A decade ago, in a stunningly magnificent obeisance to the past, in the performance of the "three kneelings and nine kowtows" (三跪九叩) to the ancestors (even those not yet quite dead), the Cuban Party apparatus adopted its Conceptualización del modelo económico y social Cubano de desarrollo socialista"(discussed here in a CPE Background Brief). That is, to badly misquote Marx, the specter that is haunting Cuba. A spector that, in 2026 was neither exorcised nor confronted but one into whose thrall the state and the Party appear to have been consumed.
The Conceptualización was most notable as an retrenchment that effectively paused the movements toward reform or development, within a Marxist Leninist framework, of the Cuban economic-political model, and underscored its alignment with the operating model first put forward by the 1st Cuban Communist Party Congress in 1976. To suggest disappointment among those who remained committed to the Cuban Marxist-Leninist model but sought its reform to conform to the then current realities of the historical stage of development in which Cuba found itself was an understatement. But the elites, officially at least, recoiled at the possibility of "newfangled" (and mostly "oriental") change--and they certainly would have nothing to do with markets or Asian style Marxist Leninist operational structures. That turn to markets, even well managed Marxist-Leninist markets, was considered a direct route toward the corruption of Marxism and with it the undoing of the Leninist project as they saw it. As late as 2012, Fidel Castro made it clear in his "Reflections" that it was the model elaborate by Erich Honecker (East Germany) rather than that elaborated by Deng Xiaoping (PRC) that was the apex model of a properly organized Marxist Leninist system (Fidel Castro on Deng Xiaoping and Erich Honecker--Understanding the Foundations of Cuban Political and Economic Policy; "More than anything else, these short reflections are likely to be as
close as we will come to understanding the reasons that Cuba finds
itself in its particular current predicament. It is one based perhaps
on a nostalgia for what could have been, East Germany, and a fear and
loathing for what may be: Chinese style" markets Marxism).
Fidel Castro had consistently viewed Deng's opening up with substantial suspicion (e.g., The UnRepentant: Fidel Castro Confronts Cuban Globalization, Law at the End of the Day, Sept. 15, 2007), a position that was hard wired into the State and Party apparatus conceptual cahes (again in 2019, and now 2026) and especially its insistently Soviet ideological expression--not just Soviet in sensibilty and outlook but an ossified Soviet-ism imperious to the realities of the flow of time (among other things). This suspicion, and its architecture was not shared to the same degree by his brother (e.g., On the Anniversary of the Attack on the Moncada Barracks: Cuba Moves Forward towards its Chinese Future, Law at the End of the Day, July 27, 2007). The result was, at least within the economic sectors over which the military was given authority, a more or less (by Cuban standards anyway) vibrantly markets ready State owned enterprise sector metastasizing under the leadership of the military (to managed a sizeable chunk of the formal Cuban economy) and a stubbornly Soviet style orthodox central planning apparatus within the State sector, one that viewed markets with great suspicion and was loathe to tolerate it except at the margins and especially during periods of emergency.
2026 has seen the flowering of catastrophe for the Cuban economy, its infrastructure and whatever passes for its formal economy. It is a crisis of its own making, one that makes the current version of Cuban Stalinist Marxist Leninism particularly vulnerable to the transactional engagements with the Trump Administration's America First Policy as applied by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, someone with a substantially more refined interest in the affairs of Cuba. In times of crisis like this, the Cuban State-Party tends to move quickly especially with respect to concessions around the core of its Soviet operational structures. These have tended to please the intelligentsia and policy makers outside of Cuba, especially in the US, and cost the government virtually nothing in terms of pressure to effect even the changes that its own Marxist-Leninist techno-bureaucrats have been urging for years. That well worn pattern appears again to some extent as the Cuban State has appeared to suggest a greater tolerance of markets based activity, but again only around the edges and in ways that do not threaten the core of its State sector (or for that matter, the business of the military through GAESA).
