Lao socialism and near universal home ownership

Laos has one of the highest rates of home ownership in the world. A track record of adjusting socialism to suit local conditions is one reason why.

This is Part Two of a four part series. Read Part One here.

“We have built up in the minds of our people—and of the world—the belief that the American system makes it possible for all to live at least at the American minimum standard of decency.”¹

This quote is from a 1960s US housing administrator. Historian Nancy Kwak begins her book, A World of Homeowners, with this quote, and goes on to argue that mass home ownership was a US model exported around the world in the 20th Century. As I argued in my previous post, this is a sentiment held by many liberal academics these days. Many housing specialists see something suspicious in mass home ownership and nod their heads at quotations like this (even when the quote comes from someone they likely would otherwise want nothing to do with).

But read from the perspective of Laos, this statement would be laughable if it weren’t so tragic. Laos has some of the highest rates of home ownership in the world today, and it is certainly no thanks to the US system. There was nothing decent about what the American system brought to Laos. ‘Nationalists’ (the term for Lao opposing French reoccupation and subsequent US presence) watched their houses burn. Setting fire to houses or rice stores was so common among US infantry in Vietnam that they developed a verb for it: ‘zippo.’² Laos is the most heavily bombed country per capita in the world thanks to US intervention.³ Much of this bombing was unplanned and indiscriminate: the US military acronym for this approach was ‘WAG’ (wild asssed guess).⁴ Any sign of life, including ‘hooches’ (war-time slang for simple bamboo and thatch dwellings) could be a target.⁵ True, the US built a few homes in their own style in the capital city Vientiane, which were used to reward Lao leaders who collaborated with them, but the overall effect of the US system in Laos on housing was destruction.

The promise, the appeal, of the communist movement was to oppose this destruction, liberate Laos from the long conga-line of ‘external aggressors’ and offer ‘the working people’ an equal slice of national development (a promise that has arguably eluded the ruling party ever since). I suppose you could argue that one effect of the American system in Laos was to drive the populace into the waiting arms of the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party. In this post, I look at Lao socialism as one key factor in high home ownership rates in Laos.

When Kaysone Phomvihane, the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party (LPRP) leader, addressed himself to ‘the working people’ he was largely addressing scattered small-holders. A Marx-style proletariate was virtually non-existent in Laos at that time. Also, these people were not typically landless: earlier mass depopulations by Siam meant open land frontiers for the lucky survivors. Kaysone did not need to campaign on a promise of land reform (as his counterparts did in China and Vietnam) because most of these ‘working people’ already had rights in land. Kaysone’s ‘working people’ were rice farmers or horticulturalists typically living in owner-occupied households that were units at once of production and consumption: peasants. Mass home ownership, then, was not something the LPRP had to promise: the population already practiced it. What the LPRP did promise was independence, peace and prosperity.

In this post, I argue that mass home ownership in Laos represents a compromise between socialist ideals and the peasant moral economy, a compromise that continues to shape Lao socialism to this day. It is a compromise that defines the household as the centre of economic and social life.

In the early years after the 1975 revolution, Kaysone focused his energies on attaining self sufficiency in food. This was especially pressing given the trade embargoes slapped on the new nation, as well as the unexploded ordnance that rendered much agricultural land unusable. One key means of pursuing this goal was collectivising rice farming. Collectivisation had been practiced in the liberated zones throughout the war, and now the new government implemented it across the nation. This involved a series of experiments combining land, labour and inputs beyond the household level, from mutual aid groups of 2-3 households pooling labour right through to large, formal collectives where civil servants distributed rice according to labour points. Land was not seized in these experiments but rather used according to the collective’s rules. Depending on the kind of collective, land may or may not earn rice in the final distribution. The collectivisation drive lasted for only a few years after the 1975 revolution, then reversed.

In some ways, collectivisation can be understood as a socialist attack on the household, hitherto the key structure of the Lao peasant economy. The overall aim at the time was ‘Advancing to socialism directly, without passing through a period of capitalist expansion.’ Collectivisation seemed to offer an alternate route, leapfrogging capitalism but still scaling up agricultural production to an industrial level. That said, even at the heights of the drive, homes themselves were never collectivised in Laos.

In the cases I know best from Champassak, collectivisation ceased after only one year of mutual aid groups and another year of farming by work points. Households retained ownership of land, tools and livestock during these experiments, and when collectivisation ended the household quickly returned as the default mode of production. At almost the same moment, Lao-style socialism identified the household as an indispensable economic unit.

