“Without revolutionary theory, there can be no revolutionary movement. The role of the vanguard fighter can be fulfilled only by a party that is guided by the most advanced theory.”
Lenin, What is to be done (1903)
Characteristics of a Revolutionary
A revolutionary must:
Be thrifty and industrious.
Show solidarity, not self-interest.
Learn to correct mistakes.
Take care without being cowardly.
Be Inquisitive.
Have patience (and be hard working).
Be interested in research, open to new ideas.
Support common interests, not private ones.
Never seek fame; never be arrogant.
So said, so done.
Keep ideology steady.
Sacrifice.
Have little interest in material things.
Keep silent when needed.
When dealing with people, one must:
Accept and forgive the errors of others.
Present a serious attitude to the group.
Be willing to share and give advice to people.
Show integrity, not opportunism.
Evaluate people with care.
When working, we should:
Examine the situation carefully.
Be decisive.
Be brave.
Work for the Party.
Why Write This Book?
1. It is the same for everyone, with any big or small task, any easy or difficult job, if we don’t make our best effort then we will probably not be successful. A Chinese proverb says, ‘A lion uses all its might in attacking a rabbit’. How strong a lion is! It is so easy for him to catch a rabbit, but he still must use all his strength. It is the same for our work to liberate our people from enslavement. If we do not try our best, we will not succeed.
2. Many people find it easy to be dispirited when facing difficulties, not understanding that ‘constant dripping wears away the stone’ and ‘practice makes perfect’. No matter how hard it is, only determination can succeed. Sure, with only a few people we cannot do it, but many people working together will be able to make it. If this generation cannot achieve it, then the next generation will follow and get it done.
3. Wanting to join and work together, wanting to be focussed, everyone must first question and understand why we must fight? Why can’t we fight? Why must every one give a hand? Why should we do it right away and not stand still watching and waiting for others? By doing this, we will have the same purpose, and we can march with the same will, with the same mind, with the same heart, and know how we will achieve the goal sooner.
4. Many books have been written about the theory and history of revolution. The French fear these, and thus have prohibited us from studying them, and prohibited us from seeing them, and consequently, our compatriots are still unclear about the meaning of Revolution. Some writers make proposals but do little and this is a very vague way; or they incite our beloved people to violence but without being organised; or they encourage dependency and submission and forget resilience.
5. The purpose of this book is to help our people comprehend:
- Why we must make a revolution if we want to live.
- Why revolution is the common task of our oppressed people, not merely the duty of one or two.
- How the revolutionary history of other nations offers us lessons.
- How we must bring the world movement to the attention of our people.
- Who are our friends? Who are our enemies?
- Our revolutionary strategy.
6. This book conveys meanings briefly, is easy to understand, and is easy to remember. Maybe someone will object that the writing style is too direct. Yes! What I say here is very simple, quick, sure like two times two is four, I don’t embellish it. For more than sixty years, French imperialism had enslaved us; more than twenty million have succumbed to this circle of death. We must speak up, and do it quickly to save the race. There’s no time to be fussy!
After reading this book, you will reflect,
wake up, and stand up, uniting to carry out the
revolution. Both in a literal and an aspirational
sense, this book stresses the one term:
Revolution! Revolution!! REVOLUTION!!!
Revolution.
1. What Is A Revolution?
Revolution is the destruction of the old and its replacement with the new, and it is the destruction of the bad, and its replacement with the good. For example, Galileo Galilei (1633) represents the scientific revolution. In the past, everyone thought that the earth was the centre of everything; but thanks to the experience of research, Galileo found that the earth goes around the sun.
George Stephenson (1800) represents the mechanical revolution. In the past, people only walked or rode on horses; he invented the steam locomotive.
Charles Darwin (1859) is famous for the revolution in biology. In the old days, no one understood the origins of diverse species; but Darwin investigated evolution as nature’s creativity.
