“The revolution is not an apple that falls when it is ripe. You have to make it fall.” ~ Che Guevara

It’s hard to imagine Cuba today without the revolutionary upheavals of its history. From being a slave-owning colony ruled by Spain, Cuba has been shaped by rebellion.

Since the Cuban Revolution in 1959, led by Fidel Castro and his comrades, the country has struggled to establish a socialist society. It has not been an easy path, but it is one in which Cuba continues to defy expectations.

Socialist Transformation

Cuba’s socialist experiment has undergone several transformations over the years. In the early stages of the revolution from 1959-62, the government nationalised major industries, redistributed land, and implemented agrarian reforms.

Cuba faced major structural problems. It only exported raw materials, while all its manufactured goods were imported. By 1960, the US ceased importing sugar from Cuba, and its economy was in a critical situation and forced to rely heavily on aid from the Soviet Union.

Cuba needed to chart its own path and break free of the global capitalist system. The revolution would be transformative.

Guevara envisioned the creation of a “New Man” – a selfless, dedicated, and morally upright individual who would serve the collective interests of society rather than pursuing personal gain. The new government was also organising workers on a mass scale. As Fidel Castro remarked years later:

“Che was radically opposed to using and developing capitalist economic laws and categories in building socialism. He advocated something that I have often insisted on: Building socialism and communism is not just a matter of producing and distributing wealth but is also a matter of education and consciousness.”

Che believed the Soviet Union had abandoned building socialism and had instead constructed a hybrid system that contained the kernels of its own destruction. 

Cuba developed its own unique economic forms of planning. Che, who had become the finance minister, developed what is considered an original contribution to Marxist theory – the Budgetary Finance System. He theorised that it was both possible and necessary to raise consciousness and productivity simultaneously.

Its key features included the decentralisation of economic decision-making, with enterprises granted certain financial autonomy. There were mechanisms of profit sharing that served as inducements to raise productivity.

Non-monetary incentives were designed to instil a sense of purpose in the labour process. There was also an accounting of labour to measure individual workers’ productivity and allocate resources accordingly, which was ultimately decided according to social needs.

The Great Debate

Some of the other government ministers criticised Che Guevara’s audacity to question the orthodoxy of the Soviet model, which at that time appeared to be tried and tested. This resulted in Cuba having two competing economic management systems and led to what was known as the ‘Great Debate’ – with Guevara on the one side and the head of the National Institute of Agrarian Reform (INRA), Carlos Rafael Rodriguez, on the other.

This is more than just a footnote in history. The debate established a tradition of open public, passionate and fraternal discussion involving the mass of the population to reach a national consensus.

Intertwined with control of industrial production was the land redistribution system, which was part of a revolutionary offensive against the large landowners. In 1968, this culminated in expropriations of the agricultural and private sectors, with over 58,000 businesses nationalised within one month.

US Sabotage

Spurred on by imperialist aggression, the revolution went right to the core of society. All Cuban property forms were overturned. Why such a drastic measure in 1968? Did hairdressers and shopkeepers need to come under government control?

We must remember Cuba was under direct threat of military invasion, and although the former ruling class was defeated, it was still powerful with a solid base in Miami – their social base in Cuba was small private enterprises.

Every sector of the economy was under threat of sabotage. Kennedy had approved $50m of funding to destabilise Cuba following the Bay of Pigs invasion launched by Cuban exiles from Miami in 1961. It was the biggest covert operation the CIA had ever embarked on.

Gray Lynch, former CIA agent, admitted openly to setting up commando groups to destroy oil depots, bomb warehouses, hotels, bridges, and power plants, derail trains and set fire to sugar cane fields and the main sugar mills. Teenage volunteers in the literacy brigades were tortured and murdered.

Fabian Escalante, a former general with Cuban intelligence, estimated that between January and July 1962, Cuba suffered from 6000 acts of sabotage. These wreaked havoc on the economy – not a single sector was spared. Cuba had to assume a form of war-communism, not too dissimilar to what existed in the Soviet Union.

This meant a more centralised control than what the revolutionaries intended. The government, under Castro’s leadership, took complete control of the economy. This involved nationalizing industry, banks, and transportation systems and placing them under state management.

This gave the government the power to strengthen the fledgling worker’s state – it meant the revolution would survive.

By then, Cuba’s economy had undergone significant changes and had overcome many challenges and had also established close economic ties with the Soviet Union which provided economic aid, including financial assistance, technical expertise, and favourable trade agreements.

This support helped stabilise Cuba’s economy and mitigate some of the negative effects of the blockade. The government’s emphasis on collectivisation, industrialisation, and social programs had brought about significant changes, but the economy still faced structural problems and dependence on external support. Guevara later wrote to Castro,

“Our entire economy lacked the concept of foreign trade as its cornerstone, and in the absence of this concept came all the rest…The most important thing (almost a cry to you) is to ‘globalize’, in the good sense of the word, our aspirations.

