Commercial powers have sought political control of Laos for centuries, and the Lao suffered heavily from attempts that peaked only a few decades ago. The deep involvement of the United States in Indochina began while supporting French colonialism against Vietnam's war for independence. The US expanded the conflict to include military action against the peoples of Laos and Kampuchea, and during the 1960's and 1970's funded the dropping of some 3 million tons of explosives on Laos. Per capita, this is the heaviest bombing of any nation in history. Tens of thousands of civilians CHINA died. The countryside is pocked with bomb craters, and hundreds of villagers still die every year from Honeywell Corporation's unexploded impact mines, "bombies", designed specifically for unsuspecting civilians. This was the ultimate expression of Western Civilization's frustration with Indochinese rebellion. When at last Western imperialism was kicked out, in 1975, Western-derived socialism was established by the new leaders of Laos as a hopeful alternative. In post-war Laos, Mahatma Gandhi's village democracies were about to meet Mao Tse-tung's Great Leap Faward. Socialism is often an improvement over colonialism; Laos, however, was never thoroughly colonized. To this day the economy runs by householdlevel, decentralized subsistence agriculTHAILAND 0 Kilometers ture. In contrast, modem Asian communism is based on a centralized, industrialized version of self-sufficiency: the Chinese answer to the Soviet push for internationalist interdependence. In post-war Laos, Mahatma Gandhi's village democracies were about to meet Mao Tse-tung's Great Leap Forward. The conflict between natural economy and centralized economy could have been a disaster. However, the revolutionary leaders of Laos found central planning unworkable. They had no money. With few resources and no colonial infrastructure, they could not 100 Winter/Spring Page 5 possibly centralize a sparse, rural population of some sixty different ethnic groups. Revolutionary leaders instead spent most of their energy helping to get the people back on their feet. Then they tried to organize people into cooperatives. But again, this is a regressive strategy in a country that already has a long established, cooperative social structure. The social organization of villages works far better than the ideal cooperative, not surprising since classical Marxist cooperatives derive from crude accounts of village life written by 19th century European anthroIs san THE LAO PEOPLE'S DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC AND PROVINCES VIETNAM CAMBODIA pologists. At the tum of the century, socialist activists thought cooperative groups should be like the organizations and unions they were familiar with in industrialized Europe. When early Soviet leaders discovered real villages on Soviet territory, they did not recognize their cooperative nature. Villagers were uncooperative to collectivization, leading some to suspect that intervillage barter was incipient commercial capitalism. This was a misjudgment, since the families produced mostly for their own needs and not for trade.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NTc4NTAz