Ho Chi Minh's thought is a comprehensive and profound system of viewpoints on fundamental issues of the Vietnamese revolution, including the issue of innovation, creativity, and development of science and technology. It contains profound values and has a vitality that transcends time. The article focuses on systematically studying Ho Chi Minh's viewpoints on the content of innovation, creativity, and development of science and technology, affirming the value of those viewpoints in the context of the Party, State and people of Vietnam promoting the development of science and technology, innovation, considering it a strategic breakthrough to successfully achieve the goal of building and defending the socialist Vietnamese Fatherland.
President Ho Chi Minh visited Thong Nhat Match Factory in 1956_Photo: Archive
1. Introduction
President Ho Chi Minh was a genius leader, the founder of the Communist Party of Vietnam and together with the Party led the Vietnamese revolution to victory. Throughout the process of leading the revolution, he never strayed from the goals and ideals of national independence and socialism, national liberation, class liberation and human liberation. To achieve these goals and ideals, Ho Chi Minh believed that innovation, creativity and development of science, technology and engineering were among the most important factors.condition key.
On the basis of applying and creatively developing Marxism-Leninism, together with his rich practical experience, Ho Chi Minh gave important instructions on innovation, creativity, and development of science and technology to help our people quickly "escape poverty and backwardness forever".(1), successfully build socialism.
Along with the views on roles, goals, conditions, and measures, his views oncontent of innovation, creativity, scientific and technical developmentis considered one of the unique creations, containing many great values for the cause of national liberation and development. Up to now, that system of viewpoints still retains its value, playing a leading role in planning guidelines, policies, and laws on science and technology development, innovation, ensuring the implementation of two strategic tasks: building and defending the Fatherland.
2. Content
From the arguments as well as practical instructions of Ho Chi Minh related to this topic, we can generalize his views onContentInnovation, creativity, and development of science and technology in the following main aspects: Scientific research; Promoting initiatives among the people; Technical improvement activities; Training of scientific and technical intellectuals.
(1) Scientific research work
Scientific research is considered one of the core contents in theContenton innovation, creativity, and development of science and technology according to Ho Chi Minh's thought. With the nature of exploration, discovery, search, and creation, Ho Chi Minh believed that the results of scientific research would help people "expand new horizons", "master nature, as well as master the destiny of society and themselves"(2).
According to Ho Chi Minh, the world is always in a state of rapid change, so research, creation, and exploration of new things to master nature and society is an extremely necessary requirement. He wrote: “The past fifty years have seen more rapid and important changes than many previous centuries combined. In those fifty years, there have been inventions such as cinema, radio, television, and even atomic power. That means mankind has taken a big step forward in controlling the forces of nature.”(3)Therefore, to bring our country "on par with the world powers", there is no other way but to devote all our efforts to learning and researching to master the cultural, scientific and technical achievements of mankind, turning them into the intellectual property of the nation, and successfully building socialism.
He emphasized that: “The world today is making giant strides in human knowledge. Natural sciences as well as social sciences are constantly expanding to new horizons.”(4)Therefore, it is necessary to constantly innovate, create, conduct scientific research, and seek new inventions "topracticalsolve the problems raised by our country's revolution and in the near future, reach the heights of science and technology"(5).
According to Him, scientific research is a special field, so we must persevere and overcome difficulties to succeed. In the condition that our country is still poor, investment conditions for science are limited, so we mustresearch has focus, avoid spreading, formality, or investing in areas that are not close to the practical requirements of the country, wasting people's wealth. He said: "Promote research and popularization of science and technology in a focused manner, with steady steps, aiming toserving production, serving people, serving national defense”(6).
Specifically, in the field of social sciences, research work needs to go into depth and needs to participate in "summarizing experiences of the struggle between the exploited class and the exploiting class and the struggle between humans and nature".(7); "summarize valuable experiences"(8)in production and life to best serve the cause of national development; at the same time, focus on urgent theoretical and practical issues that have not been resolved.
