VIETNAM: THE IMPERIAL WAR

The propaganda narrative claims the U.S. fought communism to stop totalitarian control and defend freedom. This is a lie designed to obscure the material reality: communism's actual threat was that it enabled nations to exploit their own resources instead of having them controlled by imperial powers and private wealth.

After having been colonized by the French for decades, Vietnam wanted control over Vietnamese land, Vietnamese labor, and Vietnamese resources. This was intolerable to the U.S. empire — not because it threatened American freedom, but because it threatened profits and imperial dominance by the Western powers.

The current global system operates as capital slavery: nations across the globe remain subjected to foreign control of their lands and labor through debt, "structural adjustment," corporate exploitation, and when necessary, military force. Vietnam's "crime" was attempting to escape this system of extraction and subordination.

Multiple reputable sources support the view that the Vietnam War was fundamentally about imperial-economic control and suppression of nationalist self-determination. The following citations provide evidence for understanding the war through the lens of imperialism, neocolonial exploitation, and the defense of capital slavery.

These sources represent the "official" Cold War narrative — important to understand as contrast to the imperial interpretation:

• Imperial Aggression to Maintain Capital Slavery: Leftist and anti-imperialist scholars (Parenti, Progressive Labor Party) explicitly identify the war as defense of big-business profits and imperial control over resources — capital slavery in action.
• Economic Extraction as Central Motive: Economic-analysis sources demonstrate the war was fundamentally about maintaining foreign control over Vietnamese lands, labor, and resources — the core of capital slavery.
• Inheriting Colonial Exploitation: U.S. support for colonial France, then direct intervention, shows the continuity of foreign domination. The goal was never democracy but maintaining external control over Vietnam's wealth.
• Liberation, Not "Fall": Modern reinterpretations frame 1975 as Vietnam's liberation from imperial rule — breaking the chains of capital slavery and asserting sovereignty over their own resources.
• Crushing National Self-Determination: The U.S. systematically opposed Vietnamese control over Vietnamese resources, regardless of ideology. The threat wasn't communism's political system — it was economic independence from imperial control.
• The Real Threat: Communism enabled peoples to exploit their own nations' resources instead of remaining subordinate to foreign capital and imperial powers. This was intolerable to the system of capital slavery.

1. Begin with the "official narrative" — understand mainstream sources describing anti-communism, Domino Theory, containment.
2. Introduce the materialist / imperialist critique — examine sources like Progressive Labor Party pamphlet, Parenti, the 2020 thesis, "U.S. Imperialism and Vietnam: An Economic View."
3. Provide historical context — show how the U.S. first propped up colonial powers (France), then "inherited" colonial-style dominance via intervention. Examine U.S. aid to France and the transition from French to American control.
4. Draw conclusions — the war's logic aligns with classic imperial/neocolonial behavior: resource control, market domination, suppression of sovereignty and self-determination.
5. Acknowledge complexity — recognize that historians argue the war involved "complicated and shifting motives" including ideological, strategic, regional power balancing — demonstrating nuance beyond simple narratives.

The Vietnam War exemplifies how imperial powers use ideological justifications to mask the defense of capital slavery — the subjection of foreign nations to external control of their lands, labor, and resources:

• Inheritance of Colonial Control: The U.S. replaced French colonial masters with "advisors" and military presence, maintaining foreign domination while claiming to oppose colonialism
• Puppet Government Installation: South Vietnam's authoritarian regimes served foreign capital and imperial interests, not the Vietnamese people
• Military Force to Maintain Extraction: Massive intervention to prevent Vietnamese control of Vietnamese resources, framed as "defense of freedom"
• Crushing National Liberation: Systematic suppression of movements seeking to control their own lands and labor — the essence of capital slavery
• Corporate Protection Disguised as Ideology: Economic and strategic interests hidden behind anti-communist rhetoric
• Defying Popular Will: Decades of war despite opposition at home and abroad, because profit matters more than democracy

The Vietnam War was not an aberration — it's the standard operating procedure of capital slavery. When a nation attempts to control its own resources and labor, imperial powers invoke ideological threats (communism, terrorism, authoritarianism) to justify crushing that sovereignty. The goal is not freedom but subordination; not democracy but extraction; not liberation but control.

Understanding Vietnam reveals the core truth: the "free world" defended by U.S. empire is only free for capital to exploit labor and resources globally. Any nation asserting genuine sovereignty over its own wealth becomes an enemy to be destroyed.

Vietnam exposed the fundamental contradiction of the Cold War: the U.S. claimed to fight for freedom while defending a global system of capital slavery where:

• Foreign corporations control national resources through "investment" and extraction contracts that benefit shareholders over local populations
• International financial institutions impose structural adjustment requiring nations to privatize public goods and open markets to foreign capital
• Debt mechanisms trap nations in perpetual servitude, paying interest to foreign creditors while their own people lack basic necessities
• Labor remains cheap and exploitable through the threat of capital flight and the collaboration of comprador elites
• Military bases and intervention maintain compliance when economic coercion alone proves insufficient
• Nationalism becomes "extremism" when it threatens the flow of wealth from periphery to core

This is the system Vietnam rejected. This is why it had to be destroyed. And this is why — despite losing the war militarily — the U.S. maintains the narrative that communism equals totalitarianism, carefully obscuring communism's actual crime: enabling peoples to control their own destinies rather than remain subordinate to foreign capital.

The greatest propaganda victory of the Cold War was convincing people that U.S. intervention opposed tyranny rather than self-determination, defended freedom rather than exploitation, and served democracy rather than capital.

It WAS about stopping communism — but not to defend freedom. The U.S. fought to stop communism from spreading to nations so that rich countries and individuals could continue exploiting them within the capitalist global economy. Every nation that embraced communism was a nation removed from the exploitation pool.

The Cold War's actual stakes were economic, not ideological:

• Communist Vietnam = No Cheap Labor Exploitation: Vietnamese workers would work for Vietnamese benefit, not for foreign profits
• Communist Vietnam = No Resource Extraction: Vietnamese resources would serve Vietnamese development, not enrich foreign corporations
• Communist Vietnam = No Market Captivity: Vietnam could trade on its own terms, not as a subordinate market for Western goods
• Communist Vietnam = No Financial Servitude: No debt traps, no IMF control, no structural adjustment serving foreign creditors
• Communist Vietnam = Dangerous Example: If Vietnam could break free, so could dozens of other colonized and semi-colonized nations

This is why the U.S. was terrified of communism "spreading." Not because it would create authoritarian governments — the U.S. enthusiastically supported authoritarian governments that maintained capital slavery (South Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia, Chile, etc.). The terror was that communism would enable nations to control their own economies, removing them from exploitation within the global capitalist system.

The Domino Theory was real — but the dominoes weren't freedom falling to tyranny. They were exploited nations falling away from the exploitation system. Each nation that achieved economic sovereignty was one less source of cheap labor, extracted resources, captive markets, and debt servitude for the imperial core.

THE FUNDAMENTAL TRUTH:

The Vietnam War was fought to maintain rich countries' and individuals' ability to exploit poor nations. Anti-communism was the ideological cover for defending capital slavery. Every bomb dropped, every village burned, every life destroyed served one purpose: keeping Vietnam and the Global South subordinate to foreign capital.