Can We Add Vietnam To The List Of Countries Abandoning Socialism?
/Even as New York City looks poised to try one more time to make socialism work, multiple countries that have gone down the socialist road are trying instead to turn off. Notable examples include Argentina, where President Xavier Milei’s party just scored a notable victory over the Peronists in legislative elections; and Bolivia where, in the August 2025 first round of the presidential election, after nearly 20 years of explicitly socialist rule under the MAS Party, accompanied by economic stagnation, the MAS candidate for President got just 2% of the vote.
Can we add Vietnam to the list of countries moving away from socialism? A November 1 piece at American Greatness by Stephen Young and Bradley Thayer asserts the thesis that we can. The headline is “Did We Just Win the Vietnam War?” Excerpt:
Half a century after America’s withdrawal, Vietnam has quietly vindicated U.S. sacrifice—abandoning Marxism for nationalism and embracing the very ideals America once defended. . . . While few Americans have noticed, Vietnam’s new General Secretary of the Communist Party, To Lam, has replaced Marxist-Leninism as the Party’s governing ideology with something more authentically Vietnamese: Truong Ton Dan Toc, or “Vietnamese nationalism.”
Young and Thayer cite some serious evidence in support of their thesis. My overall conclusion: Vietnam is making some meaningful strides in the right direction, but still, Young and Thayer are getting ahead of themselves.
Here are the main points that Y&T make in support of their thesis:
In a speech on April 27, 2025, Vietnamese Communist Party General Secretary To Lam “presented his party as one dedicated to Vietnamese nationalism, not Marxist-Leninism, saying that honor will always be given to those who sacrificed for the Vietnamese people’s “happiness and prosperity” and “their truong ton [nationalism] and development.”
“On May 4, 2025, the Politburo of the Vietnamese Communist Party adopted Resolution 68, putting private enterprise at the center of economic development. The resolution gave responsibility for national wealth creation to self-management, self-effort, and self-empowerment. The rights of private property will be guaranteed and protected. The Vietnamese state will henceforth ‘serve and support’ private enterprise and not contradict the ‘principles of the market.’”
On October 8, 2025, in remarks closing the 14th Session of the Central Committee of the Vietnamese Communist Party, “To Lam doubled down on his new vision for a non-Communist, truly Vietnamese Vietnam. Democracy must be guaranteed with discipline and transparency, with elections as broad-based politics to earn the trust of the people. Private enterprise must be pushed forward for national development. The benefit of the people must become the objective of the government’s new economic policy. Finally, dogma, meaning turgid Communist dogma, must be eliminated.”
These are all excellent points, and I certainly wish the Vietnamese people the best in their efforts to leave Communism behind and move forward to capitalism, democracy, and prosperity. However, the Communist Party has been in power continuously since the 1970s, and remains in power. No elections are scheduled, nor are any serious preparations for elections under way. Current GDP per capita is only about $4700 — a pitiful level, representing the fruits of decades of excessive government control of the economy.
The transition away from socialism or Communism is not simple. Once private business is allowed, some businesspeople start to succeed, and become rich. That makes them a threat to the power of the governing elite. And then the push-back begins, where only those businesspeople under the thumb of those in power are allowed to succeed. And the party re-tightens its grip. This is what has happened in China during the reign of Xi Jin-Ping.
In January 2019 I took a trip to Vietnam, and wrote a series of posts about my observations. Here is an excerpt from my post of January 16, 2019:
So with the perspective of the last 44 years, who “won” the Việt Nam War? The U.S. is very close to achieving all of its principal objectives without having risked any more lives or fired any more shots since 1973. Probably, about the same economic situation would prevail today if there had never been any Việt Nam War. Although proclaiming itself a “socialist republic,” Việt Nam is not part of an aggressive and militaristic communist bloc that continually threatens its neighbors. Its citizens are chasing prosperity through private property and free exchange just as fast as they can chase it. The only thing left of “socialism” is a government sector much larger than it needs to be or than it should be.
It would be nice if today’s government of Việt Nam could find itself feeling secure enough to stand for election like grown-up governments do; but there is no current prospect of that. On the other hand, achieving a government willing to conduct periodic elections was never really one of the main objectives that the U.S. was hoping to accomplish with its military force those many decades ago.
To Lam’s recent statements represent additional progress from where Vietnam was six years ago. But the progress is slow and incremental, rather than the sudden reversal painted by Young and Thayer. Hopefully, the change will continue, without the backsliding seen in China. I’ll believe that Vietnam has truly come out of its long winter when an election is held and advocates of a free economy win a decisive victory.
So has the U.S. finally won the Vietnam War? Basically yes. But the main lesson is that a free economy most often cannot be established by military force. With almost all academic elites teaching and believing economic nonsense, people need to learn the lessons of freedom through their own bitter experience. Little by little, Vietnam is getting there.