The turning point comes in 1979. Early that year, Kaysone still sounded optimistic about collectivisation. In a May National Cooperative Conference, he called for improved and expanded collectives. Only a few months later, in August, Kaysone described collectivisation’s shortcomings. By November, at a Plenary Meeting of the Central Party Committee, he used the phrase ‘family economy’ for the first time, referring to a distinct and important part of the economy that would ideally run alongside (and as an alternative to) the collective economy. ‘Family economy’ refers to small-scale agricultural or handicraft production carried out in the home or on private land. It encompasses classic small-holder agriculture, and also the private production a state employee might undertake in their free time to supplement nutrition or income, such as raising chickens or growing vegetables.

The term ‘family economy’ continued to be used in this sense until 1984 when it was announced as an important policy of the Party and state. In a speech announcing this, Kaysone noted that the socialist bloc generally was turning towards the family economy. He said:

Family economy is no longer an ordinary concern; it has become a strategic concern. Some Eastern Europe countries, for example Hungary, have many lessons and results from expanding the family economy: each labourer has one hectare of land to use for family economy. In the Soviet Union, after observing blunders (of collectivised agriculture), the Central Committee and the Cabinet issued a resolution to mobilise, promote and expand the family economy. In Vietnam, the Resolution of the 5^th Meeting aimed to expand the family economy and ensure it is truly part of the socialist economy. And our Cabinet has issued an Order about the Family Economy.⁶

In the Soviet Union, the ‘Food Program’ dating from the early 1980s aimed at dramatically increasing food production to meet the minimal nutritional guidelines for the population. One of the key planks was encouraging production on private plots. Although private plots represented only 1.4% of agricultural land in the Soviet Union at the time, they were responsible for 30% of meat, milk and eggs, 50% of fruits and 60% of potatoes.⁷ The Food Program aimed, in part, to remove the remaining limitations on private plot holders and to integrate them with the broader economy, and the result was a dramatic increase in production.

In Laos, Kaysone emphasised four main points about this turn to the family in socialist thinking. First, the conceptualisation was economic. The household was conceived now not just as a social unit, but as part of the ‘division of labour’ in a socialist society. Second, family economy was imagined as a major sector of the economy: the Politburo suggested family economy should constitute at least one third of the income even of state employees. Third, it was defined broadly to include ‘rice farming, forestry, animal husbandry, planting trees, fish farming, craftmanship…’⁸ Finally, (and here Kaysone repeats a phrase common in the anthropology of the peasantry) the household was recognised as a unit of both consumption and production.

Kaysone went on to specify a number of concrete policies that would support the family economy, including requirements that each household have access to adequate garden land (as appropriate to the local environment); provision of loans, seed, feed and tools to family enterprises; establishing transport and trade links, including local markets for excess household produce; and a committee at the Central level dedicated to supporting and expanding the family economy.

This commitment to the family economy continues in various guises to the present day. Recent policies related to ‘microenterprises’ display very similar language, and continue the emphasis on family economy as a form of agriculture and handicraft production that takes place within homes, private lots and families.

In the current day, the household is both an economic unit and a basic unit of administration. Being a citizen of Laos entails, at the very least, belonging to a household. Births and deaths are recorded in ‘Household Registration Books.’ These typically contain a photograph of each member of the household and their basic details. For most people, an entry in such a book is their chief identity document and evidence of citizenship. Usually, people are part of the Household Registration Book of their immediate family.

Economically, The Family Law stipulates that parents have a duty to care for their children until the age of 18, and (assuming parents meet this duty) children have a duty to care for parents who are ill, elderly or no longer able to work (the retirement age in Laos is 60 for men and 55 for women).⁹ In this way, the family carries many of the welfare expectations of the nation. This often plays out as multigenerational households. The 2015 census recorded 97% of the population as housed in households, with an average of 5.3 members per household, and only 3% housed in institutions (prisons, dormitories, boarding schools, temples etc).¹⁰

In both urban and rural areas, households are arranged administratively into ‘Villages.’ I use a capital ‘V’ to indicate the Village as a level of bureaucracy, and to distinguish it from any rosy-hued ideas readers might have of villages as quaint, anachronistic or natural. Village authorities are empowered to make a wide range of decisions locally, including mediating family disputes and making local ordinances, such as reassigning land for construction. If a person’s need for housing isn’t addressed through by their household, the next recourse is Village authorities.

