On Friday, June 19, the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) introduced a slew of market reforms that would bring about the most significant changes to the Cuban economy since the Cuban Revolution, paving the way for the further restoration of capitalism on the island.
The main measures include the adoption of private banking, lifting the cap on how many companies private individuals can own, giving private companies control over how many workers they hire and at what wages, eliminating the government’s monopoly on foreign trade, repaying external debt by selling national assets, and expanding the private sector’s reach. State-owned properties and real estate can now be sold to both domestic and foreign companies and individuals, while subsidies for important goods will be taken away from most Cubans and means-tested for the most vulnerable.
These policies roll back many of the economic gains of the Cuban Revolution. Getting rid of the monopolies on foreign trade and banking in particular signal major concessions to international finance capital and allow for foreign investment to exert greater sway in the Cuban economy. While the Cuban government is desperately seeking foreign investment in the island, many of these measures are not guaranteed to work without approval from the U.S. government, which has imposed devastating sanctions.
Those sanctions, including a total oil blockade of Cuba since the beginning of this year, have created a deeply unstable situation where millions of Cubans do not have access to proper medical and energy infrastructure. The lack of oil has led to nationwide blackouts while preventing hospitals from running properly or carrying out non-emergency procedures. Food distribution, refrigeration, and transportation remain at risk and the economy has become almost paralyzed.
The goal of U.S. imperialism could not be more clear: the restoration of capitalism, the destruction of socialism, and regime change in Cuba.
For socialists, it’s crucial to understand that these reforms are a major retreat for the socialist movement, and represent dangerous concessions to President Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio. While some supporters of the Cuban bureaucracy justify these moves as “a defense of socialism” allowing for the government to “develop the productive forces” in the model of the Chinese Communist Party, in reality they are neither positive for the working class nor were they unavoidable in the face of decades of opposition from the U.S. empire.
A Long-Standing Trend of Privatization
President Miguel Díaz-Canel, when unveiling these measures to the National Assembly, denied that they were a response to U.S. economic pressure. There is a grain of truth to this, as the Cuban bureaucracy has been slowly introducing privatization measures for years. When Raúl Castro took over the Cuban government after his brother Fidel, he drastically scaled back the state’s role in the economy while expanding the private sector, eventually facilitating the creation of Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs) in 2011.
Similarly, the 2021 Tarea Ordenamiento reforms aimed to stimulate the private sector, particularly restaurants and hotels, which consume products and generate revenue within the tourism industry but don’t create value for the Cuban working class. At the same time, the government has taken an increasingly repressive turn in the face of growing protests against its mismanagement of the economy and failure to provide essential services to ordinary Cubans. Some leftist sectors — such as the “campists” — insist that any critiques of the Cuban bureaucracy are “CIA funded.” However, contradictions flowing from the leadership of the Cuban revolution have intensified.
It’s particularly important to examine these measures in the context of Cuban foreign policy in the decades since the Cuban revolution. Cuba under Castro was closely aligned with the Stalinist government of the USSR, whose effective policy was to subordinate opportunities for revolutionary upheaval across the world to the interests of the bureaucracy which enjoyed privileges over the workers in Russia. The current isolation of the Cuban planned economy didn’t emerge under a vacuum, but after successive failures to expand the revolution.
Throughout the 1960s and 70s, Cuba had multiple opportunities to take advantage of major revolutionary upheavals in Latin America and strengthen international socialism, including the 1965 popular uprising in the Dominican Republic and the 1969 “Cordobazo” movement in Argentina against the dictatorship. After the 1979 Sandinista revolution was won in Nicaragua, Castro proclaimed that “Nicaragua would not become another Cuba.” In all of these episodes, Fidel Castro and the Cuban government either instructed these movements not to go so far as to expropriate the bourgeoisie, or advised misplaced strategies through stagism (more on this later) and reformism, leading to the defeats of those uprisings and further isolation of Cuban socialism.
