Here I will detail a perspective on how to understand the Cuban reforms from a Marxist point of view and, by comparing them with other socialist experiences of reform, try to elucidate how we can think about this kind of policy change under Communist-led governments.
It is impossible to consider Cuba, and Cuba's oppression by the American state, without getting into complex, contradictory feelings. Even before the current reforms, Cuba was contentious -- not initially a communist revolution, wrenched into communism by circumstance, and then under siege for the entirety of its existence by one of the most powerful capitalist empires on the planet. It is a model of resilience and survival, and of compromise. This last bit, I think, is well-defended in this piece.
And what have been Cuba’s playing cards in the 21st century? Arguably, the worst ones out of any Communist-led state. Any complete analysis of the Cuban Revolution in general, but especially in the 21stcentury, should always start from the decades-long, bipartisan effort by the United States to subjugate Cuba once again. Until the late 1980s, Cuba had the help of the Socialist Bloc and could benefit from the echoes of early Soviet hopes of developed socialist countries reversing unequal exchange and breaking the chains of underdevelopment in other regions. The impact that the 1989-1991 collapse of socialism in Eastern Europe had on Cuba is impossible to overstate; it is tempting to see it as isolated as the early Soviet Union, but with the crucial difference that one was a transcontinental mammoth and the other an island of a similar size to Iceland, 90 miles away from a state committed to defeat it.
A small note in this piece that I think about often is that -- as the author correctly details -- Cuba was almost entirely a monocrop economy until the 90s. Much of its money to survive was provided by the Soviet Union, who, beautifully and tragically, paid exorbitant and unnecessary prices for Cuban sugar until its collapse. An internationalism that feels almost unbelievable now. Even great China makes sure to not disturb the monster of the United States overmuch, and one can hardly blame them for it. But still.