The 2019 land law stipulates that land is owned not by individuals but by the collective. Citizens have rights to put land to use. The law states:

The land of the Lao PDR is owned by the national community, with the State representing the community’s ownership, and it holds and manages the land in a centralized and uniform manner across the country through land allocation plans, land use planning and land development. The State grants long-term and secure land use rights to Lao citizens as well as legal persons, collectives and organizations of Lao citizens.

In everyday speech, having established use of land—whether through formal land use rights or customary use—is glossed as ‘ownership.’ Successfully establishing use rights in land entails land tax. Everyday land transactions are transfers of land tax receipts and the right to pay that tax. Although these days land in more desirable areas—such as the capital city Vientiane or tourist hot spots like Luang Prabang—can be seen for sale, in out-of-the-way places residential land is not usually sold. Landless people are entitled to request residential land (they would still need to pay tax on it). This is quite a common practice in Laos and is usually managed through households. Less commonly, a Village can be asked (or ordered, by the level above) to provide residential land to people who otherwise do not have a home.

In practice, this means that the main financial cost of becoming a homeowner for most people is construction. Privately-owned banks (common since 2007) offer home loans. However, most people do not meet the requirements so even in the cities, construction costs are usually met through savings and informal borrowing such as from friends, family or even advance payments from employers. In rural areas, it is usual for homebuilders to invite large groups of friends, family and neighbours to assist in construction work, usually only in return for a meal.

In exceptional cases I have seen District authorities involved in solving housing problems (such as when the District allocates construction and farming land to people resettling from other areas),¹¹ but most day-to-day cases housing issues do not rise above a household or, at most, a Village level. This is typical of the direction and substance taken by socialism in Laos. Over time, one of the most enduring patterns to emerge in Lao socialism is an emphasis on empowering local authorities to solve local problems locally: first the family, then the village.

Lao socialism does not rest on a ‘social contract’ analogous to that often imagined in, say, the UK experiment with ‘socialistic’ housing, where in exchange for tax, labour and (sometimes) military service, the population were supposedly cared for by the state ‘from the cradle to the grave’¹² Quite the opposite. Tax payments are notoriously low in Laos. People labour for the state, but usually this is on a very local level: building and maintaining the Village school, for instance.¹³ Social housing is basically non-existent in Laos. The few houses that the state does own are occupied by very high-ranking government workers and military leaders in the city, and the state is in the process of attempting to divest itself of this housing stock, too. Ordinary people, even the extremely poor, usually provide and maintain their own housing, but they do so in a social and political setting that understands housing as a collective issue, in the sense that if someone needs a home, this is problematic not only on a personal level but also for the social and economic units to which they belong. What the state offers is not so much direct care as a relentless program prompting people to organise themselves as households and Villages and to then identify and address their own problems as a unit. This involves sometimes awkward family ties¹⁴ and countless Village level meetings and official roles. But it is effective.

When I first witnessed this grind I was sceptical, counting the hours spent in meetings as wasted time.¹⁵ This is how many of my Lao friends saw it, too. But now I’ve observed Lao Villages not only in run-of-the-mill times, but also in crisis. I’ve followed the three Villages I know best through (variously) drought, contaminated water supply, COVID-19, the returning labourers crisis in 2021, and the post-COVID economic crisis. I see now that Village meetings and activities—although often boring and disappointing—also cultivate grassroots capacities to organise as a local unit comprised of households, without recourse to higher levels.

When COVID hit, all three Villages I know best self-organised to close their own boundaries. One set up an impressive check point on the only road in and out, complete with boom gate, staffed by volunteers. Another organised off-island expeditions collectively, pooling their shopping needs so as to minimise the chance of any one individual inadvertently bringing the virus to the island. Not all the Village-wide measures made sense to me: one Village invested considerable time carving intimidating mannequins which were placed on either side of the main pathway leading in, with the aim of scaring off any visitors (Figure 1).

Another decided to prioritise vaccination for youth, thinking this would shield the Village elderly from the need to vaccinate at all. Still, even these decisions showed an ability to make decisions locally and act together as a unit. By managing responses to the pandemic cooperatively, all three Villages were able to keep their schools and everyday Village life functioning. They were in lockdown but not confined to their homes. This same crisis laid bare the lack of similar capacities (or even rights) to self-organise in response to a disaster among local communities in Australia.

