Last Sunday, during Hugo Chavez' weekly TV program "Alo Presidente" in Caracas, the President made sharp criticisms of various government officials, calling on them to fight against bureaucracy and corruption in the state institutions, especially in relation to delays in the work of PDVAL, the state-owned food production and distribution company.

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He then referred to Alan Woods' book Reformism or Revolution: Marxism and Socialism of the XXI Century: "Look, Alan Woods, ‘Reformism or Revolution'; reformism, for how long? I am reading it in great detail; I am taking notes on this book." He also spoke of the need to have every infrastructural project accompanied by a social project in order to transform society: "It is necessary to get rid of privileges in order to be socialists."

The fact that the President is reading this book and taking notes on it is thanks to the tremendous success of the author's book tour in Venezuela. Alan's speaking tour took him to many working class areas such as Puerto La Cruz, Monagas, Puerto Ordaz, Zulia, and to areas where many youth attended his meetings, such as Táchira, Mérida and Caracas.

Alan's book makes sharp criticisms of the ideas of reformist and revisionist writers like Heinz Dieterich, who assert that socialism can be built by carrying out reforms within the confines of the capitalist system and while maintaining the structures of the bourgeois state apparatus. "Reformism or Revolution" explains that it is impossible to reform capitalism, that it is necessary to build the revolutionary party, mobilize the working class, dismantle the bourgeois state apparatus and nationalize the key levers of the economy.

The book also explains the basic ideas of Marxism: dialectical materialism, historical materialism, political economy, science, and philosophy, and discusses various bourgeois and proletarian revolutions and the need to expropriate the capitalist class.

The book is an indispensable ideological tool for the Bolivarian Revolution and for the construction of the revolutionary party, and  should serve as an ABC guide to action for the ideological arming of the PSUV.

Video: Aló Presidente (315)

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