Gabriel Dibor

BUILDING A GOOD SOCIETY THROUGH SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM: A VIETNAMESE CASE STUDY INTRODUCTION Could Vietnam’s rapid movement from deep poverty to a middle-income status show that the real secret to a good society is the combination of scientific socialism and market-driven innovation? Since the 2010s, Vietnam has become a popular international tourist destination due to the successful implementation of the government’s comprehensive innovative policies and the country’s abundant resources (Thao & Bakucz, 2024). Even though Vietnam began as one of the poorest countries in the mid-1980s, it has made great developmental progress and became a lower middle-income country in 2010 (Baum, 2019). I see Vietnam’s 1986 economic reform as transformational. Years ago, it lifted Vietnam from one of the world’s poorest nations to a lower middle-income country, and poverty rates fell from 70% in 1986 to below 2% in 2021 (Nguyen, 2022). As Campbell (2021) says, “If we are serious about improving the world, we need to be willing to face social reality as we find it.” I intend to use this paper to argue that a good society is a socialist society that realizes socialist principles of equitable distribution, social justice, and collective well-being through state-led planning, market integration, and legal reform, as Vietnam’s experience of scientific socialism shows. DEFINING A GOOD SOCIETY AND SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM To define a good society and scientific socialism, one has to look at the ideals of social well-being and the approach to the process of transformative change. The society we want to live in is a good society where the basic rights of man, especially those of the vulnerable, such as workers, farmers, and children, are protected, thereby achieving equal opportunity and strong social bonds (Duc et al., 2023). This kind of society depends on a robust rule of law that balances state power with individual freedoms and integrates political perceptions on the basis of international norms of human rights’ (Nguyen, 2023; Pham, 2024). To ensure sustainable development, this rule of law has to set up mechanisms for strict and efficient law enforcement (Pham, 2024). Building this kind of society is done by nurturing social capital through inclusive institutions, democratic engagement, and respect for human rights (Haldane, 2024). Scientific socialism makes the realization of these ideals possible by combining systematic analysis of social forces with political action (Lane, 2020). Scientific socialism is defined through its methodological approach to understanding and transforming society (Lane, 2020; Ogaba & Abado, 2021). It is a Marxist framework that involves a thorough study of capitalism’s inner workings and active political struggle to end exploitation and guide social development (Lane, 2020). Karl Marx, Engels, and V.I. Lenin of Russia based their ideas on real class relations and revolutionary strategy and birthed the theory of scientific socialism (Ogaba & Abado, 2021). Lane (2020) explains that “Historical materialism envisages law-like tendencies (‘scientific’ Marxism) promoting the development of productive forces and, concurrently, a political praxis (‘active’ Marxism) requiring human intervention.” This paper, therefore, looks at Marx and Lenin’s argument that socialism can only be brought about through “persistent struggles and revolutions and not by nonrevolutionary means,” since workers must first develop class consciousness and organize to overthrow capitalist rule (Ogaba & Abado, 2021). In practice, scientific socialism requires that major industries be brought under public and democratic control so that resources are for everyone rather than private owners (Lane, 2020). It is also based on strong legal foundations, that is, improving the legal system and enforcing the law effectively to fix socialist goals in lasting institutions and to protect social equality (Pham, 2024). Also, effective coordination between government leaders and economic leaders is paramount, because planned economies can easily fall into clientelism and corruption (Vu Thanh, 2015). According to Duc et al. (2023), lasting change is possible with solid legal tools. Scientific socialism connects scientific analysis, legal structure, and structured political action in order to create a society where production satisfies human needs, progressively creating a classless community (Lane, 2020; Ogaba & Abado, 2021). A GOOD SOCIETY: THE VIETNAMESE PERSPECTIVE Vietnam’s vision of a good society has its roots in the Doi Moi reforms initiated in 1986, which established a socialist market economy, helped Vietnam reduce poverty drastically, and placed it in the lower middle income status (Nguyen, 2022). The success of this continued success depends on a strong legal system in the country to ensure that development is fair (Pham, 2024). In Vietnam, a good society requires citizen participation, because when people elect delegates at local and national levels, it is a means of transparency and accountability in government (Hoa & Garcia Zamor, 2017). In addition, Vietnam is “a role model for developing healthcare systems in low- and middle-income countries” as it expands its universal health coverage and removes out-of-pocket costs (Quan & Taylor Robinson, 2023). In the Vietnamese context, a good society is also represented by the fact