Ho
Chi Minh's
Rhetoric for Revolution
Peter A. DeCaro
Buena Vista University
SUBSTANTIVE THEMES AND ARGUMENTS
Ho
Chi Minh’s speeches, essays, and interviews contain two broad and pervasive
themes. The first rests the nationalist’s case on principles reminiscent of
Thomas Jefferson and the founding fathers of the United States, and the French
Revolution of 1791. Convinced
of the existence and importance of enduring values and timeless truths, Ho
incessantly instructed his audience on the importance of “freedom” or the
“right for self-determination.” At
Versailles, in 1919, Ho prepared an eight-point petition demanding basic freedoms
for the Vietnamese, which he had planned to submit to President Woodrow Wilson.
Of these eight points, those that reflected U.S. and French endearing
values were, “equal rights for Vietnamese and French in Indochina, freedom
of press and opinion, freedom of association and assembly, freedom to travel
at home and abroad, and substitute rule of law for government by degree.”[43] Although Ho’s voice was not heard by Wilson,
Vietnamese in France and Vietnam heralded his demand for Vietnamese self-determination
as “a flash of lighting, the first thunderclap of spring,” when he insisted
that his people be accorded their rights.[44]
Ho’s
rhetoric for “freedom” and “self-determination” had been his sole message
until 1926. It was at this time
that he demonstrably altered his discourse from denouncing “freedom lost”
to “revolution” and “revolutionary parties.” We see this in Thanh Nien (Youth),[45]
in which he answered the question, “What is the primary requisite for revolution?”
The essence of Thanh Nien’s teaching was contained in Duong Cach Menh
(Revolutionary Path), which Ho wrote in early 1926, the “ABC of revolution,”
was used as a training manual for Thanh Nien cadres.
Interestingly, Ho began with a section that preceded the introduction
which dealt with “the behavior of a revolutionary.”
He wrote, in part, that a revolutionary must “be thrifty. . . be resolute
to correct errors, be greedy for learning, be persevering, adopt the habit
of studying and observing, place the national interests above personal interests.
. . be little desirous of material things, and know how to keep secrets.” The qualities defined here mark a whole
generation of the first revolutionary militants. The style and syntax, in principle, mirrors
Confucian descriptions of the chun tzu[46]
(quan tu) and is written in classical Chinese form. The central purpose of Duong Cach Menh
was to provide a revolutionary theory which would “make everyone understand
why he must make the revolution; why it is impossible not to make it; and
why it must be done immediately.”[47] Duong Cach Menh represented a turning-point
in the history of the Vietnamese revolutionary movement, marking a break with
the past and the assertion of new principles and ideas.[48] By the time Ho founded the Vietnamese
Communist Party, he had become a champion of the Vietnamese peasant.
On
2 September 1945, in Hanoi at Ba Dinh Square, Ho addressed a crowd of approximately
100,000 people. In declaring
independence he stated, “Our people have broken the chains which for nearly
a century have fettered them and have won independence for the Fatherland.
. . Vietnam has the right to be a free and independent country—and in fact
it is so already.”[49] Throughout his address, Ho chose to stress
the theme of freedom rather than equality,[50]
which had come to symbolize class conflict and national disunity.[51] But it was collective, not individual
freedom he talked about, as his closing words made clear, “Vietnam has the
right to enjoy freedom and independence. . . the whole Vietnamese people is
resolved to bring all its spirit and its power, its life, and its possessions
to preserve this right of freedom and independence.”[52]
Equality
Ho
Chi Minh’s second theme is that of “equality” or the “right not to be brutally
exploited.” He relentlessly condemned the oppression,
exploitation, and torture suffered by the Vietnamese peasant by French colonialists.[53] Ho’s appeals were passionate pleas for
equality. He understood that
Vietnam’s case as a colonial country was not exceptional but rather was typical
of the whole colonial system. In
his early writings, he showed a constant concern for other colonial struggles
in Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America. Bernard Fall stated that, ”His early writings
clearly reflect the personal humiliations he must have suffered at the hands
of the colonial master—not because they hated him as a person, but simply
because, as a ‘colored’ colonial, he did not count as a human being.”[54] This intense personalization of the whole
anticolonial struggle shined clearly throughout Ho’s writings. He was not interested in debating general
political theories. Ho was far
more interested in demonstrating that particular (fully named) French colonial
officials were sadists who enjoyed harassing their colonial charges.
