CONCLUSION

CONCLUSION 

 The collapse of the communism is inevitable, and its reason is very simple. In "Communist Manifesto", Karl Marx confirmed : the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property. On one hand, abolition of private property is the main goal of communism, it is also the main reason of its failure. Abolish people's  property is to rob people of means of production, happiness and freedom. Consequently, people revolt against communists. When people struggle strongly, communists oppressed strongly too.As a result, communists carry out the policy of dictatorship. The communists' stronger oppression leads to the people' stronger revolt. The people 's movement that spreads widely make the communists fool, hence they increase their terrorism.

They think that they imprison and kill about ten million people they can depress the people's revolution. The communist leaders become mad and their suspicion also develops quickly, therefore Stalin, Mao Zedong ordered to kill a lot of intellectuals, marshals, generals, and their close comrades.

On the other hand, abolition of private property leads to mass up the public property into the hand of some communist leaders. They will  rob the public property, and will change the public treasure in their private property, they will spend extravagantly. Consequently, the dream of abolition of  private property do not lead to the abolition of  exploitation and to building a classless state. The abolition of private property  means to seize people's freedom and happiness and causes the chaos in society, and deepens, sharpens the  antagonism between people and communists. The abolition of  private property leads to the establishment of the New Class, and deepens social gap. When  opportunity comes , and when  people including a lot of progressive communists realize their miserable fortune and their unhappy country, they will overthrow  communist regime to establish a new democracy government. These reasons are the main elements to destroy the communism. Now the communism in the USSR collapsed, but its satellites such as China, North Korea, Cuba, Vietnam and Cambodia still survive, but they do not last long. Communism developed in the world scale and attracted a number of philosophers and writers as Beatrice Webb, André Gide, Albert Camus, J. Paul Sartre, Bertrand Russell, Trần Đức Thảo, Nguyễn Mạnh Tường.

Communism failed but its dream did not come true. But its price is not only the death of hundred million persons, and enormous human sufferings, it is also the destruction of economy, culture, morality, as well as the very objective for which such regimes are established namely equality, peace, wealth, independence, democracy and happiness.
We realize that  many  communists now recognize their faults , their failure and their crimes against their nation, their people and humankind. 

  Trần Trọng Kim 's idea is a perfect summary of the methods of action of communists:

In action, communists always used the  mischievous tricks to get fast success but the intellectuals did not like it. As as result, communists  abolished the intellectuals and promoted the workers, the women and children because of their innocence and credulity. Communists usually speak of "liberation". In the communists 'action, to liberate means to bring one person from this cage to other cage. This cage or that cage is only the cage , the destiny of the prisoners does not change. In my opinion, to liberate is to make everybody happy according the law, without oppression, deception, imprisonment, and secret murder. All the communist countries are similar to the dictatorship in the past. The persons who criticize the party's leaders would be killed or imprisoned. The persons who do not follow zealously would endure a lot of sufferings. People in the country are oppressed brutally except a minority of senior communists. What' liberation when people are in the tight monitoring of the secret  communist agents. If anybody speaks ill of the communism, he would be arrested or convicted. Consequently, people live in anxiety, without happiness, it is contrary to what the communists proclaim about the heaven on earth. Communists always tell lie, deceit, rob, destroy, kill and terrorize to get success.TRẦN TRỌNG KIM * MỘT CƠN GIÓ BỤI 38)

If we compare the monarchical, colonial and capitalist regimes to the communist regime, we will have a big panoramic picture of the world.

(1). Communism committed genocide.
Stephane Courtois estimated the global number of Communism's victims at between 85 and 100 million which is  50 percent greater than the deaths caused by two  world wars.( Pipes, 158) . In 2007, President Putin honored the Stalin's victims in Butovo and said such tragedies “happen when ostensibly attractive but empty ideas are put above fundamental values, values of human life, of rights and freedom.”

“Hundreds of thousands, millions of people were killed and sent to camps, shot and tortured,” he said. “These were people with their own ideas which they were unafraid of speaking out about. They were the cream of the nation.”[1]

(2). Capitalism can overcome every one of its crises.

Capitalism which being an empirical system responsive to reality and capable of adjustment, has managed to overcome every one of its crises. Communism, on the other hand, being a rigid doctrine- a pseudo-science converted into a  pseudo religion and embodied in an inflexible political regime- had proven incapable of shedding the misconceptions to which it was beholden and gave up the ghost ( Pipes, 159-60).

