ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the main features of the prescribed management system for cooperatives in the mid-1970s—the NMS. This was formalized in the tract “Toward a Large-Scale Socialist Agriculture” (1975) by Le Duan, party general secretary. Next, two famous model cooperatives that applied this system in practice are examined. Finally, the thinking behind this policy and the cooperativization movement as a whole are considered. It is then possible to reexamine the NMS in the context of the wider agrarian problems facing the DRV/SRV leadership. These were closely bound up with the general issues of policy nonimplementation and cooperative nominalization that made up the Agrarian Question. It is therefore essential to appreciate the nature of the NMS before moving on to discussion of the problems it was intended to solve. The NMS was a powerful set of management methods prescribed for everyday use in the cooperatives. Its failure was a failure of implementation at the grass-roots level, and the Agrarian Question of the 1970s has to be seen in these terms. It is therefore misleading to present the theory of the NMS before explaining how it worked in practice.