He chose to write about this than patiently whittle away at the colonial
structure in hope that it would, in its own time and on its own conditions,
yield a small measure of self-government to the subject nation.[55]
Ho
wrote many articles that attacked the iniquities of colonialism beyond the
confines of the French Empire. An
example of this was printed in La Vie Ouviere, “If the French colonists are
unskillful in developing colonial resources, they are masters in the art of
savage repression and the manufacture of loyalty made to measure.
The Ghandis and the De Valeras would have long since entered heaven
had they been born in one of the French colonies.”[56] This awareness of the conflict on an international
scale reflected his gradual absorption of Leninism. His articles ranged widely, but a good
proportion were scarifying indictments of French colonial exploitation and
brutality or bitterly ironic “open” letters to key colonial figures or hierarchic
fringe.
Ho
Chi Minh’s themes (ideology) of freedom and equality were basic yet powerful.
These themes define inherent motives and interests that a rhetoric
can appeal to. To be reconstituted as a Vietnamese peasant
in the terms of Ho’s narratives was to be reconstituted such that freedom,
independence and equality were not only possible, but necessary. Without freedom and independence, this
reconstitutive rhetoric would have ultimately died and those it had reconstituted
would have ceased to be subjects, or at least remained, within their current
circumstance. In consequence,
true Vietnamese nationalists could not have ignored Ho’s pleas for active
participation in the liberation of their country. Only by participation would they have
been in harmony with their being and their collective destiny, as succinctly
expressed by Ho, “Inhumane oppression and exploitation have helped our people
realize that with revolution we will survive and without revolution we will
die.”[57]
In
sum, Ho Chi Minh’s discourse called on those he had addressed to follow narrative
consistency and the motives through which they were reconstituted as audience
members.
SECOND
PERSONA AND THE EXPECTATION OF A LEADER
Frederick
Antczak combined ideas drawn from Plato, Kenneth Burke, and Wayne Booth to
explain how a rhetorical merger of thought and character affords an identification
with an audience in a way which allows its members to discover and activate
latent qualities in themselves.[58] Antczak took the concept from Plato that
a rhetoric which can intellectually and morally reconstitute audiences rather
than merely indulging them, must make use of the character of both audience
and speaker; and from Burke, that the center of the rhetorical enterprise
is identification, a consubstantiality achieved between rhetor and auditor
through sharing of substance.[59]
Booth supplied the ideas that
“the primary mental act of man is to assent . . . ‘to take in’ and ‘even to
be taken in’” through rhetorical exchanges, and that “by understanding and
being understood, by taking in other selves, we expand our moral and intellectual
capacities we expand our identities ourselves.”[60]
Thus for Burke and Both, “intellectual reconstitution inextricably involves
human character.”[61] Applying his model to the discourse of
Emerson, Twain, and Henry Adams, Antczak demonstrated how such rhetoric can
formulate audiences, liberating listeners to think and act more creatively,
intelligently, and humanely.[62]
Edwin
Black described the second persona as the implied auditor, “a model of what
the rhetor would have his real auditor become.”[63] John C. Hammerback adds one important
element to this, “the rhetor’s rhetorical creation in audiences of an expectation
for a leader who possesses particular qualities which are identified by the
rhetor.”[64] To Hammerback’s definition I will add
one more important element, “the rhetor’s rhetorical creation in audiences
of an expectation for a leader who possesses particular qualities which are
identified, not by the rhetor, but rather by cultural heritage.” The Vietnamese expectation for a leader
required more than discourse, it required fulfillment of a 4,500 year old
legacy: the ‘mandate from heaven’ and the ‘concept of revolution.’ In his insightful explication of the nature,
processes, and effects of such discourse, as referred to by Hammerback, Maurice
Charland illuminates the rhetorical power of the second persona within the
context of the text, the framework of ideology and the material world inhabited
and impacted by human agents.[65] In so doing he draws broadly from the
thought of Black, Burke, Michael McGee, and writers on narrative, structuralism,
hermeneutics, and various related topics.[66]
Charland
states that in the Rhetoric of Motives, Kenneth Burke proposes “identification”
as an alternative to “persuasion” as the key term of the rhetorical process.
