Occasional Paper No. 85 Agrarian Change in Communist Laos The Institute of Southeast Asian Studies was established as an autonomous organization in May 1968 . It is a regional research centre for scholars and other specialists concerned with modern Southeast Asia, particularly the multi-faceted problems of stability and security, economic development, and political and social change. The Institute is governed by a twenty-two-member Board of Trustees comprising nominees from the Singapore Government, the National University of Singapore, the various Chambers of Commerce, and profes- sional and civic organizations. A ten-man Executive Committee oversees day-to-day operations; it is chaired by the Director, the Institute's chief academic and administrative officer. Agra rian Change • ID CoDIDlunist Laos Grant Evans La Trobe University INSTITUTE OF SOUTHEAST ASIAN STUDIES Cataloguing in Publication Data Evans, Grant Agrarian Change in Communist Laos. (Occasional paper /Institute of Southeast Asian Studies; no. 85) 1. Agriculture and state -- Laos. 2. Laos -- Economic policy. I. Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. II. Title. Ill. Series. DS501 159 no. 85 1988 ISBN 981-3035-16-1 ISSN 0073-9731 Published by Institute of Southeast Asian Studies Heng Mui Keog Terrace Pasir Panjang Singapore 0511 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, st ored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any mean s, el ec tr nic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, witho ut th e prior consent of the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. e 1988 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies The responsibility for facts and opinions expressed in this publication rests exclusively with the author and his interpretations do not necessarily reflect the views or policy of the Institute or its supporters. Printed and bound in Singapore by Kin Keong Printing Co Pte Ltd Contents Introduction 11 Laos 1975-79: "A Profound and Complete Revolution in the Countryside" Ill De-Centralized Socialism: A Lao NEP IV Socialism and Underdevelopment: The Party in Search of a Class Th e Author 1 3 51 81 89 I Introduction The Lao People's Revolutionary Party (LPRP) came to power in December 1975, emerging victorious from a two-year coalition government and virtually thirty years of civil war. It took over one of the poorest and most sparsely settled countries in Southeast Asia -- its population of around 3.5 million being spread over an area of 236,775 square kilometres. Not only was this population fragmented into some 68 different ethnic groups (perhaps 40 per cent are ethnic Lao) but the country's topography added to the fragmentation. Mountains covered with tropical forests occupy two-thirds of the surface area and have made the construction of a national communications network difficult and costly. Thus Laos has one of the lowest densities of roads in Asia (0.04 per sq km) and therefore it has not really possessed an integrated polity, economy or society. The mountains are inhabited by various hilltribe groups practising slash and burn agriculture, while in the lowland alluvial plains along the Mekong River and other river valleys wet-rice fields are worked by ethnic Lao peasants. These lowland Lao rice growing peasants are the subject of the body of this survey. With over 80 per cent of its population dependent on subsistence agriculture for survival, most of whom have a low life expectancy, poor literacy and a low per capita income, Laos exhibits all the features of an underdeveloped country. Thus the Lao communists were confronted with the same problem faced by all new nationalist governments in the Third World -- how were they going to begin the process of economic, social and political development of their country. Like most communist governments before them collectivization of agriculture was accepted as the best strategy for revolutionizing the countryside socially and technologically. The Lao communists launched their collectivization drive in mid-1978, and suspended it one year later. The government in Vientiane remains committed to a collectivized agriculture, but the prospect of a new campaign in the future is dim. It was an 2 AGRARIAN CHANGE IN LAOS accumulation of external, internal and natural factors which prompted the LPRP to launch the drive when it did. Deteriorating relations between Hanoi and its neighbours in Beijing and Phnom Penh, plus pressure on Laos from Thailand heightened the security fears of the Lao communists. Their reflex was to strengthen the state's hold, the hold of socialism, on the whole country. In this context the existence of a mass of independent peasants was seen as a potential security risk. If they were gathered into co-operatives the government's political and economic control would be strengthened. Successive bad seasons added a certain desperation to their fears about peasant discontent. Natural calamities also intensified the