DSpace at VNU: Ho Chi Minh thought: An important contribution to the field of comparative political thought

HO CHI MINH THOUGHT: AN IMPORTANT CONTRIBUTION TO THE FIELD O F COMPARATIVE POLITICAL THOUGHT Grace Cheng* Introduction Vietnam’s wars against France and the U.S from 1945-197-2 and its socialist revolution have been acknowledged as critical events in modem history However, there has been little inquiry about the thought o f the minds behind these efforts Studies o f the “Vietnamese Wars” and the Vietnamese revolution are largely taken up by historians or those adopting an historical approach Thus, they focius on giving relief to the context and the strategic choices and actions o f the ¡actors involved, as well as their significance However, much less attention has been given to the political thinking behind these achievements, which are typically attributed simply to the nationalist sentiment o f Vietnamese actors or to their adherence to Marxist-Leninist ideology, as if they were merely guided by thes.e pre­ determined frameworks of thought Given the historical significance o f Vietnam’s victories in their 20th century wars and its revolution, it is logical that some of the actors involved in these achievements can offer some insight into modem politics and contribute to political thought generally One o f the quests o f comparative political thought is to include in the conversation thinkers who can weigh in on universal questions on political issues such as self-determination, political agency, sovereignty, justice., and freedom Among modem Vietnamese thinkers, Ho Chi Minh may be considered one of these However, outside of Vietnam, only select speeches or statements are well-known, while there is only very superficial understanding about Ho’s specific perspectives on these ideas Since its Seventh National Congress in 1991, the V ietnam ese Com m unist Party has supported the system atic study o f Ho Chi M inh’s thoughts This effort, oi Ph.D., Associate Professor o f Political Science, Department o f Social Sciences, Hawaii Pacific University Emai: gcheng@hpu.edu 290 HO CHI MINH THOUGTH: AN IMPORTANT CONTRIBUTION course, is significant to Vietnam, as part of its intellectual and political heritage and as part of the ideological foundation of the party Therefore, this study has its own approach to Ho Chi Minh's thoughts, emphasizing the particular nature of Ho’s ideas to the Vietnamese setting and its significance for the Vietnamese nation However, the argument may be made that, given the extent to which the Vietnamese wars of independence and revolution - of which Ho was a principal architect inspired national liberation movements and postcolonial peoples elsewhere in the world, Ho Chi Minh’s thoughts are not only of significance to the history of Vietnamese political thought, but to political thought more broadly Ho Chi Minh is referenced by international authors in works, particularly on the topic of decolonization Therefore, there is already some recognition of the political thought of Ho Chi Minh as a contribution to political thought in the modem era However, there has yet to be any study o f Ho’s political writings on a systematic level by scholars outside o f Vietnam The new subfield of comparative political thought calls for just such inquiries into the works of thinkers from an expanded range of regions o f the world There are a variety o f reasons for this, as comparative political thought seeks to address a number o f gaps in conventional studies of political thought This paper introduces the approach of scholars o f comparative political thought and explores how the study o f Ho Chi Minh’s thought may contribute to this subfield o f political theory While there have been collections o f Ho Chi Minh's works published in Vietnam, such as the 12-volume Ho Chi Minh Toan Tap (Hochiminh selected works), published by the Nha Xuat Ban Chinh Tri Quoc Gia (National Politics Publishing House), this paper is not based on a thorough survey of these writings, as such an effort deserves much more extensive and careful study Instead, this essay outlines the dimensions of Ho's thought for further exploration towards the development of an understanding of his thought for students of comparative political thought Comparative political thought The study of political thought has largely tended to confine inquiry to thinkers from the immediate national or regional context of the country in which the study is pursued The study may also include study of prominent thinkers, such as Thomas Hobbes, Immanuel Kant, and Karl Marx, depending on the relevance of the thinkers to the political and intellectual traditions of the country In Western countries, the study of political theory has largely excluded non-western thinkers Western theories of “political culture” - o f which Huntington’s concept of the “clash of civilizations” is probably the best known - dismiss the potential for non-western 291 VIÉT NAM HQC - KY YÉU H I THÁO QC TÉ LAN THÍT TU* traditions to conceive o f emancipatory political ideas on their own, as these theorisis tend to essentialize cultures outside of the West as authoritarian, irrational, predisposed to order at the expense o f freedom, etc Therefore, modem ideals of freedom, equality, rights, etc are attributed solely to the Western tradition of political thought Recently, however, a number o f scholars, seeking to integrate the study of thinkers from beyond the West, have called for the formation o f the comparative political thought subfield One o f these scholars, Fred Dallmayr, has argued that political thought should no longer be restricted by geographical setting but should be explored at a global level (Dallmayr 1997, 421) The motivation for investigating the political thought o f an expanded range o f thinkers from different regions