I say this with all my conviction (regardless of what it is worth); if we dedicate ourselves to agriculture and the agricultural industry only, we are liquidated.

You have to invest in industry; within it, you have to take the most modern industry; you have to have a sufficiently solid mechanical base, with at least an elementary metallurgical base. We have to automate; the only way to compete. You have to deal with the worrying problem of preventative maintenance.”

Che was deeply concerned with the revolution’s most difficult and technical challenges. He recognised that for any socialist revolution to survive, it needed a strong technological and industrial base with a highly educated workforce. He also knew that Cuba could not rely on a single crop for its prosperity, even with the Soviet Union’s help.

He was far-sighted because, in the mid-1980s, the price of sugar collapsed to historically low levels. The Great Sugar Crisis of 1985-86 devastated all the Caribbean sugar-producing countries tied to the capitalist world market.

Involvement of Workers

Fidel Castro later reflected that Cuba’s failure to analyse and understand either the Auto-Financing System or Budgetary Finance system led to the “less than correct” decision to adopt Soviet practices:

“When it might have seemed as though we were drawing nearer to communist forms of production and distribution, we were actually pulling away from correct methods for the previous construction of socialism.”

Despite the difficulties, one fact remains incontrovertible – life was immeasurably better for the workers and campesinos after the revolution, who enjoyed a substantial increase in living standards.

These difficult formative years were important for Cuba – they laid a bedrock of socialist consciousness. It’s important to remember that the consolidation of a socialist economy was hastened by threats of US invasion – amply demonstrated by the Bay of Pigs invasion. A popular mobilisation of militias thwarted the invasion.

This led to the formation of revolutionary organisations that ensured that Cuba’s revolution has survived. This ferment and groundswell of organisation guarantees the reproduction of revolutionary consciousness.

The Committees in Defence of the Revolution (CDRs) were established in 1960 to mobilise the population for social and political tasks. The Federation of Cuban Women (FMC) was also formed in 1960 and the Union of Young Communists (UJC) in 1962.

In this period, the united revolutionary movement that had taken power in 1959 – the 26th of July Movement – developed along Marxist-Leninist lines, becoming the Communist Party of Cuba in October 1965 and helping to cohere and consolidate the direction of the revolution.

As part of Che’s initiatives, the Cuban revolutionaries established Workers Councils in 1965. They were an integral part of the nationalisation efforts. However, the effectiveness of these organisations is still a subject of debate today.

They often deteriorated through workplace conflicts, which the unions affiliated with the Worker’s Central Union (CTC) confederation were better placed to resolve.

Cuba’s efforts at worker control were stunted. In the end, for whatever their merits, neither Rodriguez’s Auto-financing system nor Guevara’s Budgetary Finance System were retained. Che reflected in 1965:

“How to involve the workers? is a question I have not been able to answer. I consider this as my greatest obstacle or my greatest failure, and it is one of the things to think about because it also involves the problem of the Party and the State, of the relations between the Party and the State.”

Democracy and Economic Planning

By the 1970s, workers were increasingly drawn into economic planning, and there was a rise in participation in the mass organisations, including the trade unions.

Adopting Soviet planning methods, Cuba was able to become a member of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA) – formalising the international trade and exchange between it and the Soviet bloc.

Cuba’s relationship with the Soviet Union meant it retained its independence, but it had to experiment with forms of democracy that built the institutions it has today. In that regard, it found its own way.

Cuba’s popular assemblies – its organs of power – are a delegated structure. These go beyond elections. Cubans participate in mass organisations that make and carry out policy, and these are at a neighbourhood level. Of course, its national discussions are also held in workplaces.

Candidates to the Municipal Assembly are nominated at public meetings by neighbourhood committees, student unions, farmers’ organisations, and trade unions. The Municipal Assembly decides which candidates will become deputies to the National Assembly of People’s Power and which will become delegates to the Provincial Assembly.

This delegated structure makes decisions on policies, economic plans, and changes to the constitution.

Economic Reforms

Over a period of many years, the measures introduced by the revolution eliminated many social inequalities and empowered the working class. However, as time passed, Cuba recognised the need for economic reforms to address certain inefficiencies within its centrally planned economy and, after 1991, deal with the crisis brought about by the collapse of the Soviet Union.

In the 1990s, Cuba introduced limited market-oriented reforms, allowing for the establishment of small businesses and certain foreign investments in joint ventures with the Cuban state. These changes sought to stimulate economic growth and improve the living standards of its citizens while preserving the core principles of socialism.

