In his concluding chapter Alan Woods points out that the Venezuelan revolution has been a source of inspiration for the workers, peasants and youth of all Latin America and on a world scale. But the revolution is not completed and it cannot be completed until it expropriates the oligarchy and nationalizes the land, the banks and the key industries that remain in private hands. Unless this task is carried out the future of the revolution remains in danger.

The question of the state is the most fundamental question for all revolutions and has therefore occupied a central position in Marxist theory. The state is a special repressive force standing above society and increasingly alienating itself from it. However, on this keyquestion Heinz Dieterich manages to display utter confusion, and this is not accidental.

The main obstacles to carrying out the unification of Latin America is not ignorance but the vested interests of the oligarchies who hold economic power in their hands. The problem is Heinz Dieterich approaches the question not as a revolutionary but as a reformist, not as a materialist but as an idealist, not as a realist but as a hopeless utopian. This emerges very clearly from his writings.

The liquidation of the nationalized planned economy and the switch to market economics in Russia has signified, as Trotsky so brilliantly predicted, a sharp decline of culture. The capitalist counter-revolution has brought with it prostitution, drug addiction, AIDS, pornography, Great Russian chauvinism, the Black Hundreds, pogroms, anti-Semitism, astrology, superstition and the Russian Orthodox Church. The same fate will await the people of Cuba if the pro-capitalist elements succeed in their plans to restore capitalism.

Throughout his book Dieterich fails to distinguish seriously between genuine socialism and Stalinism. Alan Woods puts the record straight.