(3). Communism, a philosophy of failure
Capitalism did not commit genocide. Capitalist regime is a system of freedom and democracy. Capitalism is wealthier than communism. The GDP per capita in the North is $900 in the South $ 13.000 (Pipes, 152)

(4). The feudal and colonial regime is better than communist regime.

According to Milovan Djila, in the field of Ukraine in the collectivization,  the crop was under a tone/hectar, and the cattle decreased 50%. Today, it still is worse than under the Tsardom (New Class).

      Barry Loberfeld wrote:" Collectivization degraded the peasant more than did pre-1861 serfdom, since as a serf he had owned (in practice, if not in theory) his crops and livestock. His new status was that of a slave laborer who received the bare minimum of subsistence: for backbreaking work in 1935 a peasant household earned from the kolkhoz 247 rubles a year, just enough to purchase one pair of shoes [2].

Poet Hữu Loan wrote:" A variety of freedoms did exist even under the colonial regime. Let me list a number of memorable points in the French-occupied Vietnam that still remain in the memory of this slave:First, freedom of election. Most administrative offices were subject to popular vote. The provincial French officials simply played umpires. Other lesser [Vietnamese] officials dared not accept bribes. People can sue and even impeach officials from their positions. Corrupted officials were scorned by everyone. Corruption resulting in loss of lives was treated even worse. One such district official in Hue city was made known to the whole country.Second, freedom of the press and expression. Private individuals were allowed to set up their own papers. They refused to accept government subsidy. Among these papers were the famous Nam Phong (Southern Wind) Magazine, Dan Ba (Women) Magazine, Phu Nu Thoi Dam (Women's Contemporary Discussion) Magazine, Tieng Dan (People's Voice) Newspaper, Phong Hoa Ngay Nay (Today's Custom) Newspaper, etc. Among the well-respected writers and reporters were Pham Quynh, Nguyen Van Vinh, Phan Khoi, Thuy An, Huynh Thuc Khang, etc.Candidates to any position must take qualifying exams. Those with talents would pass. Workers' salaries were enough to pay for their livings and some for their savings. A teacher of two classes, preliminary and preparation, earned 12 piasters a month, equivalent to 2 "chi" of gold today.

Students did not have to pay tuition. Only higher education would cost them a few piasters a month. Good students were awarded scholarships, even scholarships to study in France.Sick people were given medicine without pay at district dispensaries. Provincial hospitals had reserved areas for poor patients who received treatment and food for free. These hospitals were known as charity hospitals.
Today, medical ethics has long disappeared. Hospitals everywhere take patients' money but make no effective treatments.The French colonial regime was horrible indeed, but it is still a far dream for people under regimes that are thumping their chest bragging about independence [and turn around oppressing their own people ( TÁC PHẨM HỮU LOAN)..

Nguyễn Chí Thiện  wrote:
  Ôi thằng Tây mà trước khi người dân không tiếc máu xương đánh đuổi.

Nay họ xót xa luyến tiếc vô chừng.

Nhờ vuốt nanh của lũ thú rừng.

Mà bàn tay tên cai trị thực dân hóa ra êm ả

 ( ĐỒNG LẦY).[3]

Oh! the French  colonialists which we fighted bravely
but now Vietnamese people missed them

Due to the clutches of the beasts
The colonialist 's hand becomes tender"
( The Mudy Field)

In Đêm Giữa Ban Ngày  (Nights in Broad Daylight), Vũ Thư Hiên  recited his mother's words:
Chúng nó đến, con có tưởng tượng được không, còn tệ hơn cả mật thám Pháp nữa kia! [4] 
(The Vietnamese communists came and they were crueler than the French secret police)

Trần Độ recounted his story:

 When I was young, I saw in my commune the security force composed  a chief with four peasant guards. Today, in my commune, ther are an office, about twenty policement, and a  colonel. Now we have many officers. The communist police now is equipped  with the modern terrorist tools which  are more abundant than the old regimes (feudal and colonial regimes)... The police investigate with setting the trap, making the false evidence and torturing people violently in many days. When we did not seize power yet, we condemned them but today we use them earnestly,  and defend them ferociously. (MỘT CÁI NHÌN TRỞ LẠI 2 ,3)

Trần Độ  also recited his sister words: My sister 's husband was imprisoned in the colonial regime and her son in law is imprisoned in the communist regime. She had  to visit her husband, and her son in law, she recognized that the prisoners in the communist jail are painfuler than the prisoners in the colonial jail. (BÚT kÝ * MỘT CÁI NHÌN TRỞ LẠI I, 4)

 Trần Độ criticized his communist regime:
Vietnamese revolution abolished the feudal and colonial regimes but now we build a regime which has  a lot of inequality, vice, anti democracy, dictatorship. This regime is worse than the old regimes.