Burke’s project is a rewriting
of rhetorical theory that considers the rhetoric and motives in formal terms,
as consequences of the nature of language and its enactment.[67] Burke’s stress on identification permits
a rethinking of judgment and the working of the rhetorical effect, for he
does not posit a transcendent subject as audience member, who would exist
prior to and apart from the speech to be judged, but considers audience members
to participate in the very discourse by which they would be “persuaded.”[68] Audiences would embody a discourse. A consequence of this theoretical move
is that it permits an understanding within rhetorical theory of ideological
discourse, of the discourse that presents itself as always only pointing to
the given, the natural, the already agreed upon.[69]
We
see one of the first examples of the “ideal auditor” in Ho’s “Appeal in Connection
with the Founding of the Indochinese Communist Party,” February 1930, in which
he stated: “Workers, Farmers, Soldiers, Youths, Students! Oppressed and Exploited
Compatriots! The Indochinese Communist Party has been founded.
It is the Party of the workers’ class.”
In claiming a “Party of the workers’ class,” Ho eliminated, for the
first time, class status and created a new identification for the masses. To this he added, “It [the Party] will
guide the proletariat into the leadership of the revolution. . . “ It is important to note that Ho claims
the “leadership” will guide the new party and not “Ho Chi Minh,” will guide
the new party, or, “Ho Chi Minh and the new Party” will guide the workers’
class. Unlike Western discourse,
where the individual rises above the party and proclaims his or her vision
for the people, Ho offered leadership through the collective efforts of the
“Party.” This is subtle, yet,
an important strategy for Ho. He
remained faithful to the tradition of the collectivity while presenting a
totally new political ideology—a polar opposite to Confucianism—to the people.
This was a permanent theme throughout Ho’s discourse.
In “The Line of the Party During the Period of the Democratic Front,”
printed in Tuyen Tap (Selected Works), in July 1939, Ho stated, “The party
cannot demand that the front recognize its right of leadership, but the party
must demonstrate that it is the most sacrificial, most active, and most loyal
element. “[70]
In a “Letter from Abroad,” 1941, Ho called for a singular people, dismissing
class lines, “As one in mind and strength we shall overthrow the Japanese
and French. . . He who has money will contribute his money, he who has strength
will contribute his strength, he who has talent will contribute his talent.” Ho called for each individual to contribute
according to their ability, as would be expected in the collective, to make
the revolution successful, as one would make the village successful.
He substituted “revolution” (and with it implied the “Party”) for village.
APPEALS
TO CULTURAL HERITAGE
The Mandate of Heaven
During
the 4,500 years that China influenced Vietnam, it was only natural for Vietnam
to adopt and adapt many of China’s religious, social, economic, and political
systems and philosophies. Throughout
centuries of local adaptation, a few of these remained unchanged—the concept
of the mandate of heaven and the quan tu (superior man), despite French interference.
One cannot fully appreciate Ho’s influence and success without understanding
these concepts and the roles they played within the minds of the peasantry,
for they were instrumental in his success.
The cornerstone of the ideology of the Chinese state
had been the concept of the mandate of heaven: the idea that the ruler of
China held a sacred trust from the highest deity which permitted him to rule
so long as he did so for the welfare of the people—but subject to the peril
that if he failed in this trust, Heaven would appoint another to rebel and
replace him.[71] Through the work of Herrlee G. Creel,
we learned that the cohesion and stability of the Chinese Empire owed much
to the almost universal, and seldom-questioned, acceptance of the religious
basis upon which the authority of the Empire had been founded.[72] This acceptance persisted into the twentieth
century, and it came, in unbroken line, from the beginning of Chou dynasty.[73]
According
to Wm. Theodore de Bary, in their arguments, the Chou rulers appealed to a
concept called t’ien ming or the ‘mandate of heaven.’[74] Heaven elected or commanded certain men
to be rulers over the tribes of the world, and their heirs might continue
to exercise the Heaven-sanctioned power for as long as they carried out their
religious and administrative duties with piety, wisdom, and justice.[75] But if the worth of the ruling family
declined, if the rules turned their backs upon the spirits and abandoned the
virtuous ways that had originally marked them as worthy of the mandate to
rule, then heaven might discard them and elect a new family or tribe to be
the destined rulers of the world.[76] The Shang kings, it was argued, had once
been wise and benevolent rulers, and thus enjoyed the full blessing and sanction
of heaven. But in later days
they had grown cruel and degenerate, so that Heaven had called upon the Chou
chieftains to overthrow the Shangs, punish their evil ways, and institute
a new dynasty.[77] Thus the Chou rulers explained the change
