Vietnam Abandons Marxism:

How One Communist Party Chose Nationalism Over Ideology

When General Secretary To Lam stood before Vietnam's Communist Party leadership on April 27, 2025, he delivered a speech that broke with seven decades of orthodoxy. Instead of invoking Marx or Lenin, Lam spoke of "Truong Ton Dan Toc"—Vietnamese nationalism—declaring all Vietnamese to be "children of dragons and grandchildren of angels" descended from the ancestral mother Au Co.

A week later, on May 4, the Politburo adopted Resolution 68, placing private enterprise at the center of economic development and guaranteeing property rights. By October, Marxist-Leninism had virtually disappeared from official discourse. Vietnam's Communist Party, which took power in 1954 and unified the country through war in 1975, had quietly abandoned its founding ideology.

The transformation represents more than political theater. Lam, who assumed leadership following the death of longtime leader Nguyen Phu Trong in July 2024, has moved aggressively to streamline Vietnam's bureaucracy, eliminate ministries, and cut over 100,000 public sector jobs. Resolution 68 sets an ambitious goal: developing 20 large private companies capable of competing in global value chains by 2030, and expanding the total number of businesses to 3 million by 2045.

The Pattern of Communist Collapse

Vietnam's ideological pivot reflects a broader truth: communism as a governing philosophy has spent the past 35 years in terminal decline. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels published their Communist Manifesto in 1848. History has measured it and found it wanting.

The 1989 revolutions that swept Central and Eastern Europe marked communism's most dramatic collapse, starting with Poland's Solidarity movement and cascading through Hungary, East Germany, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, and Romania. Communist parties lost their monopoly on power in all but five countries: China, Cuba, Laos, North Korea, and Vietnam.

The transitions followed distinct patterns. Countries with the most successful economic transformations simultaneously developed the most secure democratic systems—Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. By 1990, former communist leaders were out of power, free elections were held, and Germany was reunified.

Success factors included prior histories of liberalization attempts under communism, extensive relationships with Western democracies, and new political elites committed to rapid change. These countries introduced comprehensive macro-economic reforms early, liberalized their economies, and privatized state-owned assets with consistency despite opposition.

Other post-Soviet states followed darker paths. Moldova and Ukraine devolved into kleptocracies, while Belarus became a Russian client state. The Yugoslav successor states experienced varying degrees of violence before stabilizing.

Central Asia's Authoritarian Path

The Central Asian republics—Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan—took a third route. Three of these countries are ruled by Soviet-era officials who retained their presidencies after independence, transforming from communist leaders into authoritarian strongmen.

Political transformations in Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan can be identified as the consolidation of autocracy, featuring strong central power, limited political freedoms, restricted political pluralism, and prosecuted opposition. These regimes base their rule on family structures, security apparatus, and associated business elites, exercising tough control that has weathered fraudulent elections and mass protests.

Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan have made relative strides in market reforms, while Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan have not yet completed transitions to market economies, with Tajikistan representing an intermediate case. The communist bureaucracy didn't disappear—it shed its ideological pretenses while preserving power structures.

Vietnam's Unique Gambit

Vietnam's transformation differs from both the Eastern European democratic transitions and the Central Asian authoritarian consolidations. The Vietnamese Communist Party is attempting something unprecedented: maintaining one-party political control while abandoning the ideology that justified that control and embracing economic systems fundamentally incompatible with communist theory.

Resolution 68 explicitly identifies the private sector as "the most important driving force of the national economy" for the first time, placing it on equal footing with state and collective economic sectors. The resolution mandates at least a 30 percent reduction in administrative processing times, compliance costs, and business conditions by 2025.

The reforms commit Vietnam to a permissive, business-friendly legal framework where "everything not explicitly prohibited is allowed," with planned codification in the Enterprise Law and Investment Law. Private sector growth targets call for 10-12% annual expansion, with the sector contributing over 60% of GDP by 2045.

Lam consolidated power by weaponizing counter-corruption investigations to systematically remove rivals from December 2022 to mid-2024. His reforms have been described as "forceful, unexpected, and unprecedented," with a series of Central Committee resolutions covering science and technology, international integration, and modern rule of law.

