By Kamran Nayeri, September 20, 2026
Wilder Pérez Varona
Wilder Pérez Varona’s intervention
in the discussion of market reforms introduced by the leadership of the
Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) and quickly adopted by the National Assembly of
People’s Power in June is a welcome and thoughtful contribution. I will focus
my remarks on the interview Ariel Dacal Diaz conducted with him, published in
La Joven Cuba in July, translated into English, and posted on the Links
website on July 30. I published my initial assessment of the proposed
market reforms in Our Place in the World: A Journal of Ecosocialism (Nayeri,
2026) on July 11. I urge readers to consult it before proceeding, as I will not
repeat my earlier argument here and will build on it.
Currently, Pérez is a postdoctoral
fellow in sociology at the Institute of Economy and Society in Contemporary
Argentina. Before moving to Argentina, he was the managing director of the
Institute of Philosophy in Havana, a socialist think tank that serves as the Communist
Party of Cuba's cadre school. Thus, he writes from the standpoint of someone
intimately familiar with Cuba's problems and its economic and political system
and keenly interested in seeing its long-term crisis resolved in favor of
socialism.
Pérez’s overall view of the market
reforms under discussion comes at the conclusion of the interview:
“The future of
Cuban socialism will not depend solely on how much the economy grows. It will
depend on whether those who produce wealth also have a say in decisions about
how it is used. If reforms merely modernize mechanisms of accumulation but
leave existing power relations intact or even reinforce them, they will have
changed the economy without transforming what, from a socialist perspective,
really matters: who governs the collective wealth and on whose behalf.”
“The most
significant change is not more market, but the redefined relationship between
ownership and power. A company can still call itself socialist while workers
and citizens no longer have a real say in its affairs, thereby rendering social
ownership a legal fiction.” (Pérez, 2026)
He offers an example:
“GAESA [a Cuban
conglomerate owned by the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces] is the clearest
example. Beyond recent news regarding the release of assets, under these
reforms it could retain its management forms and convert companies it already
runs into shareholdings. On paper, ownership will remain with the people; in
practice, it will be the same people making decisions as before the reform”.(ibid.)
Pérez also writes:
“This [the
reforms] also alters the socialist project’s logic. For decades, despite many
contradictions, equality was the model’s starting point. As [Cuban president
Miguel] Díaz-Canel stated, this sequence is apparently being reversed: first
accumulate, then redistribute. Growth is no longer subordinate to social
justice; social justice now depends on growth.’
“This represents a
shift in economic philosophy. The market can be a useful tool for developing a
socialist economy, but it cannot substitute for politics. If new opportunities
for accumulation are not accompanied by transparency, democratic regulation and
social control, we risk replacing an inefficient bureaucracy with a new
economic elite closely linked to state power.” (ibid.)
Marx’s socialism vs. Cuban
socialism
For decades, the discussion among supporters
of the Cuban revolution has been murky on what socialism is and how to
transition to it. In my assessment of the market reforms, I have contrasted
Marx’s view of socialism with what has become accepted as Cuban “socialism” (Nayeri,
2026). Marx’s concept of socialism is a
society free from alienation from nature and social alienation, achieved
through a socialist revolution led by the proletariat as a self-organized,
self-mobilized class. On the other hand, Cuba's socialism has always been about
building an egalitarian society. As Pérez stressed: “For decades, despite many
contradictions, equality was the model’s starting point.”
This notion of “socialism” has made
Cuba a welfare state created by the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC). I have contrasted
Costa Rica, which in 1948 created the first capitalist welfare state in Latin
America, with Cuba and Nicaragua, both of which had revolutions in 1959 and
1979, respectively; I have found that taking life expectancy, infant mortality,
index of social security, democratic rights and democracy, and the desire to
remain in the country of their birth as opposed to migrating to the United
Staes, Costa Ricans fare better than Cubans and Nicaraguans (Nayeri, 2025).
What distinguished Cuba in the
first three decades after the 1959 revolution was its policies to achieve greater
equality in income and access to basic necessities, as well as education,
health care, and housing, among Cubans, especially for women and Afro-Cubans.
In the mid-1980s, people experiencing poverty—defined as those who could not
meet their basic needs with what they earned—made up no more than 6%. In
contrast, across Latin America during those years, the poverty rate averaged
more than 40%, and in some countries, it exceeded 70%. (Espina, 2025). Thus, we
can think of Cuba as a welfare state, a state that created the institutions and
conditions for more equality.
