Alan Woods with Hugo Chávez

407 Pages·2008·1.01 MB·English

Alan Woods with
Hugo Chávez
ALANWOODS was born in Swansea, South Wales, in 1944 into a working-class
family with strong Communist traditions. At the age of 16 he joined the Young
Socialists and became a Marxist. He studied Russian in Sussex University and later
in Sofia (Bulgaria) and the Moscow State University (MGU). He has a wide expe-
rience of the international labour movement and has been involved in the Marxist
movement in Spain, where he participated in the struggle against the Franco dicta-
torship, Latin America and Pakistan. He speaks several languages, including
Spanish, French, German and Russian.
Alan Woods is the author of many works covering a wide spectrum of issues (poli-
tics, economics, history, philosophy, art, music, and science). He is also the politi-
cal editor of the popular website In Defence of Marxism (www.marxist.com) and
secretary of the International Marxist Tendency.
Among the books he has written we can highlight Lenin and Trotsky: What they
Really Stood For and Reason in Revolt, Marxist Philosophy and Modern Science,
both in conjunction with the late Ted Grant, Bolshevism: the Road to Revolution,
Marxism and the United States, The History of Philosophy (online), Ireland:
Republicanism and Revolution,The Venezuelan Revolution - AMarxist perspective,
and What is Marxism?(jointly with Rob Sewell and Mick Brooks). His books have
been translated into several languages, including Spanish, Italian, German, Greek,
Turkish, Urdu, Danish, Portuguese, Russian and Bahasa Indonesian.
REFORMISM or REVOLUTION
Marxism and socialism
of the 21st century
To the workers and peasants of Venezuela,
the real protagonists of the Bolivarian Revolution
and of this book.
REFORMISM or REVOLUTION
Marxism and socialism
of the 21st century
(Reply to Heinz Dieterich)
By Alan Woods
Wellred Publications
London
Reformism or Revolution
Marxism and Socialism of the 21st century
(Reply to Heinz Dieterich)
By Alan Woods
First published by Wellred 2008
Copyright © Alan Woods
UK distribution: Wellred Books, PO Box 50525
London E14 6WG, England
Tel: [phone]
[email protected]
USAdistribution: Wellred, PO Box 4244, St. Paul, MN 55104
[email protected]
Wellred on-line bookshop sales: wellred.marxist.com
Typeset by Wellred
Printed by intypelibra, London, England
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Acatalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN - 13 978 1 900 007 33 7
ISBN - 10 1 900 007 33 9
Layout by Espe Espigares
Contents
Acknowledgements.................................................................9
Author’s Preface...................................................................11
1. Methodology.....................................................................15
2. Philosophy and science....................................................37
3. Dieterich and historical materialism................................77
4. History and economics...................................................107
5. Socialism utopian and scientific....................................137
6. An outline of Marxist economics...................................152
7. The economics of Socialism of the 21st Century..........187
8. Socialism or Stalinism? ..................................................223
9. The future of the Cuban Revolution .............................269
10. Nationalism or internationalism?................................ 313
11. The state and revolution...............................................331
12. The Venezuelan Revolution........................................ 367
Bibliography..................................................................411
Acknowledgements
O
ver the past months I have received a lot of encouragement from many peo-
ple who were keen to see this book in print. This was a great help to me,
since I have more than once regretted having taken the task on in the first
place. I hope that the final result will justify the work that so many people have put
into it.
I wish to express my thanks to all those who, by their painstaking work, have made
the appearance of this book possible. In the first place, my thanks to Mick Brooks
for his invaluable help with the section on economics and expert proof-reading, and
to Harry Whittacker, Jordi Martorell and Fred Weston, for their proof-reading and
valuable suggestions. I must also thank Harry Nielsen, Luke Wilson and Alex Grant
for their helpful observations on the chapter on science. In addition, I would like to
thank Espe Espigares for her professional layout.
Since we decided to publish the book simultaneously in English and Spanish, I
would also like to thank Juana Cobo and Pablo Roldán for the excellent Spanish
translation. In addition, a special mention is due to Miguel Fernández, whose con-
siderable literary skills were of great help to me in perfecting and polishing the final
text both in Spanish and English.
Above all, my heartfelt thanks to my comrade and companion Ana Muñoz for her
invaluable help and encouragement, and for her immense patience in the final
proofreading, which was enough to try the patience of a saint!