The Geopolitical Implications

Singapore upgraded its relationship with Vietnam to a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership in March 2025—Singapore's first with an ASEAN member state—expanding cooperation into digital economy, green energy, and carbon credits. The move signals regional confidence in Vietnam's trajectory.

Yet Vietnam maintains delicate relations with China, with Lam emphasizing during Xi Jinping's April 2025 visit that "developing relations with China is an objective requirement, a strategic choice, and a top priority for Vietnam." Vietnam must balance economic liberalization with geopolitical realities.

Questions remain about whether Resolution 68 will convince the U.S. administration that Vietnam is indeed a market economy, with Washington potentially examining changes to constitutional references to "Marxist-Leninist doctrine."

The Unfinished Revolution

Resolution 68 represents one of Vietnam's most dramatic economic policy shifts since Doi Moi, elevating the private sector from junior partner to leading force. Success hinges on overcoming entrenched interests and managing ideological resistance within the party structure.

The Communist Party's budget remains opaque and continues growing even as government agencies face cuts, with party-controlled mass organizations costing an estimated $2-3 billion annually. This suggests limits to reform: the party will liberalize the economy but not threaten its own institutional survival.

Whether this hybrid system can prove stable remains uncertain. The Eastern European experience suggests economic liberalization creates pressures for political liberalization. But the Chinese model demonstrates sophisticated authoritarianism can persist amid economic dynamism—at least for decades.

What seems clear is that Marxist-Leninism as a governing ideology continues its slow collapse. Even in nations where communist parties retain power, the ideology has become hollow—maintained for legitimacy while actual governance follows pragmatic lines. Vietnam's evolution represents not communism's adaptation but its abandonment, as pragmatism replaces doctrine and nationalism supplants international worker solidarity.

For the Vietnamese people, the shift promises greater economic opportunity and property rights, even if full political freedom remains distant. For those concerned with human prosperity, this represents progress. The fate of communism appears increasingly settled. The question is not whether it will survive, but what replaces it—and whether those transitions occur peacefully.

SIDEBAR: The Lost Opportunity: When Ho Chi Minh Quoted Jefferson and America Looked Away

On September 2, 1945, hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese packed Hanoi's Ba Dinh Square to witness their declaration of independence. The frail man at the microphone opened with words designed to resonate across the Pacific: "All men are created equal. They are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among them are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness."

Ho Chi Minh was quoting Thomas Jefferson, deliberately invoking America's founding principles in a calculated appeal for U.S. support.

It wasn't his first attempt to enlist American backing. In 1919, a young Ho (then calling himself Nguyen Ai Quoc, "Nguyen the Patriot") had petitioned President Woodrow Wilson at the Versailles Peace Conference, inspired by Wilson's principle of self-determination. He was ignored. Ho had even lived in the United States—in Boston and New York—working as a cook on a steamship, absorbing American ideals of independence.

The OSS Connection

During World War II, the U.S. Office of Strategic Services forged a working alliance with Ho's Viet Minh, supplying them with radios and light arms in exchange for intelligence on Japanese forces and help rescuing downed American pilots.

In July 1945, OSS operatives found Ho "shaking like a leaf and obviously running a high fever," deathly ill with malaria and dysentery. They treated him and he recovered quickly. The Americans and Ho developed genuine rapport. OSS Captain Archimedes Patti witnessed the first parade of Viet Minh troops where the Vietnamese flag was displayed alongside those of the Allies and watched Ho read his Declaration of Independence.

Just days before that historic September 2 speech, Ho had invited several American OSS officers to contribute ideas toward his Declaration of Independence.

Letters Left Unanswered

In September 1945, a letter from Ho seeking U.S. support arrived in Washington, passed along by a supportive OSS agent. It went unanswered. So did a telegram that arrived in February 1946 with a similar message.

In his October 1945 letters to President Truman and the Secretary of State, Ho explicitly invoked American anti-colonial heritage: "The truth is that we have wrested our independence from the Japanese and not from the French. The French have fled, the Japanese have capitulated, Emperor Bao Dai has abdicated."