of dynasties not as a purely human action by which a strong state overthrew
a weak one, but as a divinely directed process in which a new group of wise
and virtuous leaders was substituted for an old group whose members, by their
evil actions, had disqualified themselves from the “right to rule.”[78]
Creel
noted that the doctrine of the mandate of heaven was not merely a force making
for responsible conduct on the part of the monarch and cementing the loyalty
of his vassals and officials; it had been the “central cohesive force binding
together the entire Chinese people.”[79] And this doctrine had given the Chinese
individual a role in the unfolding drama of the Chinese state. Because it was for the “people that this
state had been held to exist, and no rightful government had been able to
persist in the face of continued public dissatisfaction.”[80] Thus Confucius stated that “no government
can stand if it lacks the confidence of the common people,”[81]
and Mencius quoting with approval the saying that it is the “common people
who speak for heaven.”[82] The people, more than any other factor,
were emphasized as the key to the mandate of heaven.[83] The Chou had given China a vision: a vision
of a world, “all under heaven,” united in peace and harmony and cooperation,
under the “Son of Heaven.”[84]
To
the Vietnamese, the mandate of heaven was called Thien minh, or the heavenly
mandate.[85] John T. McAlister, Jr. and Paul Mus wrote
that proof that a revolutionary regime had the mandate of heaven was the emergence
of a new political system that was a “complete replacement of the preceding
doctrines, institutions, and men in power and that showed itself to be in
complete command of society.”[86] To appear before the people, the supreme
judge, with any chance of success as a messenger of fate, a revolutionary
party “had to show them all the signs of its mission.”[87] In this case the people expected the sign
of signs: the ease and fluidity of success. The revolutionary party had to succeed
in everything as if miraculously. The
military and financial means were secondary considerations and would, of their
own accord, put themselves in the hands of the party that had received the
mandate of heaven.[88] Such a test of legitimacy merely indicated
that the Vietnamese expected there to be little uncertainty about an insurgent’s
capacity to govern before there was popular recognition of his being endowed
with the mandate of heaven. McAlister,
Jr. and Mus explained that in the critical task of making their choice “they
looked for a sign or an intimation of legitimacy,” and the Vietnamese called
that sign virtue. The moment
a virtue (in the West one would say a political system) appeared to be worn
out and another was in view ready to take the place of the old, the previous
abuses—which had been tolerated until then—were seen in a new light.
Then and only then, must they be remedied with the help of a new principle. Extreme patience was thus replaced by
intolerance. First the people
tolerated everything. Then they
refused to tolerate anything. In
other words, the former values did not count anymore.
This
was how Vietnamese civic morality suddenly became intransigent.[89] Paul Mus stated it had nothing whatever
to do with political pretexts. Involved
here were moral values comparable to the highest in the West, but they were
put into practice only when the circumstances were clearly appropriate.
Such behavior derived from a centuries-old wisdom leading to civic
reactions that were in no way similar to the West’s.
Instead of going along at a moderate but continuous and slowly effective
pace, the Sino-Vietnamese moral life jumped, spasmodically, from crisis to
crisis far more that did that of the West.
Mus
concluded that when a crisis came, the minds of the people suddenly became
susceptible to moral values and more attentive to the mistakes that had been
made. They judged these errors
to have been at the roots of the revolution, and, therefore, the behavior
of the protagonists had a determining influence on events. It was not by accident that East Asia
preferred to use the word “virtue” for what the West called a “system.”[90]
The
Quan Tu
(Sage
or Superior Man)
In “The Great Learning,” Confucius says, “From the
highest to
The lowest, self-development must be deemed the root
of all, by
Every man. When
the root is neglected, it cannot be that what
Springs from it will be well ordered.”[91]
“The moral integrity of the ruler, far from being his
private affair,
is thought to be a defining characteristic of his leadership.
He
must realize that what he does in private is not only
symbolically
significant but has a direct bearing on his ability
to lead. . .”[92]
To appreciate the value that the development and identification
of the ideal leader’s character held in the minds of the Vietnamese citizenry
during Ho’s life, an understanding of the quan tu, the Vietnamese version
of the Chinese chun tzu: the superior (sage) man, is necessary. The focus is primarily on Confucian doctrine,
followed by Vietnamese adoption and integration of that doctrine into its
own culture.
Second Persona
Drawing
from traditional Chinese philosophy, Ho wrote in an appeal after the national
resistance against the French began, “The strength of the enemy is like fire.
