Cuba’s National Assembly has approved 176 economic reforms in what commentators are calling the most significant changes to the island’s economic model since the revolution of 1959. Western media have predictably rushed to present the reforms as evidence of socialism’s failure. In reality, they are the latest chapter in a struggle that has defined Cuban history for more than sixty years: a socialist country adapting to survive under relentless imperialist siege.
The reforms include expanding the role of private enterprise, permitting larger private businesses, easing restrictions on foreign investment, and allowing both domestic and foreign investors to acquire stakes in state-owned enterprises. Prime Minister Manuel Marrero presented the measures as part of an effort to overcome a severe economic crisis that has pushed the island to the brink.
That crisis didn’t emerge from nowhere.
For decades, the United States has maintained a campaign of economic warfare against Cuba. This year it has escalated beyond the long-standing trade embargo into what can only reasonably be described as an oil blockade. The aim has been to cut Cuba off from fuel imports, strangling transport, electricity generation, agriculture, industry, and healthcare.
The logic behind this strategy isn’t a matter of speculation. It was laid out openly by the US government itself in a 1960 State Department memorandum by Lester Mallory. The memo acknowledged that the Cuban government enjoyed broad popular support and concluded that Washington’s best hope of overthrowing it was economic hardship. The objective, Mallory wrote, was to bring about “hunger, desperation and overthrow of government.”
More than six decades later, the strategy remains essentially unchanged.
The effects have been devastating. Since the beginning of the year, only one oil tanker has reportedly reached Cuba. Blackouts lasting more than thirty hours have become common. Food, fuel, drinking water, and medicines are all in short supply. The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Turk, has warned that “children are dying” because of shortages of medical supplies and medication.
This is what economic warfare looks like in practice.
Western politicians frequently describe sanctions as a humane alternative to military intervention. In reality, they are often designed to inflict suffering on civilian populations in the hope that enough misery will eventually produce political change. Cuba isn’t experiencing an economic crisis in isolation from imperialism; it’s experiencing an economic crisis that imperialism has spent decades deliberately trying to create.
That doesn’t mean Cuba’s leadership has treated every problem as external. President Miguel Diaz-Canel acknowledged the existence of “obstacles that don’t come from outside, nor the blockade” and criticised “slowness, bureaucracy and norms that impede those who want to produce” as well as delayed decision-making within the state apparatus.
Marxists shouldn’t be afraid of such discussions. Socialist construction is a real historical process, not a utopian blueprint. Bureaucratic inefficiency, administrative mistakes, and outdated economic mechanisms can emerge in any socialist society and must be confronted honestly. Recognising internal problems isn’t a concession to anti-communism; it’s part of solving them.
What’s striking, however, is that while Cuba is introducing substantial economic reforms, it’s making no corresponding concessions on political power.
The Communist Party remains in power. Cuba’s political system remains intact. The country’s institutions of socialist democracy continue to function. The National Assembly adopted the reforms unanimously and closed its session with President Diaz-Canel repeating Fidel Castro’s famous slogan: “Socialism or death!”
Western commentators often assume that market reforms automatically represent a transition to capitalism. History suggests otherwise. Socialist states have frequently experimented with different forms of ownership, market mechanisms, and investment structures while retaining working-class political power. The decisive question for Marxists isn’t whether markets exist in some form, but which class holds state power and in what direction society is moving.
Even critics of the reforms generally acknowledge that the Cuban leadership is presenting them as measures intended to preserve socialism rather than abandon it. Diaz-Canel explicitly rejected claims that the government was acting because of US pressure, insisting the reforms were intended to “preserve” socialism.
Of course, the pressure is real. As Michael Bustamante of the University of Miami said, Cuba is making changes “because of the pressure that’s being exerted on them by the United States.” The contradiction isn’t difficult to understand. Cuba’s leadership may believe reforms are necessary to preserve the revolution precisely because imperialist pressure has become so severe.
However, even after Cuba has opened sectors of its economy and expanded space for private business, US officials are signalling that economic reforms alone are not enough. Vice-President J.D. Vance stated that Washington wanted changes not only to Cuba’s economic model but also implied dissatisfaction with the country’s political leadership.
In other words, the issue was never simply state ownership.
For generations, US policymakers have opposed Cuba because it represents an independent socialist state sitting ninety miles from Florida, one that removed foreign domination, nationalised major industries, and has continued to resist incorporation into the US sphere of influence. Economic pressure has always been aimed not merely at changing policies but at overturning the political power established by the revolution.
The reforms approved this week undoubtedly represent a significant shift in Cuba’s economic model. They may succeed, fail, or require further adjustment. Those debates will continue both inside and outside Cuba.
What remains clear is that the Cuban Revolution has not been overthrown. The Communist Party remains in power. Cuban socialism remains intact. The country’s democratic institutions continue to operate. And despite decades of blockade, sanctions, sabotage, and economic warfare designed to produce “hunger, desperation and overthrow of government,” Cuba continues on the difficult and uneven road of socialist construction.
That alone represents a defeat for the architects of the blockade.