Though a devoted follower of Marxist-Leninism, Ho has been widely defined as "a patriot first and a communist second," who actively sought good relations with the United States in the decades leading up to the Vietnam War.

Why Washington Chose Paris

Secretary of State Dean Acheson viewed Southeast Asia through the lens of Europe. His priority was seeing a successful French government emerge from World War II's ashes. The French were clamoring to reclaim their colonies. Sacrificing the interests of an obscure Asian country was a small price to pay to help secure stability in Europe.

From 1947, the United States backed France's return to Vietnam, seeing French colonialism as a lesser evil than communist-ruled Vietnam, despite many Americans despising colonialism. France, after all, was a democratic capitalist state and an important Cold War ally.

The cost of that choice proved catastrophic. By 1954 when France surrendered to the Viet Minh, Washington had invested almost $3 billion attempting to preserve French Indochina. America's direct involvement would escalate from there, ultimately claiming over 58,000 American lives and more than two million Vietnamese.

The Bitter Irony

When American OSS officers like Patti treated Ho and the Viet Minh positively and established warm relations, the French complained bitterly to Washington, leading to the officers' recall.

Today's transformation in Vietnam adds a final layer of irony to this history. Analysts note that General Secretary To Lam's current vision for Vietnam—emphasizing nationalism over ideology, private enterprise, democracy with discipline, and elimination of rigid dogma—"has no substantial difference from that vision of our South Vietnamese allies half a century ago."

America fought a devastating war ostensibly to prevent communist domination of Vietnam. Fifty years after Saigon fell, the Vietnamese Communist Party is voluntarily abandoning Marxist-Leninism for the very nationalism Ho Chi Minh championed in 1945. Had Washington answered Ho's letters and supported Vietnamese independence rather than French colonialism, Vietnam might have reached this destination decades earlier—and at infinitely lower cost in blood and treasure.

General Secretary To Lam, born in 1957, represents a generation with no memory of fighting Americans—his entire career has been in domestic security. As he leads Vietnam away from communist ideology and toward market economics wrapped in nationalist rhetoric, he's completing a journey Ho Chi Minh began on that September day in 1945, quoting Jefferson to a crowd hungry for independence.

The question historians will debate: Would Vietnam have reached this point sooner, and without the horrors of war, if America had recognized in 1945 that Vietnamese nationalism was stronger than communist ideology?

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For Further Reading:

Dunn, Susan. Sister Revolutions: French Lightning, American Light. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999.

Bartholomew-Feis, Dixee. "The OSS in Vietnam, 1945: A War of Missed Opportunities." The National WWII Museum, July 14, 2020.

"Remembering Ho Chi Minh's 1945 Declaration of Vietnam's Independence." Council on Foreign Relations, September 2, 2016.

Sidebar: Vietnam's Millennium of Resistance

Vietnam's current turn away from communist ideology and toward nationalism isn't a departure from tradition—it's a return to it. For over 2,000 years, Vietnamese identity has been defined by one constant: resistance to Chinese domination.

The Thousand Years of Northern Domination

In 111 BCE, the Han Dynasty conquered the kingdom of Nanyue and incorporated what is now northern Vietnam into the burgeoning Han empire, beginning what Vietnamese call "Bắc thuộc"—the thousand years of Northern domination.

The Chinese didn't simply occupy Vietnam—they attempted wholesale cultural transformation. Daoist and Confucian teachings were pressed upon local people, along with instruction in Chinese language; even Chinese clothing and hairstyles became obligatory. Chinese administrators introduced better irrigation methods, metal plows, draft animals, new tools and weapons, advanced pottery, and mining techniques.

Yet Sinicization never succeeded in reconciling the Vietnamese, especially their leaders, with Chinese political domination. Even educated Vietnamese who knew Chinese and wrote only in Chinese continued to use the local spoken language.

The Trưng Sisters: First Heroes of Resistance

The first major rebellion exploded in 40 CE, led by the Trưng sisters—Trưng Trắc, a noblewoman whose husband had been executed by the Chinese, and her sister Trưng Nhị. They gathered tribal chiefs and their armed followers, attacked Chinese strongholds, and proclaimed themselves queens of an independent Vietnamese kingdom.

