Vietnam has gone from oppressive communism to corrupt capitalism.
A Vietnamese novel by Duong Thu Hong, that I read in French, presents
junior party leaders as corrupt and cynical already in 1975. What is
certain is that the Vietnamese state established an oppressive system
of labor camps after capturing Saigon. But it appears, from this
article, that it tried to protect workers — until it surrendered
to US economic warfare.
I visited Vietnam in 2004 when it was about to join the WTO. I told
the people I knew, "You fought to kick out France, then the US. Now
you are going to invite in the WTO, which is the empire that rules
France and the US. What foolishness!"
Later, at a meeting in Cambodia in 2005, a representative of the
Vietnamese government compared the WTO's rules to the rules of soccer.
My response made everyone laugh at him, since the rules of soccer are
designed to be fair, whereas the rules of the WTO are designed to be
unfair. Alas, that minor embarrassment didn't alter the trajectory of
the Vietnamese state.