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href="https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/03/12/vietnam-will-win-the-peoples-revolutionary-party/">https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/03/12/vietnam-will-win-the-peoples-revolutionary-party/</a></font>
<h1 id="reader-title">Vietnam Will Win: The People’s
Revolutionary Party</h1>
<div id="reader-credits" class="credits">by Wifred Burchett -
March 12, 2018<br>
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<p>By the end of the 1954-59 period of peaceful struggle
against the Diem repression, former communists who
survived were either in hiding in the jungle or were
living quite literally underground in holes and tunnels,
fed by some devoted peasants, emerging at night to visit
a few trusted friends and trying to keep alive some
sparks of hope for better days.</p>
<p>Out of 32 members of the former executive committee for
the Saigon-Gia Dinh area, only one survived. In Phu Yen
out of the 23 members of the provincial committee, there
was only one survivor and none at all from the district
committees. The situation in Phu Yen was typical,
especially for the central provinces controlled by Ngo
Dinh Can. The extermination of such a very high
proportion of top Communist Party cadres was part of the
terrible price paid for loyally observing the line of
peaceful political struggle. In leading this struggle,
the cadres inevitably exposed themselves and were marked
down for eventual extermination.</p>
<p>Once armed resistance started in 1959, surviving
communists and other militants of the anti-French
resistance war formed an “Association of Former
Resistance Fighters,” and after the founding of the NLF
in December 1960, the Association was transformed into
the People’s Revolutionary Party (PRP), which together
with the Democratic Party (founded in 1945) and the
Radical Socialist Party (founded in 1960) comprise the
three parties that constituted the political backbone of
the NLF leadership.</p>
<p>In February 1964 and again in February 1965, I had
lengthy discussions with leaders of the PRP, including
Tran Nam Trung, assistant secretary general, and Tran
Bach Dang, a member of the Central Committee responsible
for questions of propaganda. At these meetings the PRP
view on the war and how it would develop was set out in
detail.</p>
<p>At the first meeting in 1964, Tran Nam Trung<a
href="#_edn1" name="_ednref1">[1]</a> pointed out that
the United States was “rapidly approaching the fullest
development of special war and it is possible that
within the next 12 months or so, they will go over to
limited war,” using their own troops. We think that even
if the Americans put in 500,000 troops we can beat them.</p>
<p>“If we base ourselves on the Algerian experience,” he
continued, “we see that even if they put in a million
troops we can beat them, though they could cause us
plenty of difficulties. There are threats to attack the
DRV. It is madness to speak of attacking the DRV, but it
would be even greater madness for the Americans to do
it. They will never get anywhere with bluff and threats
against us. They use threats as an ace card; they ought
to throw it away. If the Americans intervene in a small
way, a small defeat awaits them; if they intervene in a
big way, a big defeat awaits them.</p>
<p>“This is not bluff on our part. We have fought for
nearly five years and we get stronger every year. We are
ready for a ten-year struggle. If Maxwell Taylor [then
chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff] says he is
ready for five more years, then we are ready for 15… We
will fight as long as necessary until we get peace,
independence, neutrality and democracy, the four
cardinal points of the NLF program. The leaders not only
of the NLF but also of our party support these four
points. This is not a propaganda tactic. It is based on
scientific analysis of the situation. Communists are
preponderant in the armed struggle, but we completely
accept and support Front policy, including neutrality.
The Front encompasses all parties, including ours, and
all of us are for the policy of neutrality. The Front
policy on this is also our policy.”</p>
<p>At this time I could not help wondering whether the PRP
leaders were not overestimating the resistance potential
of the NLF. The idea of a 10 or 15-year struggle and
standing up to half a million U.S. troops seemed
somewhat far-fetched. But more than four years have
passed since then, the Americans already have over half
a million troops in the South and it would be a bold man
indeed who would say the NLF is not capable of fighting
on for another five or ten years. At that time I asked
how the PRP leadership saw future developments and also
to what extent they considered the experiences in South
Vietnam valid for other countries where wars of national
liberation might be waged. This is the essence of what
each of the half-dozen top leaders had to say on these
points:</p>
<p>“We are fighting against a new type of imperialism,
neocolonialism. This is the most perfected type of
imperialism known till now, the most complete from all
points of view. We cannot yet draw final conclusions,
but the leadership of our party is convinced that with
our own forces and within our own conditions, we can win
this struggle.</p>
<p>“A big task has been imposed but if we can solve this,
it will be an historic victory. Vital for this is a
correct evaluation of the enemy and his intentions. The
enemy’s strength – everyone sees this clearly. His
weaknesses are not so apparent. The essence of the
matter is a correct evaluation of the strength of U.S.