Author's preface
T
he publication of the present work requires some explanation. Many friends
have asked me why I was taking so much time replying to a man whose
books are read by a limited public, mainly in the Latin American universities,
and are mostly only available in Spanish. I replied that I had been persuaded by the
persistent requests of my friends in Cuba and Venezuela, who, after some years,
were fed up of the theoretical pretensions of Heinz Dieterich and wanted me to
answer him.
For some years Heinz Dieterich has been waging a noisy campaign, claiming
that he has “invented” the idea of Socialism in the 21st Century. This has had some
effect on certain circles of the Left in Venezuela and some other countries. As we
know, there is an important debate taking place in Venezuela on the nature of social-
ism, inspired by Hugo Chávez’s declarations in favour of socialism.
This is enormously important, not only for Venezuela but for the whole interna-
tional workers’movement. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, there is a ferment
of discussion on the Left on a world scale. The ignominious failure of Stalinism and
the unprecedented ideological counteroffensive of the bourgeoisie against socialism
have led some to conclude that the “old” ideas of Marxism (scientific socialism) are
no longer valid, and that it is necessary to invent something entirely new and orig-
inal. This is just what Dieterich claims to have done.
During the referendum campaign on constitutional reform in December 2007 the
name of Heinz Dieterich suddenly began to acquire greater prominence. He
opposed the reform and publicly defended General Baduel, the former Defence
Minister who went over to the opposition and campaigned for a “no” vote in the ref-
erendum. Later, Dieterich said he supported a “yes” vote “as a lesser evil”.
How does it come about that a man who has cultivated the image of a loyal sup-
porter of Chávez and the Bolivarian Revolution should behave in such a way? It
came as a shock to many on the Left who had accepted uncritically the audacious
claims of Professor Dieterich. But, having carefully read his articles and books for
many months, it was not at all surprising to me.
12 Reformism or Revolution
The fact that in a decisive moment Heinz Dieterich took a position that was
clearly against the further advance of the Revolution towards socialism is no acci-
dent. It is the logical and inescapable conclusion from all his theories and from his
peculiar version of “21st Century Socialism” – a kind of “socialism” that is not
socialism at all, as we shall see.
From Anti-Dühring to Anti-Dieterich
In preparing my reply I decided to re-read Engels’famous book Anti-Dühring, in
which he answers the arguments of a man who, more than a century ago, claimed to
have developed a new and original theory of socialism that would render the ideas
of Marx (and everybody else) obsolete. I found that the similarity between Dühring
and Dieterich to be astonishingly similar, not only in their ideas but even in their
way of expressing them.
The first words of its preface are: “The following work is by no means the fruit
of any ‘inner urge’. On the contrary.” Like Engels, I had no wish to write the pres-
ent book. I agreed reluctantly because I regarded it as an unwelcome distraction
from other important work. I thought, rather naively as it turns out, that I could deal
with this very quickly. But I was wrong. The more I penetrated into this thick jun-
gle of convoluted prose and even more convoluted ideas, the more it became clear
to me that a short reply was impossible. The more I wrote the more I kept thinking
of the words of Engels in the Preface to Anti-Dühring:
“Nevertheless it was a year before I could make up my mind to neglect other
work and get my teeth into this sour apple. It was the kind of apple that, once bitten
into, had to be completely devoured; and it was not only very sour, but also very
large. The new socialist theory was presented as the ultimate practical fruit of a new
philosophical system. It was therefore necessary to examine it in the context of this
system, and in doing so to examine the system itself; it was necessary to follow Herr
Dühring into that vast territory in which he dealt with all things under the sun and
with some others as well.” 1
The writings of Heinz Dieterich are an even bigger and sourer apple than the one
old Engels had to bite on. Like Herr Dühring, Heinz Dieterich writes on many sub-
jects and, since he constantly mixes everything up, I was obliged to follow him
through all these twists and turns. He seems to be incapable of writing about polit-
ical economy without dragging in the history of philosophy, or the perspectives for
the Bolivian Revolution without speculating on the nature of the universe.
The present book is therefore intended to do two things: to answer the ideas of
Heinz Dieterich and also to explain as clearly as possible the classical ideas of
Marxism, which in every respect contradict them. I am conscious of the fact that this
1. Engels, Anti-Dühring, Preface to 1878 Edition, pp. 9-10, Laurence and Wishart, London 1943.
Author's Preface 13
does not make reading the book very easy. There are some very long quotations –
some from comrade Dieterich and others from Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky.
