Oh my god, Luna Oi is such a propaganda machine for the Vietnamese government, and I say this from the perspective of a Vietnamese leftist.
Well, to be fair, I’m not good at law, but I think anyone with half a brain could see that the law is only good for workers when it could be realistically enforced. Yes, Vietnamese workers have rights, lots of them, but it would be ridiculous to say that words on legal papers alone could arm workers with a powerful arsenal of arguments and resources to fight for their rights. We have to keep in mind the sheer imbalance of power between the workers and the capitalists at all times, since when workers appeal their case to the court, most of them cannot afford the money to hire a good lawyer while the capitalists have legions of legal consultants and lawyers backing them up. It’s not uncommon for a worker to represent themselves, and no, Vietnam does not have any system to assign a mandatory public defender for destitute people, which reduces the possibility of workers winning a case drastically. Even if they manage to bring the case to the court collectively, the procedure is still very lengthy and complicated and the cost of going through them is money and time, which most workers don’t have. They barely get by with the wages and benefits of the company, asking them to suck it up for a prolonged legal battle that could very well last for 2 years is downright unreasonable.
Strike is another story altogether. Luna said that strikes require permission from the labor union and this is very true. However, let’s stop for a second and really think about the fact that workers need permission to strike in the first place, doesn’t that sound ridiculous? Why would they have to entrust the right to strike to another body of authority? What if they decided to refuse? The workers should just drop the case and go back to work peacefully then? You might say that the union will not refuse because it’s a democratic institution and has to follow the will of the masses. However, in order for that argument to work, labor union have to be independent institution without the influence of both company leadership AND the state, because if the leading party decide to adopt a neoliberal policy, they would have every incentive in the world to mess with the democracy of the labor union and what could be the easier way to do it than subduing all unions under the control of the state? Yes, I’m saying this because all unions in Vietnam belong to the Vietnam General Confederation of Labour, an organ of the Vietnamese Communist Party whose current interest is to develop the economy by accumulating capitalistic wealth, not to protect worker’s interests. This makes Vietnamese labor unions very prone to corruption and backstage vote rigging. There’s no guarantee that a labor union could really present the interest of the worker. In Vietnam, the union’s practical role is not to reel up workers to fight the factoríe, but to extinguish the intensity of their struggle so that Vietnam doesn’t become a place that foreign investors would actively avoid.
Luna said something very interesting: most strikes are illegal because Vietnamese workers don’t bother to ask for permission, which is debatable. Why doesn’t she consider that there is a very real possibility that most strikes are actively declined by the union leaders? Vietnamese workers have been striking since Doi Moi and established a labor struggle history of their own, there must be more structural reasons why wildcat strikes are preferable than just their individual failings to be more knowledgeable about labor law. In fact, the laws are actively making it very difficult for the workers to strike. Aside from asking for permission, they would have to make sure that they are asking for benefits, not rights, striking for rights is illegal, and good luck differentiating the two because the Labor Code doesn’t do that for you. Before they could ask for permission to strike, workers must negotiate with their employers in a process called meditation. The employers could sit on their asses for 30 days without going to the negotiation session to prolong the battle with the employees. And like I said earlier, time is of the essence because they have to accept not having any money to live during the entire process.
We have to address the elephant in the room too: Workers in a lot of capitalist countries also have rights, sometimes even more rights than their Vietnamese counterparts. Labor laws in Germany, Finland or more progressive states in America are way more comprehensive and the mechanism through which workers’s rights are protected in those countries is way more developed. Vietnamese workers have suffered a lot and it’s so disingenuous on Luna’s part to present her video in a way that frames American laborers are way more miserable than us. I could not overstate how wrong this is enough when workers in factories throughout Vietnam, especially in special economic zones, have to live through abject working conditions but can not quit their jobs or protest about it. The power dynamic is heavily skewed towards the capitalists because the government is kissing their feet or inviting them to destroy our land. There is a reason why Vietnam is an attractive place for foreign investors and it’s absolutely not communism. Vietnam is not a socialist paradise, but just another victim of neo-colonialism like the rest of the Global South.
@Five, I really respect your effort to maintain the vitality of many progressive communities on Lemmy, but you can noy promote Luna Oi if you also support anarchism. The narratives she pumps out are very harmful for the left because her videos are purely dogmatic propaganda that promotes a vision of socialism based on an opressive, authoritarian regime. Vietnam is a capitalist, authoritarian country that have attempted multiple times to attack progressive movements by framing them as reactionary.
