DSpace at VNU: Ho Chi Minh thought: An important contribution to the field of comparative political thought

One o f the quests o f comparative political thought is to include in the conversation thinkers who can weigh in on universal questions on political issues such as self-determination, po

HO CHI MINH THOUGHT:

AN IMPORTANT CONTRIBUTION TO THE FIELD O F

COMPARATIVE POLITICAL THOUGHT

Grace Cheng*

Introduction

Vietnam’s wars against France and the U.S from 1945-197-2 and its socialist revolution have been acknowledged as critical events in modem history However, there has been little inquiry about the thought o f the minds behind these efforts Studies o f the “Vietnamese Wars” and the Vietnamese revolution are largely taken

up by historians or those adopting an historical approach Thus, they focius on giving relief to the context and the strategic choices and actions o f the ¡actors involved, as well as their significance However, much less attention has been given to the political thinking behind these achievements, which are typically attributed simply to the nationalist sentiment o f Vietnamese actors or to their adherence to Marxist-Leninist ideology, as if they were merely guided by thes.e pre­ determined frameworks o f thought

Given the historical significance o f Vietnam’s victories in their 20th century wars and its revolution, it is logical that some o f the actors involved in these achievements can offer some insight into modem politics and contribute to political thought generally One o f the quests o f comparative political thought is to include in the conversation thinkers who can weigh in on universal questions on political issues such as self-determination, political agency, sovereignty, justice., and freedom Among modem Vietnamese thinkers, Ho Chi Minh may be considered one of these However, outside of Vietnam, only select speeches or statements are well-known, while there is only very superficial understanding about Ho’s specific perspectives on these ideas

Since its Seventh N ational C ongress in 1991, the V ietnam ese C om m unist Party has supported the system atic study o f H o Chi M inh’s thoughts This effort, oi

Ph.D., Associate Professor o f Political Science, Department o f Social Sciences, Hawaii Pacific University Emai: gcheng@hpu.edu.

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course, is significant to Vietnam, as part o f its intellectual and political heritage and

as part o f the ideological foundation of the party Therefore, this study has its own approach to Ho Chi M inh's thoughts, emphasizing the particular nature of Ho’s ideas to the Vietnamese setting and its significance for the Vietnamese nation However, the argument may be made that, given the extent to which the Vietnamese wars o f independence and revolution - o f which Ho was a principal architect - inspired national liberation movements and postcolonial peoples elsewhere in the world, Ho Chi Minh’s thoughts are not only of significance to the history of Vietnamese political thought, but to political thought more broadly

Ho Chi Minh is referenced by international authors in works, particularly on the topic o f decolonization Therefore, there is already some recognition of the political thought of Ho Chi Minh as a contribution to political thought in the modem era However, there has yet to be any study o f Ho’s political writings on a systematic level by scholars outside o f Vietnam The new subfield o f comparative political thought calls for just such inquiries into the works o f thinkers from an expanded range o f regions o f the world There are a variety o f reasons for this, as comparative political thought seeks to address a number o f gaps in conventional studies of political thought

This paper introduces the approach of scholars o f comparative political thought and explores how the study o f Ho Chi Minh’s thought may contribute to this subfield o f political theory While there have been collections o f Ho Chi Minh's works published in Vietnam, such as the 12-volume Ho Chi Minh Toan Tap (Hochiminh selected works), published by the Nha Xuat Ban Chinh Tri Quoc Gia (National Politics Publishing House), this paper is not based on a thorough survey

o f these writings, as such an effort deserves much more extensive and careful study Instead, this essay outlines the dimensions of Ho's thought for further exploration towards the development o f an understanding o f his thought for students of comparative political thought

Comparative political thought

The study o f political thought has largely tended to confine inquiry to thinkers from the immediate national or regional context of the country in which the study is pursued The study may also include study o f prominent thinkers, such as Thomas Hobbes, Immanuel Kant, and Karl Marx, depending on the relevance of the thinkers

to the political and intellectual traditions o f the country In Western countries, the study of political theory has largely excluded non-western thinkers Western theories of “political culture” - o f which Huntington’s concept of the “clash of civilizations” is probably the best known - dismiss the potential for non-western

