I'm sure lots of people in Stalin's Soviet Union would have backed 'socialism' as well!

I am a revolutionary socialist.
Cuba is not a socialist country.
How can we have socialism with a dictator Fidel Castro in power? In a real socialist country will we have presidents who remain in power for life, and designate their brother (Raul Castro) as their official successor.
Whilst Castro is better than the Batista regime, and we should support the progressive aspects of Cuban "socialism" against American imperialism, to seriously aplaud this charade of democracy which has taken place. . .

We went to Cuba a year or 2 ago, and found it was a more complex place than the rabid freemarket zealots or the starry-eyed cuba solidarity folks wish to admit.
On the one hand, there are few beggars, the health and education systems are European-standard (better than the US, unless you're a wealthy US citizen), most people get by OK.
BUT (and it's a big fat butt), the constraints on personal freedom go well beyond CCTV or Homeland Security crap. We spoke to a woman who tried to set up a group boosting women's participation in the media. She was informed that a feminist group already existed (run by the wife of Raul Castro - Fidel's bro) and that another was neither necessary nor acceptable. Harassment followed and she gave up. We met some HIV people kept under house arrest, and gay men persecuted like in 50s Mississipi.
These aspects are perhaps down to the age of the people still running the country (good at revolution in the 50s and 60s, less good at pluralism and economics in the 90s and 00s), but they will lead to people rejecting all the good points - which are truly excellent - when Fidel pops his clogs.

Would Cuba be a better place if the US stop the war against it ?

(I doubt this is a yes/no question)

Peace!

Would Cuba be a better place if the US stop the war against it ?

(I doubt this is a yes/no question)

Peace!

Its sickening to see how these wretched little bunches of anarchists and Trotskyites, almost all in the imperialist nations, who have never achieved ANYTHING of any value in over 100 years for the anarchists and 70 years for the Trots, while Cuba is ACTUALLY building socialism and eliminating the poverty, hunger, homelessness, racism etc that imperialism is imposing on more and more millions of people.
Those who are wittering about "state capitalism" or pontificating about hierarchies are fiddling while Rome burns. As the Cubans say, reality is the real constituency of truth. An idea is proven or disproven by reality, not through academic excercises, and for anarchism and Trotskyism there is no reality!

We know Cuba is not perfect, it is carrying out a project in isolation and with very few resources, but its achievements are great!

People like the SWP should STOP DOING THE DIRTY WORK OF THE BOURGEOISIE and spreading lies that the CIA would be proud of, such as that people with HIV are imprisoned and gays are persecuted. The fact is that Cuba has done more than anywhere t combat HIV, and thousands of lives have been saved while millions die under capitalism because of lack of treatment. It is true that in the early days when HIV was not understood patients had to stay in hospital as a precaution, this is not the case now. HIV patients can stay in hospitals or at home, or move between both.
As for homosexuality, it was illegal in the past as it was and still is in many countries. The Cuban government has admitted it was wrong on this and has changed. Unfortunately there is still individual homophobia, but this is being combatted.

So please shut up with this reactionary nonsense!

It is the duty of every person why claims to be a Marxist, Trotskyist, Leninist or communist to defend deformed workers' states –namely China, Vietnam, North Korea and Cuba– from imperialist attacks and also from counterrevolution. The lie of 'state capitalism' is solely a Kautskyite and Cliffite one which bears little relevance to Trotskyism whatsoever. Such renegades as Karl Kautsky and Tony Cliff were traitors to all that they claimed to be the inheritors of –be it Marxism, Leninism or Trotskyism. Ed of the RCG makes the fundamental error of attacking the SWP as being 'Trots'! There is nothing contradictory about defending Cuba from all bourgeois and imperialist forces whilst equally drawing full attention to the fact that socialism cannot be built in one country, and that if the substancial gains of the Cuban Revolution are to be extended as well as defended then the Stalinist bureaucracy of Castro will have to be overthrown by proletarian forces in Cuba.

All those who defend Cuba in both words and deeds from US Imperialism and recognise the huge gains for the Cuban proletariat and peasantry from 1959, both within Cuba and where the products of the planned economy have been sent, are to be congratulated and appraised for their actions. But all too many make the mistake as to judge true Trotskyism by the disgusting example of the SWP and to overlook the fact that, as long as workers across the world are not breaking from reformism and reaction and struggling to overthrow their own bourgeoisies and establish the dictatoriship of the proletariat, workers in Cuba, as with all the other deformed workers' states, will have the weight of the possibility of further bureaucratic treachery and Stalinism over their heads, bring nearer the spectre of capitalist counterrevolution. They must not be allowed to go the same way as the Soviet Union did, strangled by a combination of imperialism and Stalinism.

It is the duty of every person why claims to be a Marxist, Trotskyist, Leninist or communist to defend deformed workers' states –namely China, Vietnam, North Korea and Cuba– from imperialist attacks and also from counterrevolution. The lie of 'state capitalism' is solely a Kautskyite and Cliffite one which bears little relevance to Trotskyism whatsoever. Such renegades as Karl Kautsky and Tony Cliff were traitors to all that they claimed to be the inheritors of –be it Marxism, Leninism or Trotskyism. Ed of the RCG makes the fundamental error of attacking the SWP as being 'Trots'! There is nothing contradictory about defending Cuba from all bourgeois and imperialist forces whilst equally drawing full attention to the fact that socialism cannot be built in one country, and that if the substancial gains of the Cuban Revolution are to be extended as well as defended then the Stalinist bureaucracy of Castro will have to be overthrown by proletarian forces in Cuba.

All those who defend Cuba in both words and deeds from US Imperialism and recognise the huge gains for the Cuban proletariat and peasantry from 1959, both within Cuba and where the products of the planned economy have been sent, are to be congratulated and appraised for their actions. But all too many make the mistake as to judge true Trotskyism by the disgusting example of the SWP and to overlook the fact that, as long as workers across the world are not breaking from reformism and reaction and struggling to overthrow their own bourgeoisies and establish the dictatoriship of the proletariat, workers in Cuba, as with all the other deformed workers' states, will have the weight of the possibility of further bureaucratic treachery and Stalinism over their heads, bring nearer the spectre of capitalist counterrevolution. They must not be allowed to go the same way as the Soviet Union did, strangled by a combination of imperialism and Stalinism.