As you noted yourself, socialism in Cuba -- one tiny country, certainly smaller than Argentina, economically & geographically -- even now looks better than capitalism in other Caribbean, Central American, & Latin American nations (to say nothing of Africa, the Middle East, and much of Asia). What Cuba can do, surely Argentina & Venezuela, for instance, can do better, with their greater size, better endowment of natural resources, and so on. If you get three socialist nations in the Americas in cooperation with one another, for example, that will be a pretty good beginning.
"Nations/States" are important mainly because they are still units of democracy, self-government, & popular sovereignty. Above and below the level of "Nations/States" -- above at the level of WB, IMF, WTO, the UN Security Council, etc., below at the level of families, clans, tribes, etc. -- democracy, etc. go out of the window. "Nations/States" are also important units, because if you don't have hands on the politico-economic levers of your own nation, you have very little to offer those in other nations to whom you wish to extend solidarity (out of power, the only thing American socialists may be reasonably expected to do for peoples in other nations -- aside from symbolic gestures of solidarity -- is to stay the hands of U.S. imperialists as much as possible, so as to give others a breathing space). If it looks to Hardt, Negri, & the like that we live in a "post-national" era, that is only because everywhere people are so beaten by the power elite that they have even less democratic control over capital and states. These political losses, however, are not irreversible, pace _Empire_. -- Yoshie
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