skilled concrete workers.
By 1906, the entire country had about 90 factories. In the South, there were car repair facilities, soap making plants, food canning plants, ship building facilities, rice processing mills, printing houses, etc. In the North, there were wine distilleries, power generation plants, textile factories, cement plants, paper mills, leather processing plants, etc. In 1929, the entire Indochina had 220,000 hired hands working for various enterprises owned by French colonists. Most of them resided in Vietnam - 53,000 miners, 86,000 industrial and trades workers, and 81,000 plantation workers. Most of these workers were "brown-shirt" laborers who did simple yet heavy tasks. They were illiterate or had very low level of education. "Blue-shirt" workers, who had some degree of technical skills, were rare. The transfer of skills was impossible due to the high number of dead from overwork and malnutrition, to the constant turnover of laborers who fulfilled their tour of duties, and to a large number of escapees. In 1929 alone, 4302 workers ran away; 6,907 workers fulfilled their duties and returned home.
With such small number of workers, scattered and having low level of skills, someone began to think of counting public servants and teachers as workers. Professor Tran Van Giau presented this idea: "Among the first Communist Party members were hundreds of teachers. So when we talk about the workers class, we should not leave out the teachers" !?
Today, we have about 5,690,000 hired workers. Among them, 1,760,000 are working in the state-owned sector, a little less than one half of the 3,640,000 people working in the non-state-owned sector. 290,000 Vietnamese worked outside the country but 200,000 have returned. The number of workers in the heavy industries is insignificant. Since the 80's and particularly in recent years, the number of workers in the state-owned sector has decreased quickly. Furthermore, the inequality and differentiation among the ranks of the Vietnamese workers have developed extensively. In the state-owned or community-owned sectors, some workers belong to 100% state-owned factories while others to joint-ventures, partly owned by foreign investors. In the state-owned sector, some workers are allowed to own stocks of their companies, others are not. The numbers of stocks distributed to the workers are not equal either.
Besides the state-owned sector, the community-owned sector, and the joint-ventures, there are many other types of workers, such as those working for private companies, working outside the country, working for foreign-owned companies, working for technical or handicrafts co-ops, etc. In many enterprises, right next to the workers born and trained in our regime are those trained and worked for the once-adversary governments. [In recent years,] a great number of workers have left the state-owned sector for private business to improve their income. Many hold double jobs, as a factory worker and a holder of a secondary (sometimes primary) job such as peddling, providing services, breeding cattle, growing vegetable, weaving baskets, etc.
Given that fluid reality, it is impossible to classify any entity that is scientifically good enough to be called a class, no matter in philosophical, economic, or sociological terms.
[The need to justify the extra inclusion] required "new ideas", such as "Should we add to the workers class several million hired personnel in governmental and social offices. [After all,] they are, under the Party's leadership, applying the leading role of the workers class to the whole society", or "In a country led by the Party of the workers class, it is illogical not to include the state officials in the workers class", etc. Professor Van Tao rationalized the situation: "Intellectuals, scientists, and workers are all participating in the production of goods for society. They all have equal benefits and duties. They have equal positions in the social production system ( all have to pay taxes based on levels of income) ... [Therefore,] except for a small number of capitalists (as defined by the State, based on their capital and numbers of employees), all intellectuals, blue-collar workers, and white-collar workers in the industrial areas are considered members of the modern workers class". (Tear came to my eyes when I read these lines. I could never believe such an experienced scholar and researcher would really think so in his heart! Why, then, [did he say that]? How could the Vietnamese intellectuals [stoop so low]?)
Researcher Bui Dinh Don further elaborated Professor Van Tao's definition, "So, a section of the intellectuals, that directly involves in industrial labor and in the industrial production process to generate physical goods for society, is included in the workers class. Other scientists, other branches of the intelligentsia like social sciences, and all intellectuals that do not directly involve in manufacturing under the industrial process must not be called workers."