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traditions to conceive o f emancipatory political ideas on their own, as these theorisis tend to essentialize cultures outside o f the West as authoritarian, irrational, predisposed to order at the expense o f freedom, etc Therefore, modem ideals of freedom, equality, rights, etc are attributed solely to the Western tradition of political thought

Recently, however, a number o f scholars, seeking to integrate the study of thinkers from beyond the West, have called for the formation o f the comparative political thought subfield One o f these scholars, Fred Dallmayr, has argued that political thought should no longer be restricted by geographical setting but should

be explored at a global level (Dallmayr 1997, 421) The motivation for investigating the political thought o f an expanded range o f thinkers from different regions thus may be linked to globalization, as Dallmayr asserts: “a mode o f theorizing that takes seriously the ongoing process o f globalization, a mode which entails, among other things, the growing proximity and interpretation o f cultures” (Dallmayr 2004, 249) Furthermore, globalization has prompted scholars to become conscious o f the diffusion o f norms and ideas, and this gives rise to varying as well as overlapping interpretations by actors working in distinct historical sociopolitical contexts and from a variety o f different intellectual traditions Accordingly, the comparison of works by different authors may shed light into how a particular political idea or value is conceived, achieved, and/or experienced by actors operating in a range of distinct historical conditions and from distinct intellectual heritages

Among the purposes o f comparative political thought, therefore, is the comparison o f different conceptions o f political ideas, such as equality and freedom,

in order to gain more critical perspective, not simply to examine how they are interpreted in particular historical and cultural contexts In this way, comparative political thought inquires into the epistemic value o f political ideas As a resut, a number of works comparing political ideas have offered critical evaluation of conventional interpretations of such concepts For example, Ackerly (2005) has demonstrated that certain elements in the Confucian tradition may not only facilitate democracy and enjoyment o f its benefits in East Asian countries, but also in the rest

of the world, including the West, where democratic societies may be undergoing crisis as a result of the predominance o f neoliberal ideology and its impact on serial relations and institutions Ackerly’s work represents an example of what And-ew March (2009) refers to as the critical-transformative purpose o f comparative political thought Her inquiry into Confucianism demonstrates, as Dallmayr put it, “the p>int

of comparative political theory is precisely to move toward a more gemine universalism, and beyond the spurious ‘universality’ traditionally claimed by the Western canon and by some recent intellectual movements” (Dallmayr 2004, 253)

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Therefore, comparative political thought challenges the tendency among Western scholars historically to regard solely the claims o f canonical Western thinkers as possessing universal quality, while characterizing the ideas of modem thinkers from other world regions as merely derivative o f Western ideas This has been the case in the instances where Western authors have referenced the political ideas of Ho Chi Minh (see, for example, Ishay 2009: PAGE) Certainly, ideas originating from the “Western tradition” were important in Ho’s political thought,

as evidenced in his explicit references to the ideas o f the Enlightenment, American revolutionaries, Marx and Engels, and Lenin, among others However, such commentaries imply that Ho’s thinking on these concepts is only a culturally idiosyncratic interpretation o f the original ideas o f Western thinkers

Against this approach, comparative political thought resists the suggestion that only Western ideas are original and universal while the thought o f other modem thinkers are derivative of Western thought and/or particular to historical concerns of their specific communities or both The notion that modernism is synonymous with Western civilization suggests that there is only one model o f modernity, which can only be achieved through internalizing Western frameworks o f thought This line o f thinking has historically justified colonialism, while modernism in non-western states is attributed to the attempted imposition o f Western civilization

