Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-rkxrd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-20T19:34:28.551Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Marxism and the History of the Nationalist Movements in Laos

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 April 2011

C. J. Christie
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The relationship between Marxism-Leninism and the national liberation movements of the Third World has always been an uneasy one. The essential issues have been: firstly, the nature of the relationship between movements for national liberation in the Third World and the proletarian movements of the industrially advanced countries; secondly, the question of whether, given the relative backwardness of the Third World countries, leadership of the national liberation movements should be provided by the “bourgeois-nationalist” parties or by Marxist-Leninist parties. The first issue was at least partially resolved by the Comintern in Lenin's time with agreement on the general principle that nationalliberation movements were a vital part of the worldwide struggle against capitalism; but the question of the relative importance of the national liberation movements as against the proletarian movements in the industrialized world was left in abeyance. The second problem of the leadership of the national liberation movements was not satisfactorily resolved in the era of Lenin; however, Stalin's relative neglect of the national liberation issue (particularly after the 1927 fiasco in China and the emergence of the fascist threat in Europe in the inter-war years) did give the Asian Marxists the opportunity to evolve their own policies. It was in the historical context of Comintern weakness and neglect of the Third World that an indigenously developed Marxist national liberation strategy was to emerge.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Southeast Asian Studies , Volume 10 , Issue 1 , March 1979 , pp. 146 - 158
Copyright
Copyright © The National University of Singapore 1979

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Archimbault, Charles, Structures Religieuses Lao (Vientiane, 1973), pp. 77–78.Google Scholar

2 Zago, Marcel, Rites et Ceremonies en Milieu Buddhiste Lao (Rome, 1972), pp.36–39.Google Scholar

3 Boulanger, Pierre Le, Histoire du Laos Francois (Paris, 1969), pp. 307–10.Google Scholar

4 Lucien De Reinach, Le Laos (Paris, n.d.), p. 118.

5 McCoy, A.W., “French Colonialism in Laos, 1893–1945”, in Laos: War and Revolution, ed Adams, N.S. and McCoy, A.W. (New York, 1970), pp. 87–92Google Scholar.

6 This topic has been excellently covered by Nina Adams in her article, “Patrons, Clients and Revolutionaries: The Lao Search for Independence, 1945–1954”. In Adams and McCoy (eds.), op. cit.

7 Caply, M., Guerilla au Laos (Paris, 1971), pp. 50–51.Google Scholar

8 See Adams, op. cit., p. 102.

9 Caply, op. cit., p. 51.

10 McCoy, op. cit., pp. 92–93.

11 Interview of the author with Tiao Somsanith, Summer 1973.

12 Adams, op. cit., p. 101.

13 Langer, P.E. and Zasloff, J.J., Revolution in Laos: The North Vietnamese and the Pathet Lao (Santa Monica, 1969), pp. 27–34Google Scholar; see also Murdoch, John B., Lao Issara: The Memoirs of Oun Sananikone (New York, 1975)Google Scholar.

14 Caply, op. cit., pp. 190–92.

15 Ibid., pp. 242–44.

16 Ibid., p. 267.

17 Ibid., pp. 343–44; Dommen, A.J., Conflict in Laos (London, 1964), pp. 22–23.Google Scholar

18 Keyes, Charles F., “Religious and Social Change in Southern Laos”, in Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 3, no. 3 (1972): 611–14Google Scholar; Toye, Hugh, Laos: Buffer-State or Battleground (London, 1968), p. 74.Google Scholar

19 Adams, op. cit., p. 119.

20 Goldstein, M.E., American Policy towards Laos (New Jersey, 1973), p. 74.Google Scholar

21 De Gaulle, Charles, Memoirs of Hope (London, 1971), pp. 254–56, 263Google Scholar; Haksat, Neo Lao, Twelve Years of U.S. Imperialist Intervention and Aggression in Laos (N.L.H.S. Publications, 1966), p. 86.Google Scholar

22 Halpern, J.M., The Lao Elite: A Study of Tradition and Innovation (Rand Corporation, Nov. 1960), pp. 39–40.Google Scholar

23 MacMillan, Harold, Pointing the Way, 1959–1960 (London, 1972), pp. 329–38.Google Scholar

24 Ibid., pp. 344–48.

25 Mahajani, U., “President Kennedy and United States Policy in Laos, 1961–1962”, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 2, no. 2 (1971): 94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

26 Neo Lao Haksat, U.S. Imperialist Intervention and Aggression, p. 48; Far Eastern Economic Review, 14 May 1964, pp. 326–27.

27 Neo Lao Haksat, U.S. Imperialist Intervention and Aggression, p. 52.

28 McCoy, A.W., The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia (New York, 1972), pp. 264–78.Google Scholar

29 Far Eastern Economic Review, 3 July 1971, pp. 82–84.

30 “In essence the massive American aid programme has inevitably brought about the virtual collapse of the very thing it sought to serve, namely the traditional system of values and authority.” Halpern, Joel M., Government, Politics and Social Structure in Laos: A Study of Tradition and Innovation (New Haven, 1964), p. 95.Google Scholar

31 De Gaulle, General, Salvation, 1944–1946 (London, 1960), p. 210.Google Scholar

32 Zasloff, J.J., The Pathet Lao: Leadership and Organisation (Lexington, 1973), pp. 12–15.Google Scholar

33 Ibid., p. 35.

34 Far Eastern Economic Review, 27 Feb. 1969, pp. 341–42.

35 See Halpern, op. cit., pp. 93–95.

36 Haksat, Neo Lao, A Quarter Century of Grim and Victorious Struggle (N.L.H.S. Publications, 1970), pp. 22, 30–31Google Scholar; Zasloff, J. J., The Pathet Lao: Leadership and Organisation (Lexington, 1973), p. 8.Google Scholar

37 Brown, McAlister and Zasloff, J.J., The Pathet Lao and the Politics of Reconciliation in Laos (SEADAG Conference, 30 September – 2 October 1974, New York), pp. 58–60Google Scholar; Zasloff, op. cit., pp. 119–21.

38 Giap, Vo Nguyen, The Military Art of Peoples War (New York, 1970), p. 165.Google Scholar

39 Neo Lao Haksat, U.S. Imperialist Intervention and Aggression, pp. 72–73.

40 For details of the N.L.H.S. programme, see “Twelve Point Program adopted by the 3rd National Congress of the N.L.H.S. in November 1968”, Appendix D, in Zasloff, op. cit., pp. 123–30.

41 Dommen, A.J., Conflict in Laos: The Politics of Neutralisation (London, 1964), pp. 129–33Google Scholar; Stanton, Thomas H., “Conflict in Laos: The Village Point of View”, in Asian Survey 8 no. 11 (1968): 887–900CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

42 Haksat, Neo Lao, A Quarter Century of Grim and Victorious Struggle (N.L.H.S. Publications, 1970), p. 27Google Scholar.

43 Ibid., pp. 26–29.

44 See “Ten Point Program adopted by the Second National Congress of the N.L.H.S. on 10 April 1964”, Appendix C, and “Twelve Point Program adopted by the 3rd National Congress of the N.L.H.S. in November 1968”, Appendix D, in Zasloff, op. cit.

45 Haksat, Neo Lao, Twenty Years of Lao People's Revolutionary Struggle (N.L.H.S. Publications, 1966), p. 22.Google Scholar

46 Zasloff, op. cit., pp. 6, 26–28, 63–66.