Date: Thu, 4 Apr 1996 11:51:27 +0200 (MET DST)
Subject: Who won in Vietnam?


Both Doug and Rahul appear to put Vietnam in the camp of imperialism. This 
position is extremely interesting. Our two at best liberal friends appear to 
think that certain actions by the Stalininists in Vietnam means that they 
lost the war. Well, i am afraid that you are both wrong. The Vietnamese won 
the war when they marched into Saigon in 1975. It was a big defeat for 
American imperialism. Just as Cuba was a great defeat, the Russian 
revolution was a great defeat, the third chinese revolution was a great 
defeat. And if the PCP were to take power could also be a defeat.

Naturally one can have a position on the various turns of the Stalinists in 
all of these countries. But doug and Rahouls positions are getting very 
close to the social imperialist line of the Maoists. In fact, if one were to 
draw the line the whole way, Doug and Rahul would have been Stalinists in 
Germany and followed Stalins line of Social Democracy is the same as fascism!

These two are just fake leftists. Renegades from anything to do with marx, 
Lenin and Trotsky. I declare here that Vietnam was a great victory! A defeat 
of American imperialism by the formation of a deformed workers state in 
Vietnam. It defeated many years of colonial oppression first by the 
Japanese, the french and finally the Americans.

The real danger to Vietnam is the lack of a revolutionary internationalist 
veiw of things. Many of the cadre was raised in the Stalinist school of 
falsification and in fact apply a line which has led to the disintegration 
of the Soviet Union. This is also the problem with our Peruvian maoists. 
Albeit they follow the line of Mao and Stalin.

The next thing we will be hearing from these two is that Cuba has lost the 
war because they allowing french tourists to spend money lying on the 
beaches and drinking rum and cola.

Warm regards
bob



>Doug:
>
>>Someone here recently described Vietnam as a defeat for US imperialism.
>>
>>Is this really true? It seems imperialism lost the battle but won the war,
>>at least for now. There have been very few revolutions since the US left
>>Vietnam; Southeast Asia is one of the most rampantly capitalist regions of
>>the world; and even Vietnam itself is courting foreign investment. For the
>>last 20 years, the US has been torturing Vietnam with considerable success,
>>and quietly supported the Khmer Rouge, partly in pursuit of this project of
>>torture. Two or three million dead Indochinese vs. some 50,000 dead
>>Americans. In 1996, who seems to have lost?
>
>I was about to say. Anyone with any doubts left should read the article by
>Michel Chossudovsky in the July 94 issue (no. 47) of Third World
>Resurgence. Along with the fact of Holocaust victims violently oppressing
>Palestinians, it's one of those things that threatens to make one
>completely lose faith in humanity.
>
>Rahul
>
>
>
>
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>
>



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