Rhian,

Firstly, let's get back to the original point.

You claimed that Vietnamese government policies had "impoverished its own citizenry" without any acknowledgement of the devastation inflicted upon that country by the war against the US.

You attempted to substantiate that case by citing World Bank statistics which purportedly show an improvement in prosperity since free market policies were adopted. Therefore, presumably, the supposed relative poverty prior to then was all the fault of the Vietnamese Government's prior socialist economic policies.

But didn't this period also coincide with the end of economic sanctions imposed against Vietnam as punishment for removing the genocidal Pol Pot regime from neighbouring Cambodia in 1979? And what of the war it was forced to wage against its northern neighbour China as well as the ongoing conflict in Cambodia?

Therefore, I would suggest that it is hardly fair of you to attribute all problems prior to the 'liberalisation' of Vietnam's economy to the policies of the Vietnamese Government.

Even if it is true, that that is any improvement in Vietnam's standard of living has occurred, there is still a down side. Both China (of which Klein has written in her book) and Vietnam have become sweatshop economies to which manufacturing jobs from Australia and many other countries including other third world economies have been exported with devastating social consequences. Furthermore, the growth in those economies is accelerating the harm to the world's environment as well as the depletion of the world's finite endowment of natural resources.

In any case, the World Bank clearly has an ideological axe to grind, so I would be skeptical of any of its statistics, particularly real wages and GDP of which I have written elsewhere.

Given the disgraceful record of the World Bank as documented by Naomi Klein in "The Shock Doctrine" and given the broader circumstances of Vietnam's recent history not acknowledged by yourself I don't see why I need to feel obligated to rush out in order to digest the undoubtedly skewed claims made by that organisation about Vietnam.

Firstly, some corrections:

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=6974#106156 (Friday, 15 February):

The last sentence in the second paragraph should have read:

"They have again and again abused their control of these institutions to force countries ... to ... privatise publicly-owned assets and reduce protections for workers in order to transfer wealth to the rich."

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=6974#106286 (Sunday, 17 February)

First sentence of the third last paragraph should have begun:

"Even if it is true, that any improvement in Vietnam's standard of living has occurred ...

---

The World Bank document appears to be scholarly, but I simply don't have time to verify its claims, or to ascertain if it takes due account of the broader factors I have mentioned. As free market policies (combined with excessive population growth) have been disastrous for most of the rest of the world, I think an objective examination of the evidence, would draw the same conclusion about Vietnam.

The fact is that autonomous democratic socialism was never given a chance in Vietnam. At every stage it had to cope with, at best, sanctions and a legacy of death and destruction and, at worst, some of the most extreme adversity known to humankind.

Marilyn Young's "The Vietnam Wars 1945-1995"(1991) gives a glimpse of just what might have been possible. She cites Joseph Alsop, who visited the "palm-hut state" in the Mekong Delta in the south which had to be dismantled under the unjust terms of the Geneva Peace accords of 1954:

"I would like to be able to report--I had hoped to be able to
report--that ... I saw all the signs of misery and oppression
that have made my visits to East Germany like nightmare journeys
to 1984. But it was not so." ... Alsop described an idyllic
landscape of emerald rice fields, tiny villages along canal
banks thick with mangoes, palms, palms, bamboo, papaya. Here,
during the war against the French, the Viet Minh established a
"strong self-contained state, with a loyal population of nearly
2 million, a powerful regular army, a complete civil
administration, and all other apparatus of a established
governmental authority."

(tobecontinued)

(continuedfromabove)

Alsop's fellow passengers confirmed his observations, expressing
their contentment and boasting of the Viet Minh victory over the
French. Reluctantly, he believed them, for "their was no hint
of the bleak, guarded, totalitarian atmosphere, ... that I
imagined I would find." ... "At first," Alsop confessed, "it was
difficult for me, as it is for any Westerner, to conceive of a
Communist government's genuinely 'serving the people.' I could
hardly imagine a Communist government that was also a popular
government and almost a democratic government. But this is just
the sort of government the palm-hut state actually was. ...".
(p55 of "The Vietnam Wars").

The original article was Joseph Alsop, "A Man in a Mirror," The New Yorker, 25 June, 1955.