Dallmayr (2004) and Euben (2002), furthermore, assert that the imposition of Western frames and concepts to non-Westem contexts represents “an act of hegemony and domination that ought to be counteracted by exploring the ways in which non-Westem thinkers discuss political questions” (cited in March 2009, 541) Some scholars are concerned with how universal political concepts are reframed differently by thinkers of different backgrounds (Lomperis 2008) In contrast, there are those who emphasize nativist and autonomous approaches to politics (Alatas 2006) For example, scholars have shown that “modem” ideas organically emerged among thinkers in Calcutta, Istanbul, Beijing, and elsewhere in earlier centuries, independent o f discourses in the West (Pankaj Mishra, Narayana Rao, Sanjay Subrahmanyam, and David Shulman) These have a distinct quality o f their own, as Shulman (2012) distinguishes between “the emergent indigenous modernities o f the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries” and “the impoverished colonial modernities,” which are plagued with the loss o f cultural confidence

Whatever the case, rather than presume that ideas and values of universal quality only originate from Western political thought, scholars o f comparative political thought appreciate that there have been fundamental questions about what constitutes a just political and social order that thinkers from all different

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backgrounds have inquired throughout history Therefore, comparative politcsl thought may be thought o f as an exercise in intercivilizational dialogue And, wiile acknowledging the cross-fertilization of ideas between and among peoples;, >ni should not presume that Western ideas inspired Ho Chi Minh’s thinking alout politics and that he merely reinterpreted these ideas through the cultural lens olhis particular intellectual upbringing This suggests that Ho would not have valued slf- determination, freedom, and equality if he were not introduced to these iteas through Western writings We should thus question the assumption that Ho <nly conceived o f self-determination, freedom, etc because he was exposed to Enlightenment thought, particularly since Ho’s understanding o f these po-lilcal values challenges the ways in which these concepts have been conventiorully defined in the Western tradition

Political thought transcending discrete categories of “traditions”

Vietnamese scholars have noted that Ho Chi Minh not only found Marxim- Leninism useful in his struggle to gain self-determination for Vietnam ind revolutionize the social order, but also integrated aspects o f his Conifudan heritage, along with “revolutionary and humanist constituents o f bouirgois ideology.” 1 Other scholars have also noted H o’s preference for the typially austere village lifestyle o f the northern and central regions o f Vietnam in shiajing his “revolutionary ethics.”2

From the perspective o f Vietnamese studies it is important to understand the particular "Vietnamese" qualities alongside other influences believed to shapeHo Chi Minh's political thought For scholars o f comparative political thioight, historical and cultural factors are important to consider, but they are not the; nain focus o f concern, as they might be for students o f Vietnamese studies in genral Instead, the interest lies in the thought's contributions to ways o f thinkiinj of political concepts and values Nevertheless, although historical and cultural oor.ext are not presumed to determine the shape o f political thought, attention to the;mcan make clear how some assumptions which are typically treated as universal actully derive from highly contingent conditions For example, as this essay will dlisuss further below, Western conceptions of freedom and self-determination have ¡een shaped by some basic assumptions that reflect Western historical experience and

1 Pham Nhu Cuong, 1991, Special Issue on Ho Chi M in h ’s 100th Birth Centennial, Viiet Jam Social Sciences Review, p 7.

2 My translation o f the Vietnamese original: "Co dao due cach mang thi khi gap thuan I( van thanh cong cung van giu vung tinh than gian kho, chat phac, khicm ton " Ho Chii Mnh,

“Dao due cach m ang” (“Revolutionary Ethics” ), 1959.

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tlhat a rc th u s in c o m p a tib le w ith th o s e o f o th e r p e o p le s in th e w o rld W h ile th is d o e s

a o t m e an th a t o th e r c o n c e p tio n s o f th e se v a lu e s a re m o re v a lid o r a re w ith o u t th e ir

o w n c o n tin g e n t e le m e n ts , g r e a te r a w a re n e s s o f w h a t a re p a rtic u la ris tic

c h a r a c te r is tic s o f an id e a c a n s u p p o r t th e p u rs u it o f a m o re g e n u in e u n iv e rs a l

c o n c e p tio n o f fre e d o m , etc.