imperialism. To see only the might and strength of the
enemy is to make an incorrect, unbalanced evaluation. It
is not easy for all Vietnamese to evaluate this
correctly, but we are convinced that we have now made a
correct evaluation, not based on books but on practice;
not as seen from the outside but as seen from the
inside, based on our day-to-day experiences and struggle
we cannot say whether our conclusions are valid
elsewhere, but we are now convinced that they are
correct for Vietnam.</p>
<p>“After the Geneva Agreements we had no armed forces, no
state power; the enemy held everything in his hands and
for five years the position was very unfavorable for us.
We were in a precarious position, one of retreat. In
1959, after we had reached our lowest point, we decided
to launch an armed struggle, even though this had to be
started at first against a powerful, well-armed enemy by
people without arms in their hands and mostly locked up
behind barbed wire in the concentration camps called
strategic hamlets. We realized quite well that U.S.
imperialism was very powerful and that this was our real
enemy. But we knew that our own strength was with the
people, who would never resign themselves to living
under U.S. imperialism.</p>
<p>“So we rose up in 1959 and our experience till now has
been that though it is very difficult to fight against
U.S. imperialism, with correct leadership it is
impossible not to win. Today we control two-thirds of
the territory and about half the population.</p>
<p>“Our struggle is led exclusively by the people, by the
forces we have set up ourselves. None of the leaders of
the Front or the PRP has ever left South Vietnam during
the past ten years. Outside aid could help us but the
efforts of the South Vietnamese people themselves must
always be the decisive factor.</p>
<p>“We consider that our struggle must take a
political-military form – the most suitable for the
South Vietnamese people in the present concrete
situation. We don’t say this is good for all people, for
all countries, under all conditions. In general, there
are two forms of revolutionary struggle:</p>
<p>“Armed insurrection in the towns in which the workers
rise up with the help of elements among the bourgeoisie
and the existing armed forces. Lenin used this method in
the October revolution. After seizing power in the
towns, then comes the turn of the countryside. An
insurrection of such a type requires a long period of
education of the masses, a long period of political
struggle in the towns.</p>
<p>“Armed struggle in the countryside, organization of
armed forces for a long struggle. Gradual encirclement
of the towns and finally their seizure.</p>
<p>“These are the two typical forms. But one must take
into account the specific conditions in each country.
Our resistance war against the French was of the second
type. We had broadly achieved the encirclement of the
towns but the Geneva ceasefire was signed before we
actually liberated them.</p>
<p>“The fundamental question is the seizure of power and
our present armed struggle is one of the ways of seizing
power. We have the necessary, basic conditions to wage
this new form of struggle. We use the violence of the
masses against the violence of the enemy. We use
political struggle, as well as other legal forms of
struggle, to deepen the contradictions within the enemy
ranks.</p>
<p>“How do we conceive overall strategy in our struggle?
First, the enemy appears this time in the form of
neo-colonialisms, that is imperialism, dominating our
country through puppets – a teleguided system of
control. They use slogans of democracy, independence,
freedom. Thus the puppets have some relative
independence if compared to the classical form of
colonialism. But this also permits us to wage legal
forms of struggle against local government and its
organs, and the South Vietnamese people are very
experienced in this long, patient form of struggle.</p>
<p>“Second, the South Vietnamese people are politically
conscious to a high degree and this is expressed in the
form of their organizations and the spirit of their
organizations. Ours is not a spontaneous but an
organized movement although there were elements of
spontaneity in the first acts of armed resistance. We
have organized an army of political struggle.</p>
<p>“Third, the South Vietnamese masses and their political
leadership see that for final, total victory, we have to
modify the relation of forces. We have many troops, how
many workers and students? The puppet troops can never
be the basis for launching an insurrection. At a certain
point, they will not resist us; some will change sides,
but we cannot count on them fighting till the end for
the revolution. Our political agitation among them is
aimed at neutralizing them and encouraging individual
desertions to our ranks where we can transform their
ideology. But it would be a dangerous illusion to base
our strategy on using puppet troops as an instrument of
the revolution.</p>
<p>“The above form of political-military struggle is the
form we have decided on to carry our fight through to
victory. It is based on a sober, scientific analysis of
the concrete conditions of South Vietnam. The enemy to a
certain extent understands our strategy but can do
nothing about it. The Americans and their puppets would
have to change the whole nature of the war to neutralize
our strategy. They may do this, but then we will develop
a new one suitable to the changed conditions.</p>
<p>“To sum up: our Central Committee’s analysis is that if
we exert all our efforts we can achieve complete victory
in carrying through a democratic revolution. To achieve
this, among other things we have to mobilize and educate
the masses; increase the effectives in our armed forces
to gradually change the balance of forces to the point
where we can defeat the enemy, even in his strongholds
in the cities.”</p>
<p>This was the gist of the PRP’s outlook in early