belief that modernization of agriculture was urgent, and ideology dictated that it could only be achieved through co- operatives. The campaign ultimately faltered because of the government's administrative incapacity, its inability to apply mass coercion, besides inherent difficulties in collectivized agriculture. Subsequently there was a radical re-thinking of economic policy and a modification of the role of agriculture and th e peasantry within it. The change, however, did not involve a retreat from the government's socialist objective, as Western descrip ti ns of economic 'liberalization' in communist countries like Laos sometimes imply. Instead we have the adoption of a socia li st strategy which differs from what has been considered communist orthodoxy until very recently. Laos, therefore, has joined the cia! and economic ferment coursing through most communist s ie ti es in the late twentieth century. Any researcher of contemporary Laos is indebted to the fin e work done by MacAlister Brown and Jo seph Zasloff in Appr entice Revolutionaries (1986), and to Martin Sruart -Fox's work, e peci II his Laos: Politics, Economics and Society (1986) . Th e primary interest of these books, however, is politics rather than econ mics, and their discussion of agrarian policy is onJy a minor theme among others. This study, on the other hand, provides a more detailed outline and analysis of the evolution of agrarian poli y in II Laos 1975-79: "A Profound and Complete Revolution in the Countryside'' The Na tional Congress in December 1975 which announced the forma tion of the new communist regime expressed its wish that peasa nts start to adopt collective forms of production. But the state ment was moderate and said that for the time being full-scale co-operatives wouJd only be establjshed on an experimental basis. Its broad views on the matter were clear nevertheless: Encourage and help the peasants to progress towards a collective way of life with a view to developing production and improving the standard of living. (a) Persuade and help peasants to form and con olidate solidarity units and labour exchange units. T hrough them the peasants will come to seriously plan their exchange of labuur and will familiarise them and workers from all ethnic gro u ps to a collective existence, in which the qualjty is superior to their former way of life . This aims to improve the way of life of all the people from aU the ethnjc groups. 1 Thi straightforward statement of policy is not burdened with exhortations to revolutionize the countryside. Emphasis is on per uasion and force of example, not coercion. The general idea appears to have been that once peasants couJd be persuaded to operate low level forms f co-operation, such as solidarity labour unit and lab ur exchange teams, and once they bad experienced th supposed advantages of such organizations they couJd be easily persuaded to form hjgber co ll ective forms of prod uction such as co - operatives. The time cale for this was open-ended and government pronouncements carried no sense of urgenc . During 1976, the government's first year of p wer, little 4 AGRARIAN C HAN G E IN LA OS attention app ea rs to have been paid to th e formation of collectivized production groups in agriculture. However, some over- e nthusiastic cadres obviously tried , in some regions and localities, to collectivize everything and prompted a statement of clarification from the government in May: The Government's programme of action states clearly that the people's right to own property, money, houses and paddy fi elds will be respected strictly. This shows clearly that besides not seizing the peoples property, th e Governm ent takes steps to safeguard the people's interests 2 Having issued this reassurance, the government reiterated that it was in the peasants' own interests to engage in collective forms of production, for only large-scale production, it argued, would enable them to overcome the hazards of natural calamities. At this time the new government was still grappling with the problem of creating a new administration and controlling the economy at large. It was in no position to launch radical reforms in the countryside. On the contrary, it was trying to create an atmosphere of stability by assuring the peasants that it would protect their basic rights. Any government wishing to introduce substantial reforms in any society must possess the administrative capacity to do it or else it will create widespread social disruption and even chaos. The new communist government was bequeathed a particularly weak administrative structure by the former Royal Lao Government. This was a product of a poorly developed educational system as well as the fact that the RLG's American backers during the civil war had increasingly taken over the administrative burden of running the country, to the point where the U.S . ambassador was commonly known as the "second Prime Minister" . 