Since Đổi mới (Renovation) was initiated by the Communist Party of Vietnam for the first time in 1986, both theoretically and practically significant achievements have been gained in all economic, political, social and cultural fields. One of the most outstanding achievements is the development of the Party’s and the State’s awareness and thinking on social justice and poverty reduction. The paper presents the development stages through major landmarks of Đổi mới in our country. | Vietnam Social Sciences, No. 3(167) - 2015 Social Justice and Poverty Reduction in the Period of Doi Moi Nguyen Dinh Tan * Abstract: Since Đổi mới (Renovation) was initiated by the Communist Party of Vietnam for the first time in 1986, both theoretically and practically significant achievements have been gained in all economic, political, social and cultural fields. One of the most outstanding achievements is the development of the Party’s and the State’s awareness and thinking on social justice and poverty reduction. The paper presents the development stages through major landmarks of Đổi mới in our country. Key words: Awareness, social justice, poverty reduction, Đổi mới. 1. Renovation in awareness and thinking of the Party and the State on socialism and poverty reduction One of the lofty and consistent goals, which the Party and the State always pursue through the entire process of national construction, is to execute social justice and carry out the strategy of poverty reduction. Before Đổi mới (Renovation) was initiated in 1986, however, the Party’s and the State’s awareness of social justice and poverty reduction still remained somewhat too simple and limited. At that time, we laid down as a policy the socialist transformation, aiming at wiping out quickly all private economic components of farmers, small traders, holders as well as the private capitalist economic sector and subsequently building a homogeneous socialist economy with only two fundamental types of ownership, including the State ownership and the Collective ownership (co-operative). This was considered as the way to eradicate every root of oppression, exploitation and poverty. In fact, the above-mentioned rapid 72 and vigorous transformation of (nonsocialist) economic components shows a hasty, subjective and voluntarist viewpoint. The guideline on building a social structure with “two classes – one stratum” for such a short period is really contradictory with the Marxist – Leninist theory on
