President Ho Chi Minh’s viewpoint of “Culture lights the way for the nation”

 On deeply grasping the importance of culture, right after success of the August Revolution, our Party held the 1st National Cultural Conference on 24 November 1946 in Ha Noi Capital. “Culture lights the way for the nation,” said President Ho Chi Minh at the conference. His view remains valuable and needs to be perceived and effectively applied to today’s national building and defence.

Culture is a broad category with numerous approaches. Nevertheless, in sum, culture is the beauty and the overall material and spiritual values created by humans to adapt to their life, survival, and evolution. Culture is present in every activity of humans and societies, serving as the spiritual foundation, objectives, momentums, and endogenous power for the development of a nation state. On thoroughly understanding its significance, during their leadership of the revolution, our Party and State, led by President Ho Chi Minh, have attached special importance to culture and put forth many policies and measures to foster Vietnamese culture for the utmost aspiration and goal of national independence and freedom as well as people’s happiness.

History of our struggle for national liberation has proved that, given the correct revolutionary guidelines and sound leadership of the Party and President Ho Chi Minh, patriotism, aspiration for independence, and an indomitable spirit are our people’s cultural values in national protection that have been inspired and brought into play to generate huge power for the success of the August Revolution of 1945. In the resistance war against French colonialists, the slogan of “resistance war culture, cultural resistance war” became a spiritual driver of Dien Bien Phu historic victory in 1954, which shook the whole world to the core”. The Party’s leadership in the 1960-1975 period leveraged the role of culture in fulfilling the two strategic tasks of building socialism in the North and struggle for national liberation in the South, laying the foundation for national unification in 1975. Over 35 years of reform, on being imbued with President Ho Chi Minh’s viewpoint of “Culture lights the way for the nation”, our Party has promulgated many important resolutions, decisions, and directives to concentrate efforts on cultural establishment and development, most notably the Resolution of the 5^th Plenum of the Party Central Committee (8^th tenure) on “Building and developing an advanced Vietnamese culture imbued with national identity”. The resolution affirms that culture is a spiritual foundation of the society. It is both an objective and a catalyst for socio-economic development. Over Party congresses (from the 9^th to 12^th congress”, our Party has comprehended more fully, comprehensive and profoundly about the position and role of culture. Culture is likened to a “lighthouse” used for the mission of “lighting the way for the nation” in the cause of national building and defence. Therefore, many traditional cultural values have been inherited and promoted. Culture in politics and economy has initially achieved a higher status and been effectively leveraged.

In recent years, however, culture has not received sufficient attention in accordance with requirements of national development. Moreover, globalisation, the Fourth Industrial Revolution, “digital society”, and “digital culture” have brought about both new opportunities and challenges to culture building and development. Accordingly, many fine traditional cultural values have sunk into oblivion while numerous bad habits and exotic cultures going against Vietnamese habits and customs are proliferating and doing damage to cultural, spiritual life of society. Consequently, the most urgent task of strategic significance is that authorities at all levels, branches, and localities need to promote comprehension of President Ho Chi Minh’s viewpoint of “Culture lights the way for people” with the aim to “continue to establish, preserve, and develop an advanced Vietnamese culture imbued with national identity” to enable “culture to truly become endogenous power and a driver of national development and protection of the Fatherland by means of various drastic, synchronous solutions, most notably the following fundamental ones:

First, building and tapping into political culture, forming the basis for improving operational effectiveness and efficiency of the whole political system. Political culture can be understood as the beauty and value of political thinking, vision, ideology, and operation of the Party, State, Fatherland Front, socio-political organisations, leading cadres at all levels, and the corps of cadres and party members. That culture itself is the foundation for the political system at echelons to bring into play their operational effectiveness and efficiency. Establishment of political culture, first and foremost, must be imbued with political goals of the Communist Party of Viet Nam (CPV), which aim for the people, the country, development and prosperity of the nation state, “prosperous people and a strong, democratic, equitable and advanced country”. That guideline also expresses the desire for the true, the good, and the beautiful, which are unique connotation of culture. The policy on building a socialist law-governed state is not beyond the goal of striving for a state of law-governed culture. Political culture must be part of behaviour of all cadres, civil servants, and public employees, especially the leadership and management cadres’ behaviour toward people. Those who are cultured people will be deeply imbued with President Ho Chi Minh’s view of “public servants’ culture,” which can be defined as true diligence, thrift, integrity, uprightness, public-mindedness, selflessness” in providing public service as well as in their lifestyle. They will know how to self-improve and cultivate their morality and lifestyle according to commonly shared cultural standards within the society; know how to self-improve their professional, managerial skills; dare to take responsibility; dare to resign from their positions when the mission deems to be beyond their capabilities or wrongdoing occurs in their units; and dare to say no to material offers when they consider themselves unworthy of the offers or the offers lack transparency.

