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… the chief social basis of radicalism has been the peasant and the smaller artisan J i n the towns. From the facts, one may conclude that the wellsprings of human freedom lie not only where Marx saw them, in the aspirations of classes about to take power, but perhaps even more in the dying wail of a class over whom the wave of progress is about to roll.The Southeast Asian peasantry has historically sought, as best it could, to secure its economic and physical well-being against the claims and threats of either the state or local elites. In this context, the defense of peasant subsistence and security needs i s morally underwritten by a "little tradition" that asserts both the priority of local custom over outside law and the priority of local subsistence needs over outside claims on the local product. This aspect of the little tradition amounts to a normative justification for resistence whenever agrarian elites or the state violate important local practices or threaten what villagers consider their minimal ceremonial and subsistence fund.

From the late 1950s in the north, to the 1970s until the mid-1980s in the south, there was little room or opportunity to form non-state voluntary organizations and associations in Vietnam. With few exceptions, only those established by the Communist Party and other state agencies were permitted. The picture has changed considerably since doi moi. From proactive self-help associations for the disabled to mass, semi-state or "non-governmental" organizations, the Vietnamese people are getting together to voice their collective and specific interests vis à vis the state. The process of getting tog