Vietnam and Social Revolution

Abstract

In the issue of April, 1965, the editors of Monthly Review suggested an hypothesis for the war in Vietnam which stressed its importance for American capitalism as a testing ground for measures designed to repress wars of national liberation anywhere in the world. If the revolutionary forces of South Vietnam, the Front of National Liberation (FLN), were able to carry out a social transformation in the face of direct United States military opposition, this would open the door for similar upheavals in other nations of the Third World. "If South Vietnam can do it," the editors asked, "why not Brazil or Nigeria or Turkey or Iran? Would it not be the beginning of the end of the free world, that indispensable Lebensraum of American capitalism?"

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