The rebellion was crushed within two years by Han general Ma Yuan, and the sisters drowned themselves to avoid capture. But their defiance left an indelible mark. They exemplify both the relatively high status of women in Vietnamese society and the importance to Vietnamese of resistance to foreign rule—they remain celebrated as heroines today.

Another young woman, Lady Triệu, launched a large-scale movement in 248 CE, declaring: "I'd like to ride storms, kill the sharks in the open sea, drive out the aggressors, reconquer the country, undo the ties of serfdom, and never bend my back to be the concubine of any man." Riding an elephant, she led forces to battle before she too was defeated.

The Master Strategy: Bach Dang River

When the Tang Dynasty went into decline in the early 10th century, a series of uprisings broke out in Vietnam, leading in 939 to the restoration of Vietnamese independence.

The decisive moment came at the Bach Dang River. In 938, Vietnamese lord Ngô Quyền faced an invasion by the Chinese state of Southern Han. He ordered iron-headed poles to be placed under the waters of the Bach Dang River, their tops reaching just below water level at high tide.

Ngô Quyền sent out small, shallow-draft boats at high tide to provoke a fight, then retreated upriver, drawing the Chinese fleet in pursuit. As the tide fell, the heavy Chinese warships were caught on the poles and lay trapped in the middle of the river, whereupon they were attacked by Ngô Quyền's forces. Half of the Han army died, either killed or drowned.

In spring 939, Ngô Quyền proclaimed himself king. This battle marked the point when Vietnamese history came into its own as Vietnam achieved de facto independence.

Defeating the Mongols: The Same River, The Same Stakes

The Bach Dang strategy would prove its genius again—this time against the greatest military force of the medieval world.

In the 1280s, Kublai Khan's Mongol Yuan Dynasty, fresh from conquering China, turned south toward Vietnam (then called Đại Việt). The Mongols had already conquered most of Eurasia. Vietnam seemed next.

When the Mongols invaded the Red River valley with a massive army in 1283-84, Vietnamese commander Trần Hưng Đạo adopted a defensive strategy, using guerrilla warfare and scorched-earth tactics. He then launched a counteroffensive that liberated the Vietnamese capital and drove the Mongols back into China.

The Mongols returned in 1287 with even greater force. They captured the capital Thăng Long (Hanoi) on February 3, 1288, but found no grain left to resupply. The Vietnamese had evacuated civilians and destroyed supplies. In late January, Vietnamese forces attacked the Mongol supply fleet, inflicting substantial damage and forcing it to turn back to Hainan Island.

Starving and desperate, the Mongols had to withdraw. Trần Hưng Đạo, inspired by Ngô Quyền 350 years earlier, engaged the Mongol fleet at the mouth of the Bach Dang River in 1288, using the same tactic—iron-tipped spears implanted beneath the waters.

On the morning of April 9, 1288, the Mongol fleet commanded by Admiral Omar fled home along the Bach Dang River. When it was high tide, Vietnamese junks attacked, then retreated. The Mongols pursued—and as the tide receded, the fleet was impaled on wooden stakes planted in the riverbed.

The battle lasted from sunrise to sundown. The Vietnamese captured 400 Yuan warships. The Yuan fleet was totally destroyed, and Omar was captured. The defeat had serious consequences for the Yuan Dynasty—the loss of many warships and transport vessels, tens of thousands of soldiers, and several generals killed or captured.

Despite their military victories, the Vietnamese pragmatically agreed to tributary status—paying nominal tribute to maintain peace while preserving actual independence.

The Ming Occupation and Le Loi's Liberation

Vietnam's independence didn't last forever. From 1407 to 1428, the Ming Dynasty ruled Vietnam as the province of Jiaozhi in what's called the Fourth Era of Northern Domination.

The Ming destroyed or brought north many Vietnamese vernacular texts, historical records, and classic works. They instituted Chinese mourning rites and demanded absolute loyalty based on Neo-Confucian ideology that viewed the Vietnamese as barbarians.

