UC Santa Barbara

ABSTRACT

Viet Nam began economic liberalization through the Doi Moi reforms in 1986, opening the country’s doors to global markets and production networks. In the efforts to “revitalize” its economic development, these reforms targeted the decollectivation of agriculture, elimination of state subsidies, and removal of state price controls and check points to ensure the free flow of market activities and growth of private enterprises (Turley & Seiden, 1993). The global integration of Viet Nam, however, was a process that had origins before 1986. The period of French colonization in Viet Nam during the era of monopoly capitalism – or imperialism – had previously inserted the country into the world capitalist system, thereby generating the initial capitalist transformations in the country. As Viet Nam re-integrates into the current stage of global capitalism, several questions come to mind: Why and how did Viet Nam integrate into the world capitalist system? How were the processes of the 1986 different from the country’s integration under French colonization? And how had the processes of globalization impacted the transition of Vietnam into the world capitalist system?

The aim of this thesis is to provide a historical analysis of the two periods of Viet Nam’s integration by utilizing the theoretical framework set forth by Lenin on imperialism and Robinson on global capitalism, respectively. In using the macro-historical-structural approach provided by these two theorists, I conduct a reassessment of Viet Nam’s history in relation to the stages of capitalism starting from the late 19th century to the 21th century.

While French colonization of Viet Nam integrated pockets of the economy and labour into the circuits of capitalist production during the period of imperialist expansion, the emergence of a capitalist state came in the form of the colonial state in French Indochina. Its institutions were an amalgam of French and indigenous elites who held and maintained colonial state relations with the colonized society of Indochina. Social classes were absorbed and reorganized for the colonial enterprise under colonization. Factions within these social classes became nationalist revolutionary forces that waged and won the wars against colonial rule.

The second integration of Viet Nam into the new global capitalist system opened spaces of accumulation that the colonial system was not able to access and also dismantled the social relations established by the socialist project of the revolution. The point to be made is not whether the Vietnamese state remains socialist or not, but rather I argue that Viet Nam’s decision to employ neoliberal reforms reoriented the goals of the state towards capitalist development and gradually stripped the state of its socialist principles. In effect, the transnationalization of Viet Nam, which remains on-going, has transformed the nature of state institutions to operate in conjunction with global capital. From this analysis, I also suggest future avenues of research to assess Viet Nam’s relationship with China in 21st century global capitalism.