ABSTRACT
Cuba, the principal and still existing socialist experiment in the history of the Western world is currently enmeshed in a process of imminent transformation. For the Revolution to survive the forces assailing it from within and from the outside it will need to tack carefully to the torrential winds of change blowing over the world capitalist system. Cuba has done so before, albeit not without errors and rectifications of these errors. In fact, an as of yet not entirely explained mystery is how the Cuban Revolution managed to survive the ‘perfect storm’ brought about by the collapse of socialism in the early 1990s. But it did survive, prompting some to argue that if Cuba survived that storm it can survive virtually anything thrown at it. But the leadership and current administration does not take this view. It is all too aware of what is at stake and that the government cannot continue to call on Cubans to endlessly tighten their belts-to absorb the high social costs of adjusting to the winds of change and the dictates of government policy. A further adjustment to the forces of change and another round of reforms to the Revolution is clearly called for and in the works. Indeed the leadership, if not the entire country, at in the current conjuncture of world development is seriously engaged in the process of seeking how best to make this adjustment-whether to ‘update the model’ or even possibly to change direction. Raúl Castro, at the helm of the ship of the state in this navigational context, has declared: ‘either we correct our mistakes or we sink’. At issue in this rectification, in addition to preserving the revolution’s achievements in human development is socialism itself. The question is whether Cuba will be forced to cut a capitalist path towards national development as Russia, China and Vietnam have done. Or whether it can continue to lead the forces of socialist transformation in the twenty-first century.