However, the PCC and the Cuban
state were able to do this largely because of subsidies from the Soviet Union,
which totaled $60 billion over those three decades. After the collapse of the
Soviet Union, the number of poor people had more than doubled, reaching about
15% in 1994 (ibid.). Espina (2026) estimates poverty to be about 45% of the
population now. She cautions readers that she cannot provide a more accurate
estimate because the Cuban government does not provide the necessary statistics
and does not allow surveys to determine an accurate rate.[1]
The roots of Cuba’s economic
crisis
The Cuban leadership has
consistently claimed that the ongoing economic crisis in Cuba is due to the
U.S. blockade that officially began on February 7, 1962. Pérez and I have
pointed out that imperialist hostility and the blockade, while harming the Cuban
economy, are not the root cause of the ongoing crisis. Pérez notes “inefficient bureaucracy” in Cuba
and writes: “There is consensus that the bureaucratic statist model has run its
course. Cuba needs more dynamic companies, greater managerial autonomy and new
scope for economic initiative.” (Pérez, 2006). Even the PCC leadership acknowledges
this, arguing that socialism is impossible without generating wealth that can
be broadly distributed among the people.
However, the PCC points to China
and Vietnam as models for achieving these dynamics through the market. As Prime
Minister Marrero told legislators, the measures formally recognize the market
as “an instrument for the efficient allocation of resources” (Atkins, 2026).
Pérez adds a significant issue: “There
is consensus that the bureaucratic statist model has run its course. Cuba needs
more dynamic companies, greater managerial autonomy, and new scope for economic
initiative. But autonomy for whom and under what controls?” (Pérez, 2026)
Further on, he put his finger on
the crucial problem of the democratization of the Cuban economic and political
system: “The crucial question is whether Cuba will have sufficiently democratic
institutions to prevent economic power from ultimately capturing political
power. The reforms redistribute much more than just income; they redistribute
power. This new distribution of power, rather than the economic measures
themselves, will ultimately define Cuba’s future.” (ibid.) Distribution of
power to whom?
He further adds: “That is why the
debate should not be reduced to a choice between the state and market. The
fundamental question is whether these reforms will further socialize economic
power or pave the way for a new structure of privileges.” (ibid.)
The absolute need for socialist
democracy
As I have already argued (Nayeri,
2026; August 11, 2024; October 16, 2024), the Cuban revolution, like other
revolutions after the October 1917 socialist revolution in Russia, has been a
national democratic revolution against imperialism and for economic development
led by parties that essentially followed the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin,
that is, the Stalinist one-party state that combined economic development and
industrialization with a measure of welfare state policies. Stalinist parties
led all these revolutions, except in Cuba, where the July 26th
Movement led it. However, in Cuba too, Fidel Castro who became a socialist in
his university years, mistook the pro-Moscow Popular Socialist Party (PSP) as
the representation of Marxist-Leninism and the Soviet Union as socialist. He
maintained this belief throughout his life (Nayeri, April 19, 2024). That is why, in the Great Debate of 1963-65,
Che Guevara, who was a sharp critic of the Soviet Union, was eventually
sidelined, and in 1965, with the founding of the Communist Party of Cuba, left
for Africa and later Bolivia to help the revolutionary struggle and was
eventually captured and executed.
Thus, Cuban socialism has never
been rooted in self-organized, self-mobilized working people.
Even Guevara’s vision of the
transition to socialism, which stressed the need to do away with the law of
value, had two key weaknesses. First, his Budgetary Finance System (BSF) began
with political decisions of Cuba’s leadership that shaped the overall economic
plan of JUCEPLAN (the planning board). The ministries then shared this plan
with enterprises and production units. The ministries summarized their
considerations and communicated them to JUCEPLAN, which adjusted the
economy-wide plan accordingly. The ministries then developed plans for specific
enterprises and supervised their implementation. JUCEPLAN oversaw the economy’s
central controls, assisted by the Treasury Ministry in financial control and
the Labor Ministry in planning labor allocation. In other words, the state
bureaucracy managed key decisions about what to produce, how to produce it, and
how to distribute the products. Guevara’s plan left no room for self-organized,
self-mobilized workers.
Second, when Mandel, who was in
Havana at Guevara's invitation, tried to convince him of the need for socialist
democracy, he was unmoved. His idea of Cuban workers' participation in
decision-making appears in Socialism and Man in Cuba (1965) as a dialogue
between Fidel Castro, the revolution's undisputed leader, and the masses at
public rallies. Over the decades, the
PCC leadership occasionally organized Cuban workers in workplaces or
neighborhoods to discuss major policy proposals. At these meetings, participants recorded
proposed changes and submitted them to the PCC leadership for consideration,
sometimes including them in the final policy resolution. During the massive
downsizing of the sugar industry, when world sugar prices collapsed, sugar
workers were involved in discussions of how to carry it out.
