III. Training cadres and party members’ revolutionary morality

In the history of Vietnam, President Ho Chi Minh’s Testament is an extremely sacred and noble “National Treasure”. Around the world, there has been no testament left by any great figure or sage could be as tender as our beloved Uncle Ho’s: “Finally, to the whole people, the whole Party, the whole army, to my nephews and nieces, the youth and children, I leave my boundless love”.

His “boundless love” was left first and foremost for the Party. He wrote: “Each Party member, each cadre must be deeply imbued with revolutionary morality, and show industry, thrift, integrity, uprightness, total dedication to the public interest and complete selflessness. Our Party should preserve absolute purity and prove worthy of its role as the leader and very loyal servant of the people”.

With the strategic vision of a genius leader, President Ho Chi Minh attached great importance to training cadres and party members’ revolutionary morality. Since our Party became a Party in power, he had many articles and talks about this matter. Most notably, on the occasion of the Party’s 39^th founding anniversary, President Ho Chi Minh had the article entitled “Improving revolutionary morality, wiping out individualism” on the People Newspaper on February 3^rd 1969. In his article, he instructed that “each cadre and party member must put the interests of the revolution, the Party, and the people first. It is a must to resolutely wipe out individualism, improve revolutionary morality, and bolster collective ideology and a sense of unity, organization, and discipline. It is necessary to stay close to the masses and really respect and promote the people’s right to collective mastery. It is important devote efforts to self-study and self-improvement so as to well perform the task”.

President Ho Chi Minh always set store by party members’ revolutionary ethics and considered the building of a contingent of cadres and party members according to the stated moral standards as a central task of the Party construction. This is a basic, long-term, and urgent issue as the Party’s whole strength is decided by the corps of cadres and party members. With a simple, easy-to-understand, and thoughtful approach, when mentioning the issue of revolutionary morality in his work entitled “Rectifying the way of working”, he stressed five things, namely “benevolence, righteousness, wisdom, courage, and selflessness” as the revolutionary morality. He believed that “it is the new, great morality, and that type of morality serves the common interests of the Party, nation and human race in stead of personal reputation. He underlined the necessity of revolutionary morality: ““It is similar to a river which must have a source. Without a source, the river will run out. A tree must have its root, if not, it will wither. Revolutionaries must have ethics, without which they will not be able to lead the people despite their talent”.

Being imbued with his teachings, our Party has always attached great value to training cadres and party members’ revolutionary morality and ideal and considered this as one of the important, routine tasks of the Party building and rectification. Each cadre and party member in their position have self-studied and self-improved revolutionary morality and strived to fulfil all tasks assigned by the Party. Thus, the majority of cadres and party members have kept maturing, which has acted as a decisive factor in the great victories of the nation’s holy resistance wars and in the historic success of the country’s 30-year-plus reform. However, some units, cadres, and party members have yet to be serious or active in implementing the resolutions and directives on building the Party and improving revolutionary morality and capability. In some places, the studying and following of Ho Chi Minh’s moral example has still shown the sign of formalism. As a result, the degradation in political ideology, morality, and lifestyle among a section of cadres and party members as well as corruption, wastefulness, bureaucracy, negative practices and social evils have yet to be prevented or repelled; they have even more complex. More seriously, those negative phenomena have led to “self-evolution” and “self-transformation” which have directly undermined the unity within the Party and the people’s faith in the Party.

Against that backdrop, our Party has been taking various measures to build and rectify the Party and train its cadres and party members’ revolutionary ethics. The Party issued the Resolution of the 12^th Party Central Committee’s 4^th Plenum on the Party building and rectification, the Regulation 101-QĐ/TW on “the role model-setting responsibility of cadres and party members, especially the key ones”, and the Regulation 47-QĐ/TW on “party members’ don’ts” , while the Politburo released the Directive 05-CT/TW on “studying and following Ho Chi Minh’s ideology, ethics, and lifestyle” and the Regulation 55-QĐ/TW on “several urgent measures to heighten cadres and party members’ exemplary role”.