What are considered goods for society and who are considered the direct participators in the production of those goods? Would they be the people that design the engines or just those that tighten the bolts? Would they be the people that write a political program or just those that cut the paper to print the program?
[Let's look inside] a family with a grandfather being a Ph.D. and professor in sociology, a producer of many valuable proposals for social transformation; a father being an excellent artist; a mother being a mechanical engineer; and a son who unfortunately wasted his life with a wrong crowd and ended up being a steel press operator. Every night, two different classes sat around the dinner table. The grandfather and the father belong to the "allied" class, which is to be led. Between the remaining two members, that "progressive" son is a member of the top leading class!
Obviously, there has never been a workers class in Vietnam as defined by Marx and Lenin. Neither in the past nor in the present. In the future, the "economy of speed" will replace the "economy of scale". In other words, the method of large-scale production that was closely identified with an industrialized society will become obsolete. In its place will be the method of production that generate goods specifically to the customers' demands, in small quantities, for short periods of time, and requiring interchangeable labor skills. In that environment, the concept of workers class will further lose its meaning. Marx himself predicted: "The existence of a class is directly attached to a certain historical development phase of production". Further more, the awkward pairing [of the workers class with the Vietnamese situation] is just the result of the deliberate disregard of one of Karl Marx's own criteria: the deciding factor in distinguishing classes is the relationship between the parties in term of manufacturing capital [distribution].
3. The Intellectualization of the proletarians:
The contemporary history of Vietnam not only fails to follow a straight course but also insists on zigzagging through a maze of agonies, melodramas, and bitterness. The Vietnamese in recent decades have been swung from one extreme to another. In yester-year, intellectuals were required to transform themselves to be more worker-like, more proletarian. People tried to disown their literary past to advance to the rank of the proletariats. Respected figures like Mr. Nguyen Van Cu was proletarianized through working as a miner at Vang Danh; Mr. Ngo Gia Tu as a worker at the brewery Binh Tay; Mr. Nguyen Van Luong as a worker at the oil refinery in Nha Be. Mr. Nguyen Luong Bang, already working as a sailor, was asked to volunteer to labor as a rickshaw puller to be even more proletarian. We have to respect their dedication and sacred belief. They, however, could never imagine the effect [of such policy] on today's reality in Vietnam. The campaign of proletarianization lasted a long time and covered all walks of life. Best medical surgeons were forced to pick up shovels and picks; Skilled violinists were considered worthless if they did not directly participate in manual labor; etc.
As if to respect the law of counter-balance. Yesterday, they tried to proletarianize the intellectuals. Today, they want to intellectualize the proletariats. The requirement now is not only to turn workers into engineers, nurses into physicians, etc. but also to make them philosophical doctors and medical doctors. It must be tough for someone with conscience and integrity to come up with a scientific survey of Vietnamese society in the future. What data, parameters, mathematical formulas, and computers must they use to distinguish the regular engineers and doctors from the proletarian-engineers and proletarian-doctors ?
Binh Duong province [for example] has only 5/10,000 of its population working in the industries. Even in the most industrially advanced Ho Chi Minh City, there are only 11,000 workers in the manufacturing-for-export zones and only 10% of them technicians. The number of workers of level 7 (most highly skilled) are less than that of postgraduates. The number of workers of level 6 are less than that of engineers. The statistics of the Vietnamese Confederation of Labor Unions classified trained workers of level 7 at 2.8%, level 5 at 22.2%, level 4 at 33.2%, level 3 at 21.8%, level 2 and 1 at 6.7%. While 89% of the labor force remain untrained, the strange policy of intellectualizing proletariats has caused, from 1986 to 1996 alone, a decrease in the number of vocational schools by 41%, the number of candidates accepted for vocational training by 35%, and the number of vocational teachers by 31%.