However, such “consultations” with
the Cuban working people are substitutes for socialist democracy, which has
been lacking in Cuba. To put it another way, the PCC, not the self-organization
and self-activity of the Cuban working people, has been driving policy decisions
about the economy and society in Cuba.
Economic activity can be organized
in three ways: by the market, by the state (bureaucracy), and by the working
people themselves. The capitalist mode of production is the most relevant way
to organize economic activity by the market, as Karl Marx best analyzed. In all
so-called “socialist countries,” the state has organized production and, to a
lesser degree, the state-managed market. Market Socialism is most identified
with Yugoslavia under Tito, an extreme form of it. History has shown that in
all such cases, this form of production leads to a market economy, that is
capitalism. The working people's self-organization for production is
exemplified by family farming and cooperatives, and, for brief periods, by
workers’ management of nationalized industry.
A note is in order here about the
characterization of these “socialist countries” as workers’ states. This
mistake stems from Trotsky’s analysis of the degeneration of the socialist
revolution in Russia in The Revolution Betrayed: What Is the Soviet Union
and Where Is It Going? (1936) as I have discussed in detail (Nayeri, 2006).
He correctly argued that the Stalinist counterrevolution represented the
destruction of the 1917 socialist revolution and its leadership in the
Bolshevik Party (renamed the Communist Party in 1919), its program and
tradition, and the driving of the proletariat in the young Soviet Republic out
of politics. Yet he still insisted that nationalized property, a monopoly on
foreign trade, and central planning constituted a workers’ state, albeit a
degenerated one. He hoped a political revolution by the working class would
remove bureaucracy and revive the socialist revolution. However, in Marx’s theory of the state, the
dictatorship of the proletariat, the self-organized and self-mobilized working
class is the absolute requirement for a workers’ state to exist, not
administrative and legal categories like nationalized property, monopoly of
foreign trade, and central planning. Trotsky predicted that the Soviet Union would
revive as a healthy workers’ state through a political revolution; if that did
not happen, it would return to capitalism. However, he anticipated resistance
to such a counterrevolution, going from a workers’ state, albeit a degenerated
one, to capitalism, by the working people. History showed that these “socialist
countries” did return to capitalism, and the bureaucracy reemerged as
capitalist. However, the working people did not oppose this, and in some cases,
they celebrated it.
As in the Soviet Union, which
Trotsky analyzed with mastery (Trotsky, 1936, Chapter IV), Cuban workers,
sidelined by the state bureaucracy, have no political incentive to innovate and
improve the production of goods and services. As a result, labor productivity
in Cuba has lagged.
Concluding remarks
In my essay on the systemic crisis
of economy and society in Cuba (Nayeri, August 11, 2024), I followed Hope Bastian’s
use of Pierre Bourdieu's Form of Capital (1986) to trace the ideological shifts
in Cuban society over the decades. A post-Marxist, Bourdieu views capital as the
power of an individual or social group to mobilize economic resources for their
own ends. He discusses three forms of capital: economic capital that can
be readily converted to money and is constituted in property rights; cultural
capital, such as academic or artistic attainments that can be monetized;
and social capital, or a network of powerful connections that can make
access to consumer goods easier and can be turned into economic capital.
The proposed market reforms indicate
that the PCC leadership is opening the way for a capitalist class in the
Marxist sense in Cuba. This is what Pérez is concerned about. The PCC
leadership is half-hearted about it, as it was with earlier, less drastic
market reforms.
Bastian has discussed three forms
of capital since the 1959 revolution. The first is revolutionary cultural
capital, which arose from revolutionary power and became a source of
socioeconomic changes in the 1960s. In the 1970s, material incentives were
added to the moral incentive of becoming a Fidelista and joining the Communist
Party founded in 1965. Bastian does not deny Cubans joined the Communist Party because
they wanted to contribute to improving Cuban society. In her interviews, she
found evidence of material and moral incentives for joining the revolutionary
movement. She also offers examples of individuals who, despite many years of
selfless revolutionary service, refused to use their prestige to find
much-needed resources in the 1990s. However, over time, fewer such individuals
emerged.
During the depression years of the
1990s (Special Period), a new social configuration emerged, which provided
access to power, consumption, and resources. The importance of revolutionary
cultural capital decreased, while economic capital and social capital (access
to a network of well-connected individuals) increased.
Economic capital now appears to be
gaining power in Cuba, as reflected in the PCC market reforms. A new class of capitalists
has been forming in Cuba, as reflected in Díaz-Canel meeting with representatives
of the Cuban “private sector” reported in Granma. (Martinez, 2026).