Regarding the field of natural science and technology, he emphasized: "Science must come from production and must return to serve production, serve the masses, in order toimprove labor productivityandconstantly improve people's lives, ensuring the victory of socialism"(9). Thus, for Ho Chi Minh, the research task in the field of natural sciences and technology does not stop at creating and inventing new things, but more importantly, those creations and inventions must be tested in practice, must return to serve production and contribute to improving people's lives. This is considered an extremely unique thesis of Ho Chi Minh, that thesis contains universal values and demonstrates a vision beyond the times -True science must originate from practice and return to serve practice.,must contribute to improving labor productivity, constantly improving people's lives.
According to Ho Chi Minh, scientific cadres in any field need to master and develop their professional knowledge in that field of science. “For example: military cadres must study military science, medical cadres must study medicine. Cadres in any subject must study the theory of that subject.”(10)Therefore, scientists must always be aware of improving their cultural and technical level, have the ability to research, create, and master technical means and processes. He also reminded that research projects and topics must have practical effects: "The things that are disseminated must be practical, accurate, and must be made so that the masses can understand and do them."(11).
To improve the country's scientific and technological level, Ho Chi Minh also said, "expand cooperation with fraternal countries in scientific and technological research."(12)is also a very necessary requirement. Reality also shows that, in order to form a team of scientists to serve the cause of national construction and defense, right after the birth of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, in a letter to the US Secretary of State (November 1, 1945), President Ho Chi Minh proposed "sending a delegation of about fifty Vietnamese youth to the US with the intention of establishing close cultural relations with American youth on the one hand, and on the other hand to promote continued research on technology, agriculture as well as other specialized fields"(13)He also tried to persuade a number of prestigious overseas Vietnamese scientists to return home to participate in building and defending the Fatherland, and at the same time advocated selecting many cadres to send to Western countries to promote the training of high-level intellectuals.
In the country, he opened a number of scientific research centers and training facilities at the college and university levels, such as the Vietnam People's University, Tran Quoc Tuan Military Academy, University of Technology, Hanoi Pedagogical University, College of Fine Arts, etc. With his interest in scientific activities, Vietnam has organized and built a series of scientific research facilities, universities and colleges. From here, each year, a large number of scientists and scientific research achievements are provided to serve the revolutionary cause of the Party and the nation.
(2) DevelopPeople's Initiative
Promoting initiatives among the masses is also a unique content in Ho Chi Minh's viewpoint on theContentinnovation, creativity, scientific and technical development. It is an activity related to the process of creating innovations in technology, management, and the application of technical advances in production to increase labor productivity, improve people's lives and contribute to the development of the country.
According to Ho Chi Minh, innovation is not something lofty and impossible to achieve, but it can be practical, simple improvements that bring great efficiency in work and life. He wrote: “Innovation is not something strange. It is just the result of research and thinking in very ordinary, very common, very practical circumstances and conditions.”(14)Ho Chi Minh also believed that not only people with "special talents have initiatives" but every ordinary person, through the process of learning, observing and working every day, can also propose initiatives to contribute to the overall development of the country.
He emphasized: "Anyone who is determined to benefit the masses, is willing to learn, is willing to ask the masses, has a mind that thinks hard, and a hand that works hard, will definitely have initiative and will definitely be able to do things that are beneficial to humanity."(15). Thus, according to Ho Chi Minh, everyone has the ability to contribute initiatives to the country from even the smallest actions. This is considered a very unique argument of Ho Chi Minh, because he considered the masses to be "scientists" - special scientists.
Ho Chi Minh affirmed that the initiatives and technical solutions of the masses mainly arise from practical requirements, serving life and production, including many unique and useful initiatives and solutions that bring many practical benefits. Therefore, from the perspective of the masses, "the masses are very industrious, intelligent and skillful"(16), “in production and daily life, they have a lot of valuable experience”, and they “know how to solve many problems simply, quickly, and completely, which talented people and large organizations cannot figure out”(17)Therefore, Ho Chi Minh always encouraged and motivated the masses to enthusiastically compete in labor, promote initiatives, and improve techniques to increase labor productivity. He said: "We hope that our compatriots who have talent and initiatives (...) and are willing to enthusiastically help the country, please send a clear plan to the Government. We will study that plan carefully, and if it can be implemented, we will implement it immediately."(18).
