- The Guardian
- Issue #2110
Photo: kremlin.ru – flickr.com (CC BY 4.0)
The communist world is rattled and shaken by the death of Nguyen Phu Trong.
Born in 1944, from an “average peasant” family background, Nguyen Phu Trong lived through all the tragedies and triumphs of the establishment of socialism in Vietnam. Trained as a philologist, he worked for Tạp chí Cộng Sản (the Communist Review) through key periods in Vietnamese history, and became one of Vietnam’s top Marxist theorists before ascending to the Central Committee and later the presidency and general secretaryship of the Party, the highest leadership position in Vietnam, in which he served a longer tenure than any previous leader.
In recent years, international communists have come to know him as the author of groundbreaking works and speeches in the Marxist-Leninist tradition, most significantly the book Theory and Practice of Socialism in Vietnam, and the essay ‘Some theoretical and practical issues on socialism and the path towards socialism in Vietnam.’
In that extraordinary essay, Nguyen Phu Trong charts the larger patterns of the triumph and failure of capitalism and the ups and downs of socialism across the centuries. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, and Yugoslavia, and the slow demise of socialist and national-liberation states in Africa and the Middle East, those socialist countries who continued to stand steadfastly for their systems underwent extreme pressure. Amid the financialisation of the globe, sticking to the socialist path was not easy, as everything seemed to point away from it. But as the new century wore on, capitalism’s failures piled on one after another. He writes:
“The economic and financial crises are accompanied by the energy and food crises, the exhaustion of natural resources and the degradation of the environment and ecosystem. These are posing monumental challenges to the existence and development of mankind. They are the consequences of a process of economic and social development that crowned profit as its supreme end, that esteemed the possession of wealth and consumption of material as the yardstick of civilisation, and that upholds individual interest as the pillar of society. Such are the core characteristics of the capitalist mode of production and consumption. The ongoing crises once again prove the economic, social and ecological unsustainability of capitalism. According to many scientists, the present crises are impossible to be fully resolved within the framework of a capitalist regime.”
Nguyen Phu Trong then moves to examine how socialism can strike out against capitalism and put an end to this misery. He looks at the ‘Doi Moi’* period in Vietnam, and the dialectics of productive forces and social relations. Trong also examines the issue of socialist democracy; how socialism and democracy advance simultaneously. He addresses the fundamental truth of socialist construction; that there can be no economics without society. It’s not enough to just develop the productive forces. There’s also a need to create new socialist social relations and new levels of cultural enrichment.
The mark of great Marxists is their attention and care for the development of society and advanced culture, for raising social and cultural level through the material basis. Nguyen enjoins us to never lose sight of the ultimate goal of communism and the Communist Party – to build a socialist society:
The socialist society that the Vietnamese people are making all efforts to build is a society where the people are well-off, the nation is strong and the people are owners, a society characterised by democracy, equality, and civilisation. It possesses a highly developed economy on the basis of a modern productive force and suitable and progressive production relations. It enjoys an advanced culture imbued with national identity. Its people are entitled to well being, freedom and happiness and are blessed with opportunities for comprehensive development. Ethnic groups in the Vietnamese community are equal, united, respectful and supportive of each other to grow together. It has a rule-of-law socialist state of the people, by the people and for the people under the leadership of the Communist Party.
Nguyen Phu Trong enters the pantheon of great communists, for his astute grasp of the fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism, and his role in creatively adapting Marxism-Leninism to the conditions of Vietnam. His loss is a loss too for the wider socialist world. As the Communist Party of China Central Committee put it in their condolence message, Nguyen Phu Trong was a “staunch Marxist” who made outstanding contributions to “socialist construction, and the development of the world socialist movement.”
They add: “Eternal glory to Comrade Nguyen Phu Trong.”