February 1964, the fundamental strategy of the most
revolutionary force within the NLF and which, in a
stripped down form, was the strategy adopted by the
Front’s own Central Committee. Leading members of the
Front told me they were quite content to let PRP experts
play a dominant role in formulating the fundamental
lines of military strategy, but that in evolving
political strategy PRP members within the NLF leadership
carried no more weight than any others. At a meeting
with almost the same PRP leaders exactly a year later,
the discussion centered far more on the PRP attitude
toward vital aspects of NLF political strategy, starting
with neutrality. The replies which, as at our previous
meeting I noted down word for word, were as follows:</p>
<p>“We communists also fight for neutrality. Many think
this is a bluff. The enemy says it is a temporary tactic
of the NLF, that the communists would never really
permit it. But we communists are nothing if not
realists. Neutrality is the correct policy for the whole
historical period. It has a key place in the NLF
program, together with independence, democracy and
peace. These four principles are realistic and
reasonable and we are determined to attain them. It is
around these four points that the broadest unity can be
obtained, for all sections of the population can support
them. Neutrality is a point for which the PRP fought as
firmly as anyone within the NLF Central Committee,
because there was some opposition to this from
compatriots who understood that neutrality for the South
would necessarily retard reunification and place us
outside the socialist camp after victory. We have taken
all this into account but we are determined to continue
to fight for all four aims. There will be no wavering or
vacillating on this.</p>
<p>“You can find out for yourself wherever you go in the
liberated zones, and even in the enemy-controlled areas
if you could get there, that everyone, from all sections
of the population, guerrillas, old people, peasants,
workers, intellectuals, business people – they all agree
with these four points – and most people you speak to
are determined to fight to achieve them. But the enemy
wants to divide them, to accept peace and independence
for instance, but not neutrality and democracy, or some
other combinations, peace without independence, for
instance, but for us the four terms are inseparable and
this is the unanimous view of the NLF and PRP
leadership. Peace, yes, but not at any price.</p>
<p>“Neutrality for us means diplomatic relations with all
countries that recognize the independence of South
Vietnam. It means we accept unconditional aid from
whatever quarter it comes, including from western
countries, France, England – even the U.S. – if the
latter recognizes real South Vietnamese independence,
withdraws its troops and offers aid without political
strings.</p>
<p>“Democracy for us means a real national, people’s
democracy, based on the unity of workers, peasants,
intellectuals and patriotic bourgeoisie of all
tendencies. We are carrying out a national democratic
revolution with the unity of all sections of the
population as a basic element. We have to think of it at
two levels, the present rather low level based on an
alliance between workers, peasants and the lower strata
of the bourgeoisie, which we consider as a sort of
people’s democracy, and on the higher level of still
broader unity which we are aiming at and which we could
call a national democratic union to include the upper
strata of the bourgeoisie.</p>
<p>“Our present people’s democratic alliance must approve
measures acceptable to this upper strata as well. It may
seem strange for outsiders to find communists fighting
for the interests of the upper class, but we understand
the vital necessity for national union at the highest
level, not only now during the period of struggle but
for the years of the postwar reconstruction as well. But
‘unity’ also has its specific content. It implies mutual
concessions; we have elements who accept the word
‘democracy’ but think of it only in terms of bourgeois
democracy, that is, exclusively to protect the interests
of the capitalists and landlords; there are others who
think of it exclusively in the sense of expropriating
the capitalists and landlords. ‘Unity’ for us means
harmonizing the various concepts.</p>
<p>“We propose the eventual formation of a national,
democratic coalition government based on the highest
attainable level of national unity. Within such a
government there could be elements almost at the
opposite end of the political spectrum from us,
pro-Gaullist nationalists, for instance, even
pro-American nationalists as long as they break with the
puppets and are for a genuine national independence. We
want a stable government which can be supported by every
genuine patriot who rejects selling out the country’s
interests for a pocketful of dollars.</p>
<p>“Our NLF leaders are very reasonable but also very
determined men, true patriots in the fullest sense of
the term. We know the masses are behind us and that the
basic policies adopted after very long and completely
democratic procedures are such that not only the masses
but city intellectuals and business people, even
officials in the puppet administration and army, can
support them. We think that within a short time, the
United States will adopt one of two courses: aggression
with a U.S. expeditionary force, or to push their
puppets into demanding an end to the war. In case they
adopt the latter course, they will try to divide the
Front. All sorts of formulas are already being peddled
around: ‘Peace but without the NLF,’ ‘Peace with the NLF
but excluding the communists,’ ‘Peace but with U.S.
bases and garrisons,’ ‘Peace but an alliance with the
West.’ We consider it more likely that the Americans
will intervene directly, but should they push the second
course, they will never succeed in dividing the Front.
