Author’s preface¶
Core Argument¶
Author’s Preface
This preface establishes the polemical impetus for the book: a sustained theoretical refutation of Heinz Dieterich, the German-Mexican academic who claims to have invented “Socialism of the 21st Century”. The author explains that he was pressed into writing by comrades in Cuba and Venezuela, weary of Dieterich’s growing influence in leftist circles, particularly in Venezuela following Hugo Chávez’s declarations in favour of socialism. The preface frames the stakes in explicitly Marxist terms: after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the ideological offensive of the bourgeoisie, many on the Left have concluded that “scientific socialism” is obsolete. Dieterich presents himself as the inventor of a new, superior alternative. The author rejects this claim outright.
The core of the preface draws a deliberate parallel between Dieterich and Eugen Dühring, the 19th-century philosopher and economist whom Engels demolished in Anti-Dühring. The author quotes Engels’s own reluctant preface, noting that Dühring, like Dieterich, claimed to have produced an entirely new socialist theory that rendered Marx obsolete. The author insists the similarity is “astonishingly similar, not only in their ideas but even in their way of expressing them”. Dieterich’s writings are described as an even “bigger and sourer apple” than Dühring’s, sprawling across philosophy, political economy, and cosmology, forcing the author to follow him “point-by-point, page-by-page, galaxy-by-galaxy, and millennium-by-millennium”.
The preface then turns to a key political event: the December 2007 Venezuelan constitutional reform referendum. Dieterich opposed the reform and publicly defended General Baduel, who had gone over to the opposition. Later, Dieterich claimed to support a “yes” vote only “as a lesser evil”. The author presents this as no accident but the “logical and inescapable conclusion” of Dieterich’s theories, which amount to “a kind of ‘socialism’ that is not socialism at all” but capitalism. This polemic is sharpened by the author’s declaration that, despite Dieterich’s vast output, he has yet to encounter a single genuinely new idea. What Dieterich presents as novel are “old and antiquated notions fished out of the dustbin of history” — pre-Marxian, utopian socialism, long since answered by Marx, Engels, and Lenin.
The author positions himself as a lifelong defender of Marxism, asserting that the ideas of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Trotsky remain “as correct and relevant as ever”. He cites The Communist Manifesto as evidence: written in 1848, it remains “more relevant today than when it was written”. The preface concludes with a warning to the Bolivarian Revolution: Dieterich’s friendship is dangerous, recalling the biblical Job’s unfortunate comforters. The author ends with the aphorism: “God preserve us from our friends. We will sort out our enemies ourselves.”