Anarchism in Vietnam
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Anarchism in Vietnam first emerged in the early 20th century, as the Vietnamese started to fight against the French
History
The roots of anarchism in Vietnam lay in the early resistance to French colonial rule, organized among various secret societies. Among these were the Heaven and Earth Society, which in 1884 had assassinated a colonial collaborator in Saigon.[2] Other attacks against the French colonial authorities included the Cần Vương movement, which attempted to overthrow the French during the late 1880s, the Hanoi Poison Plot, in which indigenous Vietnamese troops attempted to assassinate the entire French garrison in the Citadel of Hanoi, as well as subsequent anti-colonial uprisings in Cochinchina and Tonkin.
Official French colonial publications implied that these Vietnamese secret societies and religious sects could be easily coopted by revolutionaries, due to their status as indigenous methods of organizing, echoing
International origins
Anarchism was first introduced to the Vietnamese anti-colonial movement during the 1900s[1] by the early nationalist leader Phan Bội Châu.[4] In January 1905, Phan moved to Japan, where he was exposed to a variety of new political ideas being propagated among Chinese expatriates, including the constitutionalism of Liang Qichao, the republicanism of the Tongmenghui, and the anarchism of the Tokyo group.[5] Initially a utilitarian, Phan began to rapidly move through a variety of political ideologies and made acquaintance with a number of politically diverse groups and individuals in Japan.[6] In 1907, Phan founded the Constitutionalist Association (Vietnamese: Cong Hien Hoi), an organization of Vietnamese expatriate students which advocated for constitutional monarchy, but by 1908 it was forcibly disbanded by the Japanese authorities, at the request of the French. That same year, Phan joined the Asian Friendship Association, an organization founded by the exiled Chinese republicans and anarchists, as well as Japanese socialists. The Association was largely directed by Liu Shipei, a prominent member of the Tokyo anarchist group and editor of its newspaper Natural Justice, and included many other Chinese anarchists such as Chang Chi, who was a close friend of Phan's.[7]
But by 1909, Phan Bội Châu was ordered to leave Japan and spent the subsequent years drifting around East Asia. After the overthrow of the
As more Vietnamese expatriates joined up with internationalist organizations in China, they increasingly came into contact with anarchist individuals and groups.[10] Phan Bội Châu himself, who had developed ties with the Tokyo strand of Chinese anarchism led by Zhang Binglin and Liu Shipei, was inspired by their traditionalist approach to anarchism and socialism.[11] Phan was particularly inspired by the anarchist positions on anti-imperialism and direct action, leading him to defend the violent overthrow of the French colonial authorities, even to the chagrin of his republican allies like Hu Hanmin and Chen Qimei. Developing on propaganda of the deed, Phan admired past assassination attempts against state officials and encouraged the targeting of French colonial officials, leading to a series of bombings in Hanoi, which brought both increased publicity and reprisals against the Restoration League. Several of the League's activists were executed, internationalist organizations in China began to disintegrate and Phan himself was arrested and imprisoned by the Beiyang government.[12] While Phan was in prison, Liu Shipei died of tuberculosis in 1915, Chen Qimei was assassinated in 1916 and Zhang Binglin abandoned anarchism and gave up on political pursuits, leaving Phan politically isolated by the time of his release in February 1917. After briefly coming under the influence of a collaborationist advocate, Phan turned his interests towards socialism, inspired by the socialist currents of the Russian and Chinese revolutions.[13]
Following the end of World War I, many more Vietnamese radicals went into exile, looking for knowledge that was being suppressed in French Indochina. People from Annam and Tonkin largely went to China or Japan, where they were exposed to social anarchist tendencies, whilst those from Cochinchina went to France, where they became influenced by French strands of individualist anarchism.[14] While Vietnamese expatriates that took up the Chinese strand of anarchism tended to employ aspects of traditionalism, expatriates inspired by French anarchism employed a more radical, youth-oriented and forward-looking philosophy.[15]
Growth and spread of anarchism
This diversity of opinion among Vietnamese anarchists was reflected upon the exiles' return to Vietnam. Political opposition was harshly repressed in the northern colonies of Annam and Tonkin, the anti-colonial movement turned to illegal activism and violent actions against colonial authorities. This, combined with the social anarchism brought back from abroad, laid the groundwork for the formation of political organizations. But in the southern colony of Cochinchina, freedom of the press existed, allowing Vietnamese radicals to participate in open political discourse, which defused political tensions. Upon his return from France, the individualist anarchist Nguyễn An Ninh found a place in radical journalism, publishing political tracts in his journal La Cloche Fêlée which encouraged the synthesis of the social struggle for individual liberties with the national struggle for Vietnamese independence.[5] Ninh called for the youth of Vietnam to reinvent itself and take control of its own destiny, becoming incredibly popular amongst his peers, as his rhetorical tone marked a stark contrast to the tendency towards moderation and compromise.[16] Ninh critiqued the Confucian family values of parental authority and gender inequality, as well as traditional morality, encouraging people to "break with the past and free themselves from tyranny of all kinds" and create a genuinely new culture.[17] He also attacked the bureaucratism of the colonial state, the native Vietnamese bourgeoisie and traditional Confucian society.[18] Ninh explicitly expounded his anarchist views in his article Order and Anarchy, quoting such authors as Rabindranath Tagore and Leo Tolstoy.[19] Ninh's anti-authoritarianism also extended into his personal life, as he got himself into a number of conflicts with colonial officials.[20] In addition, while Ninh admired the Soviet Union, he positioned himself firmly against a Bolshevik-style revolution due to its human cost, preferring the route of individuals directly undermining social inequalities rather than partaking in revolutionary violence. However, as time passed, Ninh increasingly saw revolution as inevitable and began to agitate for organized resistance to achieve social justice.[21]
By this time, Phan Bội Châu's political influence was largely marginalized and his followers in the Restoration League began to leave him behind.
