In the long agony that followed the collapse of the socialist bloc in Eastern Europe, those who continue to rule in Cuba have found it necessary to shed ballast.
14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar Havana, 30 September 2025 — We all aspire to write that definitive text that will put in its place, like a cockroach under an entomologist’s pin, this pseudo-socialism in its terminal state, subjected to therapeutic abuse.
I warn that this is not that text, although I intended it to be.
I have called what we suffer pseudo-socialism, not to avenge the Republic, on which they also foisted the media-driven label, but because since April 1961, when the hijacker of the Revolution without taking into account the popular will proclaimed the socialist character of the process, the essential principles that identify this system in the books have barely been fulfilled.
Nor has the principle of each person giving to society according to their ability, nor has the principle of each person receiving according to their work, worked. Much less have the ever-increasing needs of the population, an ambition inscribed as the fundamental law of socialism, been met.
Not even during those years of Soviet subsidies, were those five-year plans — (does anyone remember them?) that were announced with great fanfare at the conclusion of the Communist Party Congresses — fully implemented. It was all a mirage, a fraud, a swindle.
I have said that the system is in a terminal state because, in the long agony that followed the collapse of the socialist bloc in Eastern Europe and finally in the Soviet Union, those who remain in power in Cuba have found it necessary to shed ballast so as not to sink the country even further.
They thought it was reasonable to invite foreign investors, but they finally gave in to the ‘MSMEs’ and are now on the verge of dollarizing the market.
Like a boring striptease , they started by accepting self-employment. They thought it would make sense to invite foreign investors. They finally gave in to the MSMEs* and are now on the verge of dollarizing the market.
Only the most intimate garments are missing.
I have also said that the system is subject to therapeutic abuse precisely because its agony is prolonged in its terminal state.
If those who remain in power in Cuba were truly convinced of the theory, they would have given socialism another chance, at another time. And that would not be a defeat, nor a surrender, but a timely retreat. But all signs indicate that the sole purpose of continuing to milk this dead cow is to remain in power, nothing more and nothing less than to enjoy the obscene privileges that such a position grants.
We Cubans frequently find ourselves subject to the swings of the pendulum of hope. For the moment, it seems there is no one who can fix or end “this,” and unexpectedly, rumors are circulating that a nonagenarian is on the verge of death or that a fracture is looming up above.
It is as if we were waiting for the child to shout that the king is naked, as if it were so difficult to realize that dialectical materialism, the philosophical basis of historical materialism, was unaware of quantum physics and that artificial intelligence has no relation to the class struggle.
If immortality isn’t playing a practical joke on us, if the performance of unbreakable unity isn’t just another fiction, something must give, because this is unbearable.
*MSMEs — Micro, small and medium size businesses, commonly privatize.
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