They will never succeed in setting up a coalition
government with the NLF from which the PRP would be
excluded. And as long as the enemy tries such tricks, we
will have only one course, to fight on for a clear-cut,
decisive victory.</p>
<p>“Just as we consider ‘peace at any price’ unacceptable,
we also reject ‘unity at any price.’ Land reform, for
instance, is a question we have to tackle now, within
our concept of the national democratic alliance which
the Front is now creating. It is a question to which we
and other leading NLF organs are devoting great
attention right now.</p>
<p>“We must tackle land reform and establish a unified
policy. There is a limited land reform policy now in the
liberated areas, but we need a national democratic
resolution on this matter. Land was distributed during
the anti-French resistance war, but the Diemists took
most of it back. We think that for a certain number of
landlords we will buy their land at decent prices, not
for cash payments but in NLF administration bonds which
we will be scrupulous in honoring later. The peasants
are the main force of the revolution, so we have to
satisfy their needs now. It is where land reform has
been most energetically tackled that we have the firmest
support from the peasants. When the Saigon authorities
round them up at gun point and drive them off their
newly gained lands to herd them into ‘strategic
hamlets,’ their hostility to the regime is total and all
the able-bodied want is a gun in their hands to win the
right to be free on their own lands again.</p>
<p>“For foreigners, plantation owners and others, we
propose that their property rights be respected as long
as they respect our four points and our laws. They can
continue their economic activities after the war and
even extend them. We can also accept foreign investments
where these do not conflict with our sovereignty.</p>
<p>“Peace and independence we do not think need defining.
They are obviously inseparable. Independence must be
total and there can be no peace without independence.
Such a peace would be a contradiction in terms, the
surest way to restart the war.”</p>
<p>This ended the clarification of policies, but a few
days earlier systematic air attacks against North
Vietnam had been started and I asked for comments on
this:</p>
<p>“At the moment,” replied Tran Bach Dang, “all sorts of
special laws are in force in Saigon and other
enemy-controlled territory, a state of emergency,
martial law, curfew, etc. The main reason is the wave of
indignation that has swept the country. Even those who
are anticommunist have turned against the Americans
because their national sentiments have been outraged.
What sort of a nationalist must one be to rub his hands
with glee over the bombing of peaceful fishing villages?
Even the majority of the Catholic refugees from the
North are angry about this… Their villages were the
first to be hit and they all have relatives still in
those villages.</p>
<p>“We consider this is probably a prelude to sending U.S.
combat troops here in the near future. The puppet regime
is crumbling due to very heavy blows we dealt their
mobile reserves in the past couple of months.</p>
<p>“They will create a lot of difficulties for us, but the
enemy’s difficulties are still greater. To wage war you
must have troops; and troops that can do something have
to have morale. The Americans have lots of dollars but
you can’t buy morale with dollars. We still think the
most the Americans can put in of their own troops is
half a million. But if they put in a million we can
handle them. If they put in more – and the Algerian
experience shows they would need more – would the DRV
remain inactive? Or China? Or the Soviet Union and other
socialist countries?”</p>
<p>To my question as to how long the war was likely to
last, the reply was the following:</p>
<p>“We consider that by the beginning of this year we had
decisively defeated the American ‘special war.’ If they
want to try us out in ‘limited war,’ then let them come.
