Non-Revolutionary Leading For Sustainable World Development

 

By Mr. Nguyễn Trần Bạt

Hanoi, Vietnam

 

The development history of humankind has experienced many significant changes -- considered as the consequences of inevitable and great revolutions. However, people recently have re-comprehended the role of revolutions under subjective and comprehensive viewpoint and with lucid minds. This reflects a qualitative change of not only the world but also of leading thought.

1. Renovation, reform and revolution

Renovation, reform and revolution are three different categories, though people often make mistakes when using them to describe changes. In more accurate terms, renovation, reform and revolution are three modes to create changes at different levels and in different scales.

In the first place, it should be understood that renovation is an active process following the law of movement and the rule of self-development, meaning that renovation is a work that should be done daily. Any thing, any phenomenon, any individual, any community and any nation always experience the renovation process as an instinct to adapt with changes of the living environment. A very famous saying of Heraclite -- "No one bathes himself twice in the same river" -- has manifested this. Renovation, thus, connotes "movement", i.e. any thing, any phenomenon, any individual, any community and any nation will be considered to "normally develop" if it can satisfy the requirement of constant renovation and self-renovation. Any system meeting this criterion will be acknowledged as a perfect and optimal one.

Meanwhile, reform is a measure carried out to solve urgent demands of the situation, which must be based on specific purpose and schedule and is required to finish in a certain period. It will create more systematic changes - on more excessive scale, and at more intensive and thorough level. Reform, in some cases, can lead to changes in the thought of action and development orientation. The basic common point between renovation and reform is the controllability. However, reform, unlike renovation, cannot be done daily, because it always creates chaos with undesired results. Therefore, a reform just can be carried out upon thorough studies of its purpose and results, and people must be brave enough to accept its damages and must have firm stuff and belief to repair these damages. 

In Vietnam, our Communist Party and State has recently implemented some renovation programs, gaining many significant achievements, yet apparently many problems remain unsolved. I think that the most fundamental and decisive cause is that we have no drastic attitude to adopt effective reforms, which can ensure steady growth. We have just succeeded in creating short-term growth period, while the root of all problems is irrationally solved. In order to overcome this fact, Vietnamese politicians, sometimes, think of revolution as an effective and radical measure, forgetting that everything has changed and we cannot apply the same prescription to various kinds of disease.

Revolution is the topic of this writing, thus, before embarking on a deeper study, we should discuss the term "revolution". Basically understanding, revolution is the replacement of the old by the new, which is more advanced. The cause of revolutions is not the isolation or the less development of the world, but a non-democratic, hypocritical and dictatorial society. Why? Because those features, in combination, lead to the accumulation of the so-called conflicts in the society. In turn, these conflicts will create outburst. Outburst of conflicts will give birth to revolution. Thus, in another meaning, revolution is to sweep the old and to create the premise for the new to exist and develop.

Nonetheless, whether revolution or not, the human being still have to live in the same place, in the same society and among communities with relative stability. Due to the fact that people always tend to abuse the relative stability making them not to take timely renovation programs, revolutions have chances to take place. Revolution, thus, is the result of lazy and coward postponement of political elements. When people cannot stand economic setback, they make economic revolution. Similarly, when they cannot bear the backwardness in science and technique, they adopt scientific and technical revolution. Revolution, in any case, is the result of the postponement of the renovation of all fields in our socio-economic life.

However, revolution, quite different from renovation and reform, is a process over which the ruling politicians, even the whole society has lost control. That is because revolution creates changes -- even more comprehensive and intensive than the synergic changes brought about by both renovation and reform. It should, nevertheless, be noted that the damages created by revolutions would be very heavy, and manifested through the destruction of not only material but also spiritual achievements. Revolution, subjectively speaking, under certain circumstances and in historical situations, especially when the world has not reached high level development, still plays a positive role because it often succeeds in solving problems that renovation and reform "succumb" to. It should be emphasized that there is no smooth revolution, called by some people "velvet" one. Some naive people or other who try to sophisticate may argue that there are smooth solutions instead of "shock therapy" to solve the consequences of revolutions. However they have forgotten that revolution itself is a shock therapy to develop.