What the “Pro-China” Left Gets Wrong
Defenders of the Cuban bureaucracy claim that these measures are not a setback, but in fact an affirmation that Cuba will “survive” the imperialist blockade by developing productive forces on the island while the economic system remains in control of the government. Despite claims that these reforms will be carried out with the PCC “maintaining control” over capital, they will not create more wealth in Cuba, only render Cubans subservient to foreign capital.
With privatization and the reintroduction of the profit motive, companies that operate in Cuba will need to lower wages, fire workers, and seek greater shares of their respective markets in order to be competitive. These dynamics will enrich a small minority of people while leading to greater exploitation of the vast majority of Cuban workers. If the private sector is allowed to grow and expand its influence, it will compel the state to take its side in struggles against the workers; even worse, many members of the existing Cuban bureaucracy can take advantage of the conversion of state enterprises into share companies to become major capitalists themselves.
Debates on this subject in the international Left are eerily similar to ones waged throughout the 20th century, and much of the justification for privatization in Cuba relies on stagist conceptions of history where oppressed and historically poor countries need to go through a capitalist stage of development on the road to “real socialism” down the line. This strategy subordinates the goal of international revolution to a Stalinist conception of “socialism in one country”: the idea that socialism can be built in a single country despite being surrounded by capitalist ones. In doing so, it rejects class struggle as the motor of history in favor of national geopolitics, conflating the leadership of a bureaucratized Cuba for the working class responsible for the gains of the revolution.
This is why we characterize many of these arguments as “campist.” Under this strategic view, the best possible outcome the working class could hope for is a “multipolar” world where the United States’ power is contested by the capitalist governments of other countries, who are considered the “lesser evil.” The question we should instead be asking ourselves is: what strategy is necessary to preserve and expand the social gains the Cuban people won from the revolution? What will it take to help Cuban workers retake control over their material conditions and win in the face of a decaying empire?
Problems Despite the Reforms
The proposed reforms have been introduced and approved in the National Assembly without any room for popular debate or input from the working class. The Cuban bureaucracy, in order to maintain power in the face of social chaos, is turning towards capitalist restoration and relying on “multipolarity” rather than pursuing a strategy of international revolution, as Lenin did even during the days of the New Economic Policy, which allowed limited market measures in the aftermath of the Russian Civil War but preserved state control of heavy industry and banks. They are also relying on coercion and repressing a growing sector of critical Left Cubans, who oppose these reforms and call for an anti-imperialist united front across borders.
Even if the measures are implemented, alongside an additional offer by Raul Castro’s grandson that Cuban-Americans be “compensated” for the expropriations from the Cuban revolution, the United States is not lifting any sanctions and is in fact demanding even more privatization and political change. Trump and Rubio are relentless in their determination to make an example of and crush the Cuban revolution completely, and trying to appease them through market reforms is a failing strategy. A major lesson from the struggles of the 20th century is that imperialists cannot be trusted with deals or collaboration, and will take every chance they get to undermine and destroy revolutions.
Supporters of the liberalization measures think Cuba could prosper in a similar way to China or Vietnam. But Cuba lacks the vast reserves of cheap labor that made these countries attractive for foreign capital, and Vietnam today is a willing partner to U.S. capitalism. With these measures, Cuba is much more likely to become a neo-colony of U.S. multinational capital, closer to Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, or Haiti.
This process is unfolding already in Venezuela, where Trump’s military adventurism and Delcy Rodriguez’s rise to power have turned the country into a U.S. protectorate upholding the embargo. Those countries operate on markets beholden to the United States, whether through energy crises, mass violence, or lack of resources in the face of natural disasters. The notion that Cuba can remain a workers’ state, maintaining the gains of the revolution while permitting the development of private markets is not only wrong, it goes against the socialist goal of planned economies under workers’ control, which Lenin and the Bolsheviks advocated for from the beginning.