It will only hasten the final defeat of U.S.
imperialism. We are not seeking war with the U.S., but
we aren’t afraid of the outcome. They will also be
defeated in ‘limited war’ and their prestige will suffer
accordingly. We know the Americans have plenty of
strength in reserve and are capable of all sorts of
tricks. Our difficulties are great but they are getting
less. Their difficulties are great and they are getting
bigger. It is only because we have prepared ourselves
and the people for a long war that we can shorten the
road to victory. We cannot fix any dates but the final
outcome for us is clear – we will win. We are not in a
hurry and the war is not costing us $20 million a day [a
reference to the $7 billion a year the war was costing
the U.S. about that time] . We can continue for as long
as it takes.”</p>
<p>As a conclusion to this discussion the PRP leaders
expressed the view that the PRP strategy of waging a
political military struggle had been correct up to that
time and that this was proven by the complete
military-political bankruptcy of the Saigon regime,
which was on the verge of total collapse. If the
Americans sent in an expeditionary force, as seemed most
likely, the basic line would not change. It would still
be a political military struggle. Thought was already
being given to reforming the Liberation Army to cope
with U.S. combat divisions. Temporary advantages for the
Americans because of their overwhelming material
superiority would be offset in the long run by political
factors, chief of which was that the entire Vietnamese
people would now see that the NLF had been right from
the beginning, that the real enemy was U.S. imperialism;
the PRP position within the NLF would be still further
strengthened because of the accuracy of their analyzes.
Even the first rumors of an American expeditionary force
(the first elements started arriving less than three
weeks later) had produced the opposite effect of that
which the Americans surely intended, which was tighter
unity than ever within the leading organs of the Front.
The government of Tran Van Huong (it was the eighth in
the 15 months since the overthrow of Diem; Huong at that
time had just been kicked out and was hiding in the
British Embassy) had pretended it wanted to create
civilian government and tried to delude people into
thinking it was “democratic” but it was seen by the
people for what it really was – just another U.S. puppet
government which continued the war.</p>
<p>The real face of the Huong government and that of
Nguyen Xuan Oanh which succeeded it, in the PRP view,
was the manhunts, the press gangs, martial law, chaos
and dictatorship, a complete denial of democracy,
nothing but grief and suffering with economic
difficulties growing every day, inflation running wild
and business at zero point. The masses in the cities,
including the Buddhists, wanted radical changes because
all the various coups brought no changes for them at
all. A year previous the NLF slogan of “peace and
neutrality” had been popular but no one dared speak of
it openly. Now people in the cities, among them the
Buddhists, were beginning to fight openly for this. A
certain number of prominent intellectuals and elements
within the bourgeoisie had also started to speak up
openly about “peace and neutrality.”</p>
<p>The present situation was a result of the Front’s
military successes on the battlefield and unremitting
work on the political front. The PRP line had been right
until now, but the leadership was ready to reexamine
tactics in the light of American intentions which should
soon become clear.</p>
<p>This was the situation as the PRP leadership saw it in
February 1965. Our discussions took place in a small hut
in the center of about a dozen bamboo frame,
barracks-type buildings with roofs of pleated palm
leaves, spaced among clearings hacked out of a dense
patch of rain forest. I had cycled for almost a week on
end from one of the NLF’s base headquarters, emerging
only rarely from the dense forest to cross clearings a
few hundred yards long, to plunge again into the jungle
– impenetrable except for the narrow cycle tracks which
had been slashed out. The buildings, actually roofs
supported by bamboo frames with open walls, were
classrooms for PRP cadres who had been pulled back from
all the NLF’s operational zones, some of them having
traveled months to reach the spot. They were attending
study classes for the coming battle of the cities; their
lecturers being none other than the top leadership of
the PRP, despite the fact that this was at the height of
the 1964-65 operational season, with the NLF forces in
the midst of their biggest offensive till that time.</p>
<p>“It is no problem for us to take over the rest of the
countryside,” explained Tran Bach Dang, “but we have to
prepare for the final round in the cities. This involves
new and complicated tasks, including careful
organizational work within the cities themselves and new
battle tactics. We have withdrawn a large proportion of
our best cadres from the countryside to prepare them for
the new task. They will go back into the cities
themselves.”</p>
<p>The assault on the cities would not take place until
three years later, for the American decision to
intervene directly with its expeditionary force required
the NLF to regroup its forces, and the PRP military
experts to concentrate on strategies and tactics
appropriate to the new situation. Although the
commitment of U.S. forces delayed by three years the
actual timing of the attacks, long-range planning had
already started at the time of my first discussions with
PRP leaders, and the tactics worked out in the jungle
schools in February 1965 were applied during the series
of offensives against the towns and major military bases
which started at the 1968 Lunar New Year.</p>
<p><strong>Notes.</strong></p>
<p><a href="#_ednref1" name="_edn1">[1]</a> Tran Nam Trung
was, and is at the time of writing, the NLF’s “Minister
of Defense” as chairman of the Military Affairs
Commission.</p>
<p><strong>NEXT: Chapter 14 – The Long Hard Road</strong></p>
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