The expulsion of General Tran Do from the Vietnamese Communist Party has sent a shock wave through the Party's rank and file. A number of senior Party-members returned their membership cards to protest the top leaders' decision. Others rebuffed the Party's reasons for Do's expulsion, point by point, among their close circles and in the underground press.
Following is the translation of the main section of a rebuttal essay by Hoang Huu Nhan, a former member of the Party Central Committee and former Deputy Head of the Central Industries Department. His essay, titled "An Incomprehensible Treatment" and addressed to the Party's highest organs, summarizes the entire campaign against General Tran Do by the Party, from unleashing the Party-controlled newspapers to distort and attack Do's views without naming him specifically, to ordering all Party cells to make public repudiation of "that kind of viewpoints", to issuing a Plenum Conclusion document to condemn those "individuals" that disseminated "harmful" memoirs and proposals.
To this day, even after the official expulsion of General Tran Do was issued, the Party have avoided mentioning his name openly in its attacks, despite requests from its members, so that the Party does not have to introduce the evidence: Tran Do's Proposals to reform the Party .
Hoang Huu Nhan's responses to the Party's attack are, however, very specific.
Who is the author of that Proposal to the Politburo? and what are that comrade's real viewpoints and conducts?
1. The author of that Proposal
Is Major General Tran Do, born 1923 in Thai Binh province. He joined the Party in 1940 and held positions of Secretary of Military Zone Party Committee, Party Deputy Secretary of Southern Liberation Armies, Head of the Culture and Arts Department of the Party Central Committee (2 terms), Vice-Chairman of the National Assembly, Member of the III, IV, V, and VI Party Central Committee.
2. Viewpoints the Party considered dead wrong
The Conclusion document of the Fifth Plenum of the VIII Party Central Committee opposed the wrong viewpoints in that Proposal as follows:
a. (The Proposal) disparaged Marxism-Leninism and stated: "Maintaining the monopolistic position of Marxism-Leninism only leads to mental retardation".
b. It repudiated the socialist direction and considered the Socialist direction "a failure, a dead-end". It stated "There is no such thing as a market economy in the socialist direction. We must chose one or the other, but not both".
c. It dismissed the Party's omnipresent leadership and considered the current Party's control as "Party rule" and as "root cause of corruption". It rejected the principle of democratic centralism within the Party.
d. It demanded capitalist-style freedom and democracy, private newspapers and publishers, "free" and capitalist-style elections.
Reflecting [these points] against Tran Do's proposals, my understanding and evaluation of his document are sharply different from the above Conclusion. Allow me to compare them, point by point, as follows:
On Marxism-Leninism
Literally, the section of Tran Do's proposal on this subject stated: "About ideology, we continue to hold on exclusively to Marxism-Leninism inside the Party as well as in the entire society. I fully acknowledge the role of Marxism-Leninism in the revolutionary history of our country. It did make significant contribution. Today, however, beside Marxism-Leninism, there are many other valuable schools of thought to study and apply appropriately to the specific conditions of our country. Maintaining the monopolistic position for Marxism-Leninism only leads to mental retardation".
How could such an objective, proper and thoughtful observation be considered a disparagement to Marxism-Leninism ?
In spirit, such observation is not different from that of the Directive of the VCP's Politburo, numbered 01/NQ-TW 20/03/1992, on the task of ideological training for today:
"... For many years, the ideological training program for the corps of cadres has been restricted to the science of Marxism-Leninism. We have not paid attention to the research of other movements and learning from the scientific achievements of the world. The consequence is a great number of cadres lack the knowledge already existed in the wide intellectual depository of humankind. Their potential for development is, therefore, limited ... Of other social doctrines, different from Marxism-Leninism, we must study them objectively and empirically ... The Party should promote freedom of thought and create the favorable condition for the study and other activities in the area of ideology ... "
Those points make me think of the current ideological and theoretical front. Today's world has gone through tremendous changes since the days of Marx, including the characteristics of the Proletarian and Capitalist classes themselves. Our core cadres on the ideological front, however, continue to maintain the following viewpoints in various publications:
- The value of the 1848 Communist Manifesto remains unchanged.
- The Capitalist class still exploits and lives on others' labor; is corrupted and about to collapse.
- International Socialism as well as Socialist and Democratic parties continue to play the role of reformers to misguide the proletarians and thus prolong the capitalist regimes.
- There is no real independence without socialism.
- Etc.
[These ideology cadres] are most willing to maintain their control on others' thought. Such Marxists hard-liners can only disfigure Marxism rather than defending and developing the beautiful essence of Marxism for the good of humankind.
That is very worrisome !
On the Socialist direction
Tran Do presented a long analysis in his desire to participate in the search for a socialist model more suitable to Vietnam. He supported the goal of a "developed economy, prosperous people, strong nation, just and civilized society", and considered [any mechanism that can achieve such goal] the socialist model for Vietnam. Indeed, Tran Do, at a number of places [in his Proposal], stated: "The Socialist direction is a failure, a dead-end", or "There is no such thing as a market economy in the socialist direction. We must chose one or the other, but not both". But what he referred to in those lines was the classical socialist model, which everyone know include: barter economy, nationalization of properties, and proletarian dictatorship. That socialist model did fail and collapse. It cannot exist at the same time with a market economy. That was the true intention of the author. There is nothing wrong with his desire to build the kind of socialist model suitable to our country and to overcome those hard-line thinking and misperceptions. Tran Do, indeed, rejected the socialist direction of the classical model, which already failed in the Soviet Union and the Eastern Europe.