that good governance and global partnerships have positioned tourism as a strategic investment priority and have helped to promote human development and sustainable economic growth (Thao & Bakucz, 2024). In the context of Vietnam, a good society is one that has achieved fair economic growth starting from the Doi Moi reform, promotes transparency through citizen participation, facilitates access to quality healthcare by increasing universal coverage, and protects vulnerable groups through politically oriented decisions on the basis of international human rights standards to create a country not divisive by class (Hoa & Garcia Zamor, 2017; Nguyen, 2022; Quan & Taylor Robinson, 2023). HOW SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM BUILDS A GOOD SOCIETY IN VIETNAM Mechanisms of State Planning and Redistribution Scientific socialism is manifested through robust instruments of state planning and redistribution in Vietnam. Benedikter and Loan (2018) point out that, “Thirty years after the departure from Soviet-style central planning, state-directed planning prevails as the dominant feature of Vietnam’s governance system, policy regime, and economic system.” The fact that governments can now channel resources to underdeveloped regions gives them an opportunity to prioritize the infrastructure and health and education initiatives first. Nevertheless, it is revealed that there are in fact structural weaknesses of dominance of the state-owned enterprises, which, in combination with bureaucratic inertia and corruption, are factors that have shattered the principles of market socialism in the past (Cuong, 2024). However, the governance system in Vietnam coexists with an officially recognized private sector. According to Vu-Thanh (2015), although private enterprises, both domestic and foreign, in the past were still marginalized as an economic sector of the multi-sectoral commodity economy of Vietnam, they have now been officially accepted as an economic sector of the commodity economy of Vietnam. The underlying model of Vietnam’s social development is built on this hybrid model to strike a balance between collective provision and market-driven efficiency. The Role of Participatory Governance Active citizen participation has many benefits, such as transparency and accountability of local governments, which can also reflect changing characteristics of a whole social structure, and it is a cornerstone of a good society (Hoa & Garcia Zamor, 2017). Local councils are the channels for community input and policies that ensure that policies are in line with citizens’ needs at the grassroots level. This kind of engagement helps to legitimize state authority and deal with inefficiency by holding officials to account. Pham (2024) made it clear that the government should collaborate with the Vietnam Fatherland Front and the people to draft and improve laws. This helps the government and citizens to become closer and create a society that is united, strong, and inclusive. Vietnam has institutionalized citizen input into lawmaking and economic governance by prioritizing durable legal frameworks over transient edicts and adopting a pragmatic model of market socialism, thereby strengthening transparency, accountability, and social cohesion (Nguyen, 2023; Cuong, 2024). Balancing Ideals with Pragmatism The Vietnamese version of scientific socialism is pragmatic and adapts to changing circumstances rather than ideological dogma. According to Duc et al. (2023), “To achieve its development goals, the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) and the Vietnamese State should focus on sustainable legal instruments instead of administrative orders that come very fast, go very quickly, and leave significant consequences.” This means relying on durable methods as opposed to transient decrees to achieve long-term stability. Similarly, Cuong (2024) notes that “The adoption of market socialism in Vietnam was not based on a theoretical or ideological commitment to socialism, but rather on pragmatic considerations of what would work best for the country’s economic development.” This orientation of practice enables Vietnam to reconcile socialist planning with selective market liberalization. Furthermore, Duc et al. (2023) points out that social equity is also required in an open economy, and the conflict between free trade and a socialist-oriented market economy may be reduced if the CPV and the state pay more attention to the essential rights of people, especially vulnerable groups. CASE STUDIES The Hunger Eradication and Poverty Reduction (HEPR) Program A clear expression of Vietnam’s commitment to scientific socialism is the Hunger Eradication and Poverty Reduction (HEPR) Program, a flagship of the National Targeted Programs, launched in 1998 by the central government and relevant ministries and implemented locally by provinces, districts, and communes (the lowest local government level) to alleviate the poor (Bertoni et al., 2025). Through their inclusion of HEPR in the fabric of grassroots governance, Vietnam managed to combine community insight with state-led planning and redistribution. HEPR is, at its core, focused on children of Vietnam, offering free health insurance, tuition exceptions, subsidies, and loans for those children living in poverty. These measures directly attack the main drivers of intergenerational poverty by lifting early schooling enrollment, an important factor in