The person emphasized:"Initiativeandexperience isbelong toprecious to the whole nation"(19), therefore theyWe must strive to make it more abundant and spread forever. “At first, it spreads throughout a unit, a factory, a village, etc. Gradually, it spreads throughout the army, the entire industry, the entire country. Initiative and experience are like small streams flowing into big rivers, big rivers flowing into the ocean. Not knowing how to appreciate initiative and spread experience means wasting the nation’s resources.”(20).
This viewpoint of Ho Chi Minh reflects a humane and progressive perspective, honoring human values and the power of creativity, expressing his deep belief in the intelligence, creativity and role of the masses in the revolutionary cause of the nation. This is also a viewpoint that demonstrates his strategic vision of a learning society - where every individual is a scientist, capable of contributing initiatives to the country.
In particular, he also advised that, in order to have good initiatives and new ways of doing things, the masses must constantly study and improve their cultural and technical level to meet the requirements of practical production. He said: “We need to learn many things: learn politics, learn culture, learn techniques and skills. In addition to learning at school, in class, learning from books, newspapers, etc., there is a very good way of learning that everyone can participate in every day. That is the way of learning right in production, learning from advanced people, groups and units. Advanced people are also ordinary workers. But in their thinking and working methods, there are good points that can help production and work progress quickly and strongly... This makes common initiatives and experiences increasingly abundant, and common ideological, organizational and technical levels increasingly improved.”(21).
For the team of leaders (from ministries to enterprises and construction sites), Ho Chi Minh believed that the responsibility was to encourage, review, apply, improve and widely disseminate good initiatives in practice. For scientific staff, he advised that in carrying out all work, they must be bold, creative, enthusiastic, eager, and improve their initiatives; at the same time, they must stick to their work to summarize the valuable experiences of the people and must be proactive in fostering and improving the scientific capacity and cultural level of workers.
Because, in practice, new problems and difficulties always arise, so we must know how to promptly adjust, correct and fix them, quickly find new ways to ensure that the work achieves solid results. "As long as we have a full sense of ownership, collective spirit, discipline and strive to study, improve cultural and technical level, have a creative spirit, seek out new things, learn new things, support new things, and implement new things, then anything can be done."(22).
(3) Technical improvement activities
Based on the fact that production in our country is still fragmented and backward, with mainly manual means of production, Ho Chi Minh believed that,want to reorganize productionthen of coursemust improve technologyand summarize experiences from economic life, draw conclusions and elevate them into scientific theories, moving from spontaneous activities to conscious activities. He said: "To progress, we must improve techniques"(23), because "only with technical improvements and improvements in labor organization can we produce more, faster, better, and cheaper. If we only rely on familiarity or if we only put in more effort, the result is often a gain in one aspect but a loss in another, getting it fast but not good, getting it good but not fast, not cheap... and all aspects are limited"(24).
He often advised the entire Party and people to "strive to improve technology".(25)and must realize that this is one of the extremely important contents of innovation, creativity, and development of science, technology, and engineering, helping "production to develop more and more quickly and steadily, and the working people's lives to become more and more prosperous and complete."(26).
Technical innovation is the process of devising measures tomodify, improvemachines, labor tools, improve production organization methods, labor organization methods to increase labor productivity, reduce production costs and improve product quality. He affirmed: "To develop production, we must improve techniques, which means: We must learn to master techniques, fully utilize machine capacity. We must seek initiatives to organize labor reasonably. We must improve working means and machines to achieve high productivity and good quality."(27).
Ho Chi Minh also believed that moving from a backward agricultural country to socialism would "The implementation of the technical revolution must be carried out over the long term.The caller is: “The Long Road of Technical Revolution”(28).He believed that technical improvements must be carried out regularly and continuously in all economic sectors, and must become a widespread movement among the people. “To do these things means to carry out the main part of the economic recovery plan. Thus, the people's lives can be improved, leading to a rich people and a strong country.”(29).
However, to improve technology, one must have knowledge and understanding of science, because technology and science are closely related. Every step forward in science is a direct basis for the development of technology and vice versa. He advised: “To improve technology, one must know technology. To improve labor organization, one must also know organizational methods and have organizational experience. In this and that aspect, we are currently lacking. Therefore, we must”learn, learn more, learn forever"As Lenin taught"(30). He requested: “Technical innovation requires learning from experience, exchanging experience, and disseminating experience to each other. We should not think that having a few experiences is good enough, we must learn from each other, learn from the experience of Chinese comrades as well as Chinese comrades learn from the experience of the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union is progressing day by day and is still seeking to progress further.”(31).
