Any Cuban who has been paying attention since 1993-94 knows that Cuban socialism has not been the same since then.
After socialism’s collapse in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union’s dismantlement, things in Cuba changed dramatically. The market and private sector were introduced, the US dollar was legalised, most state-owned land was redistributed and Cuba opened up to foreign investment. This not only created a new economy and new relationship with the world, but new perspectives on socialism as a system, including its reversibility. These policies were initially justified as a response to the crisis known as the “Special Period in the Time of Peace”, or at least they were presented that way at the time. As the crisis eased — or so it seemed (for a time) — these changes slowed. Yet their ideological consequences (what sort of socialism are we building?), and especially their impact on social inequalities and poverty, continued to spread. Policies that had levelled the playing field between different social classes and groups in Cuba, such as a very limited wage structure, a basic food basket subsidised through the ration card system (the “ration booklet”), price controls, free services and subsidies of all kinds, gradually faded away, formally or de facto. Wages and income diverged, access to foreign currency altered the established relationship between wages and training, and production levels failed to recover. Despite the supposed temporary nature of the crisis, Cuba never returned to the level of well-being and the vision for the future that had existed, above all in the decade prior to the Special Period. More than a decade after those measures — approved and implemented under Fidel Castro’s leadership — a document entitled “ Economic and Social Guidelines ( https://links.org.au/cuba-economic-and-social-policy-guidelines-party-and-revolution ) ” was publicly discussed in a mass consultation and officially adopted at the Sixth Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba ( https://links.org.au/cuba-sixth-congress-communist-party-concludes-three-assessments ) (PCC) in 2011. Five years later, barely 23% of agreed-upon policies had been implemented. In 2018, a public consultation on very broad constitutional reforms yielded unexpected results. These included the fact that the most controversial parts of the new text were not the radical changes to diversify means of production ownership, market expansion, or allowing private capital access to sectors such as agriculture and services (including those nationalised in 1960). These transformations did not provoke opposition, despite their fundamental scope. The new Constitution, approved by an overwhelming majority in 2019, prioritised equity — instead of equality — and addressed income inequality without outlawing it. >From the early 1990s to now, more and more experts, within and outside Cuba’s >institutions, have proposed a reform program that goes beyond the scope of an >anti-crisis package. Although none have proposed policies like those that marked socialism’s dismantlement in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, quite a few were branded emissaries of capitalism. Despite the differences in documents issued over the past 30 years regarding the nature of Cuban socialism, misgivings towards any proposed reform persists to this day. Following the United States' intervention in Venezuela on January 3, I asked a group of economists and political analysts the question: what should our key strategic priorities be to overcome the crisis while addressing the complexity of the moment? Some readers told me clearly that my respondents’ answers were “excessive” (ie: neoliberal). Now, the National Assembly of Popular Power (ANPP) has approved a reform program that far exceeds, in its radicalism and scope, anything these experts ever proposed. Nevertheless, views that identify reforms with the virus of capitalism persist. If one reads, for example, foreign media outlets that are supposedly well-informed about what is happening now, one sees them equating recent transformations with concessions to capitalism and socialism’s definitive collapse ( https://elpais.com/us/2026-06-20/cuba-busca-oxigeno-en-unas-reformas-tardias-que-la-poblacion-recibe-con-escepticismo.html ). They are just like the local fundamentalists. It is as if nothing has changed in Cuba since the fall of the Berlin Wall. In an attempt to shed light on the complex questions arising from the 176 measures debated in the ANPP, I spoke to three pioneering economists who anticipated them in their writings and talks, and whose way of thinking, persistence and commitment I know well: Juan Triana Cordoví (JTC), Omar Everleny Pérez-Villanueva (OEP) and Julio Carranza (JCV). Read full interviews at https://links.org.au/cubas-postponed-transition -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. 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