Labor unrest has accelerated in Vietnam recently but has not yet received much attention from scholars. This book admiringly fills in this gap as perhaps the first monograph in the English language about labor activism in Vietnam. The bulk of the book focuses on industrial workers in southern Vietnam in the contemporary period. Tran makes limited effort to place the story in a historical context. One chapter is devoted to workers’ activism under colonialism, with case studies of Nam Dinh textile workers and Phu Rieng plantation workers in the 1930s and 1940s. Another chapter examines the textile workers in Saigon in the late 1960s and early 1970s under the Republic of Vietnam during the civil war. The book does not discuss the Stalinist-Maoist labor regime in North Vietnam (1954–75) and in reunified Vietnam during 1975–86.
In the book, Tran examines both the conditions that have bred labor protests in Vietnam and the perspectives of protesting workers. Those conditions include labor laws and state institutions, which Tran analyzes mainly to provide context rather than to show how different institutional contexts can bear on the character and strength of the labor movement. Those conditions have in fact varied widely in Vietnam's modern history, with significant consequences for labor activism. During the war, as Tran notes, “two separate labor systems developed: a single, general confederation of labor sanctioned by the Marxist-Leninist state of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) and a vibrant labor movement with many trade unions in the Republic of Vietnam (the South)” (p. 64). The Stalinist-Maoist regime of North Vietnam did not tolerate independent unions as the capitalist regime of South Vietnam did. The system in Vietnam today has relied less on coercion and more on laws, enabling numerous spontaneous protests. However, activists such as Le Thi Cong Nhan and Do Thi Minh Hanh (not discussed in the book) were given lengthy prison sentences when they tried to organize workers.
The strength of the book lies in the perspectives of contemporary Vietnamese workers. Their voices emerge through various case studies, expressed in direct quotes from interviews, letters written to labor newspapers, and slogans or graffiti produced during protests. Through these sources, Tran shows how workers rely on “cultural identities,” such as gender, place of nativity, and ethnicity, to bond with each other, and how those ties facilitate collective action at certain “class moments.” In her words, “[C]ertain forms of cultural bonding come first; then, in times of desperation or crisis, relying on the comfort and security derived from their cultural networks, workers may come to recognize a form of collective consciousness, including class consciousness” (p. 2). With this argument, Tran challenges the Marxist view of Vietnamese historians such as Tran Van Giau that neglects the role of culture in labor activism. Her research of particular protest events concludes that class consciousness does not always emerge at the end of the struggle, unlike what E. P. Thompson assumes.
Tran is less convincing when she takes issue with James Scott's concept of false consciousness. She claims to have found no evidence of workers’ consent and capitulation to the hegemonic capitalist ideology or order in her case studies. Perhaps that is true, but much more research is needed. Regarding the colonial period, Tran's sources are based on the Nam Dinh Textile Combine Museum Archive and interviews with some Nam Dinh officials, none of whom worked there during the colonial period, to be supplemented with accounts by Tran Van Giau and other communist historians. These sources are likely to exaggerate working-class consciousness to fit the Vietnamese Communist Party's myth about its working-class origins.
Turning to the Republic of Vietnam context, Tran focuses mostly on the left-wing union that was deeply penetrated by communist activists. These activists were trained as revolutionary cadres and sent to work in factories to incite strikes. Of course, they must have had class consciousness or believed in workers having class consciousness. The study does not tell us what ordinary workers or those who were members of the right-wing union thought or believed in.
Finally, Vietnam is currently developing capitalism under the formula of “market economy with socialist orientations.” This formula is full of ironies and contradictions, and must be as confusing to workers as it is to analysts. Which ideology is hegemonic in Vietnam today? Does the (mostly “red”) capitalist class really dominate there as it does in any ordinary capitalist system? How can capital dominate when the legitimacy of capitalism is not accepted? In addition, Vietnam's Communist Party still organizes regular campaigns for Vietnamese to learn from Ho Chi Minh, and one wonders if this explains why Vietnamese peasants and workers often carry pictures of Ho Chi Minh when they protest, in contrast with their Chinese counterparts who do not do so for Mao? Do Vietnamese workers think that Ho Chi Minh is merely the fig leaf that covers capitalist and state exploitation, or do they really believe in the old man? Chapter 7 of the book touches on some of the contradictions in the Vietnamese system, but it does not reveal what workers think about socialism and about the confusing formula of a market economy with socialist orientations. Without asking such questions, it may be too hasty to conclude that workers do not possess false consciousness.
Overall, Tran has written a fine book on a neglected and difficult topic that should be of broad interest to scholars and students of Vietnam.