(4) Training of scientific and technical intellectuals
In order for science and technology to fulfill its roles, functions and tasks, Ho Chi Minh affirmed:human factor- key resource in scientific and technological development, is a decisive factor. Therefore, in theContentinnovation, creativity, development of science, engineering and technology, the problem isscientific intellectual training,techniquealways be cared for and noticed by Him.
According to Ho Chi Minh, in the process of revolutionary development, there are intellectuals who are products of the old education system, and intellectuals who are products of the new education system, but whether they are old intellectuals or new intellectuals, as long as they are genuine intellectuals, they are very valuable and play an important role in the revolutionary cause of the nation. The viewpoint of appreciating the role of intellectuals originates from the philosophy of the role of power.humanity-expression, on the role ofawaken,enlightenmentpeople. Because according to Ho Chi Minh, the intellectuals, as knowledgeable people, are "prophet-wishers".(32), are people with a missionknowledge acquisition, knowledge creationanddissemination of knowledge, is the forcedirectmeet the needsneed the power of understanding, of wisdomamong the people, helping the peoplerise from spontaneous to consciousto complete the revolutionary goal. From that meaning, intellectuals become extremely valuable and extremely important.
Also according to Ho Chi Minh, with the role ofspecial creative force, the team of intellectuals, including scientific and technical intellectuals, must be people with academic qualifications, professional knowledge and independent and creative thinking. To do this, scientific intellectuals need to study continuously, always be conscious of improving their cultural and technical level, have a creative spirit, seek out new things, be capable of mastering technical means and processes as well as being creative and having new inventions.
Ho Chi Minh advised that due to the ever-changing situation in the country and the world, the country's work is increasingly numerous and new, "in the past, work was done manually, but now it is done with sophisticated machinery", "without cultural and technical level, it cannot be controlled"(33), "so studying culture and improving technical skills are very necessary"(34). Intellectuals do not rely on experiential knowledge, but must be trained and must master the scientific knowledge of the field they are trained in. Therefore, not only learning in school and learning from books, scientific and technical intellectuals must also learn from people, from real life. He emphasized: "Comrades must go down to the factories and cooperatives, ask workers and farmers what they require, how they do business and live, and disseminate necessary things to help them improve techniques, develop production, and improve their lives."(35).
Besides constantly improving their level of awareness, intellectuals in general and scientific and technical intellectuals in particular must also be pioneers inknowledge, aboutperceive the new,get aheadcontemporary awareness. Without awareness that goes beyond, according to Ho Chi Minh, one is not worthy of being an intellectual. He pointed out that one of the things to avoid is: “Intellectuals who do not consider the future.”(36).
Not only that, Ho Chi Minh also paid special attention to the output of intellectuals, especially scientific and technical intellectuals. He asked them to "regardless of hardship, help people learn and expand the country's culture".(37)- oneoutput criteriavery high, reflecting the quality of the products of this team's activities. Not only for culture, the measure of the quality of the activities of scientific and technical intellectuals, according to Ho Chi Minh, is also to quickly bring our people "escape poverty and backwardness forever", making our country increasingly developed and richer.
When talking to overseas Vietnamese intellectuals and international students, he advised them to "try hard to study and master the world's advanced science and technology, so that when they return home, they can contribute to the cause of building our Fatherland to quickly become a rich and powerful country."(38).
Ho Chi Minh also put forward a very unique concept when he said that scientific and technical intellectuals must not only have high professional qualifications, but must also be people with practical capacity, that is, they must be able to apply professional knowledge into production practice. Only then can they be considered "complete intellectuals".(39)The writer said: “You must make every effort to widely disseminate your scientific and technical knowledge among the working people, so that the people can compete to produce more, faster, better, and cheaper. Only then will the country be rich, the people strong, and the people's lives will be improved in all aspects.”(40). The things that are disseminated must be practical, accurate, and must be done in a way that the masses can understand and do. After dissemination, we must monitor and help the masses learn and apply them well. If we only disseminate and then ignore the masses, not caring whether they can implement them or not, whether the results are good or bad, then we lack a sense of responsibility.
