Ngo Van - Knowledge (XXG)

587:"tubercular pleurisy" just months after he succeeded in bringing over from Saigon his twelve-year-old son Da. He describes the child as having white hairs on his head, the legacy of a "terrifying night he had spent during the previous year (1955), bullets whistling over his head as he crouched under the bed during a battle (in his straw-hut neighborhood) between the 244:, who was later to be first president of a unified Vietnam) in the Party's execution of a young comrade. His "crime" was a love affair that compromised "total devotion to the revolution." For Văn it was an illustration of "how readily a party of professional revolutionaries can end up imposing authoritarian control over every aspect of life." 586:

In his published work, Ngô Văn said very little about his family. His mentions being visited in police detention in June 1940 by his "partner, with a toddler in her arms". This unidentified woman and her child did not accompany him into exile. He records his distress in 1956 at being hospitalised for

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Under the slogan "Land to the Peasants! Factories to the workers!," Ngô Văn and his comrades joined residents in popular councils and in a "Workers' Militia." In the "internationalist spirit of the League," streetcar workers had broken with their union, General Confederation of Labour (renamed by the

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remained for Ngô Văn, first and foremost, a society in which producers "still do not enjoy collective ownership of the means of production, nor time for reflection, nor the possibility of making their own decisions, nor means of expression." Asked why he so "stubbornly" persisted in bearing witness

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Opportunity for open political struggle returned with the formal surrender of the occupying Japanese in August 1945. But events then moved rapidly to demonstrate the Trotskyists' relative isolation in Saigon. Văn and his comrades had little intimacy with developments to the north where, in Hanoi, on

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was mentioned but his colleagues "thought themselves incapable of carrying out such a task effectively." The nature of the modern economy was such that democratic management presented "a worldwide problem," not something they believed "could not be carried out within an individual factory, or even

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cell) sought to keep the workers isolated within the factory. They turned away students and other curious visitors. When the officials insisted that the red flag workers had mounted on the gate be paired with the tricolour, Van took it as a signal that he would, again, be witness to a sacrifice of

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and Poumistas who had gone through a parallel experience to ours. In Vietnam, as in Spain, we had been engaged in a simultaneous battle on two fronts: against a reactionary power and against a Stalinist party struggling for power." To these "encounters" Ngô Văn credits "new radical perspectives."

553:(2005) covers the decades since his exile. It is the story of the Communist Party's consolidation of power in "the long war" ("The victory of the 'heroic little people'—what victory?") and, with reference to strikes and other signs of revolt, of the opening of the new economy to foreign capital. 327:

30,000 workers (under the indifferent gaze of the defeated Japanese) had elected councils to run mines, public services and transport, and were applying the principle of equal pay. (Months later they received a report that the "Democratic Republic" had—in the name of national unity—crushed the

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over their "defence of the USSR" as a "degenerated workers’ state," the UOI supported Văn in taking issue with his exile community. "Despite the assassination of almost all their comrades in Vietnam by Ho Chi Minh's hired thugs," the Vietnamese Trotskyists had adopted the slogan "Defend the

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Viet Minh "Workers for National Salvation"). Refusing the yellow star of the Viet-Minh, they mustered under the unadorned red flag "of their own class emancipation." Like other independent formations, these were soon caught in the crossfire as the Viet-Minh returned to engage the French.

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and in the presentation of a common "Workers' List" in Saigon municipal, and Cochinchina council, elections. With Ho Huu Tuong he joined the League of Internationalist Communists for the Construction of the Fourth International (formed by Lu Sanh Hanh in 1935). This produced a weekly

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As Ngô Văn's Militia group fell back from the city, they reached out to local peasants: "we explained to them that we were fighting not only to 'drive out the French' but also to get rid of the indigenous landlords, to end the forced labour in the rice fields, and to liberate the

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defence levy that the Communist Party, in the spirit of Franco-Soviet accord, had felt obliged to support. Governor General Brévié indeed had praise for the defeated the Stalinists who, in contrast to the Trotskyists, "understood that the interests of the

578:(Ebony Cat) a group describing themselves as "an anarchist collective working to make anarchist materials and ideas more accessible to a Vietnamese audience, together with providing an analysis of social struggles from a Vietnamese anarchist lens". 527:

