“... the Communists remain the only Vietnamese still capable of rallying millions of their countrymen to sacrifice and hardship.” 
--Neil Sheehan, New York Times, 1964

The small country of Vietnam beat the mighty war machine of U.S. imperialism because the working class of Vietnam had strong communist leadership. The courageous Vietnamese fighters were inspired by the revolutions in Russia and China and by the fight for a just and egalitarian society. 

But today the successors of the leaders of People’s War welcome imperialists to come exploit the working class once again. The leadership of the Vietnamese Communist Party (VCP) abandoned the struggle for communism in favor of nationalism—first to win independence and then to live and profit side-by-side with capitalists.

Communists Built a Base Through Class Struggle

The French imperialists conquered Vietnam in the late 19th century. Like all imperialists, they oppressed and exploited the people brutally. In 1954, the Communist-led Vietminh defeated the French imperialists. Then they led a bold program of land reform and social reorganization in the countryside. As Eric Wolf notes in Peasant Wars of the Twentieth Century, “land was taken from landlords and redistributed among the remainder of the peasantry; at the same time political control was taken from the landlords and rich peasants and transferred to the poor and middle peasantry.” 

People’s War Defeats U.S. Military

After World War II and the communist revolution in China, the international communist movement appeared poised to defeat capitalism everywhere. Desperate to stop the communist advance, U.S. rulers replaced the French in Vietnam and installed regimes of fascist brutality that lasted for 20 years. In 1956, after the CIA installed a puppet government in the South, the communist leadership began to organize People’s War, mobilizing masses of workers to fight for working class power–communism. According to U.S. foreign service agent Douglas Pike, “The Vietnamese [peasant] was not regarded simply as a pawn in a power struggle, but as the active element.” 

Millions of peasants joined this movement. Pike noted: 

.. almost all Vietnamese were of the firm opinion that as a result of [Communist] activity, . . . fundamental change had occurred in the social order...the liberated area was characterized by a greater sense of egalitarianism and a greater awareness of class consciousness, or social solidarity.

By 1965, People’s War had toppled the U.S.-backed dictator Ngo Dinh Diem. Desperate to hold on to Vietnam, U.S. bosses launched a full-scale invasion. By 1967, they’d sent 500,000 U.S. troops. They dropped more bombs on the North than during all of World War II. 
Between three and five million Vietnamese, mostly civilians, were killed in the war. But despite suffering tremendous casualties and hardships, the Vietnamese peasants and workers, led by communists, defeated the U.S. Army on the ground. On April 30, 1975, the last U.S. forces fled Saigon.

Bargaining with the Bosses: A Fatal Error

Ho Chi Minh, founder of the Vietnamese Communist Party, vacillated between the goals of communism and “a war of national salvation.” Since Lenin’s day, the Communist International had supported national liberation struggles in colonial countries. This line led to alliances with capitalist forces that wanted independence but not communism. The Vietnamese communists’ nationalism reflected similar weaknesses in Russia, China, and the international communist movement. It led them to miss the opportunity to win U.S. soldiers to the fight for communism, as the Russian communists had done with German soldiers during World War I. 

Over time, the nationalist line won out. The goal of an egalitarian communist society was abandoned. When Ho died in 1969, James Wechsler, editor of the New York Post, lamented that the U.S. could and should have made deals, not war, with Ho. In fact, the Vietnamese communists showed themselves willing to bargain with the enemy from the start. They signed a treaty with the defeated French imperialists that foreshadowed the sellout to come.

What counted was that the Vietminh was withdrawing troops to the north for two years. This gave the U.S. rulers what they needed ... to install a puppet [in the south]. With this ... the U.S. could wreak havoc on southern Vietnamese working people, smash up their revolutionary organizations. This was a terrible setback for Vietnamese working people.” (PLP pamphlet, Vietnam, Defeat U.S. Imperialism, 1971) 

The Tet Offensive: Betrayal of the Workers

In the Tet Offensive in early 1968, communist troops attacked and expelled the U.S. from nearly every major city. This heroic effort, made at a high cost in the lives of dedicated fighters, was used by the VCP leadership to push U.S. imperialists to negotiate. Tet was a big step back from the People’s War. 

It was in fact a gigantic bluff aimed at convincing the U.S. to begin talks right away. LBJ got the message. He answered with a gesture: on Feb. 9 he called a bombing halt. By November of 1968 the North Vietnamese were involved in full-fledged talks with the U.S. rulers (PLP, 1971). 
These talks ultimately resulted in U.S. withdrawal and independence for a united Vietnam. It also meant the betrayal and defeat of the Vietnamese working class by its own leadership, which had abandoned the fight for a communist society. 

In the 1970s, inspired by the Cultural Revolution in China, pro-communist forces in the VCP won the collectivization of agriculture. But in the 1980s and 1990s, this huge reform was gradually abandoned, as it was in China and the former Soviet Union. The goal of a classless communist society was abandoned too. Today a post-colonial elite rules a “socialist” Vietnam that is home to some of the world’s worst garment sweat shops. A study of working conditions in Vietnamese factories found “forced labour, child labour and child slavery” (Anti-Slavery International 2019). 

Only Communism Can Defeat Imperialism

In 1964, Progressive Labor Movement, the forerunner of today’s PLP, organized the first anti-war demonstration to protest U.S. imperialism in Vietnam. Seven years later, PLP offered comradely criticism of the Vietnamese leadership for negotiating with U.S. and Soviet bosses—a decisive turn in the creation of a new international communist movement from the ashes of the old. Vietnam’s workers, like workers worldwide, are now faced with the task of helping to rebuild the communist movement and making a new revolution. 

The great victories and tragic betrayal of workers in Vietnam offer today’s communists a powerful lesson. No matter how valiant the fight, no matter how great the sacrifice, only a fight for communism—not nationalism and “socialism”—will liberate the international working class.