ABSTRACT
A new, comprehensive conception of socialist industrialization has yet to take shape in Vietnam. The Sixth National Congress officially recognized the errors of the old model, renounced the objective of completing socialist transformation within one five-year plan, and viewed this transformation as a process of long duration taking place under many forms through the entire historical era of building socialism. Socialist theory and practice customarily associated the commodity economy with capitalism and were ambivalent about the market mechanism. The cooperative economy of small and individual producers' means of production is no longer an integral and subordinate part of the collective economy. People are free to set up production and business establishments by putting money and other resources together through mutual agreement. Fundamental economic reform required not just the elimination of bureaucratic management, but also a resolute shift toward a market economy.