3 Moreover, the 'semi-feudal' structure of the former state meant that the central government in Vientiane exercised tenuous power in th e outlying provinces. The withdrawal of United States Aid for International Development (USAID) in May 1975 removed the backbone of the old administration, and in the following six month s a large number of the leading members of the RLG s tate apparatus fled across the Mekong to Thailand either before or after ' popular uprisings' in the bureaucracy removed them . This period possibly saw the departure of the majority of the educated elite in Lao s. Those who remained were often viewed with suspicion by the Pathet Lao cadres, most of whom were less weiJ educated, and a significant C OMPL E TE R EVOLU TI ON IN THE C OUNTRYSIDE 5 number of o ld r eg ime burea ucrats we re sent o ff to re-education camp s. This in turn created a clim ate of unce rtainty among o ther s who soon decided to leave lest they be sent off to re-education too. The communist government could ill-affo rd these losses, however the dynamics of it s takeover made them almost inevitable. For thirty years the communists had controlled little more than a proto-state in the rugged Lao mountains and its form of administration ran along military lines. Whatever its weaknesses the RLG did have a civilian bureaucracy and it was this bureaucracy that the communists inherited. No doubt it was their lack of experience with routine bureaucratic work plus their natural suspicion of 'the other side' which inclined the communists to compensate for their weaknesses by exaggerating the importance of revolutionary ideology. Claims were made that there is a 'revolutionary way' of doing virtually everything. In such an atmosphere bureaucratic experts from the old regime who contradicted cadres were e asily denounced as ' counter- revolutionary' and often sent off to re-education to acquire 'correct' ideas. This situation soon produced either bureaucratic paralysis among the old personnel or bureaucratic chaos as a result of cadres implementing ill-conceived ' revolutionary' new ways. The difficulties encountered while establishing the new administration were documented by Australian journalist John Everingham. His account of the Pathet Lao takeover of the southern city of Savannakhet gives a rare glimpse of what was occurring inside Laos during the early months of the new regime. What is immediately apparent is a theme one encounters in most peasant revolutions. That is, the confrontation of the countryside with the city, the 'country-bumpkin' peasant armies with the 'city slickers' more inured to the ways of the urbanized West. Many of the Pathet Lao had literally come out of the hills, onto the plains, and into the cities for the first time in their lives. Thus in the takeover of Savannakhet rur a l cultural parochialism , indeed puritanism , tended to ove r-shadow practical administrative measures : " Western -influenced youths were taken to task for their dress; girls, too, were criticised. Youths were dragged in for haircuts and wome n admonished not to wear any form of make-up. To listen to Thai radio stations was to risk being labelled ' re actionary' , as with the playing of western music. Both the pursuit of pleasure or profit were denounced as being unpatriotic while th e task of re- building the country remained For this people were urged to go to bed early." Everingham notes that "without compulsion, and with more visible action simultaneously in the important fields of economy, administration and education among 6 AGRARIAN CHANGE IN LAOS others, the population might have reacted more positively". 4 As it was, the expectations of the population , who had hoped th e revolution would sweep away its problem s, fe ll as administration became even more ineffective than under the former regim e. In this situation the evangelism of the peasant victors b eca me particularly irksome : The citizens of this city were being subjected to the soldiers' eagerness to lecture at every opportunity. One woman was loudly and publicly he ld to ridicule in the market for wearing a pair of glasses. To her unschooled Pathet Lao antagonist th ey were ' reactionary ' - styles not fit for the new Laos. Attracting attention from all quarters , he demanded that she dispose of them immediate ly The women was not to be beaten: she squared up to the soldier, declared that rather than 'fashion ', her glasses were prescription lenses medically necessary for improved sight. The soldier was not displaying a correct political line, she fired back, using the revolution 's own Jargon. The Pathet Lao soldier was laughed into humiliation and did not app ear in th e market again for some time. 5 But this incident is not only a rev ea ling instan ce of p easa nt parochialism, it is also an instructive contr as t with what was happening in neighbouring Kampuchea where the re were reports of bespectacled people who, unable to answer back to th e Khm er Rouge soldiers, had their glasses taken from th em a nd smashed. Laos only teetered on the edge of the anarchic violence which was an important part of the Khmer Roug e revolutio n in Kampuchea One perceptive Savannakhet re sident observed: " The Pat het Lao tried to apply in Savannakhet the same rules and regulations that had applied in their liberated zones -- in th e jungles their rules worked well for the few people ther e -- never r ea lising that the same would not also succeed when they got to the city. They never realised how complex and how numero us are the problems caused by so many people in such a sma ll place." 