ABSTRACT
For the revolutionary elite, health is the top priority in social development. The health area also carries a clear political purpose: the elite is striving to make Cuba a major medical power in an attempt to surpass the United States and the capitalist world. Socially, the revolutionary belong to the urban middle class, but it is not this class with which the workers often identify. “Uprootedness,” as Theodore Draper pointed out some time ago, “is probably the revolutionaries’ most salient characteristic.” In addition, the mere lack of controls led societal forces in directions that the revolutionary elite now considers to be alien to socialist objectives. The proposed rules are aimed at eradicating the possibility of accumulating wealth and income, two important dimensions of social stratification. Cuba will attempt to almost double Sweden’s improvement in life expectancy in fifteen years, two-thirds of the time, without the positive social conditions that prevail in Sweden.