All political thought attempts to answer basic questions about politics, including the tensions between morality and expediency or between the individual amd the collective One question that may be considered by scholars of comparative political thought is whether there are consequences for how thinkers arrive at their

c onclusions about these questions if they view the world from the perspective of particular traditions, which are based on fundamentally distinct “starting points.” For example, Taoism begins with a cosmological perspective, while Enlightenment emphasizes the individual, while Christian and Enlightenment thinking rest on the premise that humans possess innate qualities while Confucianism emphasizes the process of becoming a person Scholars studying ancient or pre-modem political tlhought traditions Find that each tradition possesses an internal dialogue shaped by tihese premises (Black 2009) As a comparative exercise, they ask what each tiradition is missing in terms o f the scope o f their inquiry, that is, why they don’t ask certain questions that are pertinent about political life

Historically, these categories o f intellectual thought could be somewhat more clearly defined The tendency to categorize modem thinkers, however, is somewhat rmore problematic There are two general characterizations o f Ho Chi Minh’s political thought: as an example o f revolutionary thinking or modem Confucian humanism These seem antithetical to each other but they may be reconciled if they aire not treated as discrete categories As Euben points out it is difficult to “[mark]

o f f distinctively Western ways o f knowing” (Euben 2002, 246-247) For example,

w hile some authors assert that Ho’s Confucian heritage serves as one o f the bases from which he creatively adapted elements in order to construct a political thought unique to him (Duiker 2001), it is difficult to definitively attribute this to his Confucian heritage Similarly, despite the importance o f Marxism-Leninism in Ho Chi Minh’s political thought, Ho was far from a mere ideologue The study of Ho Chi Minh’s political thought would aim to transcend these categories of historical imtellectual traditions by appreciating the synthesis o f ideas in his thinking This rnieans that, despite the problem with limiting Ho Chi Minh’s thinking to any one tlhought tradition, it is useful to gain an appreciation o f the frameworks of uinderstanding that did shape Ho’s unique contributions to political thought

As noted earlier, the purpose o f the Vietnamese study of H o’s thought is dlistinct from those of scholars o f comparative political thought Nevertheless,

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though they are distinct enterprises, there is much that overlaps and therefore there

is much useful in existing Vietnamese works on Ho Chi Minh’s thoughts For example, when Vietnamese scholars refer to Ho Chi Minh as a "man o f culture," this emphasizes Ho’s rejection o f the radical cultural iconoclasm embraced by ideological purists At the basis o f H o’s conception o f the ideas is a humanism, which numerous authors have noted (such as Phuong in eds., Hac et al 2003, ch 7; while William Duiker (2001) has also characterized Ho as a "Confucian humanist") Specifically, the uniqueness o f Ho Chi Minh's contributions to anticolonial, revolutionary thought is his rectification o f an issue, which has been one of the generic criticisms o f Marxist-Leninist ideology as practiced in the former Sov iet Union and former Soviet satellite states: its overemphasis on scientific materialism,

to the detriment o f a humanist core Ho's humanism tempered the extreme adherence to class struggle found among some ideologues to offer instead a reconciliation o f class differences in the context o f the struggle for self- determination and social justice

Like many leading figures o f anti-colonial movements, H o’s role in the historical efforts in the struggle to end colonial rule and foreign domination over Vietnam has been acknowledged much more than his contributions to the concept

o f self-determination This is in part due to skepticism among Western thinkers about the concept o f self-determination itself They argue that under international law there is no concept o f a “right o f self-determination,” despite having accepted the principle prohibiting colonial rule since the end o f World War II Indeed, although colonial conquest is no longer tolerated, other interventionist projects which have been undertaken more frequently since the 1990s, such as international state-building and “regime change,” have pierced the veil o f sovereignty, reflecting continued resistance by Western actors to any conception o f self-determination as

an unqualified right

Thinkers from the liberal tradition, for whom individual liberty and rights are central, have historically rejected and presently rejected the notion o f an unqualified right of collective self-determination for two reasons: (1) the political nature of defining collectives to whom such a right should belong; and (2) the potential contradictions between the claims o f the individual and those made by the collective Therefore, from the liberal perspective collective entities are political constructions, whereas individual worth and dignity are inherent and thus transcend politics Because the liberal conception o f the individual is considered apolitical, in this way liberal thinkers regard the liberal conception of individual liberty and human rights as universal Accordingly, liberal thinkers have historically dismissed

