In the early hours of 31^st January 1968, 70,000 North Vietnamese soldiers, together with guerrilla fighters of the NLF, launched one of the most daring military campaigns in history. The Tet Offensive was the real turning point in the Vietnam War. On its 40^th anniversary, Alan Woods analyses the events that led to the Vietnam War and the significance of the Tet Offensive in bringing about the defeat of US imperialism, and draws some parallels with Iraq.

In the early hours of 31^st January 1968, 70,000 North Vietnamese soldiers, together with guerrilla fighters of the NLF, launched one of the most daring military campaigns in history. The Tet Offensive was the real turning point in the Vietnam War. On its 40^th anniversary, Alan Woods analyses the events that led to the Vietnam War and the significance of the Tet Offensive in bringing about the defeat of US imperialism, and draws some parallels with Iraq.

As US imperialism prepares to go to war against Iraq, Jonathan Clyne (of the editorial Board of the Swedish Marxist journal, Socialisten) looks back at the Vietnam War. He shows quite clearly the level of radicalisation that had developed among both the US soldiers fighting in Vietnam and the mass opposition that had developed back home among US workers and youth. As he says, "It was the American working class, those in uniform and those without, that more than anything else put an end to the war."

We received a letter from Vietnam which gives a wider and more political view of the situation in Vietnam on the eve of the important forthcoming congress of the Communist Party of Vietnam on "market led socialism".

This article describes the situation of poor young girls in the rural areas who try to escape from misery by marrying Taiwanese men.

We publish this article from the Vietnamese press, translated for In Defence of Marxism by one of our Vietnamese correspondents which shows the conditions Vietnamese workers face in the Export Processing Zones through the example of the strike at the Tan A company in Ho Chi Mihn City.