Revolutionary socialism and anarchist populism
The first instance of the word "revolution" being introduced to Vietnam was through the writings of
Nguyễn Ái Quốc solicited aid from the Communist International for support in the Vietnamese anti-colonial struggle, but himself was skeptical of forming an openly communist movement in the country, due to what he saw as a "political naiveté" among Vietnamese radicals. He particularly criticized Nguyễn Thượng Hiền's work, insisting on a particular need to reject reformism and evolutionary change in favor of a political revolution, and further critiqued the use of non-violent boycott movements.[35] In early 1925, Quốc established the Vietnamese Revolutionary Youth League to organize young Vietnamese people towards collective action.[36] Anarchism, as championed by Nguyễn An Ninh, still presented a significant challenge to Quốc's nascent communist movement, as it appealed to the same young people that the communists were trying to recruit. Quốc himself presented a fierce criticism of anarchism:[37]
Nowadays, anarchism is nonsense; to spread anarchism is as stupid as proposing to a dying man that he should fight in hand-to-hand combat, or run a race.
— Nguyễn Ái Quốc, Youth, 26 July 1925
Quốc also critiqued the
Despite these challenges from the emerging communist movement,
On September 28, 1928, Nguyễn An Ninh and his associate Phan Văn Hùm were arrested after an altercation with the police and given prison sentences. The Sûreté subsequently exposed Ninh's Secret Society and detained 500 of his followers, with 115 standing trial over the following year.[46] While Ninh was in prison, some activists managed to keep the Society going, but when a series of uprisings, strikes and demonstrations broke out in 1930, many of Ninh's followers were led to the newly established Indochinese Communist Party.[47]
La Lutte and the United Front
Upon his release from prison in October 1931, Nguyễn An Ninh returned to his organizing work in the countryside. Ninh served as a unifying non-partisan presence for anti-colonial elements to join together in a united front and legally oppose the government in the Saigon municipal elections of 1933, uniting members of the Communist Party with nationalists, Trotskyists and anarchists. They rallied support through the publication of the newspaper La Lutte and succeeded in electing two members of the alliance to the Saigon city council.[48] In October 1934, Ninh revived the La Lutte collaboration to run various campaigns and participate in elections, "focused squarely on the plight of the urban poor, the workers and peasant labourers."[49]
In the Cochinchinese parliamentary election of March 1935, the La Lutte group received 17% of the vote,[50] although they failed to win a seat.[51] There was also a La Lutte candidacy that ran in the May 1935 Saigon municipal election, in which four members of the alliance were elected, but three were invalidated due to their communist sympathies. The alliance also went on to organize a number of strikes in the subsequent years.[50]
However, the united front was soon brought to an end in 1936, when the newly elected Popular Front government failed to deliver on its promises of colonial reform.[52][53] The Trotskyists led by Tạ Thu Thâu, who took an oppositionist stance towards the new French government, soon became the dominant tendency within La Lutte,[54] leading the Communist Party to split off from the alliance in 1937, launching their own newspaper and publishing attacks against the Trotskyists.[52][55] In the 1939 Cochinchinese parliamentary election, the Trotskyists of La Lutte and the Communist Party ran on different lists. The Trotskyist "Workers' and Peasants' Slate" were victorious, electing three candidates with around 80% of the vote, whereas the Communist-backed "Democratic Front", which included Nguyễn An Ninh himself, was defeated with only 1% of the vote.[56]
Following the signing of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact and the outbreak of World War II, the amicable relations between France and the Soviet Union were severed, leading France to undertake a repression of any seditious factions in Vietnam - sentencing Nguyễn An Ninh to 5 years in Côn Đảo Prison. During the war, Phan Bội Châu and Nguyễn An Ninh both died in captivity, bringing a definitive end to the leadership of anarchism in Vietnam.
