ABSTRACT
Most Ho Chi Minh City residents today associate Marxism with the Socialist Republic of Vietnam’s recent history of ideological rigidity, nondemocratic single-party rule, corruption, and economic privation. In such a context, what’s an urban anthropologist inspired by Marxist urban theory to do? How does one mount a thoughtful critique of market-based urban development without alienating interlocutors who increasingly associate any hint of Marxism with a conservative and often repressive political climate? To explore this dilemma, this essay makes three moves. First, it describes how and why the analysis of urban processes in the city can in fact benefit from Marxist critiques of accumulation by dispossession and the inequalities fostered by the rise of the global city form. Second, it describes why few Ho Chi Minh City residents place any faith in the legacy of Marxism and how they mobilize capitalist understandings of the market to formulate their own concepts of social justice. Third, it argues for a form of critical urban theory that engages and takes seriously contemporary Vietnamese enthusiasm for market-based solutions, while also integrating core lessons from Marxist urban theory. Such a critical dialogue between perspectives is necessary for thinking about urban problems when Marxist urbanism meets the specter of communism in the city bearing Ho Chi Minh’s name.