thus may be linked to globalization, as Dallmayr asserts: “a mode o f theorizing that takes seriously the ongoing process o f globalization, a mode which entails, among other things, the growing proximity and interpretation o f cultures” (Dallmayr 2004, 249) Furthermore, globalization has prompted scholars to become conscious of the diffusion of norms and ideas, and this gives rise to varying as well as overlapping interpretations by actors working in distinct historical sociopolitical contexts and from a variety of different intellectual traditions Accordingly, the comparison of works by different authors may shed light into how a particular political idea or value is conceived, achieved, and/or experienced by actors operating in a range of distinct historical conditions and from distinct intellectual heritages Among the purposes o f comparative political thought, therefore, is the comparison of different conceptions of political ideas, such as equality and freedom, in order to gain more critical perspective, not simply to examine how they are interpreted in particular historical and cultural contexts In this way, comparative political thought inquires into the epistemic value of political ideas As a resut, a number of works comparing political ideas have offered critical evaluation of conventional interpretations of such concepts For example, Ackerly (2005) has demonstrated that certain elements in the Confucian tradition may not only facilitate democracy and enjoyment of its benefits in East Asian countries, but also in the rest of the world, including the West, where democratic societies may be undergoing crisis as a result of the predominance of neoliberal ideology and its impact on serial relations and institutions Ackerly’s work represents an example of what And-ew March (2009) refers to as the critical-transformative purpose of comparative political thought Her inquiry into Confucianism demonstrates, as Dallmayr put it, “the p>int of comparative political theory is precisely to move toward a more gemine universalism, and beyond the spurious ‘universality’ traditionally claimed by the Western canon and by some recent intellectual movements” (Dallmayr 2004, 253) 292 HO CHI MINH THOUGTH: AN IMPORTANT CONTRIBUTION Therefore, comparative political thought challenges the tendency among Western scholars historically to regard solely the claims of canonical Western thinkers as possessing universal quality, while characterizing the ideas of modem thinkers from other world regions as merely derivative of Western ideas This has been the case in the instances where Western authors have referenced the political ideas of Ho Chi Minh (see, for example, Ishay 2009: PAGE) Certainly, ideas originating from the “Western tradition” were important in Ho’s political thought, as evidenced in his explicit references to the ideas o f the Enlightenment, American revolutionaries, Marx and Engels, and Lenin, among others However, such commentaries imply that Ho’s thinking on these concepts is only a culturally idiosyncratic interpretation of the original ideas of Western thinkers Against this approach, comparative political thought resists the suggestion that only Western ideas are original and universal while the thought o f other modem thinkers are derivative of Western thought and/or particular to historical concerns of their specific communities or both The notion that modernism is synonymous with Western civilization suggests that there is only one model of modernity, which can only be achieved through internalizing Western frameworks o f thought This line of thinking has historically justified colonialism, while modernism in non-western states is attributed to the attempted imposition o f Western civilization Dallmayr (2004) and Euben (2002), furthermore, assert that the imposition of Western frames and concepts to non-Westem contexts represents “an act of hegemony and domination that ought to be counteracted by exploring the ways in which non-Westem thinkers discuss political questions” (cited in March 2009, 541) Some scholars are concerned with how universal political concepts are reframed differently by thinkers of different backgrounds (Lomperis 2008) In contrast, there are those who emphasize nativist and autonomous approaches to politics (Alatas 2006) For example, scholars have shown that “modem” ideas organically emerged among thinkers in Calcutta, Istanbul, Beijing, and elsewhere in earlier centuries, independent o f discourses in the West (Pankaj Mishra, Narayana Rao, Sanjay Subrahmanyam, and David Shulman) These have a distinct quality o f their own, as Shulman (2012) distinguishes between “the emergent indigenous modernities of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries” and “the impoverished colonial modernities,” which are plagued with the loss of cultural confidence Whatever the case, rather than presume that ideas and values of universal quality only originate from Western political thought, scholars of comparative political thought appreciate that there have been fundamental questions about what constitutes a just political and social order that thinkers from all different 293 VIỆT NAM HỌC - KỶ YÉƯ HỘI THẢO QUỐC TÉ LẰN THỨ TƯ backgrounds have inquired throughout history Therefore, comparative politcsl thought may be thought of as an exercise in intercivilizational dialogue And, wiile acknowledging the cross-fertilization of ideas between and among peoples;, >ni should not presume that Western ideas inspired Ho Chi Minh’s thinking alout politics and that he merely reinterpreted these ideas through the cultural lens olhis particular intellectual upbringing This suggests that Ho would not have valued slfdetermination, freedom, and equality if he were not introduced to these iteas through Western writings We should thus question the assumption that Ho