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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Laos
Index
When LPRP leaders came to power in 1975 as victorious
revolutionaries guided by Marxism-Leninism, they retained
a zeal
for creating a "new socialist society and a new socialist
man."
They declared their twin economic goals as the achievement
of
"socialist transformation with socialist construction."
They
asserted that in establishing the LPDR in 1975, they had
completed
the "national democratic revolution." (The national goal
had been
to expel the French colonialists and the United States
imperialists. The democratic goal was to overthrow
"reactionary
traitors, comprador bourgeoisie, bureaucrats,
reactionaries,
feudalists and militarists...."). The LPRP claimed that it
had won
the national democratic revolution by winning a "people's
war" with
a "worker-peasant" alliance, under the secret leadership
of the
LPRP working through a national front. It proclaimed a
commitment
to "proletarian internationalism" and the "law of
Indochinese
solidarity" and at the same time defined Vietnam and the
Soviet
Union as friends and the "unholy alliance" among United
States
imperialism, Chinese "great power hegemonism," and Thai
militarism
as enemies.
By the late 1980s, as communism was undergoing a
radical
transformation in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe,
Kaysone and
his colleagues on the Politburo still professed an
adherence to
Marxism-Leninism, but they emphasized the necessity for
Laos to
pass through a stage of "state capitalism." Following
Mikhail
Gorbachev's example of perestroika, Kaysone proclaimed in
1989 that
state enterprises were being severed from central
direction and
would be financially autonomous. V.I. Lenin's New Economic
Policy
was frequently cited to legitimize the movement toward a
market
economy and the necessity to stimulate private initiative.
By the early 1990s, even less of the Marxist-Leninist
rhetoric
remained. The party has continued to move internally
toward more
free-market measures and externally toward reliance upon
the
capitalist countries and the international institutions on
which
they depend for investment and assistance. The "law" of
Indochinese
solidarity has been amended, and the LPDR's "special
relations"
with its former senior partner are no longer invoked, even
though
party spokesmen still insist that Laos retains a solid
friendship
and "all-round cooperation" with Vietnam
(see Bilateral Relations
, this ch.).
Despite this erosion of communist ideology, retaining
exclusive
political power remains a primary goal of the party. In a
speech in
1990, Secretary General Kaysone asserted the basis of
legitimacy of
the party:
The party is the center of our wisdom. It has laid down
the correct and constructive line, patterns, and steps
compatible with realities in our country and hence has
led the Lao people in overcoming difficulties and
numerous tests to win victory after victory, until the
final victory. History has shown that our party is the
only party which has won the credibility and trust of the
people. Our party's leadership in our country's
revolution is an objective requirement and historic duty
entrusted to it by the Lao multiethnic people. Other
political parties which had existed in our country have
dissolved in the process of historical transformation.
They failed to win the control and support of the people
because they did not defend the national interest or
fight for the interests and aspirations of the people.
Data as of July 1994
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