For comrades such as Diana Raby, Cuba is ‘living proof that another world really is possible’. The key point in her argument seems to be that the Cuban system – unlike its analogues in eastern Europe – wasn’t imposed by the Red Army. It emerged instead from a indigenous revolutionary process that grew over from nationalism into what she calls ‘socialist democracy’.

Cuba is a dictatorship

We’ll come to the issue of the dynamics of the Cuban revolution later. But at this point, it is crucial to be clear about one thing; Cuba is not a socialist democracy. Indeed, it is not a democracy of any sort. The country is a one-party state. There are no independent trade unions, and the regime maintains the strictest imaginable censorship over the media. There are no gulags as such, but plenty of political prisoners.

In plain English, Cuba is a dictatorship. It would be unforgivable to utilise the slogans of Seattle here; Cuba is anything but a foretaste of the kind of world for which the anti-globalisation movement stands. Yet Diana contends that Cuba was ‘never really Stalinist’. What are we supposed to gather from the word ‘really’ here? If Cuba genuinely was not Stalinist, it has to be said that its impression was right up to Rory Bremner standard on this score.

Diana rightly maintains that the driving force in 1959 and afterwards was Castro’s 26 July Movement, rather than the Moscow-aligned Partido Socialista Popular (PSP). But that is to miss the point. The defining characteristic of Stalinism is not alignment to Moscow, but the capture of state power by a new potential ruling class that proceeds to operate on the basis of a collectivised economy.

Stalin positively didn’t want Tito to take over Yugoslavia, and dithered in his support for Mao until the Chinese revolution was a fait accompli. Diana would presumably see both Yugoslavia and China as examples of what she calls ‘original revolutions’, but that does not mean that the resultant states were not Stalinist in the sense Marxist theory uses the term.

The ouster of Batista paved the way not for workers’ control or some form of socialism from below, but initially the exercise of government by the middle-class based Castroites in league with elements of the army. The PSP was subsequently incorporated into the hegemonic bloc. The presidency in Cuba thus became a family business, the private property of Fidel to hand over to his younger brother at a suitable juncture. Not coincidentally, Raul was previously head of Cuba’s military. Ultimately, power resides – as in many other countries in Latin America – with the men in the olive green fatigues.

What is Raul going to do now he is in the top job? Well, Cuba currently faces economic sclerosis, despite the virtues some would see in its brand of central planning. The new president – according to many commentators, anyway – is looking at China as a role model for his nation’s future. If such speculation is correct, it is difficult to guess what will be left for starry-eyed Cuba-watchers to cheerlead in five or ten years’ time.

Polarising of Cuban society

Yes, of course the US embargo and the impact of the collapse of the USSR are part – although by no means all – of the explanation for the predicament in which the country now finds itself. But there is no getting away from the conclusion that Cuban society is rapidly polarising, and on class lines at that. Beyond party cadre and those in high-ranking state jobs, the government enjoys few strong supporters. The younger a person is – and the darker the colour of his or her skin – the more likely they are to openly admit they would rather be living in Miami.

Meanwhile, another layer in Cuban society certainly isn’t hard up. Entry to Havana’s premier salsa spot costs more than a month’s white-collar wages. Yet most of the several hundred strong crowd are young Cubans. Many of the conspicuously well-off benefit from remittances from abroad. Others have jobs – formal or informal – in the tourist sector. Some of the women are not prostitutes, you understand; they just put out for foreign men with enough hard currency to show a girl a good time. Even bellboys earn more than university professors, so long as they pick up tips en convertibles. And to get to be a bellboy – so I was told by a qualified architect currently working as a cinema usher – you need ‘connections’.

Of course there are counter-arguments, and Diana rehashes most of them. Important as democracy is, it is not the sole criteria on which to judge a country. Turkey holds regular elections, but still brutally represses the Kurdish population. In multi-party India – the self-styled ‘largest democracy in the world’ – hundreds of millions starve. Cuba, on the other hand, provides universal education and the highest standards of health care in the third world. It’s the only poor country I have ever seen that isn’t scarred by shanty towns. Even those locals that grumble most don’t dispute that.