(TRẦN ĐỘ * NHẬT KÝ RỒNG RẮN II, 3)

At last, there are some pictures of the prisoners in the different prisons  in different regimes.  Trần Văn Giàu was a commuinist, he was imprisoned by the French. At first, he was imprisoned in a special room. He wrote:" 

I recognized that in the " villa S", our catering was more   richer than usually. In addition, each lunch, we also had  a piece of yellow rice crust... It was very delicious"(p.12)...When we moved to camp Tà Lài we  were not miserable, but leisurely. It wasd not due to system of prison but due to our organisation. We did some works in the forest . The policemen  followed us in order to prevent us from escaping, they  did not push us to work.  Our food was very  abundant, we had too much rice  and fry fish. We fished on the river  and bought  meat of the animals in the forest . We also bought  special wine of the minority. We had many kinds of vegetales in the forest.We had many kinds of medicines, especially the medicines for Malaria.

 ( TRẦN VĂN GIÀU * HỒI KÝ I  ,42)

Phan Lạc Phúc  wrote in his work Bè Bạn Gần Xa (Friends Near and Far) : 

We- the prisoners- came to the North and we were very hungry. A piece of potato, and manioc were our big dream. From that even, we realized  that  the high art of the Communists is to control the estomac of people. At that time, in the North  the system of timber of food  were very important which was managed by the State. The prisoners, who were my friend,  came to the district Phù Yên to  transport rice , told us that  every family has the right to keep only about 5 kilos of rice [5]

  Hà Thúc Sinh told us about the hard labor of the prisoners in his Đại Học Máu (The Blood University):
" Group 17 had the work to transport the trunks to our camp. Those trunks were often more than half a meter in diameter and 20-meter-long. It was difficult to us to pull them through the rugged terrain which were full of the termite mounds, bushes and backwaters.Those trunks were transported to the  rustic camp beside the hospital for the workers to make the furniture. The house 2 of group 17  and other houses  had the same work, we had to transport 8 trunks each day through the forestal ways which was 500 meter long and the main one kilometer way to the rustic camp.[5]
Hà Thúc Sinh also told us the a young guard beat  doctor Triển, an old prisoner:
Old man ! For a long time, I have paid attention to your eyebrows! Seeing your eyebrows, I want to beat you! I did not know doctor what  doctor Triển answered him, the guard rushed to him and beat a rifle butt on his face.(637)
Trần Văn Thái recited the torture way  in"Trại Đầm Đùn" ( The Đầm Đùn Camp)[6].  It is  "tuốt nứa" . Communists  used the neohouzeaua, a kind of bamboo, to cut the body of the victims(334).

Communism is a philosophy of deception, an philosophy of failure. It is also a philosophy of brutality, and destruction. It is a worse regime in the world. Although we were occupied by French colonialists, and  they were cruel to our people, but they were nicer than communists.
Although Trần Độ was a communist general, like Nguyễn Chí Thiện and Hữu Loan, his short poem was a  frankly critique of communism:

In dreaming fighting the evil

I trusted my life to Heaven and Earth

I thought the Good would replace  Evil

Unfortunately the Evil comes back. 

.TRẦN ĐỘ * NHẬT KÝ RỒNG RẮN I

___

[1]. Putin honors Stalin victims 70 years after the Great Terror
”http://aftermathnews.wordpress.com/2007/10/30/putin-honors-stalin-victims-70-years-after-the-great-terror/
[2]. Barry Loberfeld FrontPageMagazine.com | June 12, 2006

[3].Nguyễn Chí Thiện (1939-2012). Hoa Địa Ngụ Hoa Dia Nguc II, poems composed in his memory (as he was not allowed pen and paper in prison) from 1979 to 1988. They were published in bilingual editions, then complete in Vietnamese in 2006.

[4] Vũ Thư Hiên. Đêm Giữa Ban Ngày. Văn Nghê. California. 1997, 28

  [5].Phan Lạc Phúc . Bè Bạn Gần Xa. (bút ký, Văn Nghệ Hoa Kỳ, 2000. 2nd ed. Australia2001,78.

[6].Hà Thúc Sinh .Đại Học Máu, ký, Nhân Văn USA, 1985. 2ed.USA, 1985.463.

[7].Trần Văn Thái. Trại Đầm Đùn" .Nxb Nguyễn Trãi, 1969, Sài-gòn, Việt-nam

  Nguyễn Thiên Thụ   

February 20th , 2013