What is the Historical Mission of the Vietnamese Working Class? The Contents of the Historical Mission of the Working Class
What is the Historical Mission of the Working Class of Vietnam?
Article 4 of the 2013 Constitution clearly states:
- The Communist Party of Vietnam - the vanguard of the working class, simultaneously the vanguard of the laboring people and the Vietnamese nation, faithfully representing the interests of the working class, the laboring people, and the entire nation, takes Marxism-Leninism and Ho Chi Minh Thought as the foundation of its ideology and is the leading force of the State and society.
- The Communist Party of Vietnam maintains close ties with the people, serves the people, is subject to the people's oversight, and is accountable to the people for its decisions.
- The organizations and members of the Communist Party of Vietnam operate within the framework of the Constitution and the law.
During the renovation period, our Party has defined the role of the working class and its significant historical mission in our country.
"During the renovation period, the working class of our country has a significant historical mission; it is the class leading the revolution through its vanguard, the Communist Party of Vietnam; it represents the advanced mode of production, is the vanguard in the career of building socialism, takes the lead in the industrialization and modernization of the country for the goals of a wealthy people, a strong nation, a just, democratic, and civilized society, and is the core force in the union of the working class with the peasantry and the intellectuals under the leadership of the Party."
Fulfilling this significant historical mission, the Vietnamese working class plays the role of a vanguard, promoting the strength of the entire national solidarity under the correct and wise leadership of the Party to address specific tasks within the historical mission of the working class.
What is the Historical Mission of the Working Class of Vietnam? (Image from the Internet)
What is the Content of the Historical Mission of the Working Class?
The historical mission of the world essentially concerns the career of a class representing an advanced mode of production and social progress to establish a new socioeconomic formation substituting the outdated old formation. The content of the historical mission of the working class consists of the tasks that the working class must perform as the vanguard, being the leading force in the revolution to establish a comprehensive communist socioeconomic formation reflected in the main fields of social life.
- Economic Content
Serving as the foremost factor in the productive forces with high private investment, the working class also represents the new, most advanced production relations based on the policies of public ownership of the primary means of production, representing the progressive mode of production in line with the developmental trend of social history.
The working class's role as a subject is, first and foremost, a subject of the material production process using highly invested production methods to create material wealth in increasing quantities to meet the ever-growing needs of humans and society. By doing so, the working class forms the material-technical prerequisites for the birth of a new society.
On the other hand, the highly invested nature of the productive forces requires a new production relation consistent with the highly invested nature of the productive forces, politicized public ownership of society's primary means of production being the foundation and representing the common interest of the whole society. The working class showcases its role as a subject by representing the common interest of society.
The development of production in capitalism, leading to the increasingly advanced nature of the productive forces, at a high level, increasingly invested in expansive scales, creates the material prerequisites for the maturation and emergence of new production relations through the revolution of the working class.
In socialist countries, the working class, through the process of industrialization and the implementation of "a new labor organization," aims to increase social labor productivity and accomplish principles of ownership, management, and distribution consistent with production development requirements, ensuring social progress and fairness.
In reality, most socialist countries have emerged from a shortened developmental pathway, bypassing capitalist policies. Thus, to fulfill its historical mission in economic content, the working class must play a core role in the liberation of productive forces (which were hampered, outdated, and slow in development in the past), promoting the development of these forces to lay the groundwork for the birth of new, socialist production relations.
Industrialization is an inevitable law-like necessity to build the material-technical foundation of socialism. To fulfill its historical mission, the working class must be the leading force in implementing industrialization. Presently, in the context of renovation and international integration, new requirements necessitate linking industrialization with modernization, accelerating industrialization tied to knowledge economy development, and protecting natural resources and the environment.
- Political-Social Content
The working class, together with the laboring people under the Party’s leadership, carries out political revolution to overthrow the rule of the capitalist class, abolish the exploitative policies of capitalism, and transfer power to the working class and the laboring people. It establishes a new state, embodying the working-class nature, building socialist democracy, realizing people's power, and ensuring the democratic and societal mastery rights of the overwhelming majority of the laboring people.
The working class and the laboring people use their state, which they control, as an effective tool to transform the old society and organize the construction of a new society, developing culture and economy, building a democratic rule-of-law state, managing economic and social life, and organizing social life to serve the rights and interests of the laboring people, achieving democracy, fairness, equality, and social progress according to the ideals and objectives of socialism.