After 20 years, the number of vocational students shrunk by 75%. As a result, the 15 industrial zones of Dong Nai province needed 30,000 skilled workers but found only a few thousand qualified candidates while over 100,000 people across the province remained unemployed. Seven industrial zones of Binh Duong province needed 15,000 - 17,000 skilled workers but could fill only 1/3 of the positions from the local labor pool. It is rather strange to see for the industrial zone Dung Quat (once erected as planned) the need is only about 150 engineers but the authorities of Quang Nam province already signed a contract with the Mine and Geology University to train rapidly 450 engineers. They totally ignored the need to fill thousands of specialized worker positions currently empty !
When the vacuum had grown so great, the VIII Central Committee of the Vietnamese Communist Party issued Directive No. 2, setting the goal of training 22 - 25% of the labor force by the year 2000. That is, indeed, a very tall order to meet; particularly if one realizes that the many decades of "solidifying the workers class" policy could only train 11% of the work force. We now have less than 2 years to reach the new goal.
Could the current situation be a result of the concept "comparatively cheap labor cost is an important advantage to development", written in the Decision of the Seventh Meeting of the VII Central Committee of the Vietnamese Communist Party ? I have long worried about this issue and discussed it in my essay "Some Thought on the National Industrialization and Modernization" a few years ago.
The intelligentsia is valuable, respectable, and very necessary for societies like ours. But people with diplomas are not necessarily intellectuals. Furthermore, workers, especially those with ethics, conscience, and skills, are even more needed and much more valuable than people simply holding diplomas.
(Not to mention the "fake" professors, the "International Relation" doctors, and the doctors whose dissertations were prepared by their subordinates. These intellectuals are not worth comparing to the workers because they prove to be very harmful to the country. They are often used by others to submit consultative proposals [to the government] that are destructive to the nation [in the long run].)
Our ancestors said "Do one thing well and you will live well". That is not just a lesson from life experience. It should also be used as a direction for our industrial development effort. Most companies, especially major ones, in Japan pay salaries and give positions to workers according to seniority. This regime is based on the philosophy that the salaries should match the levels of skill manifested in the accumulation of experiences. Why should we not apply the same regime of rewarding workers with high skill levels ? These rare talented workers should be treated with salaries, respect, and privileges comparable to those of good professors and doctors.
We must take care to develop a balanced body in which each organ becomes constantly better. Don't cut off the head and attach it to the arm; and don't attach the two arms to the head, either. Engineers and doctors are badly needed but they alone cannot accomplish much. Set up enough structure and policies to help interested individuals to become worthy workers and reward them appropriately .
4. The appropriate care for the work force:
About the workers class, Directive No. 7 of the VII Central Committee stated: "The workers class, through its vanguard Party, provided the leadership for the revolution in our country for the last half century. Today, it is again leading the way in our efforts of reform, industrialization, and modernization. However, during the transition to the new structure, there was indication of neglect on the role and the position of the workers class ... We have not paid enough attention to the training of workers on class recognition, knowledge, skill, work ethics, industrial attitude, etc. We have not done well the task of providing benefits and motivating workers to be more inventive ..."
I commented on that observation in one of my essays: "[If you ask] why the workers are considered not so important while they are leading the nation's great efforts, [you should] look at who you are talking about. How could a class that still badly lacks, [in your words], class recognition, knowledge, skill, work ethics, industrial attitude, etc. be able to lead the modern industries ? Is it not the task of the leading class to provide benefits and motivate creativity in society instead of requiring society to do that task for it ?"
The solution given in the Directive was as illogical as its layout of the problem. The Directive ordered: "Build a workers class larger in quantity, better in class recognition, more solid in political and ideological understanding ...".
Let's set aside for now the mystery of the same people that claim the Vietnamese workers class has been self-formed since before 1930 now say we need to build in Vietnam a workers class with higher class recognition. Instead, let's discuss why we need to "build a workers class larger in quantity". If the workers class is the direct product of the industrial revolution, then its increase in number depends on the need and the speed of expansion of the industrial economy. The multiplication of the ranks of workers just to meet the wishful quotas of the Directive will only worsen the already serious unemployment condition across the country and in each industry. Currently, in Hanoi, about 100,000 workers have been laid off by various state-owned enterprises for more than 4 years. 1,400 other workers do not have full-week or full-month employment. In Ho Chi Minh City, 5,000 workers lost their jobs in just the last 2 months of 1997.
