The Congress, however, reaffirmed the correctness of the party line concerning socialist transition, and directed that it be implemented with due allowances for different regional circumstances. The task was admittedly formidable. In a realistic appraisal of the regime's difficulties, Nham Dan, the party's daily organ, warned in June 1982 that the crux of the problem lay in the regime itself, the short comings of which included lack of party discipline and corruption of party and state functionaries. 
In 1987 the goal of establishing a new society 
remained elusive, and Vietnam languished in the first stage of the party's planned period of transition to socialism. Mai Chi Tho, Mayor of Ho Chi Minh City and and deputy head of its party branch, had told visiting Western reporters as early as April 1985 that socialist transition , as officially envisioned , would probably continue until the year 2000.In the estimation of the party, Vietnamesesociety had succumbed to a new form of sociopolitical elitism that was just as undesirable as the much-condemned elitism of the old society. Landlords and comprador capitalists may have disappeared but in their places were party cadres and state functionaries who were no less status-conscious and self-seeking. The Sixth National Party Conference in december 1986 found it necessary to issue a stern warning against opportunism, Individualism, personal gain corruption, and a desire for special prerogratives and privileges. A report to the congress urged the party to intensify class struggle in order to combat the corrupt practices engaged in by those who had "lost their class consciousness." Official efforts to purify the ranks of the working class, peasantry, and socialist intellectuals, however, failed to strike a esponsive chord.In fact, the proceedings of the SixthCongress left the inescapable impression that the regime was barely surviving the struggle between socialism and capitalism and that an early emergence of a communist class structure was unlikely. As ideally envisioned, the socialist sector was expected to provide 70 % of household income and the "household economy", or the privately controlled resources of the home, was to make up the balance. In sept. 1986 cadres and workers were earning there living mainly through moonlighting and, according to a Vietnamese source, remained on "the state rolls only to preserve their political prestige and to receive some ration stamps and coupons." The source further disclosed that the society's lack of class consciousness was reflected in the party's membership , among whom only about 10% were identified as from the working class.
