Socialism in a Subsistence Economy: The Laotian Way

Abstract This paper is concerned with the problems of building socialism in a subsistence economy. The development of Laos since 1975 is probably a unique attempt to bypass the capitalist stage of the differentiation of forces of production and social relations by advancing towards socialism from a small farmers' natural economy of self-sufficiency. After a general introduction to some selected research problems in Laotian studies, a short socio-economic profile of the country attempts to familiarize the reader with the specific setting in Laos. The second part of the paper describes efforts to transform Laos' partly feudal and partly colonial socioeconomic formation into a local version of grass-roots socialism. During the seven-year period under study development policies have shifted and government planning has worked largely by trial-and-error. The third part of the paper tries to evaluate the meandering of development policies in post-war Laos. The author's conclusion is that the low level of productivity in the country has moo.e Laos more or less dependent on outside forces. In former times, the influence of the French and American colonial and neo-colonial powers dominated in the Vientiane zone and southern Laos. whereas northern Laos was strongly influenced by China and Vietnam. After these forces withdrew, Laos increasingly came under the influence of Soviet and Vietnamese advisers on the one hand, and international money-lending agencies like the World Bank and IMF on the other hand. During this process Laotian leaders had to give up a good part of their self-reliance-oriented plans, and the economy once again became structurally dependent. The net result was that self-sufficiency was sacrificed for "internationalism" and some moderate growth based on foreign loans. But the expected mobilization of productive forces in connection with a land reform has not yet been achieved, and internal democracy is still a far-away goal. Thus, the "gentle road to socialism" (as the Laotian leaders like to call their development policy) is proving to be long and winding, a circumstance partly attributable to the heavy impact of colonialism and thirty years of war on the country's feeble economic base.