Document(s) 21 of 30

Renovating the concept of social policy

The above concept is formed from, and also reflects, a reality that in the past the care of human life did not receive adequate attention. It is not that we were not concerned about such care, but all of our attention was focused on building a better society for the future. However, it was a mistake to think that it was a near future, and therefore we tried to call upon people to "tighten their belts to build socialism." Acting in this spirit, people’s current and near-term benefits were ignored, while we were striving to create benefits in the distant future. We focused on the prospects of a future happy life and neglected to pay due attention to the immediate imperative needs of the vast masses. In this period of time, people’s individual rights were usually placed behind obligation and responsibility. The human being was seen as the instrument rather than as the agent and object of socioeconomic development. It could be said that this is one of the factors that drove Viet Nam into crisis in the late 1970s and early 80s.

For the first time, social policy was placed in its proper position and importance at the Sixth Congress of the Viet Nam Communist Party (1986), the Congress that marked the starting point of the renovation (doi moi) period. The Congress documents asserted the necessity to stop making light of social policy by paying closer attention to the fact that although economic growth is the material basis for implementing social policies, social objectives are the aim of economic activities. Even within the framework of economic activities, social policy is important. It has direct impact on labour efficiency, productivity, and quality of products. Therefore, the Congress asserted that development of a basic and long-term social policy is required. Also, it is necessary to identify the policy development tasks and objectives in accordance with society’s requirements and capacity at this stage.

In accordance with this new understanding of the human role, and thereby of social policy in building and developing the country, the conception of content and coverage of social policy is also being renovated. In the past, social policy was conceived as a policy of state support for a population that rendered great service to the country or that needed assistance to overcome their difficulties in life. In contrast, today’s social policy is conceived not only as such support policies, but as having a more comprehensive scope. Although disagreement exists among academics concerned with definitions, social policy is generally conceived as: a system of policies or measures institutionalized by the state, designed to regulate relationships and the distribution of society’s benefits among human beings, between individuals and the community, and among different communities, in order to solve social problems and ensure the stability and development of society.

The sphere of social policies

1. The activity of material production of human beings and their society: such as policies on population (demography), division of labour, employment, and labour protection.
2. The distribution and regulation of social incomes: policies on salaries and wages, distribution of social welfare, and social security (including social insurance, social relief, and social programs).
3. The living environment: policies on urbanization, housing, environmental protection, social evils.
4. Political life: policies on human rights enforcement, policies for different social strata (workers, farmers, intellectuals, youth, women, old people, children, etc.), policies on democracy and law enforcement, policy on nationalities and religions.
5. Sociocultural activities: policies for developing education, public health, physical culture and sports, cultural-artistic activities, information, publications, the press.^[1]

The functions of social policies

Thus, social policies have two functions: to serve people directly and at the same time to foster human capacity. The two functions are closely linked and are premised on each other. It would be wrong to only emphasize one or the other.

The core of social policies

In addition, there are other categories of benefits, for example, immediate and long term, legitimate and illegitimate. Due to the variety of benefits, every person should weigh the pros and cons of each type in order to determine which benefit can best meet their needs before acting in a given circumstance. The selected benefit of one person may not be in conformity with that of another; it may even be prejudicial to the interests of others, especially to the interests of the whole collective and community.

Thus, the diversity of benefits has motivated human beings to act in different ways. Nevertheless, these differences may lead in the same direction, or, they may have impacts that are in contrary directions; in the latter case, the impacts cause social conflicts. Therefore, in order to ensure a stable development in the direction of social progress, the core task of social policies is to regulate the different relationships among benefits. The core of this regulation is to ensure justice: equality of rights and obligations for the members involved in the community. In other words, social justice is the core of planning social policies, and at the same time the nucleus and the goal of social policies.

Other principles for making social policies

Secondly, social policies must be complementary; they must be planned so that their collective impact is directed to ensuring the stability and progressive development of the society. Policies should in no way impede, let alone annul each other.

In the context of the current ebullient, vigorous movement of renovation, it is important to ensure synchronism between the renovation of economic policies and that of social policies. This involves implementing the principle of business accounting and maintaining, to a certain extent, "subsidy financing" by the state for sociocultural activities, for the common and long-term benefit of the whole community. Extreme attitudes that work against this synchronism will result in negative consequences for the normal development of the society.

Finally, social policies must be feasible. This means that every social policy must be made in accordance with the actual situation so that it can be implemented and enforced. It would be a waste of effort to formulate ineffective policies.

In order to create social policies, it is necessary to satisfy other requirements as well; but, we think that the general principles outlined above are the most important. The requirements and principles of particular relevance to the relationship between the renewal of economic and social policies are presented in detail in Chapter 13.

Pham Nhu Cuong (ed.), "Contribution to the Study of Social Policies” Hanoi: Social Science Publishing House, 1988, pp. 26-27; and, Bui Dinh Thanh (ed.) "Social Policy: some theoretical and practical matters” Hanoi: Social Science Publishing House, 1993, pp. 89-90. (Both in Vietnamese.)  < BACK >

Document(s) 21 of 30