Name: Down with colonialism!
ISBN: 9781844671779

Hò̂, Chí Minh

Selections from the writings of Ho Chi Minh.

Down with colonialism!

nhu ⋆𐙚₊˚⊹

You must excuse my frankness, but I cannot help but observe that the speeches by comrades from the mother countries give me the impression that they wish to kill a snake by stepping on its tail. You all know today the poison and life energy of the capitalist snake is concentrated more in the colonies than in the mother countries.… Yet in our discussion of the revolution, you neglect to talk about the colonies.… Why do you neglect the colonies, while capitalism uses them to support itself, defend itself, and fight you?

The aim of guerrilla warfare is ‘not to wage large-scale battles but to nibble at the enemy, harass him in such a way that he can “neither eat not sleep in peace, to give him no respite, to wear him out physically and mentally, and finally to annihilate him.

Like Mao, Ho had a moralistic streak. But, in his exhortatory essays, Ho adopted a very un-Maoist approach to revolutionary morality, refraining from characterizing people he disagreed with in the party as class enemies or ‘capitalist roaders’, always urging unity above momentary differences, and always holding up the possibility of redemption, and urging party cadres to assist people who had fallen by the wayside. 

The intention of French capitalism is thus clear. It is up to the French workers to act. They should fraternize with the native soldiers. They should make them understand that the workers of the mother country and the soldiers from the colonies are equally oppressed and exploited by the same masters, that they are all brothers of the same class, and that “when the hour of struggle strikes, they will have, one and the other, to struggle against their common masters, and not between brothers.

What have the bourgeoisie in the colonialist countries done in order to keep the colonial masses under their oppressive rule? Everything. Besides using all the means given them by their state administrative machine, they have carried out an intense propaganda. They have crammed the heads of the people of the metropolitan countries with colonialist ideas through speeches, films, newspapers, exhibitions – to mention only the more important means – while dangling before their eyes pictures of the easy, honourable and rich life which is said to await them in the colonies.

During the French conquest, military operations drove the peasants away from their villages. When they returned they found their lands occupied by colonists who had followed in the wake of the occupying troops and who had shared among themselves the land that the native peasants had cultivated for generations. Thus, our peasants were turned into serfs forced to cultivate their own lands for foreign masters.

Many of those unfortunate people who could not endure the harsh conditions imposed by the occupiers left their lands and wandered about the country. They were called ‘pirates’ and hunted down by the French.

The Catholic Mission alone occupied one quarter of the areas under cultivation in Cochin China. To lay hands on those lands it used unimaginable methods: bribery, fraud and coercion. Here are a few examples. Availing itself of crop failures it gave the peasants loans, with their ricefields as security. The interest rates being too high, the peasants were unable to pay off their debts and their mortgaged fields went to the Mission. 

Another of its tricks was to get poor people to reclaim waste land with promises that it would be allotted to them. But as soon as the crops were about to be harvested, the Mission claimed ownership of the land and drove out those who had toiled to make it productive. 

Another method is to hold old people, women and children hostage. They are penned up in crowded huts, ill-treated, beaten up, starved and sometimes even murdered. In some localities the number of hostages equals that of the workers, in order to discourage the latter from running away. The natives are not allowed to till their own land before finishing work on the plantations. Hence the frequent famines and epidemics in the colonies.

To complete this tragic picture, let me add that French capitalism has never hesitated to drive whole regions to misery and famine if this proves of advantage to it. In many colonial countries, e.g., the Reunion Islands, Algeria, Madagascar, etc., cereals have been replaced by other crops required by French industry. These crops bring more profits to the planters. Hence a rising cost of living and chronic famine.

Ignorance is one of the chief mainstays of capitalism.  

However, the French imperialists’ barbarous oppression and ruthless exploitation have awakened our compatriots, who have all realized that revolution is the only road to survival and that without it they will die a slow death. This is why the revolutionary movement has grown stronger with each passing day: the workers refuse to work, the peasants demand land, the students go on strike, the traders stop doing business. Everywhere the masses have risen to oppose the French imperialists.

On the 9th of March this year, the French troops were disarmed by the Japanese. The French colonialists either fled or surrendered, showing that not only were they incapable of ‘protecting’ us, but that, in a period of five years, they had twice sold our country to the Japanese.

In spite of all this, our fellow citizens have always manifested a lenient and humane attitude towards the French. After the Japanese putsch of 9 March 1945, the Viet Minh helped many Frenchmen to cross the frontier, rescued others from Japanese jails and protected French lives and property. In fact, since the autumn of 1940, our country had ceased to be a French colony and had become a Japanese possession.

Viet Nam has the right to enjoy freedom and independence and in fact has become a free and independent country. The entire Vietnamese people are determined to mobilize all their physical and mental strength, to sacrifice their lives and property in order to safeguard their freedom and independence.

If we make mistakes but don’t want to expose them, that is like a patient who refuses to tell his disease to the doctor.

Therefore we must be vigilant and resolute; we shall neither be discouraged by temporary setbacks, nor grow arrogant when winning big victories; neither shall we grow complacent and underestimate the enemy.

Our fellow countrymen today are worthy of their forefathers. White-haired folk, children, people residing abroad, people living in the areas still under enemy control, in the plains, in the highlands – all are imbued with ardent love for the country and hatred for the aggressor. Fighters at the front go hungry for days on end in order to remain in contact with the enemy and annihilate him. Government employees in the rear go hungry for the sake of the troops. Women urge their husbands to enlist in the army while they themselves help to transport supplies. Combatants’ mothers take care of the troops as they would their own children. Workers and peasants of both sexes emulate one another to increase production, shrinking from no hardships in order to contribute their part to the Resistance. 

The French colonialists are now landed in a dilemma: either they receive US aid and be then replaced by their American ‘allies’, or they receive nothing, and be then defeated by the Vietnamese people. To organize the puppet army by means of pressganging the youth in areas under their control would be tantamount to swallowing a bomb when one is hungry: a day will come when at last the bomb bursts inside. 

Many units of the puppet army secretly sent letters to President Ho Chi Minh, saying they were waiting for a propitious occasion to ‘pass over to the side of the fatherland’ and they were ready to ‘carry out any orders issued by the Resistance, despite the danger they might encounter’.

Down with colonialism!

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