10. Nationalism or internationalism?¶
Core Argument¶
Chapter 10: Nationalism or Internationalism?¶
This chapter mounts a trenchant Marxist critique of Heinz Dieterich’s strategic proposals for Latin American integration, counterposing revolutionary internationalism to what it denounces as bourgeois nationalism and reformism. Dieterich’s claim that the intellectual resources of humanity are accessible for a transitional phase of Bolivarian integration is dismissed as idealist: the material resources remain in private hands, and the principal obstacle to unification is not a lack of knowledge but the vested interests of the oligarchies. His suggestion to solve eight problems of economic integration through an internet contest with cash prizes is ridiculed as utopian nonsense. The bourgeoisie, the text argues, has Balkanised the continent and cannot achieve unification; only the revolutionary overthrow of landlords and capitalists, with the working class taking power, can forge a Socialist Federation.
Dieterich’s proposed Regional Latin American Power Bloc, encompassing governments such as Lula’s Brazil and Kirchner’s Argentina, is condemned for ignoring class contradictions. These are capitalist states with divergent interests, susceptible to US pressure, and their support for Venezuela is lukewarm and unreliable. US imperialism, though powerful, is overstretched in Iraq and Afghanistan, revealing its limits. Dieterich’s foreign policy of class collaboration and negotiation with imperialism is presented as a logical extension of his domestic reformism, which opposes expropriation and socialist revolution. The chapter insists that the Bolivarian revolution must pursue a revolutionary foreign policy aimed at extending the revolution across Latin America, achievable only through the overthrow of landlords and capitalists. Diplomatic manoeuvres with bourgeois governments are permissible to prevent isolation and gain time, but must never compromise socialist goals through unprincipled blocs. The revolution’s real allies are the workers, peasants, and poor of Latin America, not governments that may defect to Washington.
Heinz Dieterich is accused of advocating not socialism but state capitalism of a Keynesian character, modelled on Friedrich List’s protectionism. Marx condemned List as a vulgar petty-bourgeois economist who wanted German capitalists protected from foreign competition while exploiting workers domestically. Dieterich’s position abandons Marxism for bourgeois nationalism: he accepts world capitalism as permanent, proposes social-democratic reforms within a capitalist market economy, and postpones socialist transformation indefinitely. Marxists counterpose class struggle and internationalism to capitalist globalisation. The working class must unite across nations against the bourgeoisie. Lenin insisted that class position, not nationality, determines political alignment. Venezuela cannot escape the world market through protectionism; the only genuine defence is a state monopoly of foreign trade and a planned economy.
The chapter invokes the Communist Manifesto’s dictum that the proletarian revolution is national in form but international in content. The Venezuelan revolution, though moving towards socialist transformation, cannot be consolidated unless it spreads across Latin America. Stalin’s 1927 theory of “socialism in one country” is rejected as a contradiction of Marx and Lenin; Lenin believed the October Revolution could not survive prolonged isolation, which led to bureaucratic degeneration and the Stalinist counter-revolution. Che Guevara personified revolutionary internationalism, correctly understanding the Cuban revolution’s fate depended on extending it. However, the guerrilla “foco” model failed because US imperialism learned to crush it quickly, and most Latin Americans now live in cities, making urban working-class struggle primary. The Venezuelan revolution is urban, using parliamentary struggle and mass mobilisation. The Cuban and Venezuelan revolutions are now organically linked; defeat of one endangers the other. Halting the Bolivarian Revolution at bourgeois democratic tasks would prepare its downfall. The crisis of capitalism has ripened conditions for revolution across Latin America. What is needed is revolutionary proletarian internationalism, not nationalism or blocs with the bourgeoisie. Dieterich’s Regional Bloc of Power is a bourgeois reformist alternative; the only genuine unity is a Socialist Federation of Latin America, achievable through common struggle against imperialism and oligarchies. Victory for socialism in Venezuela would trigger a continental revolutionary wave, enabling a planned economy and a socialist world federation.