The current situation has been described as worse than Cuba’s special period after the collapse of the USSR. The Antonio Guiteras power plant in the western province of Matanzas, failed shortly before midday on Friday October, 18 2024. At a time when the island was already coming off of the destruction from hurricane Milton. Power was temporarily restored but was cut again on the following Sunday. This marked the fourth time the aging system collapsed, leaving 10 million in a precarious position of four days without electricity, water, or refrigeration for their food in the tropical heat. Since the last time the grid failed, on October 20th through Monday the 21st, many demonstrated in the streets and on their balconies by banging pots and casserole pans out of frustration and to be heard by others in the same situation. Many were working women with children who've had to endure being without power, calling it child abuse.

Attempts by the USSR to industrialize Cuba, with a productivist state- capitalist model, in the 1960s utterly failed. The USSR kept Cuba agrarian, organizing the purchase of sugar at a premium rate in exchange for Cuba providing the USSR with soldiers to die as proxies in Southern Africa and Ethiopia. These policies are felt today: all attempts to restructure Cuba's national social capital through decreasing state employment or allowing for the growth of the private sector have failed. The succession of Cuban Communist Party’s paramount leaders, from Fidel to Raul Castro to Díaz-Canel, hasn't changed this. The island country is a powder keg.

The situation has gotten worse by the day since the covid- 19 pandemic put the brakes on the high profit tourism sector. To make matters worse, in early 2021 Trump, on his way out of office, saddled Cuba with further sanctions by placing it on the state sponsors of terrorism list. This forbids the already difficult process for US firms to ship food stuff and energy to the island. At this point, the Cuban government can't even get credits to purchase fuel or shipments from any company insured by a US based firm or those fearing sanctions. These conditions lead to a massive contraction in remittance to the island from abroad paving the way for the July, 11 protests, where the state machinery was unleashed onto unarmed protestors leading to 500 arrest and disappearances. This was followed by the smaller November 2021 protests. In August 2022, the government lost nearly half of its oil supply during a fire at a refinery in Matanzas. The Russo - Ukrainian war caused further economic decoupling and for fuel prices to rapidly increase further straining the fractures on the supply chains caused by Covid- 19. This led to fuel shortages that were exacerbated by Cuba’s main regional allies, Mexico, Venezuela and Russia, decreasing subsidized energy shipments to Cuba, as they were in the middle of their own multiplying internal crises during the economic downturn in 2022.

In a bid to solidify existing alliances, the rapidly forming China-Russia bloc has tried to keep the Cuban government afloat. Venezuela’s state oil company, PDVSA, is alleged to have been using a “dark fleet” of clandestine tankers to bypass the new restrictions. Meanwhile, China’s prescribed economic restructuring (cutting government employment substantially) would cause massive unemployment and a breakdown in social cohesion. Simply put, Cuban capital is outdated. Domestic private capitalist’s savings are meager, while the inflow of investments aren't sufficient for it either; this means even the pro-democracy, multiparty liberal reformists have nothing to even pretend to offer at this point, one in which most state institutions are collapsing.

In 2024 alone, the island has been hobbling from one crisis after another, leading to food and energy rationing (in the form of rolling black outs). During March 17-18, there were yet more protests caused by workers' sheer frustration and agony from these conditions, where their demands were simply for “corriente y comida” (electricity and food). Miguel Díaz-Canel’s government couldn't even meet these basic demands due to the already collapsing social situation. The state’s reaction was to cut off the Internet, repress the days long demonstrations by force, condemn those involved as being terrorists, and then reach out to the World Food Programme for powdered milk to prevent Cuban’s low caloric intake from decreasing any further. Russia resumed oil shipments in April, 2024 after a hiatus to relieve the government.With NATO Imperialist bloc supplying Ukraine with long range missiles (including technicians to operate weapons systems), the Russian military visited the island with nuclear submarines, both to signify closer relations with the government and to demonstrate that Russian imperialism can escalate horizontally in the midst of Ukrainian missile strikes and incursions into Russia.

In the current day there's been protests around the island for nearly a year over lacking all basic necessities and many are still in the dark and hungry, even with 70% of the country's electricity restored by Tuesday, October 22. However, the government has been anticipating even more caustic protests in the near future due to discontent about the handling of the last set of crises. The government has a great chance of collapsing into a massive political crisis where the Communist Party of Cuba’s upper echelon will be divided on forming a new government. In this scenario there will be intrigue by their main allies in order to keep Cuba as a playable chess piece and out of the US’s orbit. With government ineptitude and the social situation decaying (like the infrastructure ) the island, the state has been forced to order the army and their police forces to gather from around the island to amass in the capital, while cordoning and starving off protest elsewhere. This poses the dangers of increased class self activity which could spread in these conditions. The situation is bleak. The Cuban bourgeoisie are unsure about which way forward, but either will end bloody if the class-based capitalist system remains.

Workers have described the situation as hopeless, or even have stoically resigned to these conditions as a result of both repression and how discredited reformist currents are. To prevent this outcome, it is necessary to end the vicious system of capitalist production. Cuba contains all the basic aspects of capitalism (wage labor, commodity, private property), all concentrated in the state’s hands, the most predatory monopoly of all, and therefore capitalism’s insoluble crisis of profitability. There's only one solution: the independent self activity of the working class and the communist revolution led by a new international party. This party must be able to reflect on all the past lessons of the working class struggle in order to develop a program for concrete political action. Communism is emancipatory and abolishes class based society; it is not a party dictatorship ushered in by a military coup d’état, led by military brass against the discredited Bautista government.

Notes

Image from AP freemalaysiatoday.com