Ngô Văn retired in 1978. He devoted his remaining years to researching and relaying the history of popular struggle in Vietnam, reflecting upon his own experience, and memorialising his fallen friends and comrades. He also took time to study at the

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militant in the 1930s, Ngô Văn helped organise Saigon's waterfront and factories in defiance of the Party's "Moscow line" which sought to engage indigenous employers and landowners in a nationalist front and the French in an international

339:, a "formidable" movement that had contributed to civil defence and policing under Japanese). Only when, for the declared purpose of disarming the Japanese, the Viet-Minh accommodated the landing and strategic positioning of the 366:

in the city and denied refuge in a countryside dominated by the two terrors, the French and the Viet-Minh," and suffering from tuberculosis, in the spring of 1948 Ngô Văn took the decision to board a merchant ship bound for

396:." With his fellow exile Nguyễn Văn Nâm he was persuaded that once in power "so-called 'workers' parties'" form "the nucleus of a new ruling class and bring about nothing more than a new system of exploitation." Visiting 431:

government, workers and peasants would simply have changed masters. Those with guns in their hands should fight for their own emancipation, following the example of the Russian workers, peasants and soldiers who formed

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In 1997 for the first time since 1948, Ngô Văn was able to visit his homeland. But for all the evidence he would have witnessed of a preceding half century of social and economic change, the now

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Hélène Fleury, who accompanied Văn to Vietnam in 1997, records her friend as having had two other children (not, it seems, including the toddler from 1940): Do (born 1932) who, as one of the "

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Between arrests, Ngô Văn engaged in support of the major dock and railway strikes of 1937. Judging by the frequency of the warnings in the clandestine Communist press against

482:). The project sought to bring together workers in different companies who "no longer had any confidence in the traditional working-class organisations." A distinct nucleus, 262:

In April 1939 he was back out on the streets, able to celebrate what a later reviewer of his history described as "the only instance prior to 1945 in which the politics of '

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class interests to national party-political ambition. It was a concern he believed was borne out by the unions' acceptance of relatively minor concessions in the national

266:' oriented to worker and peasant opposition to colonialism won out, however ephemerally, against Stalinist 'stage theory' in a public arena." In elections to the colonial 556:

Ngô Văn's last completed work, written in 2004 when he was 91 years old, was an introduction to the history of peasant revolts in China, with special emphasis on their

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in Saigon, Ngô Văn was disturbed by the case of Nguyen Trung Nguyet, the longest serving female prisoner. As understood by Van, Nguyet had been implicated (alongside

136:" alliance. When, after 1945, further challenges to the Party met with a policy of targeted assassination, Ngô Văn went into exile. In Paris, experiences shared with 529: 486:, was set up, and Văn was one of those involved. The meetings organised were small, usually between 10 and 20, but they slowly began to grow in the run-up to 1968. 1348: 459:, the radical journalist and publicist whose celebrity had first awakened his own political consciousness in the late 1920s (and who, in a brief encounter in the 379:

In France, Ngô Văn found "new allies in the factories and elsewhere, among French people, colonised people, and refugees from the Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939--

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grouping, triumphed alike over the Communist Party's Democratic Front and the "bourgeois" Constitutionalists. As understood by Van, however, the partisans of the

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the influence of the oppositionists in the labour unrest was "considerable" if not "preponderant." He also produced pamphlets in Vietnamese condemning the

455:, who had espoused "new sets of values, new reasons for living, new norms for acting, a new ethic." Văn recalled that Nietzsche had strongly influenced 319:. The lack of connection was made "painfully clear" when they found they had "no way of finding out what was happening" following reports that in the 499: 397: 95: 602:", made it to France in the late 1970s, and a daughter Oanh (born 1935) who he met for the first time in more than fifty years on that 1997 visit. 1343: 192:(October). Opposed to the general line of the Communist Party of Vietnam, and in particular to the nationalist-front policy of Nguyễn Ái Quốc, 814: 787: 560:

origins and utopian and libertarian inspirations. With Hélène Fleury he also brought out a collection of Vietnamese folk tales for children.

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was a Vietnamese revolutionary who chronicled labour and peasant insurrections caught "in the crossfire" between the colonial French and the

447:. Rubel inspired a re-reading of Marx as a "theoretician of anarchism". He also introduced Văn to other of Marx's contemporaries, such as 1323: 1269: 355:." But for a timely rescue, Ngô Văn, captured on reconnaissance, would likely have been executed by Viet-Minh alongside a surveyor (and 437: 401: 911:

Chonchirdsim, Sud (November 1997). "The Indochinese Communist Party and the Nam Ky Uprising in Cochin China November December 1940".