future opportunity, by roughly 9% (Wong 2020). These gains helped Vietnam achieve its wider success in reducing poverty from how high it was in 1986 to lower rates in 2021 (Nguyen, 2022). Bertoni et al. (2025) used a difference-in-differences design with Young Lives survey data and found that when treated at age 8, children have a 9.9 percentage point higher likelihood of enrolling in school. The importance of early intervention is shown by the fact that this effect diminishes among those first treated at age 12 and turns negative at age 15 in rural areas. These outcomes show that scientific socialism demands calibrated, evidence-based data to help optimize resource allocation. The HEPR in Vietnam set the stage for education to be seen in Vietnam not as both a right and a tool for social transformation. In 2025, the Political Bureau’s February 28 decision to “waive all tuition fees” from preschool to high school across the country reaffirms this commitment (VOV, 2025). The draft resolution of the Ministry of Education and Training to apply a unified ‘no tuition fees’ policy shows the country’s concern for disadvantaged families and the goal of eradicating poverty (The Nation, 2025). The latest additional VND 8.2 trillion (US$316 million) in Vietnam’s budget means that no child should be deprived of the chance to learn because of financial reasons. In 2025, 93 percent of the 23.2 million students in Vietnam attend public schools, so this reform is projected to have a massive impact on the educational system of Vietnam (The Nation, 2025). This commitment to sustained education focus is consistent with earlier HEPR goals of inclusive growth and social solidarity, and this shows that education remains the government’s most powerful weapon for poverty eradication, equity promotion, and building a prosperous society. HEPR’s achievements illustrate key tenets of scientific socialism. Historical materialism envisions state-directed efforts to develop productive forces, concurrently with a political praxis (‘active’ Marxism) requiring human intervention to shape outcomes (Lane, 2020). In Vietnam, that praxis takes the form of strategic social policy rather than coercion. As Ogaba and Abado (2021) argue, scientific socialism employs formidable force to regulate every sphere of society, yet in the Vietnamese context, this force is wielded through early intervention in health and education and enhancing welfare without undermining individual agency. HEPR’s success is supported by Vietnam’s pragmatic adaptation of market socialism. Over time, the government has been moving towards a more market-oriented approach while it is still open to experimenting with new ways of economic development (Cuong, 2024). The combination of highly selective liberalization and implicit planning mechanisms gives funding for social programs like HEPR while enhancing the growth of the private sector, and this promises both economic dynamism and social protection. Crucially, HEPR embodies participatory governance. The program operationalizes the principle that active citizen participation brings many benefits (Hoa & Garcia Zamor, 2017) by channeling resources through commune-level bodies. HEPR’s design and delivery are solicited by local councils to improve transparency and reduce inefficiency (Duc et al., 2023). This bottom-to-top input justifies state action and provides services aimed at community needs. The HEPR case shows that the Communist Party of Vietnam has played an important role in creating a good society through scientific socialism. Pham (2024) stresses that the government and people have to play a key role in building and perfecting the socialist rule of law state. HEPR embodies this kind of collaboration, thereby incorporating social welfare into the very architecture of governance. Early, targeted social investment in combination with pragmatic market balance and participatory, legally grounded institutions provides evidence of the potential scientific socialism has to design a society characterized by equity and cohesion. The Đổi Mới Reforms Vietnam’s Đổi Mới reforms of 1986 are an example of scientific socialism and its combination of rigorous, scientific understanding of socioeconomic laws and an active, force-backed praxis to transform society (Lane, 2020; Ogaba & Abado, 2021). After the Soviet-style centrally planned economy fell into a serious crisis that challenged the legitimacy of the Communist Party’s leadership, Đổi Mới emerged (Vu‑Thanh, 2015). Vietnam’s leaders faced economic collapse and food shortages and began market-oriented reforms to remove self-imposed barriers, liberalize domestic markets, and encourage foreign investment (Tuan, 2009). Freeman (1996) noted that in Ho Chi Minh City, petty enterprises, informal banking, and irregular trading provided the basis for the successful liberalization of national economic policies. The impact was dramatic, and poverty rates plummeted, making Vietnam removed from the list of the world’s poorest countries (Nguyen, 2022). Average annual growth was around 6.5 percent in the first two decades, and rice exports increased from 1.4 million tons in 1989 to 4.7 million tons in 2008 (Tuan, 2009). These are scientific-materialist outcomes that show the conviction that targeted policy experimentation of productive forces leads to measurable improvements in people’s lives. Đổi Mới also reconfigured the party-state’s relationship with the