6 For example, the soldiers spontaneously placed bans on the free movement of trade from the villages to the ci ty. Previously the guerrillas bad only been familiar with the military contro l of trade in the old liberated zone s. Mor eover, because of their long years of hardship in the mountains they w ere largely bliviou to the serious impact that this was having on living conditi on in the C OMPLETE REVOLUTION IN THE COUNTRYSIDE 7 city food supplies dwindled, prices rose and smuggling began In May 1976 Savannakhet was going hungry when a leading cadre realized what was h appen ing and told the soldiers guarding the enu ... nee to the city to lift their ban ; w hereupon the markets filled with food once again. E v eringham also reported that the poorly educated soldiers were easily deceived by opp0rtunists whose command of revolutionary rhetoric enabled them to denounce people in high offices and then take their place. " Scores of officials, many of them honest citizens, fled the country" , he wrote 7 The discontent caused by the new regime's actions attracted the attention of the Party leader sh ip in Vientiane. Finance Minister, Nouhak Phoumsavan , a native of Savannakhet, was dispatched to the city to re-assert the central government's policies. At a public meeting in Savannakhet he accused the soldiers and the new administration of not adjusting to city life, of " oppressing the people" and of substituting what he called "o ne old feudalistic system for a new kind of feudalism ". They had, he said, " created a military dictatorship". 8 Strong corrective action by Vientiane checked the spontaneous tendency of regio ns in Laos to foUow their own political course. The situation in Savannakhet illustrates clearly the administrative problems faced b y the new government. Poor communications links -- and in this respect Savannakhet is much better located than man y other areas of Laos -- and poorly educated cadres, meant that policies formulated in the capital were likely to be misa pplied in any particular local situation, and only discovered by Vientiane after the damage had been done Although a significant factor in the communists' victory against the old RLG had been its ability to creat e a centralized nationwide military and political organization, this was still inadequate for the ad ministration of a country. The organization of the state they inherited was a product of weaknesses ansmg from economic backwardness and would continue to be a source of problems for the new regime. Relatively little is known about what was occurnng m the countryside at this time. However it is dear from the government s tatement quoted earlier that some Pathet Lao zealots had attempted to instantly communize agriculture, and, as in Savannakhet, their actions had to be repudiated by the new regime. One could speculate that there were fewer ' excesses' in the co untryside simply beca use th ere was less cultural gap between the p easa nt soldiers and the peasants themselves. On the other hand, rural remoteness would mean that instances of communizing zeal would take longer to come to the attention of higher authorities. 8 AGRARIAN CHANGE IN LAOS Proba bly our best indicator that th ere were few in stances o f such extremism in the early period of the new regime is the fact th at only a tiny proportion of refugees to Thailand at the tim e were peasants These early problem s of transl a ting central government policy into practice would re-emerge during th e collectivi zation programme Economic Problems The serious economic difficulties encount ere d by th e new reg im e were an important reason for it turning to collectivization as a solution to a growing economic crisis m Laos. Wh e n th e communists came to power th ey inh er it ed th e poorest country in Southeast Asia. In 1975 annual per capita incom e was estimated at $70-80. On top of this they inherited a bankrupt state. Th e former RLG had been supported by bilateral aid programmes and the Foreign Exchange Operations Fund This was set up in 1964 by the United States, Japan , Britain, Australia and Franc e so that Laos could make purchases on the world mark et and maintain price stability in the country. It fin anced the whole current account deficit (approximately a quart er of th e GNP in th e ea rly 1970s), and nearly 80 per cent of it s budgetary expenditures. In 1974 the FEOF provided US$32 