Is the Cuban communist regime in danger?

The current economic crisis and the resentment it has created may not end communist rule in Cuba. Nonetheless, the Cuban state's failure to accommodate divergent views within the political system puts it at risk of collapse.

When "communism" fell in the Soviet Union and its Eastern European satellite states in the early 1990s, many believed that it would soon also come to an end in Cuba, the island nation just south of the US state of Florida. Yet, for three decades now, since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Cuban regime has been able to sustain itself with moderate popular support, despite facing adverse economic and political crises that are mostly caused by long-standing US and Western sanctions. Then, suddenly, in mid-July, one of the biggest protests the island nation has seen in decades erupted. Thousands of people came out to the streets in Havana and at least 14 other cities to air their grievances against the single-party dictatorship.

This new uprising raises a fundamental question: will the communist regime ultimately survive the intense economic crisis the country has been going through since the start of the pandemic?

The role of US sanctions

In its first thirty years, the regime's economy was highly dependent on Soviet aid, subsidies, and loans. After the Soviet Union collapsed, Cuba fell into an abysmal economic crisis that it has never been able to shake. When the Trump administration ratcheted up US sanctions in 2018 and then redesignated Cuba as a "state sponsor of terrorism" and imposed new embargos in early 2021, this prolonged crisis took a new turn. The current sanctions against Cuba constitute the maximal response the US only imposes on countries it accuses of promoting terrorism.

Crucially, the new sanctions close the legal channel that allows remittances to be sent into the country from Cubans living in the US. Out of more than 2.3 million Cuban émigrés in the US, roughly 700,000 send some 3 billion dollars in remittances each year to their home country. A recent study has shown that 56 percent of Cuban households and small businesses are heavily dependent on these remittances. By stopping them, the US has wreaked havoc on the Cuban economy.

The Biden administration has not changed any of the previous government's measures against Cuba. Indeed, it has added additional sanctions targeting Cuban military officials. Biden is rhetorically opposed to Trump, but on foreign policy issues, especially toward Iraq, Afghanistan, Cuba, and Israel, he has been following in the former president's footsteps.

After the Cold War, Cuba opened tourism and other related industries to generate foreign currency to import agricultural products and other necessary goods. In 2020, however, the COVID-19 pandemic dealt a severe blow to tourism on the island. This, combined with tougher US sanctions and domestic economic mismanagement, caused the already cash-strapped economy to contract by 11 percent in 2020.

As a consequence of new sanctions and fewer foreign tourists, Cuba faces a severe shortage of foreign currency that prevents it from importing essential commodities. The resulting scarcity of food, basic medicine, and energy has sparked the current rage against the regime.

Given the dearth of foreign currency, the Cuban health ministry has not been able to purchase COVID-19 vaccines. The vaccination process has thus not yet started on the island. Cuban scientists are developing their own vaccine, but it still needs to pass through the approval process. Despite success in arresting the pandemic initially, COVID is now spreading at an alarming rate, complicating the situation even further.

Marx's legacy of dictatorship

Massive demonstrations have been occurring in many Western and other liberal democratic capitalist states, including India and the United States—but no one worries that those will result in the collapse of those political systems. In contrast, why do protests in the so-called socialist states like Cuba make the regimes so apprehensive for the security of their regimes? The reason is that socialist states have not developed adequate mechanisms to accommodate pluralistic views within their systems. They developed a one-party rule based on Karl Marx's idea of the "dictatorship of the proletariat." But there is no known human society in history where all people have thought alike. If a political system cannot create space for the expression of varied opinions, it is natural for people to revolt.

Political thinkers have long debated whether Marx's concept of "dictatorship" applied only in the context of the Paris Commune. Even in relation to the Commune, Marx talked about the dictatorship of the class, not of the party or the leader. The rule of a particular class is not the same as the rule of a party. No party, communist or otherwise, has organized itself solely based on the membership of a single class.  Communist parties claim to be the vanguard of the proletariat. After capturing state power, they established single-party dictatorships that evolved into dictatorships of party leaders.

Fidel Castro followed the same path as previous communists. After his guerilla group overthrew the Batista regime by armed insurgency in 1958, Castro sought US recognition. The US government's refusal to recognize the revolutionary government led Castro to seek Soviet help. In return, the Soviet leaders told him to merge with the local Communist Party, which initially did not support the revolution. Castro followed the model imposed by the Soviets and gradually became a dictator in their mould.

Has Cuba been able to develop under Castro and his successors? The answer is clearly yes, especially in the health and education sectors. The government has also made inroads in overall human development. At the same time, we should not forget that enormous progress has also been made under a range of dictators and absolute monarchies in the Middle East and elsewhere.

Like the Batista government before it, the communist regime did not open any space for a range of political expression and has not shown concern for human liberty and democracy. This, in addition to economic hardship, has driven numerous Cubans to risk their lives to cross the Caribbean by boat and come to the United States.

Can socialism survive in Cuba?

It is clear that mass protests do not fundamentally endanger the political regimes of democratic states. The recent mass protests have not changed the regimes of India, the US, or other established democracies. States that cannot accommodate different opinions in their political systems, on the other hand, do face the risk of collapse.

George Orwell's 1945 political satire Animal Farm compares the Soviet system with a society of farm animals. The distinction between animals and human beings is that humans have no desire to live in confinement, regardless of the purported assurance of a better life. Nor do human beings all think or act alike. There is a variation and diversity in the human thought process. The more powerful states are those that can accommodate more divergent views and thoughts.

The present economic crisis and the resulting protest movement may not bring down the Cuban regime. Down the road, however, if the so-called socialist states continue to repress pluralistic views, they will ultimately remain in danger of being overthrown.