If this book is therefore rather long, the reader must console him or herself with
the thought that the universe about which comrade Dieterich strolls with such envi-
able ease is a lot bigger. We can hope that some day maybe someone will explain to
Heinz Dieterich that “brevity is the soul of wit”. But until that day arrives, we have
no alternative but to answer him point-by-point, page-by-page, galaxy-by-galaxy,
and millennium-by-millennium.
In the present book I have attempted to examine the extravagant claims of com-
rade Dieterich in order to determine to what point they are valid. Is it really true that
he has discovered an entirely new and original concept of socialism? If this were
true, it would have very serious implications for socialists everywhere. We would
have to re-examine all the basic ideas of Marxism and create an entirely new set of
ideas and principles.
As the author of this work, I have a duty to make clear to the reader from what
standpoint I am approaching this task. I write as a lifelong defender of Marxism. I
consider that the ideas of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky to be as correct and rel-
evant as ever – indeed they are more relevant and necessary now than at any other
time. Naturally, if somebody can convince me that they have a body of ideas that is
superior to Marxism and makes Marxism obsolete, I am quite prepared to change
my opinions.
However, for almost 50 years I have made a careful study not only of all the
works of the great Marxist writers of the past but also many of their critics. Having
listened to many arguments of people who claimed to provide an alternative, I have
yet to hear of anything that could be remotely compared to the depth and richness
of Marxism. I have yet to find any body of ideas that comes remotely close to dis-
placing Marxism as a scientific tool for understanding the world in which we live.
The enormous superiority of the method of Marxism can be seen in The
Communist Manifesto, the founding document of scientific socialism. Written in
1848 by two young revolutionaries, this text is the most modern book one could
read today. In fact, it is more relevant today than when it was written. Here we have
a perfect description and analysis of the world, not as it was then, but as it is now.
How many other books written over 150 years ago can make such a claim? This is
a decisive answer to all those who argue that the ideas of Marxism are “old” ideas
without relevance to the world we live in!
New ideas?
As to the “new and original” ideas of the 21st Century I will say only this: that to
this day, despite all the noise and fuss, among all the vast literary production of the
Dieterichs of this world, I have yet to read a single solitary genuinely new idea.
What I have found is many old and antiquated notions that have been fished out of
14 Reformism or Revolution
the dustbin of history – unscientific and utopian ideas that were long ago answered
by Marx, Engels and Lenin, ideas that belong to the prehistory of the workers’
movement. These old and tired ideas of pre-Marxian, utopian socialism have been
dusted down and presented as 21st Century Socialism. And there are even some
simple souls who take this seriously.
All this chattering about “entirely new and original ideas” seems superficially
attractive – after all, who would not prefer a nice new car or computer in place of
last year’s model? But in reality the analogy is false and contradicts our most basic
experience. To be new is not necessarily a good thing in all cases, nor is something
necessarily bad because it is old. Anew car or computer that does not work is worse
than an old one that does work. The wheel is a very ancient invention, but it still
works rather well after thousands of years. What would we say of a man who
demands of us that we abandon the wheel (because it is old) and look for an entire-
ly new kind of wheel – a wheel of the 21st century? What kind of wheel would that
be – a square one, perhaps, or a triangular one? Whatever shape it may be, we are
convinced that it will not carry us one step further.
For our part, we do not believe there is any need to reinvent socialism, just as
we do not need to reinvent the wheel. Of course, it will be necessary to introduce
this or that modification, but what is really remarkable is how few adjustments we
have to make to the ideas that were worked out by Marx and Engels in the 19th cen-
tury and developed and enriched by Lenin and Trotsky in the 20th century. We may
make this or that change, but in all the fundamentals the basic ideas retain all their
vigour and actuality. It is, of course, very good to debate the ideas of socialism and
we will participate in this debate with the greatest enthusiasm. What is not so good
is that Heinz Dieterich and others claim the right to a monopoly of the interpreta-
tion of 21st Century Socialism. What is even worse, as we shall see, is that this inter-
pretation of “socialism” turns out to be exactly the same as – capitalism.
Heinz Dieterich appears on the international stage as a friend of the Bolivarian
Revolution. That is to his credit. The Bolivarian revolution needs all the friends it
can get. God knows it has enemies enough! But there are friends and friends. The
unfortunate Job in the Bible had cause to regret the consolation offered to him by
his friends in his moments of greatest need. And we have no doubt that the revolu-
tionaries of Venezuela will have even greater cause to regret it if they accept as good
coin the advice given to them so generously by their friends like Heinz Dieterich.
Friendship of this sort reminds us of the old saying:
God preserve us from our friends.
We will sort out our enemies ourselves.
London, 11th May 2008