- Cultural-Ideological Content
In fulfilling its historical mission, the working class in the revolutionary process of transforming the old society and building a new society in the cultural and ideological domain focuses on constructing a new value system: labor (no longer the alienated, exploitative labor under previous capitalist production but labor for oneself, for collective community interests, conscious, creative, and autonomous labor); justice (in the distribution of benefits, harmonizing individual interests with collective and social interests); democracy (linking rights with interests, rights with responsibilities and obligations, democracy for the majority, not just a few wealthy individuals as under capitalist democracy); equality (in politics and the workers' rightful positions liberated by the revolution) and freedom (developing all abilities and creative potentials, the free development of each being a condition for the free development of all).
This new value system fundamentally negates and opposes the old value system, the capitalist values, along with remnants of outdated values from past societies representing capitalist nature and serving the capitalist class. The new value system embodies the essence of new socialist policies that will gradually evolve and perfect.
The working class carries out a cultural-ideological revolution that includes transforming outdated, backward elements and building advanced, progressive elements in ideological and psychological consciousness, lifestyle, and spiritual life. It builds and consolidates the advanced ideology of the working class, Marxism-Leninism, fighting to overcome capitalist ideology and remnants of old ideologies. The process of combining transformation with construction in the cultural-ideological field is long-term, wherein the working class builds and develops itself in all aspects while laying the cultural-spiritual foundation for the new society. The working class in fulfilling its historical mission in cultural-ideological aspects should selectively and critically absorb the elite values, cultural achievements, and ideological advancements of all epochs, including the capitalist era in human cultural history and civilization. In this process, the working class also overcomes the negative influences of capitalist and feudal ideologies impacting and penetrating the workers’ lives, enhancing political education within the working class, raising educational, cultural levels, and the awareness of scientific and revolutionary theories of the working class. Developing culture, building the new socialist human, and establishing the new socialist moral and lifestyle are fundamental content that the cultural-ideological revolution demands of the historical mission of the modern working class.
What is the Nature of the Working-Class State in Socialist Society?
To clearly understand the nature of the working-class state in socialist society, let’s explore through the following analysis:
- The Working Class in Economic-Social Terms
Born from grand industrialization, the working class operating in increasingly modern industrial labor methods within capitalist production: these are workers directly or indirectly engaged with highly sophisticated and industrially advanced production tools.
C. Marx and F. Engels described the development process of the working class, emphasizing: in manual workshops and crafts, workers used their own tools, but in factories, they serve the machinery. According to Marx and Engels, industrial factory workers represent the modern working class.
They stressed that other classes deteriorate and extinguish with grand industrial development, while the proletariat is the product of grand industry itself. The working class, just like machinery, is an invention of modern times, with English workers being the inauguration of modern industry.
- The Working Class in Political-Social Terms*
Within the capitalist production relations, the working class is composed of laborers who do not own the primary means of production in society. They must sell their labor to the capital owners and are exploited for surplus value. Facing the capital owners, the workers are free in the sense that they are free to sell their labor power to survive. This condition places the working class in fundamental opposition to the capitalist class. The capitalist class grows, and simultaneously, the proletariat, the modern working class - solely capable of living through job acquisition, and whose labor merely augments capital, also grows.
Marxism-Leninism clarifies: These laborers, compelled to sell themselves for daily bread, are commodities, subjected to all market fluctuations and competition risks.
Thus, within capitalist production relations, the defining characteristic of the working class under capitalist policies, according to Marx and Engels, is being the proletariat, modern wage workers who, devoid of production means, must sell their labor power to survive.
The domination of the capitalist class, especially the grand industrial capitalists, is the initial condition for the development of the working class.
Examining the working class (proletariat) from economic-social and political-social angles in capitalism, Marx and Engels not only provided a scientific concept of the working class but also illuminated its critical characteristics as a revolutionary class with a global historical mission. These features could be summarized as follows:
+ The prominent feature of the working class is the industrial work method, characterized by machinery-led labor producing high productivity, inherently highly invested.
+ The working class is the child of grand industry, the subject of modern material production, representing advanced productive forces and production methods, pivotal for the existence and development of modern society.
+ Grand industrial production and advanced production methods foster qualities in the working class, such as organizational discipline, labor cooperation, and industrial labor spirit. As a class oppressed and exploited by capitalists and capitalism, the working class, through its maturation, self-realizes as a class opposing capitalist domination, becoming inherently revolutionary with radical revolutionary spirit.
These characteristics form the essential attributes for the working class to be a revolutionary class and lead the revolution. From the above analysis, the working class can be defined as follows:
The working class is a social cluster formed and developed alongside the advancement of modern industry; laboring through increasingly modern industrial methods closely tied to modern material production, representing highly invested production modes. They are wage laborers without own production means, compelled to sell their labor power for subsistence and exploited by the capitalist class for surplus value; hence, their fundamental interests oppose those of the capitalist class. It is the class with the mission to negate capitalist policies, successfully constructing socialism and communism worldwide.
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