On the other hand, in the way that the (in retrospect tragic) State visit of President Obama was connected to the political retrenchment that was the "Conceptualización del modelo económico y social Cubano de desarrollo socialista" delightfully described at the time by Ann Louise Bardach, "Backlash in Cuba," for Politico Magazine, June 10 2016 (and reposted by Arch Ritter to his blog site: here), so it appears that, in mirror reverse, the current state of US-Cuba relations produces the same sort of reaction--retenchment ideologically with asensation of reform. In the face of the Trump Administration's America First Policy applied in a more robust way to the Caribbean region (starting perhaps with the end of the leadership of Mr Maduro in Venezuela) and no focused on Cuba (here, here), the Cuban State-Party apparatus has again produced what amounts to an updated clone of the 2016 Conceptualización del modelo económico y social Cubano de desarrollo socialista" now with a few marginal tidbits to suggest the need to appease the architects (on the outside) of the current crisis (understanding of course that the Cuban State itself has been the master of its own disasters for quite a long period of time). That cloned and updated retrenchment (including in the choices of quotations from Fidel Castro that now aligns with present political need) has been distributed under the title Programa Económico y Social del Gobierno (2026). So. . . the appearance of changes at the margins and a hearty reaffirmation of the permanence of a 1970s ideological position--this time without the seemingly endless subsidies of the Soviet empire.
The Economic Program outlined consists of a 10 point plan, which in the style of such things in liberal democratic as well as Marxist-Leninist techno-bureaucracies sound like vague exhortations to generalized goals of sorts:
Objetivo General 1: Propiciar un entorno macroeconómico que favorezca la actividad productiva y el incremento de los ingresos externos.
Objetivo General 2: Incrementar y diversificar los ingresos externos del país.
Objetivo General 3: Incrementar la producción nacional, con énfasis en los alimentos.
Objetivo General 4: Transformar, modernizar y desarrollar el sistema empresarial cubano fortaleciendo el papel de la empresa estatal socialista, con énfasis en la integración entre todos los actores económicos.
Objetivo General 5: Avanzar en el perfeccionamiento de la gestión estratégica para el desarrollo territorial.
Objetivo General 6: Avanzar en el perfeccionamiento de la gestión de Gobierno, la Defensa y Seguridad Nacional.
Objetivo General 7: Consolidar y desarrollar las políticas sociales, garantizando la protección a personas, familias, hogares y comunidades en situación de vulnerabilidad.
Objetivo General 8: Avanzar en la implementación de las directivas generales dirigidas a la prevención y reducción del delito, la corrupción, las ilegalidades y las indisciplinas sociales.
Objetivo General 9: Avanzar en la recuperación del Sistema Electroenergético Nacional, impulsando la soberanía energética.
Objetivo General 10: Gestionar la ciencia e innovación, los recursos naturales, la comunicación social y la transformación digital para impulsar las esferas de desarrollo sostenible.
General Objective 1: Foster a macroeconomic environment that favors productive activity and the growth of external revenues.
General Objective 2: Increase and diversify the country's external revenues.
General Objective 3: Increase national production, with an emphasis on food.
General Objective 4: Transform, modernize, and develop the Cuban enterprise system by strengthening the role of the socialist state enterprise, with an emphasis on integration among all economic actors.
General Objective 5: Advance the improvement of strategic management for territorial development.
General Objective 6: Advance the improvement of Government management, National Defense, and Security.
General Objective 7: Consolidate and develop social policies, guaranteeing protection for individuals, families, households, and communities in vulnerable situations.
General Objective 8: Advance the implementation of general directives aimed at the prevention and reduction of crime, corruption, illegalities, and social indiscipline.
General Objective 9: Advance the recovery of the National Electric Power System, driving energy sovereignty.
General Objective 10: Manage science and innovation, natural resources, social communication, and digital transformation to drive the spheres of sustainable development.
