Four decades after the unification of the North and South’s different political, economic and social systems, the issue of class seems to be silently reemerging. After four decades under a unified classless system, the nation appears to experience growing class divisions. The diversification of classes is visible in practice rather than in formal recognition, through private ownership, consumption patterns and lifestyles. The country’s increasingly stratified society with its distinctive socio-economic manifestations is a living proof that the socialist ideology no longer has application in contemporary Vietnam.