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succeeded at the ballot box for reasons relatively mundane. The election had been primarily a tax protest, a rejection of the new

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of August 23, 1939. Moscow ordered a return to direct confrontation with the French. The Party obliged, triggering a

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did rival political forces turn out in force. The brutality of the French restoration triggered a general uprising.

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In a wave of such labour actions across France, in May 1968 Ngô Văn joined in the occupation of his workplace, the

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Văn acknowledges, however, that in his factory the discussion of more radical demands was desultory at best.

668:, with Hélène Fleury, (Paris) (Vietnamese folk tales for children in a bilingual French-Vietnamese edition) 1174: 599: 503: 340: 226: 730: 248: 157: 128: 427:(Workers' Voice) (October 30, 1951), Ngô Văn argued that if Ho Chi Minh won out over the French-puppet 1308: 1303: 710: 279: 263: 215: 205: 971: 508: 452: 428: 177: 1261: 955: 715: 543:(2000). Together with notes for a second autobiographical volume, this is published in English as 335:

supported, Ngô Văn records, by the leadership of the Jeunesse d'Avant-Garde/Thanh Nien Tienphong (

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In 1952 Ngô Văn and his partner Sophie Moen joined a less formal group around the "marxologist"

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called on activists to "bond" with rank-and-file urban workers and build a "mass-based" party.

180:, of the press, and of education. A high-school educated workmate provided him introduction to 810: 783: 495: 475: 448: 181: 149: 145: 1199: 160:, Ngô Văn "permanently distanced" himself from the model of "the so-called workers's party." 920: 444: 283: 153: 588: 1283: 720: 456: 185: 541:

Au pays de la cloche fêlée : Tribulations d'un cochinchinois à l'époque coloniale

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factory in electrical engineering plant in Paris. From the outset he noted that CGT (

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A short biography of Vietnamese libertarian socialist and metal worker Ngo Van Xuyet

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The political opening against the Communist Party, such as it was, closed with the

222: 133: 363: 804: 777: 661:, (Paris, L’insomniaque). (Van's autobiography, covering the period up to 1945) 634:

Viêt-nam 1920-1945, révolution et contre-révolution sous la domination coloniale

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Việt Nam 1920-1945, révolution et contre-révolution sous la domination coloniale

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Viêt-nam 1920-1945, révolution et contre-révolution sous la domination coloniale

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Au Pays de la cloche fêlée, tribulations d’un Cochinchinoisà l’époque coloniale

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Au Pays de la cloche fêlée, tribulations d’un Cochinchinoisà l’époque coloniale

1012: 423:" , an opinion piece appearing under the name Dong Vu in the Trotskyist paper 393: 385: 380: 320: 168:

Ngô Văn left his village at the age of 14 to work in a metallurgical works in

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In 1958 Ngô Văn's study and discussion circle—which later adopted the name

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In 1936 Ngô Văn parted with comrades willing to continue cooperation with "

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He covered the years of his own engagement both in a substantial history,

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supporter) condemned for having helped peasants divide expropriated land.

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within a single country." In general "the workers had little to say."

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Revolutionnaires Vietnamiens et pouvoir colonial en Indochine. Paris:

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Việt Nam 1920-1945, Cách mạng và phản cách mạng thời đô hộ thực dân

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Group—began to cooperate closely with the Henri Simon in the ICO (

900:(Revised ed.). Hanoi: The Gioi Publishers. pp. 224–225. 571:

to past history, Văn replied "Because the world hasn't changed."

302:. to whose bloody suppression Ngô Văn, having been exiled to the 873:

Goldner, Loren (1997), "The Anti-Colonial Movement in Vietnam",

1278: 615:, Saigon, (pamphlet in Vietnamese denouncing the Moscow Trials) 1048:

Rubel, Maximilien (1973), "Marx, théoricien de l'anarchisme,"

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government of Ho Chi Minh against the attacks of imperialism"

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In Saigon itself, the initiative lay with the Communist-front

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with Ngo Van's notes for a second autobiographical volume).

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denied him permission to visit their "re-education camps".

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