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The Alternative Is Workers‘ Control
Cuba’s current economic conditions are complex, dire, and not solvable overnight. However, despite the insistence by the bureaucracy and its Stalinist supporters abroad, there is a political alternative to this crisis. The planned economy, arguably the greatest achievement of the Cuban revolution, can be strengthened by allowing for greater workers’ control over production. Unlike privatization which produces goods under a profit motive, a planned economy has the main goal of improving the lives of ordinary and working people.
As Liu Mok León, Cuban economist and researcher, illustrates, the central question is: “Who will control the country’s resources, and who will benefit from the wealth they generate?” Rather than turning state-owned businesses into corporations controlled by capital, those businesses should be managed democratically by their workers. Every worker could have a say in the company’s leadership, investment plans, production priorities, and profit distribution.
These types of changes could be vital in areas like banking and energy. The Cuban government could create a national network of cooperative banks, municipal development funds, and locally managed credit associations — entities aimed at prioritizing the productive capacities in different regions. Large centralized investments in energy could be turned into local energy cooperatives to manage community solar systems, reducing the energy dependence on imports. Mok explains:
Ultimately, the discussion is not just about companies, banks, or market mechanisms. It is about power. Every economic reform redistributes power. The question Cuba will have to answer in the coming years is simple: Will the crisis be overcome by expanding the decision-making power of those who produce the country’s wealth, or by gradually transferring that power to those who have the resources to buy it? The answer will determine not only the course of the economy, but also the nature of Cuba’s social project in the coming decades.
Defend the Revolution Against Imperialist Aggression
The central task of socialists in the United States is to defend the Cuban revolution against imperialist aggression, including the oil blockade imposed by Trump and the decades-long embargo sustained by both major political parties. Our efforts must be redoubled in light of increasing sanctions, Trump’s threat to arrest Raul Castro on bogus charges, and even potential military aggression as we saw in Venezuela. The Cuban revolution succeeded in expropriating the parasitic ruling class, and, although deformed, created a workers’ state qualitatively different from the results of other revolutions in Latin America. That history is proof that even a small island with limited resources can create a society where the needs of the majority are prioritized over profit.
Most of the blame for Cuba’s current crisis lies squarely with U.S. capitalists, bipartisan political leadership, and bloodthirsty Cuban-American expats who want nothing less than a full political overthrow of the island and for the Cuban working class to go back to being their servants. They are willing to create such devastating conditions that malnutrition and homelessness become features of the Cuban economy after decades of having been eradicated; rolling blackouts that have led to hospital deaths; and an overall lack of access to resources that are basic human rights. However, we must also criticize the leadership of the Cuban government, as the country’s Critical Left has done, for choosing to pursue a problematic strategic path for decades, one that has allowed the unraveling of major gains and which denies democratic decision-making from ordinary Cubans.
Ultimately, the anti-imperialist struggle against Trump and the United States government can only succeed through a strategic emphasis on class struggle and internationalism. Despite the capitulation of union leaders, the recent uprising in Bolivia demonstrates an organic crisis playing out in Latin America, where capitalism is coming up against hard limits that liberal governments are unable to resolve. Campaigns by workers in Brazil and Mexico have exposed how their “progressive” governments kowtow to the Trump administration under the threat of tariffs, demonstrating resolve and international solidarity with the Cuba. These actions alone won’t be able to preserve the gains of the revolution, but they are fundamentally necessary to break the isolation and deepen regional class struggle in the pursuit of liberation from the capitalist threat in the north.
Even when Lenin and the Bolsheviks were in the throes of defending the Russian Revolution from the imperialist White Army, facing massive economic hardship as a result, they did not separate the tasks of the revolution from the fight to construct a revolutionary international. A major weakness of the bureaucracy in Cuba has been the refusal to build an international socialist movement, which is the major social force capable of pushing back U.S. imperialism and saving Cuba from capitalist restoration. This requires both a doubling down of an anti-imperialist movement against Trump here in the United States, and a political revolution in Cuba to replace the ruling bureaucracy with genuine workers’ control that can call for that movement through the construction of a real revolutionary international.
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