There are three main defining moments in Cuba’s recent economic history:

1. The 1959 revolution.

2. The adoption in 1975 of centrally planned management (allowing it to monitor and control its budgets) with organs of people’s power.

3. The reform process that began in 1990 – the current period is a continuation of that process.

Unresolved external shocks spurred the need for Cuba to prepare for and adapt to crises. Since 1990, the main changes have been:

• Opening to foreign investment.
• Expansion of self-employment in selected activities.
• Creation of basic units of cooperative production and agricultural markets.

Economic reform is not new to Cuba – there has not been a wholesale embrace of free-market reforms but measured changes to raise productivity and promote economic growth. For example, in 1980, private farmers markets were established with unregulated prices and in 1982, foreign direct investment was legalised.

One of the major changes is the usufruct distribution of 2 million hectares of state land to private farmers. Hundreds of thousands of workers have been transferred from state employment into cooperatives and self-employment.

Self-employment has provided some Cubans with opportunities to earn income beyond what they can make in state-controlled industries, and it has contributed to the diversification of the Cuban economy. However, it’s important to note that self-employment in Cuba remains tightly regulated by the government, and there are limitations on the size and scope of these businesses. Cubans are also allowed to sell their cars and real estate on an open domestic market.

These are not neo-liberal reforms. In 1980, Castro was already publicly warning the Cuban people about the spread of “bad habits”. The reforms aimed to limit the rot from bureaucratisation and the spread of the black market.

Economic Challenges

The Cuban leadership is posed with a difficult challenge: how does the government obtain the financial and other resources it needs to invest in social welfare and develop the economy while retaining its sovereignty? It has no choice but to reinsert itself into the world’s economy. How does it do this without relinquishing socialism?

A program has been carried out that combines tax cuts, wage anchoring, importer adjustment, and dollarisation of the economy. The opening brought about by these measures allowed the gradual recovery of economic growth and a certain expansion of the market, not only due to the boost given to the self-employed sector, the opening to foreign capital and foreign commercial companies but also due to the flexibility granted to state-owned companies that operated in foreign currency.

A difficulty Cuba faces is the growing emigration of qualified personnel, which has increased in the last three years and has an undeniable negative effect on the capacity of Cuba to produce the goods it needs.

According to Vilma Hidalgo, the Vice Rector of Research at the University of Havana, Cuba will need a substantial improvement in the design of public policies, an improvement in the quality of institutions and policy coordination, mainly because of the circumstances in which the country has developed have changed substantially.

Despite challenges, Cuba’s economic planning has many advantages. As Ernest Mandel noted in 1986, the main strength of economic planning is the ability to correct mistakes via trial and error, allowing decisions to be made directly according to what is needed rather than what is saleable.

The Battle of Ideas from 2000, the Energy Revolution from 2005, the acceleration of Cuban medical internationalism and the development of Cuba’s biotechnology sector are testament to that. So is the period of ‘Rectification’ in the late 1980s, Cuba’s survival of the ‘Special Period’ – the economic crisis of the 1990s – and the reforms carried out under Raul Castro’s mandate from 2008.

Today, there are debates over economic efficiency and social justice that I am sure will continue to affirm the socialist character of Cuba’s revolution. If we look at the debates throughout Cuba’s history, the government has always sought to strengthen socialist consciousness whilst tackling material deprivation.

Challenges and the Path Ahead

On 26 July 1989, 18 months before the Soviet Union collapsed and four months prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall, Fidel Castro declared that the Cuban revolution would endure even if the Soviet Union were to disintegrate.

The subsequent collapse of the Soviet bloc obliterated 86% of Cuba’s trade and investment. Today, the revolution has existed for longer without the help of the Soviet Union than with it.

While Cuba has achieved notable advancements in various aspects of its socialist experiment, challenges remain. The country still faces economic hardships due to the ongoing embargo and the need for further reforms to address inefficiencies.

There is also a growing generational divide, with younger Cubans expressing desires for greater economic opportunities and individual freedoms. Balancing the preservation of socialist principles with the need to adapt to changing circumstances poses a delicate challenge for the Cuban government.

The Cuban revolution remains the highest point of revolutionary development attained in the Western Hemisphere. This article has barely touched on its achievements, particularly with respect to its internationalism, which is second to none. Neither has it mentioned the strength of the Cuban Communist Party and its links with the masses of Cuban people.

Both accomplishments and setbacks have marked the struggle for socialism in Cuba. Despite the economic embargo and internal challenges, Cuba has made commendable progress in education, healthcare, social equality, and human development.

For as long as US imperialism remains dominant, Cuba will continue to be under siege. However, Cuba’s commitments to social justice are integral to its revolutionary project and with solidarity, it is sure to prevail.