This is Richard Wolff from democracy at work, responding to another Ask Prof Wolff question
from our Patreon community. This question comes from Patreon
community member Big Fan of Trees, that's his or hers chosen name. The question is about Cuba,
what's going on in Cuba, what's the story about Cuba. Is this a case of something
in the way of a collapse or falling apart of communism or socialism? Is it something
else? What's the reality of the situation? And I’m glad to answer this question because
talking about Cuba from time to time is an important reality because Cuba has shown a
side of the United States that you could not and would not see quite so clearly if it were
further away. Cuba being, as I think most of you know, a mere 90 miles from the coast of Florida.
So, let's talk about Cuba and let's talk about it in a general way,
which is what we ought to apply to any country we were seeking to understand or evaluate. What are
its strengths? What are its weaknesses? What are its achievements? What are its problems?
So let me begin this way, probably the biggest crisis facing the world,
Cuba included, these days is Covid-19 and all its variants.
And here there's an instructive comparison I can make between the United States and Cuba,
the population of Cuba is about 11 million people the population of the United States about 325
million people. In other words, the United States has roughly 30 times the population of Cuba.
Now let's look at the Covid-19 fatalities, the number of people who have died, from the disease
in Cuba so far 3,000; in the United States so far 600,000 and counting. Let's do the comparison,
the United States has eleven times the population of Cuba, but it has 200 times
the number of deaths. There is thus no comparison Cuba has done an infinitely better job
of protecting the lives and health of its people than the United States has been able to do
for its. Cuba has a greater literacy rate, that is a higher percentage of Cubans read and write than
Americans do. Cuba has the best health care system in the western hemisphere on many dimensions,
child mortality, times in the hospital, doctors as a percentage of the population, and so on. Cuba
has focused on its health care industry, doctors, nurses, medical equipment all over the world in a
remarkable way that no other small less developed country anywhere in the world has equaled.
So, Cuba has a lot to be proud of. A lot of achievements since it revolted from the
old Latin American pattern back in 1959. But the achievements of Cuba are greater than all of that
because over the last 60 years from the revolution made by Fidel Castro and his comrades in 1959,
to the present Cuba has had an implacable enemy, the United States,
a country that has embargoed Cuba. Blocking trade investment, every kind of economic interaction
between that island and the United States. And make no mistake that was a devastating
blow because Cuba, for the previous 200 years, had geared its entire economy to the nearby United
States exports, imports, investments, tourism, you name it. Cuba was appended to the United States,
in many ways like Puerto Rico was, even though Cuba was of course not a part
of the United States. So, the friend, the ally, and the trading partner became the great
enemy and that enemy didn't resist the call to military adventures. In 1961 the United States
organized, trained, shipped, and funded an invasion to overthrow
Fidel Castro’s new, young regime in the so-called Bay of Pigs fiasco. It was a total failure.
The Cubans were able to push out the invaders, whom they did not catch
and prosecute. It was a humiliating defeat, but of course it burdened Cuba even more, because
now Cuba, cut off from the United States had to devote enormous resources it desperately needed
to survive economically these resources had to be used to build up its military defense capability.
To make it too costly for the United States to try to invade again,
as they had proved they would be willing to do by the Bay of Pigs adventure in 1961.
So, Cuba’s achievements are all the more stunning given the implacable enmity of the United States
economically, culturally, politically militarily, extraordinary. Perhaps the
most remarkable achievement of the Cubans was that their socialist economic system survived
these circumstances. When many another small country couldn't and didn't at that time. And so,
the Cuban economy reorganized itself, for a while with the help of the Soviet Union,
but that help had strings attached and that help disappeared once the Soviet Union
imploded in 1989, which is a long time ago. Then the Cubans were on their own. There were
some countries that traded with Cuba to replace in part the United States but never to a comparable
degree. The Soviet Union helped Cuba but Cuba was still a poor country, an underdeveloped country,
a country disproportionately dependent on the one big crop that it grew each year,
sugarcane. And so, it struggled, it had its ups and downs, like all economies do,
but it labored under the embargo of the United States, the threat of the United States.
And that makes it particularly tasteless and invalid to hear sleazy U.S. politicians denouncing
Cuba, as if the problems of that society are something for which the United States
bears no responsibility. As if the United States was merely a spectator, than an interested party
trying every which way to smash the regime in Cuba and failing to do that over and over again.
So then why the protests? The Cuban people have supported their revolution
and the government of Fidel Castro, and now the government after Fidel Castro, with a remarkable
unanimity and loyalty. There were always critics inside Cuba, that's healthy, they should be there.
They have usually been able to speak they have not been given the equal access
to the media but the United States and most other countries have little to say in that,
because they're not so good at giving critics of their system access to media
either. Could the Cubans have done a better job? No doubt. And there are people in Cuba
who are determined to reform the system, to change the system, to move forward, to find new ways.
And they have been expressing themselves with some anger because things are going
too slowly because the crash of the world economy in the early months of 2020 impacted Cuba too.
But make no mistake, this is a struggling socialist society
but much more unified than we are in the United States. With friends around the world my guess is
they'll get through these hard times but they have a long road to go and scarce resources to devote
to becoming a wealthier, more settled economic system. But their achievement historically
will have been to carve out a different economic system from the dominant capitalism of the western
hemisphere, and to keep it alive and to keep it going. And to keep their people together
and in the main supportive for 60 years despite the enemy of the world's number one superpower.
This is Richard Wolff for Democracy at Work.