This works in good times; it lacks the clarity and intensity often required in times of crisis. None of this is new; much of it is a tease; and all of it lacks any effective pathways other than hope. And, indeed, at its core is the fundamental determination to re-embrace, with renewed vigor the core of the ideological choices, and their necessary consequences, that brought the Cuban State to its present situation:
La Conceptualización del Modelo Económico y Social Cubano, los Lineamientos de la Política Económica y Social del Partido y la Revolución, el Plan Nacional de Desarrollo al 2030, el Programa Económico y Social del Gobierno, el Plan de la Economía Nacional y el Presupuesto del Estado para el 2026, constituyen los documentos rectores que rigen la dirección del desarrollo del país. La correcta comprensión de la naturaleza y funciones de cada documento
y, sobre todo, de su interrelación, es crucial para evitar desviaciones
en el logro de las metas previstas. [The Conceptualization of the Cuban Economic and Social Model, the Guidelines for the Economic and Social Policy of the Party and the Revolution, the National Development Plan through 2030, the Government’s Economic and Social Program, the National Economic Plan, and the State Budget for 2026 constitute the guiding documents that govern the direction of the country's development. A proper understanding of the nature and functions of each document—and, above all, of their interrelationship—is crucial to avoid deviations in the achievement of projected goals.] ( Programa Económico y Social del Gobierno (2026), Introduction)
Dressed up around operational reform, the suggestion that they will, after a decade or more, now properly approach the operationalization of the key documents of retrenchment (and get it right this time), is precisely what tends to be embraced by those looking for any sort of movement (even in the wrong direction) that suggests Cuban "cooperation" or "reform"--wprds that lose much of their usual meaning in this cntext. They suggest as well that it is the failure to properly understand these documents that is the cause (along with the American embargo) of the present state of catastrophe, or better put, the current State of Misery in which Cuba finds itself (on the Cuban State of Misery HERE). That is the tragedy. A pity really but it fits that patterns of response adopted in this early part of the 21st century. Lamentably, more the the same is precisely what is not now needed. Even if revolutionary transformations of the sort hungered for in some quarters would be disastrous as well.
And over all of this the ghost of Fidel Castro continues to haunt both State and Party--not revolutionary Fidel, but the Fidel that became the embodiment of the Stalinist turn in European Marxist-Leninism. Unlike his idol Erich Honecker, Fidel did not live to copy that fate of that fallen leader--extradition back to the place of his leadership and trial for his crimes cut short only by an advanced fatal illness. What happens to those others who remain is impossible to predict.
And thus: when on the edge of the abyss, consider jumping in. In this case the Cuban authorities appear well tempted to do just that, holding tightly onto a playbook scripted for the middle decades of the last century and utterly convinces that, at least within the national territory of Cuba, time has, indeed, stopped. And that may well be the final lesson for this variation of Caribbean Leninism born of a military revolution that sought to stop time at the moment of its triumph; only to discover that time stopped has another meaning; and in that they may, in time, come to the realization that Emily Dickinson suggested about such efforts:
A Clock stopped -
Not the Mantel's -
Geneva's farthest skill
Can't put the puppet bowing -
That just now dangled still -
An awe came on the Trinket!
The Figures hunched, with pain -
Then quivered out of Decimals -
Into Degreeless Noon -
It will not stir for Doctors -
This Pendulum of snow -
The Shopman importunes it -
While cool - concernless No -
Nods from the Gilded pointers -
Nods from Seconds slim -
Decades of Arrogance between
The Dial life -
And Him -
Cuba's clock, indeed, may well have stopped. That was the spector of an ossified Soviet Caribbean Marxism whose
principal undoing was its unwillingness to understand what the Chinese
Leninists have long known (and which was incomprehensible to the Soviets
themselves)--that Marxist Leninism in inherently a temporally embedded
theory grounded in the core premise of a progress through time along a
socialist path toeard communism, and that the triumph of a revolution
was not the end but the starting point.
The Introduction to the Programa Económico y Social del Gobierno (2026) follows below in the original Spanish and in a quick English translation. The picture which follows, also part of the Programa Económico y Social del Gobierno (2026) might best be savored with a garnish of irony.
