Thirteen August 2026 marked the hundredth anniversary of the birth of Fidel Castro Ruz the leader of the Cuban Revolution. Until his death in 2016 Fidel was an unparalleled guide of the Cuban people in their struggle to build a socialist future.

This anniversary finds Cuba at the most challenging point in its revolutionary history. The decades-long economic blockade by US imperialism has been escalated to a genocidal level by the Trump Whitehouse in its attempt to rebuild US despotism over the Western hemisphere. As a result, the Cuban people are facing chronic blackouts, vital services grinding to a halt and a growing lack of the necessaries of life. Their revolutionary project, brought to power under Fidel’s leadership in 1959, has been forced to adapt yet again in the face of the onslaught of US imperialism, proving its continuing vitality.

This anniversary must be more than an opportunity to reflect on the revolutionary legacy of Fidel Castro and his contributions to Marxism (vital though this is). Socialists, revolutionaries, humanists, all people wishing for a better future, must deepen their solidarity with the Cuban people and affirm their commitment to organise in Cuba’s defence against the barbarism being unleashed by US imperialism. Yet it is also from Fidel himself that we can draw key lessons for how to carry out this work of resistance against imperialism.

Material aid is undeniably critical for Cuba in this moment. One of the most devastating elements of the recent escalation of the blockade has been the near total prevention of oil imports—except for just one Russian tanker this year—which has sparked crises in all spheres of Cuban life. However, the installation of solar panels imported from China is gradually relieving some of the burden on Cuba’s electricity system. Thus, we can say, the measure by which Cuba transitions to renewable energy is the measure by which it overcomes the US energy blockade. For those with the means to donate this is a crucial front in which to aid Cuba’s defence.

However, as Fidel emphasised, there is another critical front in the fight against imperialism: the battle of ideas. In a speech to the conference of the Latin America Solidarity Organisation in 1967 Fidel said;

The statement that Cuba wants to set itself up as an arbiter, a head, a leader is more than ridiculous. I am going to tell you what we really think. There is no reason why there should be leading people and much less leading men! It is leading ideas that are needed! (APPLAUSE) And revolutionary ideas will be the sole, true guide of our peoples. We fight for our ideas! ¹

As important as establishing the hegemony of socialist ideas is, Fidel’s speech also helps us to clarify the relation between revolutionary ideas and revolutionary action against those who, seeing things one-sidedly, would put off action for a strategy of “cultural hegemony” or a retreat into idealism;

We believe that revolutionary ideas must prevail. If revolutionary ideas should be defeated, the Revolution in Latin America would be lost or would be delayed indefinitely. Ideas can hasten a process—or they can delay it considerably.

We believe that the triumph of revolutionary ideas among the masses—not the masses in their entirety, but a sufficiently broad part of them—is an absolute requisite.

This does not mean that action must wait for the triumph of ideas, and this is one of the essential points of the matter. There are those who believe that it is necessary for ideas to triumph among the masses before initiating action, and there are others who understand that action is one of the most efficient instruments for bringing about the triumph of ideas among the masses.

Whoever hesitates while waiting for ideas to triumph among the greater part of the masses before initiating revolutionary action will never be a revolutionary.²

It is exactly this revolutionary action that the Cuban people have taken, in daring to struggle for and build towards a socialist future, that has proved the greatest threat to the hegemony of US imperialism. But it is not the social achievements themselves that threaten the interests of US monopoly capitalism. That the Cuban people nationalised land and industry on their island, using it to eradicate illiteracy and build robust public education and healthcare systems, although clearly damaging to those US capitalists who lost their “investments,” had a negligible impact on the profits of the class as a whole. Far less has Cuba posed a military or terrorist threat to the US. Rather, the history of US-Cuban relations over the last six decades has been one of US military occupation and US-backed terrorist attacks on Cuba.³ Rather, the threat posed is that of a good example, the effect Cuba’s actions have in spreading socialist ideas to the masses in Latin America. And this is why US imperialists have for decades been intent on suffocating Cuba’s socialist project under the weight of their economic and military might.

If the logic of US imperialism is to stifle the ideas born of the Cuban revolution (and the Marxist ideas they made their own) then we must resist imperialism by amplifying these ideas. And more than this, we socialists must demonstrate how the lessons of the Cuban revolution can be adapted to our own contexts and how they can guide our own struggles for a socialist future. What Fidel said of Che is as true for his own legacy;

It’s not strange if one feels Che’s presence not only in everyday life, but even in dreams if one imagines that he is alive, that Che is in action and that he never died. In the end we must reach the conclusion that for all intents and purposes in the life of our revolution, Che never died, and in the light of what has been done, he is more alive than ever, has more influence than ever, and is a more powerful opponent of imperialism than ever. Those who disposed of his body so that he would not become a symbol; those who, under the guidance of the methods of their imperial masters, did not want any trace to remain, have discovered that although his tomb is unmarked, there are no remains, and there is no body, nevertheless a frightening opponent of imperialism, a symbol, a force, a presence that can never be destroyed, does exist.

When they hid Che’s body, they showed their weakness and their cowardice, because they also showed their fear of the example and the symbol. They did not want the exploited peasants, the workers, the students, the intellectuals, the democrats, the progressives or the patriots of this hemisphere to have a place to go to pay tribute to Che’s remains. And in the world today, in which there is no specific place to go to pay tribute to Che’s remains, tribute is paid everywhere.⁴

So too with Fidel, ten years after his death, he is more alive than ever; in the millions of Cubans who carry forward their socialist project, in the peoples of Southern Africa who today live free from the yoke of colonialism and apartheid, in the global mass movement which opposes itself to the apartheid inflicted upon the Palestinian people and in the tens of millions of people in every continent who take inspiration from the tenacity and achievements of the Cuban revolution. Fidel is everywhere people struggle for a better, more human future. Everywhere imperialism is confronted by ordinary people. Everywhere people refuse to bow in the face of oppression and oligarchy, and in their words and deeds assert Venceremos! [we will overcome].

1. https://www.marxists.org/history/cuba/archive/castro/1967/08/10.htm ↩︎
2. https://www.marxists.org/history/cuba/archive/castro/1967/08/10.htm ↩︎
3. In fact, the US first invaded Cuba in 1898 during the Spanish-American war preventing a true Cuban independence and placing the newly founded republic under neo-colonial tutelage. US marines were sent to Cuba several times in the first decades of the twentieth century to maintain the control of the US and its Cuban puppets. ↩︎
4. https://www.marxists.org/history/cuba/archive/castro/1987/10/08.htm ↩︎