As for the state-owned sector of the economy, his Proposal also presented a long analysis. He advocated the use of all economic sectors, under proper evaluation and application, as the means to effectively achieve the goals and quickly develop the economy and improve the living standards. After analyzing the negative aspects of the state-owned sector, Tran Do asserted: "We cannot totally erase the state-owned sector. It is still necessary in a number of areas. However, giving it the leading role would mean exterminating or weakening other economic sectors, particularly the private sector".
In my opinion, this subject should be considered an on-going concern. It should be timely monitored against reality so the economic sectors can be adjusted for the optimal result. We should not dismiss [his ideas] so easily and subjectively.
On the Party's leadership
Indeed, Tran Do called the Party's method of leading today "Party rule" and "the source of abuses and corruption". Tran Do analyzed in details and with great care the issue of Party leadership. In his Proposal, he said: "I still concur and support the Party leadership. Such role is necessary. But leading does not mean ruling or Party rule. History of our country and the world proved that all monopolies of power and leadership end up in degradation, corruption, and impasses not only for the society but also for the Party body itself". At another point, he strongly asserted: "Today, I can say with certainty that no forces inside or outside the country can destroy the Vietnamese Communist Party. Only the Party could weaken itself by refusing to adapt".
Therefore, in this Proposal as well as in his 1995 petition to all members of the Central Committee for an overhaul of the Party, Tran Do suggested the Party hold on to political leadership only. It should deal [exclusively] with overall strategies and major issues rather than using the motto of the Party's omnipresent, absolute, and concrete leadership to infringe upon and replace the government. The Party and the Government have turned into the same entity at all levels, in all branches. As a result, the two giant systems overlap each other and turn the Party Government combination into an totalitarian and dictatorial regime, which is called the "Party rule" for short. It is the source of power abuses and corruption today. It is the root cause of the unethical phenomena and decadent lifestyle the Fifth Party Plenum pointed out.
Uncle Ho also said that a good organization or a good individual could turn bad if they are inflicted with individualism. To fully understand that sentence, we must expand the idea: If an organization or an individual do not have a good environment to grow in, if they are not checked by any other forces, then they shall degrade gradually because of self-interests. In more concrete terms, a totalitarian regime with the Party and the Government being the same entity, naturally forms and encourages a class of Party members holding positions and power at all levels abuse authority and commit corruption acts. There is no way to stop this problem unless the leadership is changed.
With such general content one cannot conclude that Tran Do denied the overall leadership of the Party. In opposite, I understand both the words and the heart of Tran Do in trying to rebuild the Party so that it can truly fortify and maintain its leadership role, to revive the Party's credibility and its image in people's hearts as they were during the revolution and resistance time. In those days, the Party and the people are one.
On the blunder of asking for the capitalist-style freedom and democracy
I understand that Tran Do truly wants our government to implement the democracy that some people call "capitalist democracy". I and many others, especially the intellectuals (due to their wide knowledge and opportunities to research), are also longing for such free and democratic regime because of the following scientific facts: Freedom, Democracy, and Human Rights are timeless aspiration of humankind. It was not a coincidence that Uncle Ho strongly concluded: "There is nothing more precious than independence and freedom", or "independence without freedom and happiness is meaningless". For that same crucial and proper goal, our country signed the international covenants on human rights; our 1992 Constitution stipulates the people's freedoms of expression, assembly, organization, etc.
People's rights to print newspaper, to publish books, to participate in free elections, to hold meeting, to assemble, to demonstrate, to exercise their rights in a republic under the rule of law, etc. are the results of the fierce struggles of working people against the authoritarian regimes run by the feudal class. In those movements, the upper class are the learned capitalists. They were bright enough to hold the leading role and skillfully used the victory of the struggle to form democratic regimes in the developed capitalist countries. Because of that sequence, some people, to this day, continue to mistakenly attach democratic achievements to capitalist regimes and then generate all sorts of misconceptions. A phenomenon in the US has attracted the attention of many. That is the sexual misconduct charge on the President and he has to answer to the court. Sections of the public asked him to resign while the legal experts insisted the President must not be placed above the law. Despite the differences between our system and theirs, our people could not help but desire that kind of democracy.
The whole socialist camp mistakenly attributed the market economy, which first appeared during the feudal era, exclusively to the capitalists and therefore, insisted on building a non-market economy with political coercion by the proletarian dictatorship. In other words, we just wanted to build an economic and political regime that totally differ from the those of the capitalists. The world now know such system has totally disintegrated. Our Party has corrected the economic side. Sooner or later, it will have to correct the political system if it wants to bring about fast and solid progress. We have to build a government that truly belongs to the people. [That need is] particularly urgent today since we have decided to join the world community and accept a fierce economic competition with all other countries while our economy as well as our [collective] management ability are still far behind - maybe at one tenth to one hundredth of - other countries. Only a true democracy can mobilize all the enthusiasm, creativity, and expand to the fullest the mental capability of our people to overcome quickly such tremendous gap.
Writing these lines I still feel I am not doing justice to the spirit of the [Tran Do's] Proposal. I recommend to anyone truly concerned of this matter to find and read that document in its entirety. The document did have some points I disagree with but they are minor and need not be mentioned here.
The basic idea of the Proposal is the call for the democratization of the political system to balance out the democratic moves on the economic front and to match the particular socialist regime in our country. That is the objective requirement of reality and of the public. There are signs of such demand: the "Thai Binh phenomenon" in 1997 and the rows of people waiting days and nights to submit complaints in front of the Prime Minister's residence. The Proposal should be treated with respect and it deserves careful study by the leading organ. If the Proposal is considered ill-advised and harmful, [the Party] should be truthful about it (ethics is important to both organizations and individuals) by introducing and analyzing that Proposal internally or publicly so people would know the pitfalls to avoid. [The Party] should not have distorted and attacked [the Proposal] so simplemindedly and cruelly as it did.