Trường Chinh Quotes

Since the beginning or French imperialist rule in Vietnam, the Vietnamese landlord class has relied on the imperialist forces to oppress and exploit the Vietnamese peasants still more harshly. A considerable number of peasants toil all the year round and yet do not ·have enough to eat and to wear. Under the colonialist and semi-feudal regime, when any natural calamity occurred enormous· numbers of labouring peasants would die of starvation. At the end of 1944 and early in 1945, two million of our peasants died of starvation not only due to savage exploitation by the feudal landlord class, but also because the Japanese fascists and the French imperialists brutally robbed them of their resources. This has aroused deep hatred in. the hearts of every peasant in our country.

Our agrarian policy in the present revolutionary stage is aimed at abolishing imperialist and feudalist land ownership, in order to wipe out the feudal regime of exploitation of the landlord class. For this reason, apart from the land and property of the imperialists which we must confiscate, our policy is to confiscate, requisition, and forcibly purchase the land of the landlord class, but not to confiscate, requisition or forcibly purchase land in general upward of a certain area.

The regime of feudal and semi-feudal exploitation must be abolished, and “land to the tillers” must be realized. So far, the Vietnamese Revolution has only restricted that feudal and semi-feudal exploitation. It must progress further to realise land reform and wipe out all vestiges of feudalism. In brief, the Vietnamese Revolution must fulfil both the anti-imperialist and anti-feudal tasks to realize independence, freedom and happiness for the people. In other words, it must complete the task of democratization to pave the way to the socialist revolution in the future: to socialize all means of production, abolish from Vietnam the regime of exploitation of man by man.

The working class' invincible strength is due to its vanguard party which leads the revolution according to a judicious line. the Marxist line, and sets up a firm worker-peasant alliance to serve as the basis for uniting all popular forces with a view to isolating the enemy to the utmost and overthrowing him.

The cogency of Marxism precisely resides in its ability to reflect accurately the objective laws of historical development; and to represent the most advanced class, the most revolutionary class of modern society, the proletariat, and hence strike roots into the broad masses, to win the hearts and minds of millions and millions of people, and stir them into an implacable and uncompromising fight against the enemy of their class, against world bourgeoisie, and into the building of a classless, communist society.

The proletarian who sells his labouring power to the capitalist is paid a wage which corresponds only to a part of the time of labour he spends, the value of the rest, the surplus value, being pocketed by the employer. This viewpoint eloquently proves that all the wealth of the bourgeoisie is made up of the surplus value produced by the proletariat and appropriated by the capitalists.

With a view to the implementation of this general line, our Party's policy is on the one hand to strengthen dictator-ship over the enemy of the people, repress the counter-revolutionaries, maintain order and security; on the other, to develop democracy with regard to the people, put their democratic rights into effect in a correct fashion, gradually build and consolidate socialist legality, and create conditions for the people to participate in a concrete manner in the. management of the state.

The effect of the land reform bringing land to the peasant masses is to enhance their enthusiasm and their zeal in increasing production and taking part in the war of resistance, and consequently the resistance forces will grow in strength.

The working class must provide firm leadership to the people's national democratic revolution and cannot share it with any other class, least of all let it fall into the hands of the national bourgeoisie.

If we strive only for national reconstruction but neglect to struggle for sovereignty and territorial integrity, national independence will certainly not be recognized and our country will be reduced to an autonomous state.

To overthrow the imperialist aggressor, stress should be laid on the question of national liberation. An anti-imperialist national united front should be founded, and the fire of revolutionary struggle should be concentrated on the imperialist aggressors and the feudalists, their devoted agents, in other words the king, mandarins and village tyrants.

Let our entire people and armed forces advance on the impetus of their victories and completely defeat the US aggressors and their stooges!

We should ally ourselves not only with the French people, but also with all peace-loving and democratic peoples, particularly with the Chinese people, our great neighbours who are resolutely struggling for democracy, unification and independence. In a word, we must unite with all the oppressed peoples who are fighting to liberate themselves.

First of all, the triumph of the August Revolution was due to the two following subjective and objective conditions: Subjective condition: our people are united around the Vietminh Front led by the Indochinese Communist Party. The proletarian class exercises this leadership without sharing it with any other class. It results from this that the revolutionary forces of our people are not scattered, that they have no rivalries or internal conflicts (except in some insignificant cases), and that at the decisive hour, they can be gathered together under the leadership of a single organisation to launch a direct and massive attack against the fortified enemy lines. Objective condition: World War II created for the Vietnamese people an extremely favourable opportunity: the enemies of the Vietnamese Revolution, the Japanese and French fascists, had exhausted each other and grown weak. Moreover, the Japanese were then defeated by the Soviet army; that was enough for the Vietnamese people to fell them with a single blow and to seize power.

Imperialism and feudalism, the two most reactionary forces, have dominated Viet Nam in collusion for more than 80 years now. It was the feudalists of the Nguyen dynasty who sold our country to the French imperialists, and who became the puppet administration, lackeys to the French imperialists who then occupied our country.