million . In 1975 the amount hal ve d th ereby de-stabilizing the kip and fu elling inflationary pressures. The withdrawal of USAID in mid-1975 had a similar effect. By the e nd of its twenty-year involvement in Laos in 1975 this orga ni za ti on was pouring approximately US$50 mi lli on into Laos while the RL budget stood at only US$14 million. The withdrawal of Western aid was only partially offset by ai d from socia li st co untries, and in the second half of 1975 inflation wa s running in exces f 100 per cent. 9 Inflation was carried along by social forces crea t ed by L o ' dependence on American dollar infusions. As in th r urban centres of Indochina, U .S. in vo lvem ent in the regi n had pen d up great trading opportunities for merchan ts in th e citie f the RLG zone (who were mainly Thai, Chinese, Vi etnam ese r Lndian) and this class had grown rapidly. From the earl y 1 s nw rd they were augmented by a steady stream of peasant refug s r m the battle areas who became petty traders in small shops and tails both in the cities and rural villages. These small trad r were largely dependent on the bigger city-based merchants f r their goods, and the whole trading edifice was largely de p nd nt n COMPLETE REVOLUTION IN THE COUNTRYSIDE 9 imported consumer goods. The cut-off of U.S . dollars made these goods difficult to buy and the traders bargained frantically for dollars, drastically devaluing the kip and causing runaway inflation in the process. The departing RLG elite in 1975 also drove the blackmarket price for dollars up as they attempted to exchange thousands of kip. In the rural areas the war had damaged some of the most productive lands, resulted in the killing of tens of thousands of draught animals and made 400-700,000 of the rural population into refugees. At the beginning of the Provisional Government of National Union formed in February 1974, one year after the cease- fire in Laos, there were 350,000 of these people requiring re- settlement. One result of these developments was that agricultural production neither kept pace with population growth nor with the demands of the bloated urban areas, and Laos became a food deficit country, importing 15 per cent of its annual nee requirements. The protracted nature of the communist takeover in Laos, the pace of which was largely dictated by he winding down of U.S. aid to the RLG and the subsequent disintegration of the Lao rightwing, meant that the central government could do relatively little about the deteriorating economic situation in the country. By mid-1975 almost the entire RLG wartime leadership had decamped to Thailand. But the final communist coup de grace came only after the Thai Government blockaded land-locked Laos following frontier clashes in November. The economic impact of the border closure was crippling and imposed unprecedented austerity on the population in the former RLG zone. Aid supplied by Vietnam and the Soviet Union enabled the emerging regime to withstand Thai pressure, but the crisis forced the Lao communists to call together a National Congress for early December. They had not expected to assert complete control until elections already announced for April 1976. " The hardening of Thailand's attitude," a Le Monde correspondent commented, " the prolonged closing of the frontier formed by the Mekong and the halt of deliveries of fuel and food stuffs have no doubt driven the Laotian communists to close their ranks and to provoke a political transformation which will allow them to deal rapidly with economic problems." 10 By the time the border was re-opened at two points on 1 Janu ary 1976, the new government had set out to bring the economy und er its control. It struck first at food speculators and closed Vientiane's vast 'Morning Market', forcing many merchants to leave for Thailand. Yet, by the middle of 1976 Laos had one of the highest inflation rates in the world, and in mid-June the government 10 AGRAR IA ' C HA N(i 1:'-J LAO\ 11 cmp tcd ro cu rh rh c ~c ti v iti c!"> o f curr e n cy spec ul ato r by c nf 1 r 'n witch fr om th e o ld Royal kip. beari ng the form er in portrait. to th e Liheration kip previously o nl y in c ir c ul a ti on in Pa th ct La o h ld ar ea!'> By insi sting th ai th e bulk of fa mil y a nd wealth b dcpo itcd in th e gover nm e nt -contro ll ed bank s, 1 uan n ew curren cy aga in st it , th e governm e nt hoped to ca b . horl eco nomy a nd ea se inn a ti ona ry press ur e. u.s l th e ve rnm ent a ll empt ed to fLX a ll ma rk et prices. mea ur e!