He emphasized that in the new society, intellectuals "are no longer people who only stay in ivory towers and are far from the masses."(41), on the contrary, "must be soldiers on the ideological, cultural, scientific and technical fronts; must contribute their talents and efforts to change the social face of our country, make our people produce and work scientifically and make our people's lives civilized, that is, scientific, healthy and joyful"(42).
Thus, in Ho Chi Minh's viewpoint on the contents of innovation, creativity, and development of science and technology,scientific intellectual training,techniqueis one of the contents containing many profound values, having directional and guiding significance, not only for the requirements of innovation, creativity, and development of science, technology and engineering in the previous revolutionary period, but also having topical value in the current period, so that our Party and State can apply the training, fostering, and effective use of the team of scientific and technical staff, and at the same time propose policies to attract and promote talents.
3. Conclusion
In Ho Chi Minh's system of viewpoints, the viewpoint oncontent of innovation, creativity, scientific and technical developmenthas a very important position and role. For Ho Chi Minh, revolution is essentially innovation, and innovation, creativity, initiative, etc., are the basis and conditions for bringing the revolution to success, so that people can produce spiritual and material products, including science, engineering, technology and more broadly, so that people can build the national culture. On the basis of thoughts on innovation, creativity, development of science, technology, and application of science and technology in revolutionary practice, Ho Chi Minh built a fairly comprehensive system of viewpoints on innovation, creativity, development of science and technology. In which, his viewpoint oncontent of innovation, creativity, scientific and technical developmentcontain profound values, with timeless vitality. Those viewpoints contain profound suggestions for determining the contents of current scientific and technological development and innovation, such as suggestions that scientific research must be fundamental, focused, key, practical, and suitable to the country's potential and conditions; on arousing and promoting Vietnamese intellectual resources, promoting creativity in all classes of people combined with the role of the intellectual elite; on constantly improving techniques and technology on the basis of scientific research achievements and social creativity; on prioritizing investment in developing specialized forces, pioneers in scientific research, creativity, initiatives, and technical and technological improvements, which are the intellectual class.
To successfully implement the strategic breakthrough identified by the 13th Party Congress is: "Continue to comprehensively develop human resources, science, technology, innovation associated with arousing the aspiration for national development, national pride, self-reliance and promoting cultural values and Vietnamese people"(43), then researching, applying and creatively developing Ho Chi Minh's thoughts on innovation, creativity, and development of science and technology in general, including his views on the content of these activities, is an extremely necessary and useful task.
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Date of submission:9-5-2024; Review date: 12-5-2024; Posting date: 18-5-2024.
(1), (2), (4), (21), (24), (26), (28), (30), (33), (34) Ho Chi Minh:Full set,Vol. 12, National Political Publishing House Truth, Hanoi, 2011, pp. 501, 104, 104, 528, 527, 528, 183, 527, 459, 459.
(3), (19), (20) Ho Chi Minh:Full set,Vol. 7, ibid., pp. 18, 404, 404.
(5), (38) Ho Chi Minh:Full set,Vol. 15, ibid., pp. 507, 543.
(6), (7), (8), (9), (11), (12), (16), (25), (27), (35), (40), (42) Ho Chi Minh:Full set,Vol. 14, ibid., pp. 96, 96, 98, 97, 97, 96, 98, 44, 140, 97, 97, 97.
(10), (14), (15), (17), (32), (36), (37), (39) Ho Chi Minh:Full set,Vol. 5, ibid., pp. 310, 284, 285, 335, 157, 694, 514, 275.
(13), (18) Ho Chi Minh:Full set,Vol. 4, ibid., pp. 91, 114.
(22), (41) Ho Chi Minh:Full set,Vol. 13, ibid., pp. 70, 118.
(29), (31) Ho Chi Minh:Full set,Vol. 10, ibid., pp. 213, 280.
(43) Communist Party of Vietnam:Documents of the 13th National Congress of Delegates, tI, National Political Publishing House Truth, Hanoi, 2021, p. 220.
Author:Associate Professor, Dr. Lai Quoc Khanh
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