Our strength is like water. Water
will overcome fire.”[119] This is a reference to the Five Elements,
where one element overcomes the other according to its strength.
To
enter into Ho Chi Minh’s narrative is to “identify with Black’s second persona.
. . to exist at the nodal point of a series of identifications and to be captured
in its structure and in its production of meaning. . . to be a subject which
exists beyond one’s body and life span. . . to live towards national independence.”[120] Ho’s discourse describing the colonial
conditions in Vietnam created that series of identifications, which, over
time, captured the hearts and minds of the peasantry. The power of Ho’s discourse and personal
persona is the power of an embodied ideology. This form of ideological rhetoric is effective
because it is within the bodies of those it constitutes as subjects.[121]
To
what extent did the Vietnamese people identify with Ho’s second persona?
At the time, anticolonial literature was banned in Vietnam, newspapers,
fliers, books and booklets were confiscated by the colonial administration,
yet, the peasantry regularly received Ho’s appeals which were printed in European
newspapers.[122] Bamboo sticks on which were engraved appeals
had been secretly sent from one village to another. Hundreds of Vietnamese were executed in
reprisal for such actions.[123]
First Persona
Through
his own rhetorical efforts and his steadfastness to the Confucian belief of
the quan tu (chun tzu), Ho Chi Minh himself displayed the characteristics
he had encased in his profiles of the model auditor and of the nationalist/communist
leader. The sources of his identification
were his heritage; his physical appearance and much of his own life’s experiences,
partially, providential, but primarily a result of his calculated design;
the content and style of his discourse; and most importantly, the consciously
crafted self-portrait he presented throughout his life.
Ho’s
style of speech and writing touched the Vietnamese deeply; his speeches were
vivid and simple.[124] Unlike his contemporary, Mao Tse-tung,
whose writings sometimes had a philosophical vein, Ho’s was always most concerned
with the specific problems of people.[125] He did not limit his written attacks to
colonialism, he also wrote of injustices committed against blacks in the United
States, “It is well known that the black race is the most oppressed and most
exploited of the human family. . . What everyone does not perhaps know, is
that after sixty-five years of so-called emancipation, American Negroes still
endure atrocious moral and material sufferings, of which the most cruel and
horrible is the custom of lynching.”[126]
In
a cave at Pac Bo, 1941, Ho instructed his comrades and gave them the benefit
of his world-wide experience.[127] He also translated Sun Tzu’s Art of Warfare
and wrote a training pamphlet “Guerilla Warfare: Experiences of the Chinese
Guerillas.”[128] Maintaining Confucius’ position on education,
Ho wrote in “A Prison Diary,” “The civilized and the uncivilized must struggle
by nature; the majority through education, will win. . . For a usefulness
of 10 years, cultivate a tree; for a usefulness of 100 years, cultivate a
man.”[129]
Character
Ho
had all the qualities necessary in a leader, and his austerity, perseverance,
iron determination and whole-hearted devotion to the cause of the Revolution
were an inspiration to all who served under him and to the nation as a whole.[130] Paul Mus said that Ho was “an intransigent
and incorruptible revolutionary in the manner of Saint-Just. . . Thus, by
his moral standing alone, Ho acquired the respect and confidence of the whole
Vietnamese nation. His reputation
for honesty and sincerity has contributed greatly to his success, for in Vietnam,
as in many underdeveloped countries, the masses put their trust in the personal
character and behavior of a leader more than in the political party he represents.”[131]
Ho’s
personal behavior in the years he clandestinely traveled through Vietnam added
to the mystique of the quan tu (chun tzu). During these times it was recorded that,
while staying with various friends and acquaintances, he “split firewood and
boiled rice; cared for the children of friends while they worked; educated
both child and adult; and tended to the needs of others before his own.”[132]
Unlike
Mao and his colleagues, Ho never carried a rifle. His only weapons were his tongue, pen,
native wit, strong moral fiber, passionate devotion to the cause of his people,
and his determination to achieve his set purpose against all odds.[133] Ho was not a military leader, like Tito
or the Burmese Patriotic Socialists, nor a party boss, like Rakosi or Kim
Il Sung, but first and foremost a man of the people.[134] For Ho, works were more important than
faith, devotion more valuable than discipline.[135] Through all the long years of struggle,
from his early revolutionary days as he traveled the countryside to his ultimate
occupancy of the Presidential Palace, the man himself had remained unchanged.[136] Halberstam described Ho as one of the
extraordinary figures of this era—part Ghandi, part Lenin, all Vietnamese. He said of Ho that he was, perhaps more
