Michel Chossudovsky on Vietnam (was Re: 5th columnist)

Dennis R Redmond dredmond at oregon.uoregon.edu
Sat Apr 8 01:21:33 PDT 2000


On Fri, 7 Apr 2000, D.L. wrote:


> What's the structural difference between Vietnam's one-party
> military/political elite and the Russian nomeklatura who have robbed the
> former SU blind?

Their position in the world-system: the former is a non-industrial periphery of East Asia and the latter a semi-industrial periphery of the Eurostate. Basically, Russia is run by oil oligarchs who practice gangster capitalism and Vietnam is run by agrarian oligarchs who practice rice-export socialism (Vietnam still has a huge peasant class, is 75% rural, etc.). The VCP's peasant base has, so far, managed to keep the megalomaniac tendencies of their technocrats in check.

-- Dennis



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