Karl Marx stands for a revolution in economics. He studied capitalism, imperialism, and class struggles, clearly showing their origins, history, current manifestations and future possibilities.
2. How Many Kinds Of Revolutions Are There?
In the history of political thought, we have identified three kinds of revolution:
- Capitalist revolution.
- Nationalist revolution.
- Class-based revolution.
Examples of the capitalist revolution are the French revolution in 1789, the American Revolution for independence in 1776 (against the British), and the Japanese revolution in 1864. Nationalist revolutions include those such as when Italy evicted the powerful Austrian troops in 1859 or when China reclaimed Manchuria in 1911. A class revolution is, for example, when the Russian workers and peasants evicted their capitalist exploiters and seized power in October 1917.
3. What Was The Origin Of The Capitalist Revolution?
A. The capitalists in the city means the bourgeoisie, with factories and manufactured goods. These factories must have skilled workers, manufacturing many goods. They must have people to buy and sell these goods, and they must have means of transportation for the goods.
B. The capitalists in the countryside are the landowners. They want to retain the old feudal property regime where sovereign power belongs to the wealthy. The peasants are treated as if they were buffaloes or pigs, forced to stay in one place to plough the fields. Traders want to move goods without arbitrary taxes and without different tarids in different currencies in each place. So when they are travelling to, and fro, traders have to ask permission from the feudal lords, who do everything they can to prevent new businesses and trades.
The landlords were obstructing the bourgeoisie, the bourgeoisie was opposed to the landlords, and the two sides were in conflict, which led to the capitalist revolution.
Never did the two of them fight against each other more intensively or conspicuously than in America. From 1861 to 1865, the provinces in the North (bourgeoisie) sent soldiers to fight against the southern provinces (landlords, plantation owners) as if they were two hostile countries.
4. What Is The Origin Of The National Revolution?
A powerful nation robs a weaker one and rules over its people with force, conquering both economic and political rights. The people of those nations have lost their freedom and independence; all they can produce will be claimed by their oppressors.
The bourgeois capitalist robs all the produce and the rights of our people. Where there is an enemy, they force our people into the army to die on their behalf. As in the battle among the European powers in 1914–1918, the French forced us to join their army and then increased taxes and fees on our people. If we fight and win, they enjoy the benefit and authority; if we lose, we lose both our people and our property.
In short, the cruel and powerful enslave others, as France does to the Vietnamese people. When the enslaved masses cannot tolerate this anymore, they are awakened, are unified, and know that they would rather die than live on as slaves. They join forces to chase away their oppressors. This is the national revolution.
5. What Is The Origin Of The Class Revolution?
In the world, there are two classes:
- Capitalist (not working but enjoying all the benefits).
- Workers and farmers (hard-working but do not see the fruits of their labour).
Consider the Vietnamese workers who work at the Hon Gay coal mine in shifts of eleven hours per day. They work every day from the beginning to the end of the year and are paid only three cents a day. Three cents a day is not enough to pay for their food; it is not enough to clothe themselves; it will not pay for medicine when they are sick, and it is not even enough to buy a coffin when they die.
Whereas the owner of the mine never dirties his hands in work, enjoys sumptuous meals, travels to and fro conveniently, and takes a profit of millions per year (in 1925, it was VND seventeen million). So, let’s ask who produces this seventeen million VND, the mine owner or the mine workers? Peasants do not even own their ploughs, but the private plantations occupy all 122,000 acres of arable land in Central Vietnam and 150,000 acres in the South.
In places where our people did not have enough to eat and sometimes were starving, the private landlords sold rice at profits of nearly 1,000 million quan (French francs) per year (in 1925, they sold 911,477,000 quan worth of rice).
It’s like this in our country; the same goes for other countries. Workers and peasants cannot stand it anymore. We must unite together to drive away the capitalists, as happened in Russia; that is the class revolution. In short, the oppressed class makes a revolution to overthrow the oppressor class.
