Laos in 2021: One More Return to the Subsistence Ethic?

ABSTRACT

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a weakening of the formal economy and a crisis of the informal economy in Laos. The population has responded with a partial return to subsistence farming, which almost the entire rural population had been engaged in anyway. The return to subsistence farming was accompanied by a revival of the subsistence ethic, which is compatible neither with Stalinist socialism nor with capitalism. In the current configuration, the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party is in a position to take advantage of this revival, since it seems to support a communitarian morality, anti-capitalism, and self-sufficiency, which the socialist rhetoric of recent years has been propagating. The socialist rhetoric as well as the leadership of the LPRP were reconfirmed by its national congress in January. Social, political, and economic forces seem to complement each other to a larger degree than in the first two decades of the century.