As someone who lives in yet another country (South Africa) where workers has tons of “rights” that are essentially meaningless because of the cozy and utterly corrupt relationship between the self-enriching state apparatchiks, capitalist elites and a “formal” labour union complex that is kept on a tight leash by the first two, I feel this strongly.
I really appreciate your comment - it elevates the post, and I hope is the first step to developing a culture of media criticism and respectful debate in !vietnam. You put a lot of effort in to your analysis, I respect that.
I’m really grateful @cnx created this community on Slrpnk, as it has encouraged me to research and learn more about Vietnam and the Vietnamese people. I share things here that I find interesting and educating, in the hopes that other people also find them valuable. One of the things that interests me is how Vietnamese people feel about themselves, their country, and their place in the world. My ability to learn is impaired by my language limitations, as I don’t speak Vietnamese.
I find some of Luna Oi’s work worth sharing because I think she gives an English voice to the sentiments of a significant portion of the Vietnamese people. She is very critical about how Vietnam is misrepresented in western media, and is actively creating propaganda that represents the Vietnam she would like the rest of the world to see. I hope !vietnam can become a place where Vietnamese people feel welcome to build community, and I think demonstrating a willingness to engage with media they feel represents authentic Vietnamese perspectives is a good way to achieve that goal.
The original plan for this community when it was created by @cnx and @poVoq was to primarily emphasize the solarpunk aspects of Vietnamese culture, but my engagement is for a broader purpose. I don’t think an anarchist or solarpunk future is possible without the participation of people who have survived colonialism, from which the Vietnamese experience is particularly valuable.
While most of my posts are based on what I find interesting in the moment, I do make some effort to balance stories I share that are critical of the Vietnamese government and society with posts that encourage an engagement with the typical Vietnamese experience.
While I try and privilege anarchist media and voices when selecting sources, I share news and stories from a spectrum of political ideologies. Limiting my posting to sources I explicitly endorse would significantly limit my post volume, and hamstring my goal of fostering a community of diverse political perspectives. While I don’t endorse Luna Oi, not sharing content of hers I find interesting while holding a different standard for other content I share would be hypocritical. Worse, I’ve found that working too hard to differentiate oneself from the authoritarian left can be interpreted by Nazis as an endorsement of their views and politics. My cooperation with party socialists is conditional on shared goals and means. I’m happy to exclude Hexbear and Lemmygrad from the platform, but I don’t have a problem with authoritarian leftists themselves who can engage with Slrpnk communities without disrespecting community norms and trolling. I reject “left unity” but I welcome cooperation from any political ideology when fighting against racism, homophobia, and fascism.
Ultimately, I think anarchist ideas are resilient enough to survive exposure to authoritarian ones. While the responsibility for directing the growth of a community is in the hands of its moderators, I think there’s a lot of potential for a community of diverse Vietnamese and foreign perspectives sharing ideas in an online solarpunk context. @cnx has been extremely tolerant of my less than flattering posts about Vietnam, I suspect your contributions have a place here as well. I hope you continue your engagement in this community and the Fediverse project.
Thank you for your response :") I spend a lot of times online and just find it so aggravating when the Western Left keep pointing to Vietnam or China as a ideal model of socialism, while they are enjoying lots of cheap goods and food made from heavily exploited workers in both countries. The most vocal opposition I’ve seen so far is, well, Vaush, which is not ideal. I personally could not make any video about the topic to counter this kind of narratives sinceI could be jailed for that, while people like Luna Oi is given platform is precisely because she doesn’t bother to poke the pitchfork at the government.
Aside from that, I want to express my appriciation for your very prominent presence here in Lemmy ,especially here in !vietnam. It must’ve been difficult to find information about Vietnam if you are not influent in Vietnamese and I really respect your effort to actively engage with the community. I’m really sorry that I come off as aggressive in my original comment, I was just really tired to see people who are supposed to be allies keep idolizing such an oppressive regime, like they don’t really care about us, or to see any attacks on a so called “socialist country” as reactionary.
Keep up the good work, @five, and thank you for what you’re doing :") I will try my best on this space too.
Side note: It’s kinda funny that I bumped into !vietnam on slrpnk.net of all places, I thought it would be on lemmygrad or something, but I’m really glad that it’s here.