than any single man of the century, “the living embodiment to his own people—and
to the world—of their revolution.”[137] In a country where the population had
seen leaders reach a certain plateau and then become more Western and less
Vietnamese, corrupted by Western power and money and ways, and where, the
moment they had risen far enough to do anything for their own people, immediately
sold out to the foreigners, the simplicity of Ho was powerful stuff. The higher he rose, the simpler and purer
Ho seemed, always retaining the eternal Vietnamese values: respect for old
people, disdain for money, affection for children.[138] In contrast, wrote Graham Greene in 1956
about Ngo Dinh Diem, the American-sponsored leader in the South, “He is separated
from the people by cardinals and police cars with wailing sirens and foreign
advisers droning of global strategy when he should be walking in the rice
fields unprotected, learning the hard way how to be loved and obeyed—the two
cannot be separated.”[139]
Ho
deliberately did not seek the trappings of power and authority, as if he were
so sure of himself and his relationship to both his people and history that
he did not need statues and bridges, books and photographs to prove it to
him or them.[140] It was noted that one sensed in him such
a remarkable confidence about who he was, what he had done, that there would
be no problem communicating it to his people; indeed, to try to communicate
it by any artificial means might have created doubts among them. [141] His abstinence from his own cult was particularly
remarkable in the underdeveloped world, where the jump from poor peasant to
ruler of a nation in a brief span of time inspires more than the predictable
quota of self-commemoration.[142]
There is something else in Ho’s character that
one does not find in any other top political figure, not even (to mention
two considered more humane) Gandhi and Nehru.
This is what Confucius called ‘shu.’[143] There is no exact equivalent in English;
the nearest we might get is ‘reciprocity’ in the sense of those responses
between two human beings aware of the concept that all men are brothers. Ho’s instinct seemed to have worked from
the heart rather than from the head,[144]
“To see something, to feel something and then interpret one’s impressions;
to try and distinguish between the appearance and reality of things; that’s
all. What’s so difficult about it?”[145]
A
man became wise at sixty—such was the rule of the Confucian order under which
Ho Chi Minh began his life.[146] Ho therefore became wise when the war
against the French was at its height.
But he was also wise enough to avoid any cult of his own personality
even after victory when his position in North Vietnam was practically unchallenged.[147] Neumann-Hoditz said of Ho that “In Ho’s
lifetime there was no personality cult of the kind which has surrounded Mao
Tse-tung.”[148]
Ho’s
title of “Bac” must be understood in the context of Chinese culture in which
the eldest members of society (Ho himself referred to them repeatedly in is
appeals) enjoy especial veneration.
Bac means “big uncle;” it is the term used to denote the elder brother
of a father or mother while the younger brother is referred to as Chu, “little
uncle.”[149] It was only natural that people began
to speak of Bac Ho because his closest colleagues already belonged to a younger
generation. Bac is therefore
a familiar term and the Communists in North Vietnam liked to point out that
every family considered Bac Ho an honored member.[150] In addition, Bac is synonymous with democratic
conduct; the father can command, but the uncle only advises.[151] The relations were unique between this
leader of a Communist Party and state and his people for whom he demanded
the most severe deprivations.[152]
Robert
Shaplen wrote that Ho was the beaming father figure of his people, the man
of constant simplicity, the soft-spoken Asian who seemed gentle, indeed almost
sweet, sometimes self-mocking, his humor and warmth in sharp contrast to the
normal bureaucratic grimness of a high Communist official.[153]
Mus wrote that Ho cited the four virtues he considered as pre-eminent to be:
diligence, frugality, justice, and integrity.[154]
CONCLUSION
An
old Vietnamese proverb “phep vua thua le lang” (the laws of the emperor yield
to the customs of the village) was known by all Vietnamese, and in many respects
it characterized the village n Vietnam as a self-contained homogenous community,
jealously guarding its way of life-a little world that was autonomous and
disregarded (if not disdained) the outside world.[155]
The
Vietnamese shared a cosmological view deeply rooted in the Buddhist-Taoist-Confucianist
ideology of the Chinese Great Tradition, with Vietnamese alterations and additions,
which underlied the amalgam of beliefs and practices that made up village
religion, and it influenced all other aspects of village society as well.[156] Adherence to it was manifest almost daily
in behavior. Belief in universal
order, and the related concepts of harmony with this order and human destiny
within it, were reflected in the way all villagers conformed to guidance by