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the claims of anticolonial thinkers who invoked rights in service o f their collectivist causes for self-determination and social justice This perspective is not confined to the anticolonial period More recently, for example, John Charvet and Elisa Kaczynska-Nay (2008) cite nationalism and claims to domestic sovereignty as the key obstacles to the promotion o f human rights worldwide

The concrete expression o f liberal political thought may be found in the historical practice of liberal actors, the endeavors that they have undertaken, and the institutions that they established Those outside o f liberal societies were affected by liberal thinking, as liberal ideas resulted in the differentiated normative international systems: one governing relations among Western states, on the one hand, and a separate one governing their pursuits in the nonwestem realm, on the other (Keene 2002) These parallel systems o f “international relations” persisted well into the twentieth century, as illustrated with the limited implementation o f Woodrow Wilson’s proclaimed goal o f making “the world safe for democracy and national self-determination,” which was only applied to European Christian people within the Russian, Austro-Hungarian, and Ottoman Empires Outside o f that sphere, the League o f Nations placed the people o f Africa, Eurasia, and the Pacific under Western mandatory powers (including the white minority government o f South Africa), which enjoyed extensive powers for the purpose o f promoting the “well­ being and development o f such people” (League Covenant, Article 22).1

Tutelage o f “less-advanced” nations by Western mandatory powers aimed at economic integration and the elimination o f “barbaric customs.”2 By justifying the postponement o f self-determination o f non-western peoples in this way, culture became politicized, a continuation o f colonial practice and anticolonial politics Among native intellectuals throughout the colonial period and, for some, the postcolonial period, the question o f native culture was central to political debates What distinguishes Ho Chi Minh from most other thinkers, as the characterization

1 The goal o f this w as to bring “civilization” to these “ less-advanced” nations, including econom ic integration and the elim ination o f “barbaric custom s” (Permanent M andates Commission re: “ Social, M oral, and Material Conditions o f the N atives”) As a result o f these mandates, European com panies significantly expanded their presence in the colonies, with native populations receiving much below the real value o f the materials extracted, while the mortality o f native populations rose as they were forced to be more productive, including in many cases providing com pulsory labor for “essential public works and services” and large infrastructure projects.

2 Permanent M andates Commission on the “ Social, M oral, and Material Conditions o f the

N atives,” cited by Anthony Anghie, Imperialism, Sovereignty, and the Making o f International Law (Cambridge University Press 2007), p 183.

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o f Ho Chi Minh as a “man o f culture” suggests, is that he did not internalize the colonial view o f indigenous and traditional culture, nor did he dwell on the anxieties that plagued those who lost confidence in their inherited culture This precisely what makes his work interesting to study As on Vietnamese source characterized,

Ho Chi Minh’s thoughts “creatively develop and apply Marxism-Leninism to the special conditions o f the Vietnamese revolution, along with inheriting and illustrating the traditions o f the Vietnamese people and the quintessence of mankind.”1 Rather than asserted the universality o f some ideas and the particularism and irrelevance o f ideas o f others, Ho seemed to move freely between the boundaries o f different intellectual traditions and cultures