Revolution and exiled radicalism
With the defeat and dissolution of the
The Viet Minh responded by launching the
Some of those who survived escaped to
See also
- Anarchism in China
- Anarchism in France
- Communism in Vietnam
- Socialism in Vietnam
- Trotskyism in Vietnam
Notes
- ^ a b Ho Tai 1992, p. 4
- ^ Ho Tai 1992, p. 188
- ^ Ho Tai 1992, p. 189
- ^ Dirlik, Arif (25 November 2019). "Anarchism in Vietnam and Korea". In Franklin Rosemont (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. Retrieved 15 May 2021.
- ^ a b Ho Tai 1992, p. 58
- ^ Ho Tai 1992, pp. 58–59
- ^ Ho Tai 1992, p. 59
- ^ Ho Tai 1992, p. 60
- ^ Ho Tai 1992, pp. 60–1
- ^ Ho Tai 1992, p. 61
- ^ Ho Tai 1992, pp. 61–62
- ^ Ho Tai 1992, p. 62
- ^ a b Ho Tai 1992, p. 63
- ^ Ho Tai 1992, p. 57
- ^ Ho Tai 1992, p. 74
- ^ Ho Tai 1992, p. 73
- ^ Ho Tai 1992, pp. 73–74
- ^ Ho Tai 1992, p. 78
- ^ Ho Tai 1992, pp. 81–82
- ^ Ho Tai 1992, pp. 82–83
- ^ Ho Tai 1992, p. 84
- ^ Ho Tai 1992, pp. 63–64
- ^ Ho Tai 1992, p. 64
- ^ Ho Tai 1992, p. 66
- ^ a b Ho Tai 1992, p. 67
- ^ Ho Tai 1992, pp. 66–67
- ^ Ho Tai 1992, pp. 84–86
- ^ Ho Tai 1992, p. 86
- ^ Van 2010, pp. 40–42
- ^ a b Ho Tai 1992, p. 171
- ^ Ho Tai 1992, pp. 171–172
- ^ Ho Tai 1992, p. 172
- ^ Ho Tai 1992, p. 173
- ^ Ho Tai 1992, pp. 173–174
- ^ Ho Tai 1992, p. 175
- ^ Ho Tai 1992, pp. 176–178
- ^ Ho Tai 1992, p. 186
- ^ Ho Tai 1992, pp. 186–187
- ^ Ho Tai 1992, p. 187
- ^ Ho Tai 1992, pp. 187–188
- ^ Ho Tai 1992, p. 188
- ^ Ho Tai 1992, p. 190
- ^ Ho Tai 1992, p. 191
- ^ Ho Tai 1992, pp. 191–192
- ^ Ho Tai 1992, p. 192
- ^ a b Ho Tai 1992, p. 193
- ^ Ho Tai 1992, p. 194
- ^ Van 2010, p. 55
- ^ Goscha 2016, p. 255
- ^ a b Alexander 1991, pp. 961–962
- ^ Taylor 2013, p. 515
- ^ a b Trager 1959, p. 142
- ^ Alexander 1991, p. 964
- ^ Dunn 1985, p. 7
- ^ Van 2010, p. 161
- ^ Van 2010, p. 81, 156, 168
- ^ Hunt 2016, p. 125
- ^ Hunt 2016, p. 124
- ^ Chieu 1986, p. 301
- ^ Chieu 1986, p. 309
- ^ Chieu 1986, pp. 311–312
- ^ Van 2010, p. 125
- ^ Van 2010, p. 131
- ^ Van 2010, pp. 155–159
- ^ Van 2010, p. 2
- ^ Van 2010, p. 199
- ^ Van 2010, pp. 79–80
- ^ Van 2010, pp. 207–216
- ^ Van 2010, pp. xvii–xviii
References
- Alexander, Robert Jackson (1991). International Trotskyism, 1929-1985: A Documented Analysis of the Movement. OCLC 750715544.
- Chieu, Vu Ngu (February 1986). "The Other Side of the 1945 Vietnamese Revolution: The Empire of Viet-Nam". S2CID 161998265.
- Dunn, Peter M. (1985). The First Vietnam War. OCLC 490910176.
- Goscha, Christopher (2016). The Penguin History of Modern Vietnam. OCLC 953130310.
- Ho Tai, Hue-Tam (1992). Radicalism and the Origins of the Vietnamese Revolution. OCLC 464029400.
- Hunt, Michael H. (2016). The World Transformed: 1945 To the Present. OCLC 1123239161.
- Lodia, Claudia C. (June 2023). "Anarchism in Vietnam". Anarchist Developments in Cultural Studies. 2023 (1): 59–71. ISSN 1923-5615.
- Taylor, Keith Weller (2013). A History of the Vietnamese. OCLC 810273605.
- Trager, Frank N., ed. (1959). Marxism in Southeast Asia; A Study of Four Countries. OCLC 906066150.
- OCLC 877726806.
Further reading
- ISBN 0-300-15228-0