Between the 1950’s and 1980’s, Vietnam experimented with collective cooperatives in their Communist state. I use the term “experimented” because in the end, their efforts to collectivize the peasantry into agricultural based labor exchanges and eventually cooperatives all failed, returning to the individual and family based farming style that had been prevalent in previous centuries. Over the course of this paper, I will discuss several different reasons contributing to the ultimate failure of collective cooperatives including authoritative deficiencies, corruption, distrust, and war that together lead to the demise of the collective cooperative.

My primary source of information and course of study for this paper was The Power of Everyday Politics, a book by Benedict J. Tria Kerkvliet. According to Kerkvliet, “there are two processes in northern Vietnam-building collective farming and dismantling it (p.1)”. Kerkvliet lived in Vietnam four times throughout a ten year period and during his stays he visited hundreds of locals to discuss the conditions of living in collective cooperatives and the social and political incentives to remain collectivized or to lash out against cooperatives. He also did a considerable amount of course study in Hawaii as well as Australia.

According to Kerkvliet, there are five political criteria that must be met: perceiving shared problems, organizational experience and local leadership, addressing shared problems collectively and trust in order to sustain a successful socialist government. Kerkvliet says that “first individuals must realize that they share a serious problem requiring a collaborative solution”. Many years of war with the French left the country devastated with extensive property damage, loss of many beasts of burden used to till the land, lives lost and the local economies were left in shambles. This was one lead into collectivization. Second was organizational experience and local leadership and this is where the Communist Party stepped in, with their proposals of a socialist society with collective farming and production practices. Third was to address the shared problems collectively, and this was done by the Communist Party implementing socialist programs within the society beginning with the imposition of experimental labor exchanges. The fourth was trust involving how individuals felt about working together and also how they felt about the authorities’ ability to provide a fair environment in which the programs were run. The way the northern Vietnamese government handled these issues is what lead to the deterioration of collective farming.

Concerning the first of the criteria, it is obvious that the country was in shambles and was immediately addressed with the overthrowing of the French colonials under the leadership of the Communist Party (which addresses the second criteria as well). It was with the latter two criteria that the peasant’s dealing with what Kerkvliet calls “everyday politics” eventually lead to the dissolution of the collective cooperatives.

The first half of his book describes the social and political conditions that moved peasants to farm collectively and the processes by which they did so. Maltreatment from the French colonial authorities with their exploitive imperialist intentions by means of violence fueled by racial prejudice, many Vietnamese peasants decided it was a good idea to side with the Communist Party in an effort to expel the French from their country. In 1954, northern Vietnam achieved sovereignty over the French colonial authority and was governed by the Communist Party led by Ho Chi Minh who was in favor of collectivizing the entire nation. Given the conditions of war and extreme poverty, collectivism looked favorable in the peasantry’s eye because it promised improved living conditions, increased wages and a stronger social structure with everybody working together toward a common goal.

Vietnam based much of its communist revolution on China and Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward campaign. In Vietnam, it began with the government implementing experimental labor exchanges by which families would share resources such as tools, water buffaloes, oxen, and especially labor. Families would combine their efforts and construct more and better irrigation ditches, dykes, and various other forms of engineering projects to better the farming conditions within the communities. Villages would pool families together to assist with plowing, planting and harvesting fields as well as sharing resources such as manure and fertilizers in order to yield more crops upon each harvest. By doing this, villages could share in the risks of their crops being destroyed by flooding and various other phenomena that may destroy the food supply and have more available resources in tough times.

From 1954 to 1960, the national government pushed to turn all labor exchanges into collective cooperatives and to turn the existing collective cooperatives from low level to high level ones. Some reasons for accelerating growth of cooperatives included increased production (at least initially), controlled consumption and trade of agricultural products and a direct proportion of agricultural earnings to state agencies in charge of building factories and other parts of the economy (Kerkvliet, 67). Party leaders and officials wished to “fast track” also because they felt that rural living conditions were deteriorating rather quickly, for according to leader Truong Chinh, “Unless collectivization was vigorously pursued, land will be concentrated little by little in the hands of a few persons, and class differentiation will be accentuated (Kerkvliet, 67)”.

Initially, many leaders found the rapid collectivization technique to be a success for labor exchanges and cooperatives seemed to be spreading quickly throughout the Red River Delta. Farmers were now applying new agricultural techniques that were more effective and efficient. By assisting each other and spreading the workload over a broader spectrum. Also, the government liked how the peasants were working to expand the nation’s irrigation programs(Kerkvliet, 67). The peasantry experienced improved rural living conditions compared to the standards of only a few years prior, although most everybody was still considerably poor. The goal was to reach widespread collectivization by 1961(Kerkvliet, 69).

More people were signing up for collective cooperatives during the late 1950’s also because many peasants gave the Party and their policies the benefit of the doubt as quoted by a villager in a report in Kien An province:

“The majority of people are resolved to build them [cooperatives]. The party in the past and until now has looked after our interests; never has it taken us down into a big hole. Helping to advance socialism [with cooperatives] is an honor, even though there are many problems which we must try hard to overcome” (Kerkvliet, 73).

Another incentive to join the cooperatives was that up to 5% of the collective land was allotted for cooperative members to farm individually so that they may raise their own pigs, ducks, fish and grow some vegetables or rice. Unfortunately, the 5% was to be split evenly between the villagers and sometimes when new families were formed within the villages no extra land would be delegated to them, they were to share with their parents’ portion. In some cooperatives, brigade members allowed more than the 5% to be allotted for individual farming which often was overlooked by the local and provincial officials and worked beneficially for everyone (Kerkvliet, 77).

Other improvements on rural life brought by the cooperatives were new healthcare facilities to be offered at little or no cost to the members, more public schools and a secondary education was offered to the members as well. Education rates increased dramatically from 300 Vietnamese out of 10,000 that had gone to school in the 1930’s to 700 out of 10,000 in 1960 and up to 2,500 in 1970 and 47 percent of those were women (Kerkvliet, 81). Also,” the number of hospitals and health clinics increased from about 750 throughout northern Vietnam to 4,800 in 1960 (Kerkvliet, 81)”.

Although membership among collective cooperatives significantly increased throughout the late fifties up to 1961, there were a great many disgruntled members who applied for their resignation of their membership as well as a great many peasants who simply refused to join. Between 1960 and ’61, the benefits of joining a collective cooperative were diminishing for a number of reasons.

It is true however that of the peasants that joined, many did so under pressure and coercion. Similar as with China during the Great Leap Forward, Communist officials “invited those opposing cooperatives to come to district offices and explain their objections (Kerkvliet, 71)” often making them stay for days or weeks to sit through “collectivist tutorials” until they finally accepted to join. Another method of pressuring people to join was that they “had village wide broadcasts announcing the names of those who had not become cooperative members yet”, subjecting individuals to the scrutiny of their peers (Kerkvliet, 71).

There were some who opposed collectivization by tearing down or writing Ngo DInh Diem’s name in spray paint on signs promoting collective cooperatives. There were other vigilantes who sabotaged cooperatives’ fields and torched cooperative officer’s and local police’s houses however violent protests were few in number and very sporadic (Kerkvliet, 71). Another more passive aggressive method of protest however was that peasants who were bound to join the cooperatives anyway would often sell their draft animals to make a little extra money and so as not to have to give it up for the benefit of the cooperative. Although public pronouncements from the Communist party claimed that “peasants eagerly and enthusiastically wanted cooperatives (Kerkvliet, 69)” , reports from both the national and local levels stated that “Peasants and cooperative members lacked confidence and retained a strong sense of private ownership(Kerkvliet, 69)”.