In this way, although H o’s Declaration o f Independence emulates the language

o f the U.S Declaration o f Independence, his adaptation o f the text should not be presumed mere mimicry o f American political concepts Such a presumption leads

to the view, which U.S leaders held at the time, that Ho was an unsophisticated thinker who did not properly understand the liberal ideas in embodied in the U.S Declaration (Bradley 2000) One might entertain instead that Ho recognized his own ideas upon reading the U.S Declaration Furthermore, as history demonstrated, these ideas were understood very differently by Ho and the Americans, so this is one topic that would be tremendously interesting to explore more deeply The U.S support for the return o f French colonial rule despite the Declaration of Independence o f the Democratic Republic o f Vietnam in 1945 is often explored from an historical approach that focuses on events, political and economic context, institutionalized practices, and actions by the historical actors involved It seems, however, that Ho Chi Minh held an understanding o f the ideas o f self-determination and freedom that was very different from those held by American decision-makers These conflicting views were at the root o f the U.S intervention in Vietnam and the DRV’s responses to that

Decision-makers in the U.S did not entertain extending self-determination immediately to nonwestem peoples Instead, they continued to call for the proper preparation in the form o f periods of tutelage and other interventions by the more

“advanced” nations, whose responsibility it was to promote among “less developed” peoples civilization in the form of modem societies comprised o f sovereign individuals Therefore, the U.S Cold War-era foreign policy was not pure realpolitik in the sense of attempting to gain immediate geostrategic advantage or material self-interest for the U.S., but an integral dimension o f its objective of

1 Quoc Phong Toan Dan, October 1991, p 3-7; FBIS November 20, 1991, p 73-75.

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a d v a n c in g its c o n c e p tio n o f “ fre e d o m ” in th e w o rld T h e U S in te rv e n tio n in

V ie tn a m in p a r t a im e d to g u id e th e V ie tn a m e s e tra n s itio n fro m th e state o f

“ b a c k w a rd n e s s ” in to a m o d e m lib e ra l c a p ita lis t s ta te , w h ic h U S le a d e rs p re s u m e d

to e m b o d y f r e e d o m 1

Why did Ho Chi Minh not regard the American idea o f “freedom” and the system that embodied that idea as universal? And similarly why did the U.S not regard Ho’s thinking on the topic relevant? Most attention has been given to the Marxist-Leninist critique of the global political economy, which pointed out some

of the structural sources of inequality that would prevent the poor from enjoying their formal, legally protected liberties The attraction o f Lenin's “Theories on National and Colonial Questions” to Ho was its broad conception o f the problem o f the subordination of peoples outside o f the metropolitan centers o f the global economy This critique focused on structural dimensions o f why some persons did not actually enjoy freedom in the liberal capitalist system However, absent any incorporation o f Marx’s early “humanist” works, the Marxist-Leninist explanatory framework focused too closely on materialist strategy and class struggle In both Marxist-Leninist and the ideological liberal approaches, more emphasis was placed

on the structure that would presumably promote freedom than on the quality o f freedom that was the goal Certainly, there is a humanist tradition in liberal philosophy as well, but the ideological liberals who constructed the U.S intervention, including modernization strategies, abroad stripped down the conception of liberal society to one crudely comprised o f atomistic individuals

However, Ho Chi M inh’s writings suggest that he regards individuals as moral and ethical actors deeply rooted in institutions, rather than autonomous and rational actors in nature, which is the liberal understanding Duiker (2001) characterizes Ho’s humanism as rooted in his Confucian heritage Scholars o f comparative political thought have demonstrated that, with its own critical tradition and method

o f argumentation and exposition, the Confucian tradition possesses critical and democratic potential (Ackerly 2005, Angle 2008) Confucianism is not inattentive

to the individual, but in contrast to liberal approaches does not presume a transcendent basis for its understanding o f human nature Instead, for Confucian thinkers the individual is regarded as a moral and political subject, not detached from the institutions that provide the framework necessary for political community Contrary to the notion that this renders Confucianism incompatible with modem ideals such as democracy, Ackerly argues that insights offered in Confucian thought

1 Michael E Latham, Modernization as Ideology: American Social Science and “Nation- Building” in the Kennedy Era (University o f North Carolina Press, 2000).