> w re soon und ermin ed, howeve r, by de ma nd pr ur a nd sp c ul a ti on agai nst th e kip ga in ed momentum once tn inally, in October. so ldi ers were se nt to occupy th e stores of 1 he maj or impo rt merch an t s. Shops were searched a nd th e mer ha nt w r forced to se ll th e ir goods to th e government or the public at prices co nv e rt ed fr om do JJ ar impo rt values at th e official l ow rat Tbu ano th er w ave of merchants quit socialist Laos. AJtboug h mo t rural eco nomic activity fell outside the m neti 7..ed ector of th e economy government restrictions on trade tn 1 7 did aff d th peasantry. In January the new regime had pr hibi1 ed m rchant fr om buying ri ce and livestock m the untry id e a nd banned inter-pr ovi nci al trade in goods . And even if th n w regim e's actions elsewhere did not degenerate to the poin t th ey did in Sava nn akh e t, ze alous application of th e -- such as peasants being co nstantly ch ecked and asked f r tra ve l doc um e nt s wh en th ey an empt ed to bring d tu ff and animals to town to se ll -- amounted to bureaucratic h ras me nt. Peasa nt s soon found it was too much trouble to make th e j urn ey, and in th ese conditions the flow of fo od to the urban r a eg n to dwindle. The state trading ne tw o rk , on the ot her h nd , wa s t o weak to fiU th e gap, even though at th e end of 1976 th rnm e nt boast d it had 92 stat e- run departm e nt stores and 1 mark ling - peratives. The governme nt respo nd ed to the d- h rt ges in th e towns by resorting to rhetoric abo ut the need for self -s ufficie nc y, and governme nt ministries were w their own vegetables and raise poultry a nd li vestock. caused even more urban dw e ll ers to leave th e co untry or th e peasa nt s, who had relativel y little to trade ubsistence needs were met, the new regi me's po li cies n enience but not a major di srupti on to their li ves. lnd d the new policies induced a retreat to the tradi ti o nal ul rit of tbe Lao peasant community. While th go ernment's actions trimmed the economic power merchants, and therefore the power of a class the regi me h tile or lentiaU y hostile to it, they also ca used a furth er dr p in th le el f co nomic activity in the country. No doubt CO:\fPLETE R E \ ' 01 t iTIO:"' IN THE COl i fR Sl II rhi s w as an in c,il:thlc l'C lmomic c~)S f lll rhc communi. I s csln hl il hin -. !heir p0lirical writ in rh c wuntrv. Yc r. the ext e nt pf th e c) , 1 ' IS greater than ncco sa rv ~ivcn !he state's pr o pc n. ir y t u. administrati,·c rather th an ("COnl1mic measures tn ac hi eve it. im s. The maj0r pr n hkm f:t cc d hy th e new gove rn me nt was fin ding intern al sour ces 0f ca pit.ll ac umubti o n fo r . n i t~ li t CCl 'n mi dcvc lnpm c nt. Th e ma nuf ac turin g cc !IH o f th e e o no my w s minuscule ; alo ng with mining it ..tc cn unt cd fur k ss th <n p r · ·nr nf I he GNP <1 nct em pl nycd le ss than IO,llOO p eo ple . II prndure d simpl e c0 nsum c r go 1d s a nd rc li cJ heavi ly o n imporr ed raw mate ri al s. Major di srupli ons had hcc n ca use d hy the comm uni t takeove r as manage rs a nd c :<p c rt s ned rh e ountr y, often n ft er ca nniba li zing th e fa ct o ri es, a nd IJc k of fund s to linan ce impmt s of r aw mate ri als cause d a drop in pruduc ti on. In ll >77 a World B;mk repo rt estim ated th at ave rage ca pa c it y utili1a 1i o n was abo ut :\0 per ce nt; in some industries as l ow as 10 -lS pe r ce nt. Not o nl y did thi. inhibit it as a reve nu e base fo r th e gove rnm e nt , it also mea nt th at sc ar ce foreign exchange wo uld h ave to be spent on impor l in • consumer good s. Most capital goods had to be import ed. Yet Lao has rela ti ve ly few ex po rt earning industries . In 1976- 77 th major o nes were timber, et ff ec a nd c le c rr ici t y, bu t re eipt w re o nl y a littl e more th an ha lf expe nditures in La ' foreign excha ng tr ansac ti on s. Thus th e Wo rld Bank re po rt c it ed above c nclud d "that Laos cons um es nea rly a ll it produ ces and h s pra tica ll y no na ti onal saving s, so th at the country is a lm o t fu ll y de pende nt n th e o ut s id e world to fin ance it s developme nt needs" . 11 At th e e nd of 1976 De puty Pre mi er Ph oumi Yongvichi t asse rt ed Laos wa s not poor. " I have on many occa ion stated th t regarding our wealth, we must draw a picture of a m n we ring torn cl othes and sitting on a box of go ld Thi m n i extending h is hand to beg because he does not kn ow how to open th e b x. Laos is lik e thi .s man." 12 In th e long te rm th e gove rnm e nt ' a im is to ope n this box lill ~ d with mineral wealth and bui ld modern industry. In the short term , however, it needed for eign id a nd t ra1se r eve nu e from th e country' s major ec n mi c ctivity, agriculture, if o nl y to support th e stat e a ppar tus it e lf. Thu s, in September 1976, an agric ultural tax wa s intr du ed int o the old RL G zone. This move w as un popu lar among th e peasants who had not bee n se ri ously taxed previou ly becau e U . . aid had provided th e RLG with s uffi cie nt revenue. T he imm edia te response was widespread ev as ion . Thu in Nove mber the parry paper, Sieng Pa sa sv n, urg ed th e p ea ants to "s how th e ir outstanding revolutiona ry qualification at thi tage, th at to be h nest and s in ce re m re porting the ir mc ome to the tate by 12 AGRARIAN CHANGE IN LAOS refraining from making false reports" Y There were reports of some farmers