From 1954 to 1975, the government of South Vietnam never mentioned the need to build a workers class. Saigon, however, was transformed from a commerce and financial hub of pre-1954 to a major industrial center with 20,000 capitalists (10 times more than the number of capitalists in the North in 1954). Among them, the "steel kings" invested in 11 industries and operated 23 manufacturing facilities across the South. From that investment, the quantity and quality of workers increased rapidly. In 1955, the total number of workers in the South was 300,000. In 1969, this number jumped to 670,000, with 170,000 being industrial workers. In Saigon, there were 178,600 workers in 1958; 191,030 in 1960; and 309,000 in 1967.
In recent years, a number of new industries appeared in our country to respond to the need of the population as well as to match the trends of the world such as petroleum, electronics, informatics, communication, etc. Right away, there also appeared a young work force with growing number and talent. This healthy, young, and highly educated work force have been working very hard to improve their skills, knowledge, foreign languages, etc. NOT out of their recognition of the leading role of their class but because of the current competition for employment, high salaries, and good working condition.
With the exception of a number of special industries and at some foreign-owned enterprises and joint-ventures, monetary compensation and general treatment of our workers are very dismal. While payment for simple manual labor in the US is $5 per hour, the average compensation for a month work (200 hours) of a Vietnamese worker is $20. Many workers do not have permanent home. 18% of workers' families live in places of 2-4 square yards per person. Due to the low level of mechanization and automation, manual labor remains the principal engines in most manufacturing industries, up to 90% in some areas. The work environment for many workers is seriously polluted. At all inspected facilities, harmful substances were found to be 50% above the allowed levels, even 100% at certain locations. Not enough care is given to workers' health, especially female workers'. At some facilities, 40% of the workers had dust silica in their lungs. The number of accidents on the job has also increased consistently. In the state-owned sector alone, 200 people die of working accidents every year.
Not only in non-state-owned companies that ugly bosses beat workers with high-heels or strip-searched female workers, but also in state-owned factories very close to the central government like the shoe manufacturing facilities Dong Anh workers are frequently required to work 12 to 14 hours a day. The company pays insurance for only 441 out of 2,905 workers. 2,300 of them work without labor contracts. Each group of 50 - 60 female workers has one access card to use the restroom !
While Vietnamese workers labor in such condition, the top leaders of the workers class received gifts worth millions of dollars from foreign capitalists.
In the 19th century, when the surplus value created by the workers was robbed by the capitalists and turned against the workers themselves, Marx called that the victimization of the workers. Today, despite the newly acquired [national] independence and unification, poor management in couple with corruption and extravagance have perpetuated the workers' miserable living condition and forfeited them reasonable and fair compensation. This must be the second round of worker victimization.
When witnessing these tragic situations or reading about them in the newspapers, I wanted to scream to the faces of those that still sing [the Party's] refrains [about the workers class] to stop - no matter if they were naive or intentionally deceitful. Please end such blatantly illogical and shameless propaganda. There has never been and will never be any leading class with that much misery attached.
By discussing the issues relating to the Vietnamese workers class in this rather simple essay, I run the risk of being accused of heresy. Nevertheless, I agree with Leon Tolstoi: "True intellect comes from thinking, not memorization".
Things must be accurately named and studied to correctly identify their characteristics and appearances. Only then, could we develop them as well as let them influence us the way we want to.
Hanoi, September, 1998
Nguyen Thanh Giang
House A13 - P9 - TTPK Hoa Muc
Trung Hoa ward, Cau Giay district, Ha Noi
Tel: 8.586012