9. The future of the Cuban Revolution¶
Core Argument¶
The survival of the Cuban Revolution is not assured. As Fidel Castro warned in November 2005, the revolution could self-destruct from internal corruption, inequality, and bureaucracy, just as the USSR did. The collapse of the Soviet bloc and the ensuing Special Period created a layer of pro-capitalist elements, including corrupt bureaucrats and a new rich, while deepening material inequalities. Castro condemned Stalinist crimes and insisted that bureaucracy cannot be reformed from within; only control from below, by the organised working class, can safeguard the revolution. Foreign Minister Felipe Pérez Roque echoed this, arguing that the revolution depends on popular support rooted in ideas and convictions, not material consumption, and warned that a new Cuban bourgeoisie would be pro-Yankee and require repression.
The text sharply attacks Heinz Dieterich’s idealist and mystifying language, contrasting it with Castro’s clarity. Dieterich’s proposals—such as “cognitive cybernetics” and “Socialism of the XXI Century”—are dismissed as vacuous or dangerous. His call for a “mixed economy” is exposed as a veiled apology for capitalism: rather than the socialist mixed economy where the state holds the commanding heights, Dieterich’s version would leave oligarchic power intact and confine socialist elements to small cooperatives. This, the text argues, would be catastrophic for Cuba, given its proximity to US imperialism. Lenin’s warnings at the Eleventh Congress about the state machine not obeying the driver and the danger of capitalist restoration are cited as prescient.
The real danger to Cuban socialism is not military intervention but economic penetration. A more intelligent US ruling class would abandon the blockade and encourage trade to undermine the nationalised economy, but US imperialists remain blinded by hate. Isolation creates chronic shortages in transport, housing, and food, while unequal access to foreign currency worsens inequality. Trotsky’s programme for an isolated workers’ state is invoked: building a self-sufficient socialist society is impossible in Cuba or Venezuela; success depends on extending revolution across Latin America to create a socialist federation with high technology and living standards.
The central dilemma is maintaining the nationalised planned economy while raising living standards. Workers accept sacrifices only with equality of sacrifice; bureaucracy and privilege undermine morale and endanger the revolution. Dieterich’s point that state property is perceived as alienated because workers have no real influence over the surplus is taken seriously: democratic debate over investment and consumption is necessary for workers to identify with and defend the state. What is needed is not cybernetics but Leninist workers’ democracy, where decision-makers collectively implement and adjust plans. Bourgeois democracy is merely the disguised dictatorship of monopolies, readily replaced by dictatorship when class struggle intensifies, as seen in Venezuela in 2002. The only way forward is a Socialist Federation of Latin America, grounded in popular participation and the organised power of the working class.