burning their surplus crop and of officials refusing to collect the tax. Phoumi Vongvichit defended the tax in December: Some people have rejected the collection of agricultural taxes. They want the Government to pay these taxes and the people not to pay for anything. However, they say the country must be built. If we followed that idea, then the country would have to be dependent on foreign countries and could only ask them for money to carry out construction work. However, it is not easy to get other countries to give us as much as we want.... After we have found other sources of income then the agricultural tax may be reduced or abolished. At present, the national income is obtained from agriculture and forestry. We have not obtained any income from the mining business .... 14 Despite the clear logic of this, the government had trouble explaining why they collected agricultural taxes and the former "neo-colonialist regime of the US imperialists" did not. The bedrock of the regime's justification was an appeal to nationalism. Self-reliance strengthened the country's independence and therefore "no foreign countries can now manipulate us " argued Phoumi. But nationalism's roots in Laos were shallow and its appeal weakened the further one travelled into the countryside from the capital. A further problem was the progressive structure of the new tax and its various exemptions -- such as for land reclamation, switching from shifting to settled paddy production, and so on -- were far too complicated for many of the administrators on the ground. Indeed, even in late 1979 I found it impossible to find someone in the Lao refugee camps in Thailand, educated or uneducated, peasant or not, who could give a coherent explanation of how the tax operated. A standard answer was that the "Communists" would only allow lOOkg of rice per family member per year and take the rest. Of course, this is simply not enough to live on. In fact the lOOkg referred to was the amount officially exempt from tax per family member, and surpluses above that amount were to be taxed at various rates up to a maximum of 30 per cent. The refugee account was an exaggeration but it did demonstrate their perception of the tax as onerous and exploitative. COMPLETE REVOLUTION IN THE COUNTRYSIDE 13 One of my informants in Vientiane said that in his father's village the officials pretended to the cadres who instructed them in tax collection that they really understood how to do it. "They stood there and nodded their heads all the way through the explanation of the tax system and then, when the cadres had gone, they simply turned around and taxed everyone in the village at the same rate." 15 Naturally in this situation the burden fell much harder on some peasants (often the poorer ones) than on others. That this practice was widespread emerges in a speech given by Finance Minister Nouhak in early January 1977 on the problems associated with collecting agricultural tax. Peasants in the former liberated zones of the country had paid a flat tax of 15 per cent, but Nouhak advised it was "improper" to continue to apply this fixed rate in either zone. He said he had been asked by "compatriots" why there could not be only one rate as it would make collection much easier. This, he explained, would create injustices while the progressive rate would not. 16 Economically his logic was faultless, nevertheless it overlooked the difficulties of trying to implement a taxation scheme among peasants with no experience of it, using officials who were equally inexperienced. However much the government intended the taxation burden to be shared 'justly', poor administration of it often negated these intentions. Later, the government was forced to substantially amend its taxation procedure. Unexpectedly bad weather in 1976 brought a bad harvest adding to peasant discontent about taxes. The government had to import rice to cover the shortfall, further straining its depleted resources. Although 1976 was the first full -year Laos had been ruled by a unified central government in its modern history, the problems faced by the communist regime were very much those of a modernizing elite and its state apparatus trying to gain control of a refractory economy and society and bend it to its aims. The thirty-year civil war had ended but skirmishing continued between the Pathet Lao and soldiers of the old regime who, in many cases, were operating from sanctuaries in neighbouring Thailand. In a country as poorly integrated as Laos, and as militarily vulnerable, it is not surprising that Prime Minister Kaysone Phomvihane devoted attention to the problem in a policy review before a joint session of the Supreme People's Council and the Council of Ministers in mid-February 1977. He emphasized: "In laying down the administrative structure .. utmost attention must be paid to which sectors of the administration should take up the dictatorial role against the enemies," and, "Because our country 14 AGRARIAN CHANGE IN LAOS is an outpost of socialism, and to ensure the thoroughness of the revolution in our country, we must at all times closely link the duties of national defence and national construction." 