Outline on Vietnamese Culture (1943)

Xem nguồn tại talawas. Tôi tạm dịch từ "xu trào" với từ "tendency." Có phải đúng không? Còn từ "triết trung" thì tôi dịch tiếng Anh là "ambivalence."

Cám ơn bạn Lila / Thanh cho tôi hiểu rằng "triết trung" thực ra là "chiết trung." (Ông Trường Chinh có viết "ngọng").

Outline on Vietnamese Culture (1943) - Trường Chinh
(Jason Gibbs dịch)

Stating the problem

1. The scope of the problem: Culture consists of ideology, learning and the arts.

2. The relationship between culture, economics and politics: The economic base of society and the economic regime based on that base completely determines the culture of that society (an infrastructure that determines the architectural superstructure).

3. The attitude of the Indochina Communist part on the issue of culture:

a. the cultural front is one of three fronts (economy, politics, culture) where communists must be active.

b. we must not only make a political revolution but must make a cultural revolution as well.

c. the vanguard party must lead a vanguard culture.

d. once it can lead the cultural movement, the party can influence public opinion, then the party's propaganda will be effective.

History and the nature of Vietnamese culture

1. Each historical period of Vietnamese culture:

a. The era of Quang-Trung and earlier:
Vietnamese culture by nature was half-feudal, half-slave, dependent upon Chinese culture.

b. The era from Quang-Trung until the invasion of the French empire:
A feudal culture with bourgeois tendencies.

c. The era from the French invasion to the present:
A culture that is half-feudal, half-bourgeois and completely of a colonial nature (pay attention to distinguishing between a few periods within this era).

2. The nature of Vietnamese culture today:

Vietnamese culture today in form is colonial and in subject matter is pre-capitalist.

The war and the tendency of culture today: the influence of fascist culture is making the feudal and subjugated nature within Vietnamese culture stronger, but at the same time it is being influenced by new democracy, the new cultural tendency in Vietnam is an effort to overcome every obstacle in order to break through (illegal arts and literature).

The danger to Vietnamese culture under the yoke of Japanese-French fascism

1. Fascist ploys that fetter culture and kill off Vietnamese culture:

a. The French culture policy:

• oppress revolutionary, democratic, anti-fascist cultural experts.
• put out material, form cultural agencies and organizations in order to indoctrinate.
• severely censor cultural material.
• buy off and threaten cultural experts.
• be intimate with religions in order to propagate medieval culture, moronic culture.
• propagandize for defeatism and a blind and narrow-minded patriotism (chauvinism).
• create the appearance of caring for the people's mental, physical, and moral health.
  

b. The Japanese culture policy:

• propagandize for a Greater-Asia ideology
• create the idea the Japanese are the saviors of the yellow-skinned races and that Japanese culture brightens the light of civilization and progress for the races of Greater Asia.
• seek in all ways to flaunt and introduce Japanese culture (exhibits, lectures, reserve rooms for tourism, cultural institutes, student exchange, invite Southeast Asian artists to visit Japan, open newspapers for propaganda, organize musical theater, film...)
• oppress anti-Japanese writers and buy off talented writers

2. The prospects for Vietnamese culture; two assumptions:

• if fascist culture (medieval and slavish culture) prevails then Vietnamese national culture will be impoverished and inferior;
  
• or Vietnamese national culture will triumph through a democratic liberation revolution and will allowed to open its chains and keeps up with the global new democratic culture.

Two assumptions, which one will become a fact? Based upon the economic, political and social conditions of today, the Vietnamese national revolution shall categorically make the second assumption become a fact.

The matter of a Vietnamese cultural revolution

1. The communist conception of a cultural revolution

a. One must complete a cultural revolution before one can transform society.

b. If one wants to complete a cultural revolution it must be lead by the Indochina Communist Party

c. A cultural revolution can be realized when the political revolution has succeeded (a cultural revolution must come after the political revolution). The approaches to cultural revolution brought up now are to pave the way to toal revolution later.

2. The culture that a Southeast Asian cultural revolution must realize is a socialist culture.

3. Vietnamese cultural revolution and national liberation revolution:

a. The Vietnamese cultural revolution in Vietnam must be based on a national liberation revolution to have the conditions to develop
b. The Vietnamese national liberation revolution can in the most fortunate circumstances lead Vietnamese culture towards a democratic standard and have an entirely independent national character to build up a new culture.
c. We must advance forward to realize a social revolution in Southeast Asia, to bring about a social revolution throughout Southeast Asia.

4. Three campaign principles of the new Vietnamese cultural campaign during this period:

a. Nationalize (oppose each slavish or colonial influences, cause Vietnamese culture to develop independently).
b. Popularize [Mass-ize] (oppose each position and action that makes culture contrary to the great mass of the public or distant from the great mass of the public ).
c. Make scientific (oppose all things that make culture contrary to science, anti-progress).

If we want the three principles above to prevail, we must fiercely oppose tendencies of a cultural conservatism, eclecticism, eccentricity, pessimism, mysticism, idealistic, etc... At the same time we must oppose the extremist cultural tendencies of the Trotskyites

5. The property of new Vietnamese culture:

The new Vietnamese culture advanced and led by the Indochina Communist Party is not yet a socialist culture or a Soviet culture (like culture of the Soviet Union for example).

The new Vietnamese culture is a kind of culture with a national character and is new democratic in substance. For that reason it is the most revolutionary and most advanced in Indochina during this period.

The urgent mission of Indochinese Marxist writers, especially Vietnamese Marxist writers

1. The objective before us

a. oppose culture that is fascist feudal, degenerate, slavish, moronic and imploring art;

b. develop an Indochinese new democratic culture.

2. The work we must do:

a. oppose learning, ideologies (smash mistaken European and Asian viewpoints that have had a more or less harmful influence on us: the philosophies of Confucianism, Mencius, Cartesianism, Kant, Nietzsche, etc...; cause the philosophies of dialectical materialism and historical materialism to prevail).

b. struggle about art and literature sects (oppose classicism, romanticism, naturalism, abstraction etc... make the tendency of socialist realism prevail).

c. struggle about spoken language and writing:

1. unify and enrich the spoken language;

2. determine the stratagem of our literature.

3. reform written letters, etc...

III. The manner of culture campaigning:

a. take advantage all public or semi-public possibilities to:

1. propagandize and publish.

2. organize writers

3. struggle to gain actual authority for authors, journalists, artists, etc...

4. fight against illiteracy etc...

b. intimately coordinate secret and public methods, unify every progressive cultural activity under the leadership of proletariat Marxist leadership.