With the deep and organic crisis of capitalism from advanced capitalist countries to emerging economies and the developing world, and with no sign of recovery, bourgeois commentators are beating the drum again of the ‘end of socialism’. The restoration of US-Cuba diplomatic ties is being portrayed as another ‘defeat’ and failure of the ‘last’ socialist state in the world by the corporate media. The announcement of the reestablishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries came after many months of secret negotiations between Raúl Castro and Barack Obama. As part of the agreement, Cuba released US spy Alan Grossman on humanitarian grounds as well as another unnamed US spy while the US released the remaining three of the Cuban five, jailed in the US for the crime of having told the FBI of terrorist actions being planned from US soil by Cuban reactionary émigrés.Prior to the revolution in 1959 Cuba was controlled and run by US imperialism. US companies controlled 70 percent of the land and more than 75 percent of primary industry. It is no wonder Washington pursued a criminal policy against the Cuban revolution ever since the overthrow of the US sponsored dictatorship of Batista. This assault included an unsuccessful invasion of the island, a total commercial, economic, and financial embargo, terrorism, assassination attempts, providing financial, physical and political support to reactionary Cuban dissidents, forcing other imperialist countries to pursue the same policies and attempting to engineer internal coups and splits. The cost of these policies of imperialist aggression has been huge. According to the Cuban government, the embargo cost the small island $ 685 million every year. Diplomatic relations between the two countries were broken by the US in January 1961 after the Cubans demanded the scaling back of the US diplomatic mission, which was involved in terrorist activities against the new revolutionary government. The embargo had already started in 1960 in response to the revolution’s expropriation of US property. For three decades, the combination of the enormous advances of the revolution in the fields of healthcare, housing, education and others, alongside very favourable trade links with the Soviet Union allowed the revolution to survive this assault. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, this small island was left to swim on its own. The Special Period (1991 to 1994) saw economic collapse as Cuba was left at the mercy of the world market. Despite this the revolution did not collapse and capitalism was not restored, a clear indication that the Cuban revolution was still alive and had enormous reserves of support amongst the masses. There was a generation that remembered the terrible life before the revolution, under the jackboot of US puppet dictators, and what had been won through the abolition of private property. The resistance was not only economic but also political against the massive propaganda campaign of the ruling class internationally that said that socialism had died and there was no alternative to capitalism.The coming to power of the Bolivarian Revolution in 1998 threw a new lifeline to Cuba. On the one hand, it meant the exchange of Venezuelan oil for Cuban medical services on very favourable terms. On the other, it broke the isolation of the Cuban Revolution and provided the hope that it could spread even further.The collapse of the Soviet Union also brought sharply to the fore the fundamental problem facing the Cuban Revolution: its isolation. The Cuban economy, despite the limitations imposed by the embargo, is inserted in the world market on very unfavourable terms. It acquires hard currency by selling nickel and medical services, tourism and remittances. As with any other underdeveloped economy, with low productivity of labour and obsolete machinery, the terms of trade extract a heavy toll. It is in this context that significant sections of the bureaucracy in Cuba have embarked on the ‘Chinese way’ (allowing market relations in certain aspects of the economy, while maintaining an iron grip on the state) as a way forward. At the end of the day, was China not the fastest growing economy in the world? The problem with the Chinese road is that it results in full restoration of capitalism and destruction of many of the conquests of the revolution. Cuba, a small island with limited resources, surrounded by the mightiest imperialist nation, stands little chance of survival.For many years, a section of the ruling class in the US remained critical of Washington’s approach to overthrow the Cuban Revolution by brute force and isolation. They also realised that as Cuba opened up certain sectors of its economy to foreign investment, US companies were losing out on potentially profitable business opportunities against Canadian and European capitalists. They have been advocating a policy of engagement as the most effective road for the restoration of capitalism in Cuba. Obama’s current engagement is all geared towards promoting, encouraging and aiding the development of a private capitalist class in Cuba. This is precisely the policy that has been advocated for a long time by a section of the US ruling class: defeat the revolution through the “heavy artillery of cheap commodity prices” that Marx talked about. The New York Times wrote, “Washington could empower the reformist camp by making it easier for Cuban entrepreneurs to get external financing and business training.” The division of opinion in the Cuban leadership stands exposed. One of the reformists in the leadership, Omar Everleny, wrote in Havana Times, “China and Vietnam have demonstrated that one can make massive use of foreign investment and achieve good economic results without losing political control at home. Cuba is heading towards a model more similar to that of a market economy, even though the final aim does not seem to be the transition to a typical capitalist country.” However, the US says openly that it will continue meddling in the internal affairs of Cuba, all in the name of “human rights” and “democracy”. The current world situation, with the intractable economic crisis of capitalism and the resulting growing questioning of the system, plays in favour of the Cuban Revolution. The situation on the island however is one that does not leave much room for manoeuvre. Mismanagement and bureaucracy compound economic problems. The status quo cannot be maintained. The whole history of the relationship between Cuba and the Soviet Union, and later with Venezuela, underlines the point that for the Cuban Revolution to survive, it has to overcome isolation. Its fate, ultimately, will be decided in the arena of the world class struggle and will have a dialectical relationship with the balance of forces inside the island, between those who argue that the way forward is on the road to the market and those who argue that the defence of the gains of the revolution is socialism, which made them possible. The writer is the editor of Asian Marxist Review and international secretary of Pakistan Trade Union Defence Campaign. He can be reached at lalkhan1956@gmail.com