Re: [marxmail] Cuba at the crossroads of the ‘New Trumpist/Fascist Order’

The Revolution and Its Escort

The most clear-headed document to have been produced in the last few years regarding the ideological position of the Cuban state from within the state itself, Enrique Ubieta Gomez’s “Cuba At A Crossroad Of The New Trumpist/Fascist Order," will be read for the wrong reasons. *1* Washington Press will find ammunition to use in their assaults because of what he writes. The Solidarity Movement will see this as an attack on a comrade and therefore an attack on the revolution—and they will ignore all aspects of difficulty contained therein. It would be unfair to both sides to do so. While Ubieta is certainly not defending the status quo as many defenders of the Cuban Revolution do—he is a Communist who sees a slide away from where his state has come to pass and feels strongly enough about the situation to write publicly—his strength comes from just how far he is willing to go in saying things openly (that there is little popular support left for socialism, that recent economic packages contain clearly capitalist elements, that the ideological struggle has been lost to social media metrics, that courses in Marxist political economy were removed from curricula, that those who call themselves revolutionaries but speak out against the actions taken by the state are being treated as pseudo Marxists and ultra-leftists, etc.).

While I agree that you can accept the frame of reference provided—that Donald Trump's administration does not wish to negotiate a settlement with Cuba; it wishes to take control of the island. That the blockade imposed upon Cuba is the primary cause of the disaster currently unfolding on the island and that no genuine accounting of current shortages on the island begins with anything other than the blockade. What is also true is that the criminal prosecution of a 95-year-old man for a shoot-down incident in Cuban waters in 1996 is a legally absurd exercise in service of a war aim. Ubieta is correct when he says that the proposed dialogue is simply a tool and correct when he says that what is being offered as an alternative to dialogue is nothing short of a Puerto Rican governorship followed by a massacre. None of this lessens my obligation. The first obligation of socialists living in the United States is to destroy the blockade; it is absolute.

This piece addresses the theory that Ubieta utilizes to defend the Revolution—and argues that the theory has long since conceded the case.

--------------------------
I. The Escort at the Table
--------------------------

Ubieta’s main task is to destroy an “imperialist opinion matrix"—the assumption that Raúl Castro and his clique are the ones exercising true power in Cuba and that Díaz-Canel is merely an administrator lacking any actual ability to make decisions. Let’s watch how Ubieta conducts the destruction.

Ubieta introduces Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro (the grandson of Raúl Castro) as the head of Raúl's escort in his own words. Rodríguez Castro was one of the two interlocutors during the US-Cuba contacts in May. Ubieta doesn't dispute this; he simply asks if the empire's emissaries demanded it. Ubieta then admits that after Rodríguez Castro's later profile became clear, it demonstrated significant vulnerabilities and elicited genuine outrage from revolutionaries. Ubieta also acknowledges that the descendants of the historic leadership carry a historical burden in a society that proclaims social justice—i.e., that they occupy a position where they have the potential to discredit it.

This is followed by Ubieta's argument. It isn’t that there is no truth to the notion that Raúl and his crew rule Cuba, having control over Cuba's economy and military. Rather, Ubieta states that the notion that Raúl and his crew do so is counterproductive. In other words, while the claim may be true, Ubieta views the claim as harmful. Ubieta bases his argument against the thesis on its results, but never challenges the factual basis for it. At the very same time, he provides evidence that supports why people believe it: it creates the perception of competing interests existing within Cuba, and some of these individuals (or possibly all of them collectively) might be able to influence Cuba’s decision-making process to benefit themselves or, alternatively, use Raúl's legend to get what they want when Raúl is 95 years old. That sentence directly expresses the succession problem articulated by a loyalist who thinks he is disproving it.

The same fate awaits GAESA. Ubieta defends GAESA as being a successful economic entity established inside the Revolutionary Armed Forces to circumvent the blockade and inherit the military's discipline and discretion. Ubieta emphasizes discretion. Ubieta refers to discretion without irony. Ubieta is defending a multi-billion dollar conglomerate controlling much of Cuba's hard currency acquisition apparatus, which is responsible to a chain of command rather than any organ of people’s power, based upon the fact that it is disciplined and therefore does not need to justify anything.

