Ho Chi Minh’s views on the role of the Communist Party of Vietnam in social development and management of social development

According to Ho Chi Minh’s viewpoints, the ruling party is the one which continues with social leadership after having led the people to struggle for national liberty, the party which rules the entire political system. Ruling party mainly concerns with: the ruling position, ruling capacity and ruling method. Beside the existing methods (building guidelines; propagandizing, convincing the people through education...) the party can use administrative and legal tools to influence on all aspects of social life based on the goal and the guidelines that the party identified. The party’s leadership role covers all areas from economics, politics, society, culture to foreign affairs. These aspects are equally important, and are aimed at a single purpose: to satisfy the legitimate demands of the people, to enable people to express and promote all creative potential and comprehensively develop personality. To this extend, social development and management of social development in Ho Chi Minh’s thought is the establishment of social relations and the orientation of these relations to humanity state with extensive values - truth, goodness, beauty.

1. The Party with the choice of social development in humanism model

To develop the society, which means all aspects of social life, it is necessary to choose an appropriate way and pattern.

Ho Chi Minh soon thought about the path of the nation, which had to meet the vital needs of the people of Vietnam, and be consistent with the development tendencies of human society.  His choice grounded on theoretical foundation and especially based on practices generalizing and summarizing.

From his earlier years, Ho Chi Minh was aware of the anti-human face of semi-feudal colonial society: enslavement, trample, oppression, exploitation of people and the worst thing that it deprived the true human values. Prior to Marxism - Leninism, as standing on patriotic stance, Ho Chi Minh required:

“3. Freedom of the press and freedom of speech;

Freedom for association and assembly;

Freedom of residence abroad and freedom of departure;

Freedom of learning, establishing technical and professional schools in all provinces for native peoples.”(2)

Ho Chi Minh came to Marxism - Leninism and the Russian October Revolution because he found out, on theoretical and practical aspects, the appropriate development model, in which the human values are concerned and practically assured. Given that, to the early 30’s of 20th century, Ho Chi Minh envisioned relatively clear about the model of social sector development of new social regime with the leading role of a political party which has actual capacity and efficiency: the Communist Party of Vietnam.

In the first Political Platform edited directly by Ho Chi Minh, social issues was considered at the highest angle, in the Political Platform level of a political party with specific slices. Compiling Condensed Platform, it was not accidental for him to put social sector in the first major content of the path “bourgeois democratic revolution and land revolution to reach for communist society”. Ho Chi Minh defined:

“A. In social aspects:

a, The people are free to organize.

b, Equality between men and women, etc.

c, Generalizing education together with agricultural modernization”(3)

In 1941, after returning back and directly leading Vietnam revolution, in the Viet Minh Program - a pre Constitution document for Vietnam - Ho Chi Minh clearly showed the social issues to be solved. Those were:

“E. Society

Implementing labor laws, working 8 hours per day.

Helping families with many children.

Establishing kindergartens to take care of children.

Building cinemas, theatres, clubs and libraries to raise people’s knowledge.

Adding hospitals, maternity hospitals and elderly nursing houses.”(4)

After the 1945 August Revolution, Ho Chi Minh has directed to solve this problem thoughtfully and efficiently. He defined that struggling against hunger, ignorance, educating the consciousness of laboriousness, thrift, integrity, and implementing free religion and religious - non religious uniting were the urgent mission for the young revolutionary government to solve immediately. Later, in the 1946 Constitution and the 1959 Constitution, Ho Chi Minh specified social issues into basic human rights and the implementation of these rights was the responsibility of the entire society, primarily the ruling party, to assert the preeminence of the society which we were building.

Ho Chi Minh envisioned that the path of national independence together with socialism was the only right way which can radically solve the social problems that the history of human society had raised; the socialist institution is able to develop harmoniously all material and spiritual sectors, economic, political, society, morality, culture, between society and nature, improving social relations to a new quality of formal people.

Thus, according to Ho Chi Minh, the leader of the historic mission to lead the nation to true and popular social values is the Communist Party of Vietnam; the social institution which creates the material and technical premise for human liberation completely and thoroughly is socialist and communist institution.

2. The Party and the orientation of social development and management of social development

Bringing social development model to reality, the ruling party planned a road of scientific revolution thanks to the social policy system. According to Ho Chi Minh’ views, the social policy system covers many areas, associates with a lot of different subjects. The supposed most important aspects are:

Class relations and class policies;

National relations and national policies;

The factors of surviving and developing environment of human life;

The problem of poverty and poverty reduction policy;

The employment, wages and income;

The problem of education, health service, medical care for all people;

Policies for people, families of war invalids and martyrs who have difficulties, risks in life…

Other significance is that from very early on, Ho Chi Minh advised the ruling party never to absolutely separate different aspects of social life, to see it as the issues related to general life of human, the pillars of sustainable development. Our Party’s goals and ideal of social development must be consistent in political guidelines, in policies and in Resolutions of General Assembly terms...

The ruling party has to take care of all aspects of people’s life, from important issues such as the development path, to the small things like daily food and utilities. Ho Chi Minh advised: it would be the Party’s fault if the people have to suffer hunger, illiteracy and disease.

