Declassified per Executive Order 13526, Section 3.3
NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011
TOP SECRET – Sensitive
its backward economy into a socialist economy with modern industry and agriculture .... "Communism" (or a derivative term) is not mentioned as such, but the document is otherwise explicit that the economy is to be state-centered; e.g.:
"Article 12. The state sector of the economy, which is a form of ownership by the whole people, plays the leading role in the national economy. The state ensures priority for its development.
"Article 17. The state strictly... prohibits the use of private property to disrupt the economic life of the society or to undermine the economic plan of the state ....
Chapter III is a hyper-democratic guarantee of civil rights, and the remainder provides for an elected National Assembly .and a centralized, statist public administration.
2. Political Parties
a. Lao Dong Party
Unrecognized by the 1960 Constitution except in the Preamble's encomiums, the Lao Dong Party (Dang Lao Dong Vietnam, or Vietnamese Workers' Party, is the dominant political power within the DRV. It is an expressly Marxist-Leninist Party which traces its lineage back to the Indo-chinese Communist Party founded by Ho Chi Minh, and although the ICP was abolished in 1946, claims to have be e n prime mover in the major nationalist "front" movements through 1951, when the DRV "legalized" the Party. For example, Vo Nguyen Giap explained that:
"The Vietnamese people's war of liberation was victorious because we had a wide and firm National United Front ... organized and led by the Party of the working class: the Indochinese Communist Party, now the Vietnam Workers' [Lao Dong] Party. In the light of the principles of Marxism-Leninism ... the Party found a correct solution to the problems .... "
Party statutes adopted in 1960 established a National Congress, and a Central Committee elected by the Congress, as its policy- making bodies. The Congress is ponderous (600 members, meets every 4 years), and the Central Committee in fact governs. More precisely, power is exercised by the Politburo, its steering group. The Central Committee serves as a forum for the discussion of policy, the dissemination of information, and the training of future leaders. Though major decisions appear as Central Committee resolutions, in actuality they originate with the Politburo. The Secretariat of the Central Committee is the principal executive agency of the party, directing subordinate Party organizations in foreign affairs propaganda, organization, inspection (or control), the military establishment, the "reunification" movement, industry and agriculture. The Secretariat also appears to control personnel assignments and promotions in the Party's middle and upper echelons.