Havana might not be heaven

Havana might not be heaven, but it sure ain’t Haiti either. It’s just that – not unreasonably – the population wants a system that provides them with toilet paper. Oh, and some fresh fish once in a while would be good.

For the democratic left, then, the conclusions are clear. We should oppose the US embargo on straightforward democratic grounds. But at the same time, we need to stress that a democratic opening is essential if Cuba is to avoid upheaval on the scale of 1989 in the Soviet satellite states. If the revolution does not go forward, it will go backwards. I’d hate to go back in a few years and find that heart-stoppingly beautiful Old Havana had reverted to its former role as one big extended casino-cum-whorehouse theme park for gringos.

David Osler is a journalist and author. See his blog here www.davidosler.com

That’s right, the same party that sent British troops to Iraq; the same party that scrapped student grants, in what must rank as the single most socially regressive piece of legislation introduced by any UK government since 1945; and the same party that has produced a succession of racist semi-Stalinist and fully-Stalinist home secretaries that continue to rein in civil liberties.

And let me make it clear – and I really must, because I am a former Trotskyist – that I haven’t taken out a card in the expectation that New Labour can eventually be converted into a revolutionary party, or that a revolutionary tendency can be built within it. Both those ideas so evidently infantile as not to be worth a moment’s consideration.

Nor will I be trying to ‘reclaim New Labour from the Blairites’, because that cannot be done, either. The changes within Labour’s internal structures have sealed off, once and for, any possibility of re-running the late seventies and early eighties. More’s the pity; the rock music of the period was infinitely superior to anything being recorded today.

Every single one of the criticisms Peter Tatchell levels at New Labour in ‘Green is the new red’ is unarguably correct. Blair and Brown have indeed thrashed the last vestiges of labour movement democracy, and on many issues, out-Thatchered Thatcher. None of this is in dispute.

It’s not even that I am particularly in tune with majority thinking on the much reduced Labour left, which still conceives of socialist utopia as a nationalised gas industry. For most of these people, it is as if globalisation, the collapse of communism, political Islam and global warming had never happened.

As a result, they automatically fail politically, because their backward-looking bureaucratic outlook condemns them in advance to fail. Small wonder they were unable to mount a serious fight against Blairism; it is because they couldn’t advance a viable alternative set of ideas.

That brings me to the reason I ate humble pie and filled out the standing order form to New Labour. Developing that alternative set of ideas strikes me as the most constructive thing democratic socialists can now be doing.

And the party that still commands majority support among the progressive electorate and the affiliation of the majority of the trade union movement is the best place it can undertake this task.

Obviously I regard leftwing Greens such as Peter and principle male speaker Derek Wall as comrades, on the assumption that one is allowed to use such a term in this context. It’s just that I do not think the Green Party can ever become a popular front for the achievement of socialism by stealth.

It remains small, and displays no sign of an ability to attain the critical mass it needs to become a serious factor in British politics, or even to build a base of support in the working class.

What’s more, historical experience shows that where Green parties do take off, they leave their radicalism well behind. The Realos take over from the Fundis, and the one-time soixante-huitard peaceniks end up cheerleading Nato bombing campaigns from the comfort of their ministerial limos.

Let me draw an analogy between the current situation of the serious left and that faced by the intelligent free market right in the 1950s, the hey-day of Keynesianism. At that time, it looked as if all argument over political economy was over for good.

The reaction by the most far-thinking devotees of the Austrian economists was to form think tanks and slowly propagate their world view from within the Conservative Party. It took about 20 years to come to fruition, but ultimately, the strategy worked.

Our ideas – including expanded trade union rights, public ownership and workers’ control, left libertarian social policies that would cause instant myocardial infarction among Daily Mail leader writers, a foreign policy that consistently promotes democracy and sustainable development, and the realisation that the environment is the most important issue facing humanity today – are relevant.

Indeed, they offer the only way out of the impasse. But before they can be put into action, they have to be rearticulated into policies geared to today’s world. That is, of course, a limited horizon, especially compared to preparing for world revolution. But then, these are times when limited horizons surely trump strategic dead ends.