The Party’s revolutionary goal is continuously improve and enhance the people’s life, both material and spiritual life. A matter of principle, the Party takes care of the people by guiding them to take care of themselves rather than render service for the people. The role of ruling party is to figure out the appropriate motto, practical policies in order to gather and promote all existing resources of the people for themselves to take care of their life. Those are the policies of agricultural development, financial support, assigning cadres to help locals with difficulties, overcoming poverty policy under the motto: making the hunger have enough to live, people with enough food to live become well off, well off people become rich, rich people get more and more richer, the whole Vietnamese people are supplied with food, clothes and education, making the country strong, making the people prosperous and happy.

The social development policy system was most clearly and most concretely mentioned in the Testament by Ho Chi Minh. After the national unification, the first thing to do was reorganizing the ruling party to make every officials, party members, union members, each party committee strive for fulfilling the tasks assigned, with wholehearted, full attention to serve the people. He was profoundly aware that the rebuilding of the country, especially in solving social problems is a very large, heavy and complicated, but very glorious responsibility. It is a struggle against what were old and damaged, to create new and fresh things. Winning a victory in this huge fight needs to mobilize the entire people, organize and educate the people and lean on the great people’s forces.

To implement the first task, which is for the people, Ho Chi Minh mentioned eight different aspects of social life, which can also be considered as eight specific social policies to different objects. They cohered as a perfect whole, revealed the depth of human nature; performing well these aspects factually affirming the ruling capacity of the Party, the Party’s prestige among the people. In which emerged some types of policies:

For people who have sacrificed in the war, the Party must direct all generations to honor them, making the best conditions so that they can have a normal life, continue to contribute to the country and the people.

 Gender policy: Taking priority for female, creating male - female equality in all aspects, especially in staff organizing. Ho Chi Minh said that ensuring male - female equality was the humanistic and advanced development tendency with mankind’s lofty goals, in the level of a social revolution, a perceptional revolution. The ruling party’s mission is liberating society escaping from cankers, injustice, including the liberation of women, which is considered as a measure of the progress and civilization of our society.

Class policy, especially for farmers: In the Testament, Ho Chi Minh followed the national traditional vessels, proposed the idea of sparing people’s resources, considered it as an integral part of society - class policy. In a certain sense, taking care of the people in which farmers is the majority is synonym to strengthening social resources, social power of the ruling political party, creating a solid social foundation, making every intentions of building, developing and prevailing the country.

The regional, urban and rural development policies, for not leading to the too large gap. The ruling party must take the initiative in planning, finding solutions to make villages, cities more beautiful, proper than they were before the war. The developing content is very broad, including: restoring and expanding economic sectors, developing hygiene and health care operations; amending educational model to meet new situation of the people to ensure the equality for everybody in receiving the best education.

The guiding ideology Ho Chi Minh placed on the ruling party, which is the most difficult: establishing equal environment and conditions for all Vietnamese people to enjoy the social benefits which they, this makes the ruling Communist Party, in natural aspect, different from other political parties existed in history. A fair distribution of the social welfare system is the important criteria which reflect the superiority of the social system, ensure that the basic social relations follow its orbit and make the firm bracket for the political stability of the country. This also clarified Ho Chi Minh’s integral thinking in solving the problems of society, politics, economy, culture and international relations to reach the noble and humanistic values.

In other words, the policy system, impact method, social adjustment solutions relations of the ruling Communist Party formed a new type of social management: the people is subject to service and enjoy the efficiency of management activities; taking people as the mode of operation; taking advantage of resources of the public as the key motivation; taking to ensure the human value of long-term development orientation.

3. The guarantee conditions of Party are promoting their role in the management of social development

Ho Chi Minh was compiled as a philosophy about the role of the Party: the Party is the symbol of morality and civilization. In the field of developed and manageable society, elements of civilization and culture of the ruling party need to be more clarified. There are a number of conditions that Ho Chi Minh emphasized:

- The Party’s ability to identify, capture social issues which are inherently very sensitive and complex. How the ruling party fatually realize the motto: understand the people’s mind; improve people’s life; increase people’s knowledge.

- Forming strong enough institutions to organize and mobilize the people in solving social problems. Social policy derived from the needs of the people, detected by the ruling party, summarize to the mode, policy, then return to the public and public policy is the results they created. In the management of social development by the Communist Party leadership, the people are simultaneously the target and the driving force of development.

- Construction of staff of social performance management has expertise, professionalism, full of qualities as a leader and loyal servant of the people, but the most important thing according to Ho Chi Minh is that they must have: walking legs, seeing eyes, thinking brains: from knowledge to practice, from understanding to ethic practice to serve the people. More than any area, social development management requires fairness, transparence, impartiality, non-profit, non priority, not allowed to be “revolutionary boss”. The fight against the metamorphic expression of the cadres is the vital needs of the type of social development management in the humanistic ideal that the Ruling Communist Party represents.

Assoc. Prof., Dr. PHAM NGOC ANH

Instituteof Ho Chi Minhand the leaders of the Party,

Ho Chi Minh National Academy of Politics and Public Administration

Further reading:

(1) Ho Chi Minh: Complete Works, vol. 12, National Politics Publishing House, Hanoi, 1996, p. 498.

(2) Op. cit., vol.1, 1995, p. 435

(3), (4) Op. cit., vol.3, 1995, p. 1, 585-586