Second, establishment of cultural life in residential areas, which provides a basis for fostering and bringing into play human factors in the cause of building and protecting the Fatherland. When he was still alive, President Ho Chi Minh pointed out that the root of building culture was to establish cultural life at grassroots level. He affirmed that “Practice of new life is vital to national salvation and construction” and required that, “Cultivating new life does not necessarily means removing every old things and renewing everything Those which are old and bad must be got rid of. Those which are old but not bad and cause inconvenience must be adjusted”. Accordingly, it is necessary to further enhance the movement “All people build cultural life” in connection with the patriotic emulation movement and the campaign “All people stay united to build civilised urban and new-style rural areas”. Attention should be paid to bringing into play fine virtues of Vietnamese people such as patriotism, diligence, honesty, passion for work, vicinage, “whole leaf envelops torn leaf”, and so on. Additionally, there needs to establish and tap into civilised lifestyle and law-abidingness in every aspect; regulate cultural acts of members in communities by rules; resolutely eradicate bad habits in lifestyle and the way of thinking of each person with a view to building a truly pure, healthy cultural environment in residential areas, serving as the cradle of personality development to guide people to the true, the good, the beautiful, knowledge, capabilities, and aspiration for building a prosperous, happy country and firmly defending the Vietnam socialist  Fatherland.

Third, building and bringing into play cultural values in economic field; sustainable development of cultural industry to gradually become a pillar of national economy. Resolution of the 13^th National Party Congress requires “rapid, selective development of cultural industry and service on the basis of identifying and leveraging soft power of Vietnamese culture and effectively absorbing values, quintessence, and new achievements of the world culture, science, and technology in connection with developing tourism into a key economic sector”. To realise this guideline requires making full use of existing cultural resources, including UNESCO-recognised intangible cultural heritage as well as thousands of national heritage and traditional art forms, to promote cultural tourism. Film industry, music industry, digital entertainment industry, etc., should be actively developed to capture domestic and foreign markets. It is necessary to gradually renew and enhance product quality of the cultural industry with a focus on communicating the spirit and character of Vietnamese people while making the most of cultural values in economic field, contributing to development of working spirit, creativeness, diligence, and steadfastness in the face of challenges in order to accomplish production and business goals. Relations in management, operation, production, circulation, trade, etc., need to be established on the basis of moral standards and loyalty. There needs to cultivate business culture to create trademark value and productivity. These are contents belonging to the category of “soft power” that needs to be mobilised during economic development process.

Fourth, tapping into Vietnamese people’s cultural values of safeguarding the nation to generate strength for protecting the Fatherland in the new situation. Today’s national defence is confronting many difficulties and challenges, especially in the face of hostile forces increased destructive actions by means of more and more overt, direct “peaceful evolution”. It is within this context that cultural values of safeguarding the country need to be aroused to create strength for protecting the Fatherland. It is necessary to make people from all social strata deeply imbued with values such as patriotism, resilient and indomitable spirit to counter foreign aggressors, all people’s solidarity and wholehearted support for fighting against invaders, the ideology that building the country must go with defending the country, or defending the country when it is still in peace, noble humanity for defending the country, and so forth. Those cultural values have been the sources of all feats of arms in the struggle against foreign aggressors to safeguard the country of Vietnamese people since the King Hung dynasties to Ho Chi Minh’s era. Accordingly, today’s education and propaganda must be able to leverage cultural values of safeguarding the country spiritually to transform them into material forces to serve national defence, creating combat power to triumph over enemies in all situations.