private sector institutionally. According to Vu-Thanh (2015), the main factor that determines industrial growth is the relationship between the party-state and the private sector, and the more the party-state trusted the private sector, the less it distrusted private enterprise. The Đổi Mới case is that of a good society arising from scientific socialism with policies based on empirical analysis, realized through iterative experimentation, and oriented toward material wealth and social justice. By mixing Marxist insights with adaptive pragmatism, Vietnam has created a society where poverty falls and institutions slowly change to meet citizens’ needs. Comparative Analysis The use of scientific socialism in Vietnam to build a good society is shown by both the HEPR and Đổi Mới case studies. HEPR is a focused program that provides poor children with free health insurance, school fee waivers, and loans through local communes and helped increase early enrollment (Bertoni et al., 2025; Wong, 2020). However, Đổi Mới was a nationwide shift in 1986 that opened markets to markets, rebalanced state–private roles, and poverty rates (Tuan, 2009; Nguyen, 2022; Vu Thanh, 2015). While both require careful planning, evidence, and adaptation, which are very important for scientific socialism (Lane, 2020), HEPR worked at the grassroots to meet social needs directly, while Đổi Mới reformed the whole economy and institutions. Nevertheless, they show together that a good society in Vietnam consists of socialist analysis and practical policies that promote equity, opportunity, and social cohesion (Ogaba & Abado, 2021). MY OPINION OF A GOOD SOCIETY: LESSONS FROM VIETNAM I think that a good society prioritizes wealth creation and social protection of its people. In Vietnam, the Đổi Mới reforms opened markets, grew the private sector under the 1999 Law on Enterprise, and used extra revenue to invest in public services (Vu Thanh, 2015). The way poverty reduced from 1986 to 2021 shows that economic growth and equality can go hand in hand (Nguyen, 2022). I am convinced that improving the economic growth of a nation does not hurt social welfare. Instead, it can make use of the growth of private firms to raise money to fund schools, hospitals, roads, and other necessary infrastructures. In Vietnam, free tuition and health subsidies were given to children through the Hunger Eradication and Poverty Reduction program (Wong, 2020). Exploiting the growth of the private sector positively helped Vietnam with subsidies and free health insurance (Quan & Taylor Robinson, 2023). Through testing, measuring results, and scaling up the things that work, Vietnam raised living standards for all their citizens, including the poor. For this reason, Vietnam’s Human Development Index and tourism revenue increased steadily, proving that social equity and economic success can complement each other (Thao & Bakucz, 2024). All these are further made secure for the future generations by using strong legal policies. A good society also requires citizen input. In Vietnam, local People’s Councils and the Vietnam Fatherland Front give people a voice to improve policies and watch over officials (Hoa & Garcia Zamor, 2017). When citizens join law-making and local planning, governments become more transparent and accountable, so they create clear and fair laws that protect citizens from market changes (Pham, 2024). I believe laws should lock in social gains so equality and justice last beyond political terms. A good society learns and adapts its systems over time. Vietnam moved from Soviet-style central planning to a socialist-oriented market economy by testing new models, checking results, and expanding successful pilots (Cuong, 2024). For example, Vietnam expanded universal health coverage, reducing out-of-pocket costs and improving public health outcomes (Quan & Taylor Robinson, 2023). Rice exports grew, and tourism became a sector, showing how economic markets can fund social programs (Thao & Bakucz, 2024;Tuan, 2009). I am convinced that the best societies combine practical market reforms with state-led programs and citizen participation. Vietnam’s example shows that when the government works together with citizens through careful planning and a tested development model such as scientific socialism, they can create a society that is productive and fair. This shared effort not only helps protect citizens but also supports long-term stability. CONCLUSION Vietnam’s adoption of scientific socialism has led to a good society that seeks to strike a balance between social justice, market efficiency, and collective welfare. Big changes such as the Đổi Mới reforms helped to lift millions of people out of poverty. Other programs, such as HEPR, also provided an example of how good planning, supplemented with local people’s involvement, really does work. I think a good society is a society where state actions are in accordance with human needs and accommodate the voice of the community to protect vulnerable groups. This is achieved by scientific socialism and can be seen in Vietnam's pragmatic combination of law-based regulations, evidence-based policies, and flexible market reforms. I am sure that Vietnam can maintain its path towards an inclusive, just, and resilient society for generations to come. REFERENCES Baum, A. (2020). Vietnam’s Development Success Story and the Unfinished SDG Agenda. 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