On Saturday I went to Socialist Resistance's Latin America dayschool, which had sessions focusing in particular on Bolivia, Venezuela and Cuba. While there was open discussion where members from other groups could say what they thought - all too rare for many left "schools" - I felt that key questions about the character of these governments were ignored, and it had little focus on independent, working class politics.

For example, there was constant reference to an ongoing "Cuban Revolution". Cuban Trotskyist Celia Hart spoke of how dissident groups were all on the extreme right - leftists were engaged "inside the Revolution". She admitted that there were no independent workers' organizations or indeed strikes in Cuba - but her attitude seemed to be that there wasn't really much that could be done about that. I thought she was letting the régime off the hook - labour activists are and have been imprisoned, and I can't see how you can meaningfully work "within" the Communist Party for change. Given a lack of free speech within the party, it's hard to see where the force for change is meant to come from - the fact that she described political and economic 'reforms' in Cuba almost wholly from the perspective of how they were affected by international events gave no answers.

While many of the people there thought that there was a need for a "political revolution" in Cuba - those who think bureaucratically controlled nationalized property is necessarily what we must "defend" - there is also strong identification with the figures of Fidel Castro and Che Guevara. It was hardly as if Castro was labelled as a traitor who was oppressing the working class - more, that reforms were needed in Cuba, the Revolution "continued". Indeed, there was much talk of healthcare and educational achievements in Cuba, "gains of the revolution". But these do not excuse or make up for bureaucratic repression - it is hardly as if the working class cannot make these gains independent of Stalinist 'benevolent despots', nor that the régime is only forced into taking undemocratic measures by international pressure. A socialist Cuba will come through a further revolution - the one-party state overthrown, bureaucratic-controlled planning structures smashed - not by working in the CP to reform what exists now.

Similarly for Hugo Chávez - Socialist Resistance's Liam MacUaid said that the IBT were wrong to describe him as a "bourgeois Bonapartist" when he had done so much to introduce free healthcare in the barrios. But the fact that he makes radical reforms, many of them in confrontation with the bourgeoisie, does not mean that he is not a bourgeois leader. The fact that he has preserved the bourgeois state structures, has not mounted expropriations of any functioning businesses, and is funded by some banking interests, shows that he is no revolutionary. His talk of "socialism" is hollow, since he is not challenging the basic structures of capitalism. Co-ownership by the bourgeois state and workers is not the same as workers' control - and only bankrupt factories have been nationalised.

Most people thought that an independent workers' party was needed - but also that we should support Chávez in elections, in case the Right got in! This is nothing but lesser evilism. Again, I do not see what "working within the Bolivarian Revolution" can actually mean, since it is hardly as if you can set up a faction within the MVR and ask Chávez nicely to overthrow the state.

There was talk of a "revolutionary process" which is ongoing - but how can it be pushed forward, by whom and with what conclusion? A Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire member on the panel said that the revolution needed to be deepened in the consciousness of the masses - but in what kind of revolution is the aim merely for the president of a bourgeois state to entrench his power? Expropriations, independent workers' control of industry and overthrowing oligarchic-bureaucratic state structures are simply not happening under Chávez's leadership.

Michael Lowy, another LCR member, claimed that Morales' MAS party was a coalition of the social-movements - when Bolivia Solidarity Campaign members said that this was not true, there was no answer. It is assumed that Morales fits into the impression that there are "revolutionary processes" going on where reform after reform will create a socialist society - with the co-operation of mass movements with the state. In a few recent struggles he has been in direct confrontation with 'the masses' - but this doesn't fit into their pattern, so is ignored. If you only talk of solidarity with gains already made by "processes", and preventing their reversal by imperialism, it is impossible to deal with the fact that Marxists here must support workers' organizations fighting against even a "radical" bourgeois president.

While the masses in Bolivia and Venezuela undoubtedly have a lot of faith in their presidents, this does not mean that independent working-class parties are not the main weapon by which a revolution can be built. However well-intentioned, bourgeois radicals will simply never overthrow the capitalist system - this has to be done by workers, from below. In the case of Cuba this is most evidently the case - Castro's CP is a viciously anti-working class régime - and socialism will never be built in Cuba before the workers overthrow the bureaucracy.