With the author’s permission, we are republishing this article by the Cuban film director Javier Gómez Sánchez, as we consider it a very interesting contribution to the debate on the future of the Cuban Revolution.

For additional context on the unfolding situation in Cuba, we recommend you read the following articles, published on Marxist.com.

• Faced with unbearable imperialist pressure, Cuba moves towards capitalist restoration
• CIA director visits Havana as US imperialism ramps up blackmail against Cuban Revolution
• The Cuban Revolution is facing its most dangerous period ever
• Armed incursion against Cuba by Florida-based terrorists leaves four dead

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[Originally published in Brecha]

The private business actors who have emerged in recent years, and the networks through which they coordinate their thinking, have become a new political force in Cuba.

Through their integration with the government bureaucracy and technocracy, they have demonstrated an ever-increasing ability to capitalize on crises to bring about changes favorable to their interests.

The core of the 176 “measures” recently announced by the Council of State, under the heading of social transformations’, are in fact initiatives long sought after by an economic elite capable of profiting from them. These measures involve, amongst others: the legalization of private banking, the private sale of fuel, the liquidation of loss-making state-owned enterprises (with the privatization of their infrastructure and operations), the conversion of state-owned enterprises into joint-stock companies, and their acquisition by private actors.

These measures would not have been so readily proposed under normal circumstances. But the uninterrupted state of shock in which Cuban society has found itself in since the COVID-19 pandemic—and even more so since the US attack on Venezuela in January, the total oil blockade, and the threats of military intervention—has opened the door for the implementation of policies aimed at transitioning from socialism to capitalism in Cuba.

It is not the escalation of US aggression that is forcing these measures to be implemented (they’ve been in the works for some time), but it’s the state of shock this aggression produces which allows the moment to be seized.

Over the last 15 years, since the start of the reforms spearheaded by Raúl Castro in 2011, the aim had been to establish a mixed-economy model that would maintain a coexistence between the socialist state economy and the capitalist market. However, the Cuban state, economically blockaded by the United States, failed to keep the capitalist forces—which the reforms themselves had generated—in check, and ultimately succumbed to their pressure.

Private actors gradually penetrated state structures and the Cuban Communist Party (PCC) itself, through corruption, family ties or friendships with leaders, capitalizing on the loss of ideological identity, naivety, and the socialist movement’s powerlessness in the face of the blockade.

This business community organized an efficient private media apparatus, coordinating with a group of liberal economists, known as “The Gurus” or the “Havana Boys” (in reference to the “Chicago Boys”). For years, they have been putting forward proposals for privatization, the dismantling of the state and the dismantling of socialism, disguising these as solutions. This is in the face of a revolutionary, communist, and pro-Fidelist rank-and-file that still defends socialism, but is exhausted, crushed, and left with no options and, above all, without leadership.

The President of the Republic and First Secretary of the PCC himself has become an uncritical defender of the private business sector and its interests, repeating that the new policies will “save socialism.” In contrast, the private press speaks openly of “transition”—a term it previously tried to conceal—and of how to manage the process of “winners and losers” amongst the population.

The National Assembly of People’s Power met for a single session to approve the document, which had been handed to it just one day earlier. In that short space of time, not a single motion was tabled against even one of the 176 measures. In comparison, the mere decision to start levying VAT on the population—at a time when the government has been unable to collect taxes properly from private companies, leading to a huge fiscal deficit—would have warranted several days of intense debate.

Between the debate over the preamble to the 2008 reforms and the discussion on the 2019 Constitution, the National Assembly experienced its most notable period of resistance to capitalist advances. But since then, the parliamentary floor has been dominated by the rhetoric of business-owning MPs—backed by the civil service—with their pseudo-patriotic discourse and guaranteed speaking slots at every session. State television and the official press then make this rhetoric the focus of their coverage and the front pages of their newspapers.

For some time now, any expression of resistance to the transition has been censored in the official media. In the face of the recent package of measures, the few who dared to write critical articles had to publish them in foreign media. Much of the Cuban intelligentsia is either publicly silent or has also been won over by the ideas of transition. It is only too willing to speak of capitalism outside of Cuba, but reluctant to mention it within the country, and it is controlled by a system of rewards and punishments administered by the bureaucracy.

In recent years—as a part of the US’ strategy of internally destabilizing Cuba—alongside the blockade, the Cuban government has been dragged into a dirty war. The United States uses statistics on the number of political prisoners in Cuba as leverage on the international stage, as if they were pieces on a chessboard. Universities have been poisoned by what amount to soft coups, being flooded with complaints from censored artists and “independent” journalists, backed by US money and support.

Meanwhile, dissidents who have made a lot of noise but achieved very little have been prosecuted and imprisoned, or harassed in an attempt to push them into choosing the lesser evil of leaving the country, thereby reviving the notion of “exile.” Their actions and financial links have then been exposed on state television programs.

By contrast, the free-market gurus—the ideologues of capitalist restoration and privatization—who are backed by the very same US interests through invitations to university events and funding for book publications, are presented as respectable economists and academics, or innocent entrepreneurs. They are not shown for what they really are: the intellectual and business arm of the blockade.

Whilst attention was focused on street protests and an antiquated speedboat laden with weapons from Miami, a far more powerful counter-revolution was organizing its conclaves, attended by hundreds, hiring function rooms in Havana’s most modern hotels for its private business forums. It is highly likely—and this will go down in history—that those who, at that time, were doing the real work to bring the Cuban Revolution to an end were never questioned by State Security.

This year marks a century since the birth of the historic leader of Cuban socialism, Fidel Castro; to paraphrase one of his sayings, it seems that his ideas are set to die in the year of his centenary. In fact, his phrase ‘change everything that needs to be changed’ has been hijacked by those driving Cuba’s transition to capitalism.

The question mark hanging over Cuba is no longer the economic model, but rather the political model. The single-party system, the electoral system, the controversial restrictions on freedoms and rights, and many other aspects of the political model were once considered inevitable because they were seen as safeguards of socialism. Is it possible to sustain them when the model is no longer socialist? For a country like Cuba, which—unlike China or Vietnam—is subject to external pressure to overthrow its government, is it possible to pretend that economic changes will not lead to political changes? Once cultural and economic power have been lost, can political power be maintained?

But power, like matter, is not destroyed; it is transformed. The integration of the traditional bureaucracy with the new economic powers, utilizing the old but effective control over society, may seek to replace anti-imperialist socialism with nationalist capitalism. Yet this would not satisfy the United States.

The other element that cannot be removed from the equation is the people, in a domestic situation that is becoming increasingly volatile and reliant on police containment. Nor can the impact on the revolution’s base of support be ignored, who feel less and less represented by the government.

The main change in Cuba is that those who still hold political power no longer hold economic power. If there is one certainty, it is that the ringmaster is no longer the owner of the circus.