Agrarian reform in southern Vietnam from 1975 to the late 1980s : from small to large scale farming and back again

Abstract

Soon after reunification, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (SRV) government in Hanoi launched full scale social, economic and political reforms in southern Vietnam in line with the socialist model of the north. Of these initiatives, agrarian reform was a key component, consisting of post war economic restoration, land redistribution and collective farming. Taken together, the SRV government called this 'socialist transformation of agriculture and agricultural collectivization'. The aim of the reform was to transform existing householdbased farming into socialist large scale farming (collective farming), which Vietnamese Communist Party (VCP) leaders believed would increase productivity, improve living standards, eliminate exploitation and consolidate the party's power. VCP leaders planed to complete the task by 1980. The result of the reform varied from region to region. Land reform and collectivization were rapid in the Central Coast but faced major difficulties in the Mekong Delta and other parts of the Southern Region. By 1980 the Central Coast had completed the task of socialist transformation of agriculture while the Mekong Delta failed to achieve the target; collectivization there incorporated only a minority of peasant households and land. With additional effort and struggle, VCP leaders claimed in the mid-1980s that collectivization in the Mekong Delta and elsewhere in Southern Region had been completed. This dissertation argues that the faster pace of collectivization and other agrarian reforms in the Central Coast relative to the Mekong Delta came from weaker peasant resistance and stronger local cadres' commitment to the socialist transformation of agriculture. Moreover, being heavily affected by wars and living in extremely difficult socioeconomic and ecological conditions, the main concern of villagers in the Central Coast was subsistence and survival; their behavior was more likely to be 'safe-first principle' and riskaversion as moral economist assume. So, villagers there tended to comply with state policies to avoid any risk and disadvantage that local authorities imposed on non-compliers. Meanwhile, villagers in the Mekong Delta were better-off and lived in favorable socioeconomic and ecological conditions and had more economic options. They were closer to being 'political economy' peasants whose main concern was profitability so they tended and were able to resist more strongly and evade collective farming when they saw its disadvantages. Despite a decade's effort, the socialist transformation of agriculture in southern Vietnam failed badly to achieve its stated goals. As in the north, collective farming in the Central Coast, the Mekong Delta and elsewhere in the south could not produce sufficient food. Faced with severe food shortages and many other problems related to collective farming, the SRV decided in the late 1980s to shift back to household based farming and gradually dismantle the collectives. By using some features of Joel Migdal's model of strongmen politics, James Scott's notion of everyday forms of resistance and Ben Kerkvliet's concept of everyday politics, this dissertation argues that peasants (ordinary villagers) and local cadres were two sets of key actors derailing post-1975 agrarian reform in southern Vietnam far different from what state leaders expected. In other words, central to the failure of and shift in national policies were widespread peasants and local officials' practices which were often at odds with what VCP leaders expected them to do. For example, peasants tried their best to pursue their own household economic activities, often at the expense of collective farming. Local cadres often took advantage of their positions to benefit themselves rather than the collectives and the state. Despite the authorities' numerous campaigns to correct and crack down on such 'bad behaviors' and even attempts to modify national policies to accommodate local concerns, these problems did not disappear but seemed to increase. The ultimate consequences were inefficiency of collective farming, severe food shortages, and an economic crisis which made the government accept and eventually endorse new farm arrangements that villagers and local cadres had initiated to deal with their own local problems. By comparing two localities, Quang Nam province in the Central Coast and An Giang province in the Mekong Delta, the dissertation examines the tensions and interplay between state agencies and peasants over agrarian issues during the period of 1975 to the late 1980s. In particular, it seeks to understand to what extent peasants and local cadres' practices, which were at odds with national leaders' expectations, contributed to the failure of and shift in national policies. Moreover, the dissertation examines similarities and differences in form and magnitude of peasant behaviors and politics in the two these places and the effect of local conditions on the capability of the SRV government to implement its post-1975 agrarian policies.