Leadership Styles of Ho Chi Minh and Ngo Dinh Diem

his needs. Money would have no place in society. People would be able to take what they want. Marx believed that the pleasure of seeing the fruits of their labor would be enough to cause men to work. Countries and people would soon catch on to this ideology. One of those countries happens to be Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh was greatly influenced by Marxism and Leninism. He loved and admired Lenin because he was a great patriot who liberated his fellow countrymen. Lenin opened a new, truly revolutionary era in the colonial countries. He was the first to realize that a social revolution was inconceivable without the participation of the colonial people. With his characteristic insight, he knew that success in the colonies depended on developing a national liberation movement and that by supporting this movement the world proletariat would gain new powerful allies in the struggle to bring about a social revolution. Ho Chi Minh felt that any revolution would initially have to be mostly a peasant revolution directed against colonialists and local feudal lords. He sets out to read everything Lenin ever wrote so that he could be sure to understand what Leninism is all about and be able to spread the message of Lenin to his people, most of who are uneducated, in a way that they could embrace it. Armed with this knowledge, Ho Chi Minh sets out on a campaign of propaganda through his writings. The control of information is still very much in play today that even in modern day Vietnam, there is a saying that "don't listen to what the communist say, just watch what he is doing."

Ho Chi Minh's leadership is very enigmatic. On one hand, he exudes the nurture tendency with his nick name of "Uncle Ho." It would make one feel like his leadership could resemble a servant-leader type. He focuses on his followers and articulates the goal of independence so that his followers can take actions to achieve their means. Every stated mission is done with the people in mind. And his leadership can also be characterized as an expert with a wide ranging knowledge due to his exposure from traveling all around the world in combination with most of his followers who are typically peasant farmer with very little or no education at all. Ho Chi Minh's guiding role in Vietnamese politics today is undeniable for the plain reason that the Vietnamese government formally promotes it as a state ideology. Whatever Ho Chi Minh said or wrote in his lifetime have been compiled into an operating ideology known as Ho Chi Minh Thoughts (Tu tuong Ho Chi Minh). A state-funded industry of research program and publications generates a huge amount of writings about the man. Ho Chi Minh Thoughts is a compulsory item in the formal training of party cadres and civil servants. In his lifetime, Ho had charismatic appeal both domestically and internationally. He has a large reputation as a nationalist hero but the charismatic cult that has grown around him is based on the image of a simple clean-living old man who loves children and shows great wisdom in everything he did. Ho has irrefutable answers for a vast range of national or local issues. Ho is also never blamed directly for any of the less desirable actions of the Vietnam Communist Party (VCP). Vietnam, like most socialist countries, had periods of state-imposed radicalism that inflicted suffering and violence on its people. There were the Land Reforms program