Our position is that, in such a situation, when the world is experiencing many significant qualitative changes, we should and totally can find a new technology to maintain the development. It should be a measure, which do not cause heavy damages. This is non-revolutionary mode of leadership.

2. Evolution - the rules of development in the modern world

The world has experienced many changes. And realities show that rules of evolution is the first one - also the most fundamental and decisive one. The reason is that rules of evolution can satisfy the natural development of things, phenomena, communities and nations to the utmost. 

How does this rule work?

Firstly, the world has shifted from renovation to reform as a significant stride of instruments to sustain development. That is because renovation is a natural reaction of the society to adapt to changes of situation. It is similar to biological reactions of bodies to changes of living environment. In the light of this viewpoint, reform is an important achievement of the human being to maintain development, and more importantly, to create social advance. The significance of reform is that it creates changes in thought and action, which is the core to create development and maintain sustainable growth. However, no longer is reform a natural reaction, it is really a therapy to diseases of any society. In abstract terms, reform can be compared to the therapy to diseases of a living body. And any kind of medicines, when permeating in our body will bring about both positive and negative impacts, in short or long future. So is reform! Although it seems to successfully solve some problems, people still have to admit its negative impacts -- regarded as the unexpected consequence of a medicine to living bodies.

Upon this reality, the human being has created a new tool of development, what is so-called revolution. Humankind, initially, was dazzled with short-term results brought about by revolutions. Revolutions often originate from serious demands of life, thus, it usually satisfies the demand for rapid changes of a certain class in the society. Only when the victorious aureole seems to dim, do people realize that the work of repairing damages is not less difficult - or even more difficult than it is before revolution takes place. Let us look at recent revolutions to realize that the consequences of revolutions are always terrible in any field. The short-term victories are inspiring politicians, making them fail to be aware of the nature of problem.

To meet this reasonable and humane demand for development, revolution and only revolution is the sound trend.  Non-revolutionary leading mode, therefore, is born; if people, in the previous time, consciously or unconsciously renovate themselves to exist, the border between these two moods, at present, is dimmer and dimmer. That is because the renovation itself or evolution itself has contained both the purpose and the content of development.

 One of the most important reasons for putting an end to the mode of revolutionary leading is that, no longer can our earth's energy sources afford revolutions. Meanwhile, revolutions are not always progressive; realities show that there are some revolutions mistakenly thought of as progressive. Revolution, due to the limits of vision, becomes short-term reasonable actions with short-term progress. With non-revolutionary leading mode, people will get rid of the thoughts of making revolutions habits of humankind, and after carrying out revolutions, they will be taken to heaven. Moreover, it will help people realize the importance of renovation and evolution, because renovation thought is consecutive which will make people more responsible for their actions while revolution thought is discontinuous. We, thus, should not absolutize the significance of revolutions as the sole solution for development. I strongly believe that, people, without the presence of revolutions, will have other modes of development or modes of being asymptotic with development without heavy damage and destruction. Firstly and most importantly, we should make evolution the rules of development, a natural reaction of any society. The evolution itself has no characteristic as people used to sophisticate to delay it. As long as politician parties and states take the difference between the Orient and the Occident or the difference among political conditions as the reason for forming various ways of approaching renovation, they still hesitate and wait for a revolution. To create sustainable development by new methodology, we, therefore, should form a set of popular conditions considered main technologies of development including political, human and democratic conditions. Without democracy, the speed of propagating ideas and reasonable solutions will be slower while the space for pervasion will be narrow and limited. It is unlikely to adopt new measures to create the fundamental theory for the development of a non-democratic society.

It should be further discussed that we should distinguish renovation in previous time from that in our modern time. The former was the result of pieces of revolutions -- or, the exploitation of positive impacts of revolution -- that is the post-revolutionary renovation - a renovation of chaos time. It is, thus, attached to revolutions, i.e. there is no renovation without revolution. What we are striving for is the non-revolutionary renovation - renovation under the name of evolution. This is the technology of development. 