Figure 1: Carvings outside Old Kandon village created during the pandemic to close off the village to outsiders.

If Laos is socialist, it is Lao socialist. One key characteristic of Lao socialism over the past 50 years is the capacity to self-organise to solve local problems locally. Instead of imagining homes as private paradises free from economic calculation or state intrusion, Lao socialism imagines homes as bedrock of the economy and as basic to state administration. Households are arranged into Villages which are empowered legally to solve many problems at a local level, including homelessness. Ironically or not, this means that the ‘self-help’ mentality that authors like Kwak ascribe to the so-called western capitalist model of mass home ownership is actually more evident in the supposedly communist antithesis.

One reason for a left-leaning endorsement of mass home ownership is that it is a key plank in enabling this kind of local empowerment. In rural Laos, the ability to make decisions locally is hard won through often boring, uncomfortable, or even tense everyday household routines and Village obligations. The pay-off, though, is an enhanced ability to respond sensitively to disasters. It is time to stop casting places like rural Laos as quaint examples of a quickly-fading past, and instead appreciate them as actors in the present relevant to thinking through the range of possible futures.

1. Kwak, Nancy. A World of Homeowners: American Power and the Politics of Housing Aid. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2015.

2. Cunningham, Mike. 1997. Walking Point: An infantryman’s untold story. No publishing details.

3. High, Holly, James R. Curran, and Gareth Robinson. “Electronic Records of the Air War Over Southeast Asia : A Database Analysis.” Journal of Vietnamese Studies 8, no. 4 (November 1, 2013): 86–124. https://doi.org/10.1525/vs.2014.8.4.86

4. Drury, Richard S. My Secret War. Aero Publishers inc, p11.

5. Drury p52-53.

6. Kaysone Phomvihane. ບັນຫາດັດແປງແລະສ້າງກົນໄກຄຸ້ມຄອງເສດຖະກິດໃນຍ່ານທາງທຳອິດຂອງສະໄຫມຂ້າມຜ່ານກ້າວຂຶ້ນສັງຄົມນິຍົມຢູ່ປະເທດເຮົາ. ‘Problems in adjusting and creating economic management mechanisms in the first phase of the transition to socialism in our country.’ Excerpt from talks given during the Central Committee Party's Theory Training Series (1984-1985). Volume II of Collected thoughts of Kaysone Phomvihane. Chapter 8. P289-373. Parentheses added.

7. Malish, Anton F. “SOVIET AGRICULTURAL POLICY IN THE 1980s.” Policy Studies Review 4, no. 2 (November 1, 1984): 301–10. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1541-1338.1984.tb00215.x., page 304.

8. Kaysone Phomvihane. ibid.

9. Lao People’s Democratic Republic. 2008. Law on Family (Revised Edition). Document 5 of the National Assembly 2008. 26^th July 2008, Vientiane.

10. Lao population and housing census. Results of population and housing census 2015. No publication details. p83.

11. High, Holly. “The Implications of Aspirations: Reconsidering Resettlement in Laos.” Critical Asian Studies 40, no. 4 (December 1, 2008): 531–50. https://doi.org/10.1080/14672710802505257

High, Holly, author. “Projectland : Life in a Lao Socialist Model Village / Holly High.,” January 1, 2021. https://research.ebsco.com/linkprocessor/plink?id=2bbc4f98-5634-3d6a-bb5b-255b5818428a.

12. Alexander, Catherine, Maja Hojer Bruun, and Insa Koch. “Political Economy Comes Home: On the Moral Economies of Housing.” Critique of Anthropology 38, no. 2 (June 2018): 121–39. https://doi.org/10.1177/0308275X18758871.

13. High, Holly. “‘Join Together, Work Together, for the Common Good - Solidarity’: Village Formation Processes in the Rural South of Laos.” Sojourn 21, no. 1 (2006): 22–45.

14. High, Holly. “Ethnographic Exposures: Motivations for Donations in the South of Laos (and Beyond).” American Ethnologist 37, no. 2 (2010): 308–22. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1548-1425.2010.01257.x.

15. High, Holly. “The Road to Nowhere? Poverty and Policy in the South of Laos.” Focaal 2009, no. 53 (2009): 75–88.