However, this living example of popular socialism was dismantled and the people of the "palm-hut state" were forced to submit to the authority of the corrupt unelected US-backed regime of the artificially created South Vietnam.

The elections that were promised in 1956 were cancelled, when the US backed dictators realised they stood no chance of winning.

Comrade Passant follows the pop history analysis of picking a moment in time that defines a war, a campaign or an empire, if that is what the US really is. No more shallow than the blindly anti US chants I recall of him at Monash 20 odd years ago. Tet was a political win for the VC and the North but by any measure a complete military disaster for them. Continue banging the drum comrade Passant. And North Korean missile testing was the turning point in the war against the South Korean running paper tiger running dogs!

Vinegar Joe

Thanks for the “heads up” I had not considered the history of John Passant the OLO trailer nearly describes him as “a Canberra based Writer”.

I threw the name into google and got the following

http://workers.labor.net.au/51/a_guestreporter_john.html
“The white rich elite are disillusioned with Mugabe because he cannot provide them with …”

http://users.cyberone.com.au/myers/xTrots.html

“John Passant, formerly an ISO leader but now of Socialist Alternative (which split from it.”

Good for JP however, he must never have heard the well known Lenin quote

“the goal of socialism is communism”

and the observation of history is not only is that true but confirms how socialist governments are inherently infiltrated and usurped by trotskyites, despots, murderers, torturers who ensure the limp and facile values of socialism ensures the descent of mankind into the morass of a third world life expectations.

The other references seemed to be about someone involved in the tax office.

I doubt much of our “Canberra Writers” postings would earn a dollar so can understand how and why he might need another job. It does concern me we have a leftwing radical employed by the tax office.

As I wrote earlier in this thread

“Nothing lasts for ever. However, the politics of “democratic libertarianism” has certainly outlasted by a factor of more than three, the politics of communism (240 years to 73 years) and the insipid aspirations of socialism which has still to find a proper place, despite 150 years of the intelligensia masturbation of itself.”

to quote you “No more shallow than the blindly anti US chants I recall of him at Monash 20 odd years ago.”
From the brief points above I would surmise, nothing has changed.

But I welcome his articles. Through them he exposes himself and the politics of the left as the shallow, worthless shams and faux-compassion, full of the weasel words which give that warm feeling most commonly associated with incontinence.

I would note however, free speech is one of the first things to disappear under the style of politics he endorses, regardless of whether he agrees with it or not.

Viniger Joe wrote: "Tet was a political win for the VC and the North but by any measure a complete military disaster for them."

Apologists for the war have a propensity to dwell on the supposed military achievements of the US and its Saigon puppets rather than the rights and wrongs of that conflict.

To put the military performance of the NLF and NVA in its proper perspective it is worth reading the abovementioned "The Vietnam Wars" (p217).

For the first time the war was brought directly to the cities.
... The fighting was astonishingly fierce. In Saigon, a force of
one thousand NLF troops fought eleven thousand combined American
and ARVN troops to a standstill; it took three weeks to subdue them.
Hue was quickly occupied, and a coalition municipal government
drawn from those who had been active in the 1966 Buddhist Struggle
Movement administered the city. ... "Joking and laughing, the
soldiers walk in the streets without showing any fear. ... They
give an impression of discipline and good training. ... Numerous
civilians brought them great quantities of food. It didn't seem that
these residents were being coerced in any way." For almost a month
the NLF flag flew over the citadel, until the Marines, bombing and
strafing from the air, fighting street by street, house, by house,
retook the city. "Nothing I saw during the Korean War, or in the
Vietnam war so far," Robert Shaplen wrote as he toured the city, "has
been so terrible in terms of destruction and despair, as what I saw
in Hue." Of Hue's 17,134 houses, 9,776 were completely destroyed;
3,169 seriously damaged. (The figure was almost as high in the rest
of Thua Thien Province.)

Just as the 1944 Warsaw uprising was a costly military defeat for the insurgents, so too was the Tet Offensive for the Vietnamese. However, the fact they were defeated by the vastly superior firepower of a ruthless enemy should not detract from their heroism or the justice of their cause.