the lunar calendar and reliance on individual horoscopy, and in the respect
most villagers had for the principles of geomancy.[157] The notion of harmony was involved in
many practices and rituals—observance of taboos, use of amulets or talismans,
preparation of medicines, consultation with healers, propitiation or expulsion
of spirits, invocations to deities, and veneration of ancestors. The aim was to preserve or restore harmony,
and, with it, well being.[158]
There
also was homogeneity in the social expectation. The drive to provide well for one’s family
combined with some of the basic beliefs associated with the Cult of the Ancestors
contributed to the strong motivation for economic gain that characterized
the Vietnamese peasant.[159] Most villagers wanted to improve their
lot, which meant having land, a fine house, material comfort, and education
for one’s children.[160] A concern that the Vietnamese had for
poverty was that the family could potentially disintegrate as members quit
the village to seek a livelihood elsewhere.[161] For the villager it was extremely important
that the family remained together: in addition to the comfort of having kinfolk
about, immortality lied in an undying lineage.[162]
The
experience for conquest for Vietnam was by no means novel. Vietnam as a people, a nation, and a culture
had been forged over two millennia of resistance against Chinese domination.[163] To survive, the Vietnamese had borrowed
freely from Chinese social, political, and cultural institutions and values.
But the new enemy from the West (France) posed a different challenge.[164]
In
equating independence with survival, patriotic literati believed that they
were engaged in a desperate race against annihilation as a people and a culture.
Their country appeared to them to be a “week and small” (nhuoc tieu)
nation in the process of being swallowed up by a stronger and fitter France.[165] Language reinforced this cannibalistic
vision of colonialism as a “people-eating system” (che do thuc dan), an even
more evocative description than the usual “dog-eat-dog” metaphors of Social
Darwinism.[166] Accustomed as they were to employing cultural
yardsticks to measure national health, these literati opted to follow the
path already taken by their Chinese counterparts in attempting to strengthen
their country by reforming its culture.
But the zeal of the Vietnamese literati in embracing what they called
“New Learning” from the West compounded the profound changes which colonialism
had brought to the political, economic, and social landscape of Vietnam.[167] It also undermined the power of Confucian
orthodoxy and the moral authority of tradition. The very language used by these literati
was not uniform.[168] In the South, French was used even by
those who sought to overthrow French rule.
In other regions, older anticolonial activists used Chinese. Increasingly, however, the Vietnamese
vernacular, in its romanized writing system—once despised as a tool of the
invaders—was employed by enemies and upholders of the colonial order alike.[169] But whether written in Vietnamese, Chinese,
or French, many of the words were unfamiliar; others were old terms which
had been given new meanings and a different resonance. They became weapons in a struggle for
control over ruling metaphors and symbols.
Friends and foes of change alike used the rhetoric of the family, the
metaphor of adolescence and immaturity, and above all, the emblematic figure
of Vietnamese womanhood to illustrate their particular vision of both present
and future.[170]
For
Ho Chi Minh, revolution came to seem the only possible solution to an existential
predicament that bound his personal concerns to those of the nation in a tight
and seemingly natural unity.[171] He saw a symmetry between the national
struggle for independence from colonial rule and his efforts to emancipate
his people from the oppressiveness of French institutions.[172] He knew well enough that the audience
he had to reach consisted, in the main, of tradition-bound peasants.[173] Fenn asserted that Ho perceived
that his fellow countrymen suffered economically, they were the “have-nots”
as against the French “haves;” and Confucianism, Buddhism and Christianity
offered them small comfort and no relief.[174] Furthermore, the Vietnamese, like most
Asians, were firm believers in fate.
The Marxist concept included the inevitability of proletarian victory.
It was not without significance that the Vietnamese expression for
revolution—cach mang—means literally ‘change fate.’[175] Whereas radicals conceived of independence
as arising organically from their struggle toward self-emancipation, Ho’s
discourse established a new symmetry between national liberation and the pursuit
of social justice along class lines.
To some, security was more important than freedom, predictability more desirable than perfection. This meant accepting inherited institutions, no matter how oppressive, and the colonial system, no matter how unjust.[176] Others, however, were drawn to freedom in its multiple meanings: liberation of the nation from colonial rule and emancipation of the individual from the patriarchal family system, outdated moral values, and authoritarian social systems.