Finally, Ubieta concludes the section with a statement that reveals everything: "The legitimacy of future governments headed by Diaz-Canel cannot depend on support from any historical figure." You write a sentence like that only if you believe the legitimacy of those governments depends on it.

Put the elements side-by-side. A government whose members float above a class that cannot administer on its own behalf. A military-economic complex providing the financial foundation for the Cuban state, unaccountable to any organ of popular authority. Posts tied to individuals and families rather than posts tied to specific offices, making it possible for the chief of a former revolutionary leader's personal bodyguard to perform a diplomatic function without holding any post. These represent patrimonial Bonapartism, and this represents its most pure expression available to date. *2* The household guard is performing a governmental action since the household has not been separated from the state. Weber’s point regarding patrimonial administrative systems was not that rulers were corrupt; it was that there had been no institutional accomplishment of separating the ruler's private household from his/her official office. Ubieta’s article documents the lack of separation in his denial that it matters.

He has every right to argue that the alternatives offered are colonies. He has no right to describe the descriptive process as a psy-op.

------------------------------
II. The Ideological Watchtower
------------------------------

Ubieta presents his methodological "confession" as a minor caveat, but as such, it serves as the pivot point. When Ubieta states that his analysis of the 176 measures is ideological and not economic (and though he recognizes that the two are related), he claims he is analyzing the economy from the perspective of the ideological watchtower, not vice versa.

Take him at his word and consider the implications. Marketization can thus be registered only as a morale issue. The 176 measures will be evaluated based upon how well they enhance or detract from consensus, the communist horizon, and the pedagogical ability of the party. Never will they be assessed as a change in the type/form of social labor since the type/form of social labor is simply not something that the watch tower can observe. As a result, we get the unique form of the positive program presented in the last part of the essay: the deficit must be remedied through mobilizing, through streets, through the pedagogy of "doing," etc., through a revitalized battle of ideas. In short, ideology is called upon to carry out the mediations that no institutions can carry out.

There is a question Ubieta cannot pose from that vantage. Did socialist production in Cuba occur according to some basis other than value? He gets remarkably close to asking this. What he terms an extreme supposition arises: did socialism actually occur in Cuba if there exists a statistified economy and there is no genuine popular control over each factory, enterprise, and community? This is indeed the proper question, and it would have been the only one capable of making the remainder of the essay tractable. Nationalization is not the abolition of value relations. The state that monopolizes mediation between domestic labor and world markets has not eliminated value; rather, it has nationalized its administration. Therefore, under those circumstances, the enterprise will continue to appear to the worker as an alien force, the length of time for work will continue to be dictated by an accumulation imperative set by someone else (not by workers), and the surplus will remain outside of workers' control. GAESA is not an anomaly in Cuban socialism. Rather, it represents an institutional expression of where that mediation has been concentrated—precisely why it is opaque—and precisely why it remains after all this time.

Thus, when read in this manner, the 176 measures represent not a departure from socialism. Instead, they represent a de-centralization of a value relationship the State had previously monopolized, undertaken since the monopoly has ceased to provide sufficient foreign exchange for the apparatus' requirements. Ubieta sets up a question that would allow him to determine whether this interpretation is true—but then refuses to address it. Why were these measures not enacted before—and therefore allow the reformist response for him, allowing us to choose between dogma and realism? There is another alternative. They were not enacted before due to the fact that the state's monopoly over the value relationship represented the material basis of cohesiveness among apparatuses. And they are being implemented now because that apparatus must find new sources of hard currency and a new social base. The causal sequence is much closer to GAESA's financial reports than it is to the health/education needs of populations—and hence why privatization has begun to pursue health and education—as Ubieta noted with considerable concern.

He clearly observes symptoms of this process. However, the watchtower prohibits him from rendering a diagnosis.

-----------------------
III: We Build Consensus
-----------------------

In eleven words, Ubieta answers his extreme speculation: "Our socialist idea was tainted by both history and encirclement,” and yet thanks to Fidel’s brilliance, it was more democratic and participatory than were other experiments.

