Somebody: This is the crucial point. Capitalist reforms tend to be self-reinforcing past a certain point. Modest NEP type reforms can be curtailed, as they were in Cuba following the early 90's (and in the Soviet Union itself, of course). But, the type of robust market reforms now being initiated in Cuba are, based upon extensive historical precedent, essentially irreversible.
Ironically, the falsification of Marxism as a mode of production also confirms it's class-struggle perspective - once a new bourgeoisie is established, it won't surrender it's control without an entirely new revolution. Which of course, contrary to Trotsky, won't happen. The workers aren't going to resurrect the ancien régime once it's own founding fathers have abandoned it.
I know Carrol seems to think ideology and a belief in socialism as a viable economic alternative doesn't really matter, but historical experience seems to suggest otherwise. Was it a coincidence that the *only* region of the world to have a resurgence of the left in the first decade of the 21st century was also the homeland of an enduring Cuban revolution? Of course not. There would be no Bolivarian left if Fidel had cried uncle in 1992 and joined the rest of the international old guard in embracing capitalism. It doesn't take a clairvoyant to predict what's likely to happen to the Latin American left in the coming years.