3. Non-revolutionary leading mode for a non-revolutionary world

Lenin used to write on the conditions of a revolution, including the leading mode of the ruling class is no longer suitable, the governed class no longer can accept the old leading mode and a new group appears in the society with new awareness. The birth of non-revolutionary leading mode is not an exceptional case. Firstly, thanks to changes in degree, awareness, methods and independent levels of a nation and among nations, no longer is the leading mode of destroying the old and building the new suitable. Secondly, no longer can the energy sources of nations in particular and of the whole world in general afford revolutions and the work of repairing their damages. And finally, talented leaders, on world scale, start to seek for smother and less risky leading modes. Non-revolutionary leading mode, in nature, is also a revolution of leading thought. It is, however, a special revolution because it does not cause sudden changes and heavy damages like other revolutions. That is why it is really a new, feasible solution, which also can satisfy the demands of this situation.

Non-revolutionary leadership is a daily process of responsible and clear-headed repairing different defects in various aspects of the social life. People should have understood that the time of propagating renovation and reform in mass media has gone because renovation and reform nowadays are not achievements but daily work. Unless governments get rid of such way of thinking and doing, they will have to face a new revolution because of the failure in realizing that revolution, actually, is a weakness of our life. It is only like the ultimate solution to overcome the consequences of overlapping mistakes of a system. Both ex and post revolutions' leaders must be jointly responsible for the fact that the society is so sluggish that it needs a revolution.

One of recent happenings of the world is the East Asian crisis - the manifestation of a revolution. It would be useless if we now talk about its effects, results and aftermath. Nevertheless, the crisis once more emphasizes that it is high time for us to bring revolutions to ant end, and that wise politicians who keep abreast with the times should not count on revolutions as the therapy to their countries. To avoid revolutions, democracy should be propagated as the crucial premise for making evolution the new technology of maintaining existence and generating social progress.

Democracy propagation is, however, not a simple task especially in backward countries which are less developed in awareness like third world nations. To those countries, the most effective measure is to create awareness - even a compulsory one. Politicians, in any society, always form an advanced class at least in awareness. They, thus, must compel themselves to create premise of democracy, otherwise, a revolution will take place. We should bravely adopt measures to make people perceive democracy as a prerequisite condition to create development of which the most important is developing human capacity. That is because unless human capacity is developed, we will be deepened in the backwardness and failures in competition, which will make a certain part of the society carry out a revolution. Politicians, at any cost, should avoid revolutions and in doing so, we should meticulously build up a mechanism of democracy. In this regard, meticulously building up a mechanism of democracy should be understood as perfecting ourselves, perfecting the state of our ownership, perfecting our society and perfecting the awareness of democracy of our people. We should implement these tasks in a flexible manner so as not to make democracy the consequence of a revolution. To non-revolutionize developments of life, we should consciously democratize instead of making democratization the natural appearance of a revolution. In summary, we should divide the whole revolution into small pieces, then make these small pieces specific revolutions of various fields of the socio-econo-politic life, then beat these specific revolutions into renovation programs. The political system and politicians should be the pioneer in the process of building a society in which renovation is used as the basic instrument to maintain the development and existence. If politicians still delay these works, they will have to suffer a revolution.

In a world shifting to non-revolutionary world like ours, revolution has been and will be an undesired thing. It is, thus, not exaggerative to say that we have to bury all possibilities of a new imminent revolution. Renovation and evolution are effective medicines to repair the damages of revolution.

The time when great men invented development models for nations has gone. We should let our society do its work, it will self-renovate and find the most suitable and nearest way to the development of the new era. Each citizen and each family has been carrying out renovation as the smoothest solution to maintain its precious happiness, and they will do the same in the future. The sustainable development itself must be based on the awareness of each individual and the consensus of the whole society. The infrastructure for such a society is democracy -- the minimum and basic free space for people to be aware of the reasonableness.

This is the philosophy of modern development.