However, the PCC leadership, backed
into a corner by a severe economic crisis at home and aggressive U.S.
imperialist policy to put in place a government subservient to Washington, is
opting for a course toward capitalism while keeping the PCC in power, that is,
the Vietnam model (The China model is not appropriate as Cuba simply has no
resources to create a world economic power within fifty years).
The problem is that the U.S. rulers
have their eye on taking over the Cuban economy as they had before the 1959
revolution. (Schlenker and Augustin, 2026)
If the PCC moves ahead with its market
reforms, which will heavily and quickly affect the working people of Cuba who
are already largely in poverty, it will lose much of the support it currently has,
which bars imperialist military intervention. If it does not, the economic
crisis will deepen.
While Pérez and I both wish for working-class
power intervening in this situation, there is no such possibility in sight. For
many decades, the Cuban working class were denied independent political action and
urged to follow the leadership of the PCC.
There is also no sign of a
revolutionary breakout anywhere in Latin America and the rest of the world.
As I have argued, the socialist
revolution that Marx and Engels predicted to break out in their lifetime in
Western Europe never materialized because of the rise of labor aristocracy and bureaucracy
that became supporters of the Western imperialist regimes. This formed the basis of the reformist Socialist
Democracy of Second International.
The Russian socialist revolution of
1917 degenerated not only because of Russia's economic backwardness but also
because socialist revolution in the West never happened.
As a result, the world revolution
turned to the periphery of capitalism, where national democratic revolutions
broke out against colonialism and imperialism. In some cases, like China,
Vietnam, Korea, and Yugoslavia, Stalinist parties led these revolutions and
declared their one-party rule socialist because it helped win the support of the
working people. I have already discussed the case of Cuba. However, one-party states running the economy
and society are not stable, as they have all returned to open capitalist social
formations in which the Communist Party still rules.
Cuba's future cannot be different.
References:
Atkins, C. J. “Cuba
Embarks on Emergency Reforms.” Communist
Party U.S.A. June 23, 2026.
Bastian, Hope. Hope Bastian.
Everyday Adjustments in Havana: Economic Reforms, Mobility, and Emerging
Inequalities. 2018.
Guevara, Ernesto Che. “Socialism
and Man in Cuba.” 1965.
Castro Ruz, Fidel and Ignacio
Ramonet. My Life: A Spoken Autobiography. 2006.
Espina, Mayra. “Look
at Cuba: Growing Inequalities.” ReVista: Harvard Review of Latin America. Apr
22, 2025.
__________. “Poverty
In Cuba Today.” CEDA. May 1, 2026.
Martínez Hernández, Leticia. “Díaz-Canel se reunió con
representantes del sector privado cubano.” Granma. August 25, 2026.
Nayeri, Kamran. “Critical
Theories of the Class Nature of the Soviet Union: A Marxian Survey.” III
Conferencia Internacional La Obra de Carlos Marx y Los desafíos del Siglo XXI
(The Third Conference on the Work of Karl Marx and the Challenges of the 21st
Century) in Havana, Cuba, in May 2006.
_____________. “The
Political Thoughts of Fidel Castro.” Our Place in the World: A Journal of
Ecosocialism. April 19, 2024.
_____________. “Economic
and Political Thoughts of Ernesto Che Guevara.” Our Place in the World: A
Journal of Ecosocialism. April 30, 2024.
_____________. “Systemic
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of Ecosocialism. August 11, 2024.
_____________. “The
Cuban Revolution and Other Socialist Revolutions of the Twentieth Century: A
Reassessment.” Our Place in the World: A Journal of Ecosocialism. October
16, 2024.
_____________. “A
Historical Comparative Analysis of Costa Rica's Development.” Our Place in
the World: A Journal of Ecosocialism. October 22, 2025.
_____________. “Cuba
Adopts Wide-Ranging Free-Market Reforms: An Assessment.” Our Place in the
World: A Journal of Ecosocialism. July 11, 2026.
Savioli, Arminio. “The Nature of
Cuban Socialism,” L’Unita, February 1, 1961.
Schlenker, Lee and Ed Augustin. “Trump
and Rubio Allies Are Vying for Control of Cuba’s assets If Regime Falls.”
The Guardian. September 17, 2026.
Toussaint, Eric. “Ernest
Mandel, Revolutionary Cuba and Che Guevara.” CounterPunch, January 12,
2024.
[1] She also adds: “Poverty
exists in degrees; within that 45% figure, there are moderate, intermediate,
and extreme situations the latter falling below the threshold of mere survival,
a point at which existence becomes extremely fragile and subhuman.”
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