While resolutely, persistently adopting the general measures in the Party’s resolutions and directives, for the sake of cadres and party members’ improved revolutionary morality under President Ho Chi Minh’s Testament, we need to focus on the following.

First, the most practical measure to train revolutionary morality is studying Ho Chi Minh’s moral example. Our country and people are extremely proud of President Ho Chi Minh - a pure, noble example of revolutionary example. Thus, the studying and following of Ho Chi Minh’s moral example will be easily permeated into each cadre, party member and citizen. By studying Ho Chi Minh’s morality and following his moral example, each cadre and party member will have progressive thought and healthy, benevolent lifestyle and devote themselves to the revolution and the people.

Morality within the society and that within the Party affect each other directly. The preservation of morality within the Party will spread throughout the society and among all people. Studying and following Ho Chi Minh’s moral example will bolster the value of the country’s traditional morality and bring revolutionary morality to a new height.

Second, during the process of training cadres and party’s revolutionary ethics, it is necessary to be fully aware of the particularities of our country’s revolutionary path. Reality in our revolution is posing complex issues. The task of developing a market economy in the context of globalization and international integration is indispensable to us. Although we always maintain the socialist orientation, the development of a market economy will certainly lead to the capitalism’s spontaneous trend. Moreover, as we are in the transitional period, our economy and the social life have to face a lot of intertwined issues which are hard to be clarified. The process of international integration, business cooperation with capitalist countries and use of capitalism’s method of economic development to build socialism is posing many challenges and impacting on our people’s ideology and behaviour. Those issues should be analyzed and clarified during the process of training revolutionary morality.

Third, training cadres and party members’ revolutionary morality must be centred on consolidating their faith. Consolidating all cadres, party members, and people’s faith in the victory of the revolution and making them resolve to well fulfil the task of Homeland construction and protection is seen as the yardstick of the training of revolutionary morality. It is important to be fully aware that revolutionary morality has higher criteria than ordinary people’s morality in general, thus requiring higher responsibility. The basis for improving revolutionary morality is the unshakeable faith in the objective, ideal and victory of the revolution. The faith created by deep knowledge of each person and combined with revolutionary morality will become a huge source of strength, transform willpower into action, and unite millions of people as one to encourage the progress in the society. Revolutionary morality and cadres and party members’ faith represent the solidarity within the Party and the special bond between the Party and the people as a great motivation for us to win numerous victories.

Fourth, the training of cadres and party members’ revolutionary morality must be combined with the fight against the wrong, hostile viewpoints, the degradation in political ideology, and the signs of “self-evolution” and “self-transformation” from within. In recent years, when the Party and our people have proactively fought against the degradation in political ideology and the signs of “self-evolution” and “self-transformation” within the Party and society, the hostile forces have made every effort to distort and prevent our work. Thus, the fight against the wrong, hostile viewpoints will not only help foil the hostile forces’ plots and artifices in the theoretical field, but also greatly contribute to training and improving cadres and party members’ revolutionary morality.

Fifth, further propagating and studying typical examples of revolutionary ethics, building up the good in the social life, commending the “good people, good deed” examples, and condemning the bad correctly. There have been many good examples of revolutionary morality set by cadres and party members. Therefore, during the Party and unions’ meetings in offices, units, and social organizations, it is necessary to propagate and study those examples.

Sixth, due regard should be paid to the youth’s revolutionary morality. Young people in our country are a powerful force, accounting for over 1/3 of the population and more than half of the country’s labour force, playing an utmost important role in building and defending the Homeland. Thus, the training of the youth’s revolutionary morality in the period of accelerated industrialization, modernization, and international integration will greatly contribute to building the young generation and making the country’s future masters both “red” and “expert”. Together with the whole Party, Military and people, they will become a core force in fulfilling the noble objective of a prosperous, strong, democratic, equitable, and civilized country towards socialism.  (To be continued)