Confronting Capitalism: The True History of the Vietnam War

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🗓️ 23 April 2025

⏱️ 47 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

April 30th marks the 50th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War. But although the conflict still looms large in American memory, the reasons why the US went to war have been distorted in the mainstream account.

In this episode of Confronting Capitalism, Vivek Chibber and Melissa Naschek explain the real imperialist history and remember the courageous struggles of both the Vietnamese resistance and the US anti-war movement.

Confronting Capitalism with Vivek Chibber is produced by Catalyst: A Journal of Theory and Strategy, and published by Jacobin. Music by Zonkey.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Confronting Capitalism. I'm Melissa Nashek, and I'm here with Vivek Chibber, a professor of sociology at NYU and the editor of Catalyst, a journal of theory and strategy.
0:29.6	Be watching the ongoing chaos around Trump's tariffs. Are you feeling vindicated in your initial analysis?
0:38.7	You know, the funny thing is I always feel vindicated, no matter what I say.
0:42.6	Because I learned, like, much of the left that in retrospect, if you just twist the facts enough,
0:46.8	you can always say this is exactly what I predicted.
0:49.6	Nice. It's probably not a good statement on my character that I'm like, hell yeah.
0:55.7	So today we're going to be talking about the Vietnam War because we have this anniversary coming up.
1:02.6	Yeah, April 30th is the 50th anniversary of what's known as the fall of Saigon, but actually it's the liberation of Saigon.
1:12.4	America loves its little ironies.
1:14.9	Yeah.
1:15.3	You know, I mean, globally, it was seen as a world historic event.
1:18.6	And I remember the day it happened because my parents and their friends were celebrating.
1:23.6	And in fact, it was a celebration around the world because this tiny little country in Southeast Asia, after 30 years of unceasing warfare against the most powerful countries on earth, both France and the United States, had emerged victorious.
1:36.9	It was quite significant, I think, for an entire generation back then.
1:40.5	And I think it's a good reason to get into it today again and analyze it and commemorate it.
1:46.0	Why 50 years later are we still talking about the Vietnam War? Why is it so important?
1:53.6	I think it's important for several reasons, Melissa. First of all, there is this generational shift
1:58.8	coming where the student anti-war movement and the people
2:03.6	in the anti-war movement outside the universities are now quite old and there, some of them
2:08.9	are around, some of them are not around. As long as they were around, there was this living historical
2:13.3	memory, not only of the war, but what it took to end the war, and the ways in which it changed
2:19.4	the culture of the United States, but it changed global culture as well. And it was a memory of
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