17 This twin concern for security and socialist transformation would intensify over the next two years. The first year was bound to be difficult for the communist regune. The inevitable disruption caused by a total change of governmen t would have ensured that, besides the massive withdrawal of foreign aid and the subsequent economic decline. Nevertheless, the year bad been tougher than expected for the leaders who now had to adjust to running a nation state rather than prosecuting a guerilla war. In his policy review Kaysone ex pr esse d his government ' s frustration that "small-scale production, characterised by rudimentary economy, IS still expanding in our country'' while productivity remained low; communications were poor and during the wet season some areas were entirely cut off "from the mainstream of life in the country"; a national market did not exist; and, the "newly established State- run economic enterprises remain weak and cannot genuinely play the leading role in our economy''. Worse, they were continually being undermined by "economic enterprises run by the capitalists, primarily in trade, based on profiteering and hoarding .... " 18 Therefore the sooner private production and private trade could be overcome the better. In the countryside, however, little had been done to displace private production. By the end of 1976 only a few thousand people had been drawn into low-level co-operatives in 9 of the 13 provinces and most of these were located in the former "liberated zone". Obviously few farmers had responded to the tax incentives offered to co-operatives by the government. Kaysone's speech, however, did not herald a sudden assault on private production and was more a depressing catalogue of the economic difficulties facing the regime. Naturally he was happy to blame capitalists and " reactionaries " for these problems, but statements attacking private production caused unease among the population. In a speech, also in January, Phoumi Vongvichit alluded to this apprehension: "For example, when the Interior Ministry carries out a population census to determine the numbers in each family, their education, jobs, and their livestock, the enemies imm edi ate ly start a rumour saying that the Government is taking an inventory of their property so that it can eventually be confiscated for public use. Some persons are frightened by this rumour and even attempt to bury their property and gold in the ground in ord er to hide them from the census authorities. When the authorities inquire CO MPLETE R EVOLUT I ON IN THE COUNT RYSIDE 15 about th e age of each family me mber, th e enemies try to scare our people by saying th ey will be recruited into ac ti ve service." 19 These p easa nt suspicions of th e gove rnm ent 's intentions were partly well- found e d . Any ce ns us was pr e paration for increased state intervention in th e ir li ves -- taxes, conscription, health and education -- but in this respect the new stat e's actions, and the peasantry's reactions, were little different to what had been seen in other parts of the underdeveloped world, or indeed to the conditions of the modern stat e's emergence in Europe The Programme Programmatically the Lao Peopl e's R evolutionary Party stated that its tasks were the simultaneous promotion of the " three revolutions": "the revolution in production relations, the scientific and technical revolution and the ideologjcal and cultural revolution -- by stressing the scientific and technical revolution as the key element and the ideologjcal and cultural revolution as the leading element." 20 Like their Vietnamese count er parts -- who have played a key role in the shaping of Lao communism -- LPRP emphasizes the importance of science and technology in th e building of socialism. 21 Unlike Maoism at the height of the Cultural Revolution in China, or Pol Pot's regime in Kampuchea, a 'romantic' hostility to science has not b ee n a significant force in Laos. But, faced with capital shortages and an abundance of labour Laos, like these other regimes, has sometimes veered towards adulation of physical labour (which, it could be argued, also created an environment justifying the use of forced labour) and its government opted for voluntarist solutions to economic and social problems. These sentiments are contained in Kaysone 's policy revtew : Socialist construction is not on ly aimed at creating new production relations and forces, but also at creating ... a new type of socialist man. Du e to certain conditions, the cultural standards of most of the people and cadres in our country are generally low. Superstition, belief in the supernatural and backward traditions remain strong, and are a major obstacle to improving our production and living conditions. We cannot affo