Contents¶
Core Argument¶
The chapter is a table of contents, listing the twelve chapters, postscript, acknowledgments, and author’s preface that comprise the book. Its function is purely organisational, providing a structural overview of the work’s scope and sequence. The contents reveal a systematic progression from foundational theoretical concerns—methodology, philosophy, historical materialism—through applied economic analysis and historical critique, culminating in contemporary political case studies and polemical interventions. The early chapters establish the Marxist framework: methodology, the relationship between philosophy and science, a defence of historical materialism against revisionist attacks (Dietrich being a named target), and a treatment of history and economics. This theoretical groundwork supports a critical exposition of socialist theory, distinguishing scientific from utopian socialism, followed by an outline of Marxist economics. The second half of the book applies this framework to concrete political and economic questions: the economics of socialism in the twenty-first century, a polemical separation of socialism from Stalinism, the future of the Cuban Revolution, the tension between nationalism and internationalism, and the theory of the state and revolution. The final chapter addresses the Venezuelan Revolution, and the postscript delivers a sustained polemic against Heinz Dieterich, characterising his analysis as a prophecy of doom and a failure to provide a correct strategy for saving the Bolivarian Revolution. The contents thus map a trajectory from abstract Marxist theory to urgent, contemporary political struggle, with a consistent emphasis on defending orthodox Marxist positions against both Stalinist distortions and reformist or utopian deviations. The inclusion of the postscript signals that the book is not merely a textbook but an intervention in ongoing debates within the international left, particularly around the fate of revolutionary processes in Latin America.