6. How Many Stages Does The Revolution Have?
The revolution is divided into two stages:
A. As Vietnam must drive away the French, India must drive away the English, Koreans must drive away the Japanese, the Filipinos must drive away the United States, and China must drive away the imperialists in order to regain, for their countries, the rights to equality and national freedom: that is the national revolution.
B. The farmers and workers of every country in the world, uniting all races like brothers and sisters as one family, then destroy all the capitalists in the world, bring happiness to every country, and to every people, thus making an equal world for all humanity: that is the world revolution.
The two paths of revolution are different because the national revolution does not involve discriminating among classes, which means that scholars, peasants, workers, and merchants are unified to fight against the foreign invaders. As for the class or world revolution, the proletariat marches in the front ranks. But the two kinds of revolution are closely related to each other. For example, if the Vietnamese people succeed in revolution, then the French capital is weakened, and weakened French capitalism will make it is easier for French workers and peasants to carry out their revolution. And if the French workers and peasants succeed, then the Vietnamese people will more readily win their freedom. The Vietnamese revolution and the French revolution must rely upon each other.
7. Who Are The Revolutionaries?
Because revolution is born of oppression, whoever is most severely oppressed will be more resolute. Previously, the bourgeoisie was oppressed under feudalism, so they had their revolution. Now, capitalism is oppressing the workers and farmers in turn, so the workers and farmers are the leading force of the revolution.
1. Because the workers and farmers are more heavily oppressed.
2. Because the workers and farmers are a mass; therefore they possess the greatest potential strength.
3. Because they are barefoot already, they have nothing, and so if defeated, they would only lose one miserable life. If they win, they will have the whole world. For this reason, workers and farmers are the fearless heart of the revolution; while the students, small merchants, and the small landowners, though also oppressed, do not suffer as much as the workers and farmers, so these three classes are only the revolutionary friends of the workers and farmers.
8. Is The Revolution Difficult Or Easy?
It is very diffcult to reform an old society that has existed for thousands of years. But knowing how to do it, knowing how to work together can make it possible, and then it is not difficult. Being easy or difficult all depends upon each individual, and the very determined will make it for certain. But those who want to make a revolution must know how
a. Capitalists and imperialists use religion and culture to fool the people. They use the law to bind our beloved people; they use power to scare the masses and take the wealth of our people, and they feed on greed. They make our people fear the word ‘revolutionary’. So, the revolutionary task is first to raise the people’s consciousness.
b. The masses were miserable and violent; the Vietnamese refused to pay taxes like the Annamese in Trung Ky (central Vietnam); in an Thành (Hanoi City), they tried poison; in the South, they escaped from jail; but without a plan, without ideology, they will forever fail. So, the revolutionary path is to clarify theory and strategy*, *An explanation of reasoning and doctrine, that is, an explanation of reasoning within Marxism-Leninism. making it understandable to the masses.
c. Because people do not theorize about the situation in the world, do not know how to think strategically, do not have any tactics, want to do more, but do not know what to do, the revolutionary path must understand the movement of the world, and the strategies to be presented to the people.
d. Ordinarily, people are divided into groups; our people in the South are suspicious of the people of the Centre, while the Centre despises the North. These divisions result in weaknesses; half a pair of chopsticks are not much use. So then, the power of the revolutionary path is our focus, and if we want to focus, we must have a united revolutionary party.
9. What Are The Priorities Of A Revolution?
First of all, we must have a revolutionary party responsible for mobilising our people at home and making contact with oppressed nations and proletarians abroad. Our revolution will owe its victory to a strong Party, just as a boat relies upon a firm hand on the tiller. If the Party wants to be steady, there must be unity; every member of the Party must understand; every member must follow Marxist theory. Without ideology, the Party would be like a man without wisdom, a boat without a compass.
At present, there are many doctrines and theories, but Leninism is the most genuine, firmest, and most revolutionary one.
Tomorrow, Part 2.