Yet resistance continued. Between 1407 and 1424, revolts erupted across Vietnam, led by Buddhist monks inspired by Vietnamese nationalism in Lạng Giang, Nghệ An, Hanoi, and other cities.

The decisive leader was Lê Lợi, who waged a guerrilla war against the occupiers. By 1427, Vietnamese rebels had captured northern prisoners who furnished them with siege techniques, primitive tanks, and advanced artillery. The Xuande Emperor decided to end the war.

After final victory, the Vietnamese repatriated 86,640 Ming prisoners to China and confiscated all their weapons. China would not invade its southern neighbor again for 360 years.

The Historical Debate: Resistance or Revisionism?

Modern scholars debate how to interpret this history. Some historians criticize the nationalist narrative of perpetual resistance, arguing that rebels were often ambitious imperial commanders rather than indigenous leaders, and that the "thousand years of Chinese domination" was more complex than simple Vietnamese-versus-Chinese conflict.

Dr. Kathlene Baldanza of Pennsylvania State University notes that during the millennium from 111 BCE to the 10th century, there was no "Vietnam" as we think of it today and no constant "China" either. Following Ngô Quyền's 939 victory, every Vietnamese dynasty spent more time in conflict with people to their south and west than with China.

In the 1950s and 1960s, Vietnamese scholars decided to "desinicize" their past, emphasizing Vietnam's status as a long-standing, independent civilization and reframing history as a territorial narrative of ethnic Vietnamese people perpetually resisting foreign invasion.

Yet nationalist narratives in Vietnam place great emphasis on military victories against China and steadfast refusal to be culturally assimilated. Almost every Vietnamese dynasty engaged in conflicts against Northern armies, and leaders like the Trưng sisters, Ngô Quyền, and Trần Hưng Đạo became national heroes.

The Cultural Paradox

Ironically, one result of Sinicization was the creation of a Confucian bureaucratic, family, and social structure that gave the Vietnamese the strength to resist Chinese political domination in later centuries—unlike most other Yue peoples who were assimilated into the Chinese cultural world.

Vietnam absorbed what was useful from Chinese civilization—administrative systems, agricultural techniques, literary traditions—while fiercely guarding political independence. Though the Vietnamese incorporated advanced technical elements they thought beneficial, the general unwillingness to be dominated by outsiders and the drive to regain independence signified Vietnamese resistance to Chinese imperialism.

From Past to Present

In a recent speech, General Secretary To Lam emphasized that through dynasties of building and defending the country, "the Vietnamese people have formed a long-standing culture, taking the people's hearts as the root, taking humane ethics as the foundation, taking the spirit of independence and autonomy as the lifeblood."

Lam noted that Vietnam "is a country with a history of forming, building, protecting and developing the nation continuously for thousands of years," and that "Vietnamese culture is a culture that is always in motion, always innovating, always open to absorbing the quintessence from outside, while at the same time maintaining its core values."

This historical pattern illuminates Vietnam's current transformation. For a thousand years, Vietnam absorbed Chinese cultural and technological innovations while rejecting Chinese political control. In the 20th century, Vietnam adopted Marxist-Leninism from abroad but adapted it to nationalist purposes. Now, as To Lam abandons Marxist ideology for explicit nationalism, he's not breaking with Vietnamese tradition—he's returning to it.

The Vietnamese have always been pragmatists wrapped in fierce patriotism. They take what works and discard what doesn't, but they never surrender their independence. Whether the enemy was Chinese emperors, Mongol khans, French colonists, American forces, or now, rigid communist ideology, the pattern remains: Vietnam bends but never breaks, absorbs but never dissolves, compromises tactically but never strategically surrenders.

As Vietnamese scholars note, "resistance against Chinese aggression" has been "the main theme of historical and national defense education" even decades after normalizing diplomatic relations with China.

The stakes planted in the Bach Dang River over a millennium ago symbolize Vietnam's enduring strategy: know your terrain, use your enemy's strength against them, fight smart rather than head-on, and never, ever give up. That strategy worked against Chinese dynasties and Mongol hordes. It's working now against an exhausted ideology that has outlived its usefulness.

Vietnam's turn toward nationalism and away from communism isn't abandoning history—it's honoring it.

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