Consider what has now been said. The democratic character of a social regime is attributed to the genius of an individual (not to the Soviets, not to workers’ control of enterprises, not to any institutional means whereby the working class could force the apparatus to conform, but to the qualities of a man). This is the extreme manifestation of the substitutivist reflex, and it manifests itself precisely at the point at which the alternative would have to be identified. *3*

Only a few paragraphs later does Ubieta explicitly state the underlying principle. According to him, revolutionaries, he states, are not administrators of already formed consensuses and realities; they destroy what exists practically and mentally in order to construct their own consensuses and realities. The possessive is all there is. The consensus is constructed by the revolutionaries and then possessed by the people. There are no institutions connecting these two; only pedagogy. Socialist legitimacy based upon authoritarian power was stated as a virtue in the first person plural by a man who lamented for many pages prior how the popular consensus collapsed.

There is only one location where institutionalized solutions may have emerged within the essay; however, the author of the essay completely passes over this possibility in a subordinate clause. As such, Ubieta indicates in a parenthetical remark, popular power can and should be strengthened if it wants to perform the functions of socialism. This is the complete content of Ubieta’s proposal. In an extensive essay on the deterioration of the protagonist of the people, there is neither an institution nor a program through which that protagonism can emerge.

---------------
IV. Broken Link
---------------

In the latter part of the essay (the portion translated into English separately) Ubieta places the Cuban crisis within an international context. In this section, he outlines the theory of alliances on which Cuba's foreign policy has rested since at least the early 1990s. And, unlike much of the Western writing supporting this same theory, he states it more candidly.

As Ubieta writes, he has always believed "that each link that is broken or weakened in the chain that maintains our subordination to imperialism is one step nearer to breaking up the international order that sustains capitalism," even if the blow to this order comes from a nationalist bourgeoisie that will continue to exploit internally.

That parenthetical remark encapsulates both the argument and its negation in a single phrase. The internal social relation is stated but then bracketed as strategically inconsequential. Although Ubieta concedes that the workers of any particular nation are being exploited by their own bourgeoisie, he sets this concession aside. What matters is the direction of that bourgeoisie's foreign policy. Everything that follows in Ubieta's international section of the essay follows from this premise; thus, everything that he laments also follows from it.

He laments a lot. He describes how the Latin American Left abandoned its search for a true popular democracy and effectively renounced the possibility of defeating the capitalist system. He notes how many of the progressive governments' policies have been assistentialist and how some of those governments have implemented nearly the same neoliberal measures they campaigned against. He expresses real self-criticism about how Cuban television described a progressive candidate's re-election as a triumph for democracy—as if democratic rule through the bourgeoisie constituted democracy itself. Each of these is an accurate description of what campism has yielded. None of them may challenge the premise that produced them.

It is the Venezuelan conclusion, however, that represents a break in the premise. To Ubieta, the actions of the present Venezuelan government represent a betrayal, an open wound, a collapse of morals. Since betrayal is the only category available to a theory that has bracketed off the class nature of its allies, when the external pressure exceeds the interests of such an ally and it ultimately capitulates, there is nothing in the theory that could predict this outcome, and only the language of treason can remain. A bourgeoisie that never ceased to exploit internally would obviously never resist imperialism and threaten its property. Thus, it acted according to its class position.

Ubieta's own footnote that acknowledges Delcy Rodriguez led the capitulation is not a revelation of poor character. Rather, it is merely evidence of the operation of a class relationship that his theoretical structure warned him to overlook.

The alternative to Ubieta's justifiable contempt for abstention is not simply abstention. Rather, it is that solidarity against imperialism should be unconditional and support should be offered to no state and that the only stable obstacle to surrender is the independent organization of workers in the country attacked by imperialism, something that campist alliance politics continually dissolves in favor of loyalty to the government. Stating this is certainly not a difficult proposition to articulate. Ubieta approaches articulating this proposition more closely than most of his critics: he declares that another democracy exists—namely, popular democracy—and that people need to be informed that it exists and need to struggle for it. Both sentences cannot coexist.

---------------------
V. Death to Socialism
---------------------

The essay concludes at Fidel’s Centennial with the old slogan and with a reinterpretation: death is never always defeat. Sometimes it is the only way you can win. The essay also suggests, very carefully, that after having eliminated armed struggle as a viable option (that route), Imperialism may force another round of violence against the State.

In order to read the entire trajectory, the essay begins with a diagnosis of how the popular consensus surrounding socialism has eroded over three decades. It provides evidence for the introduction of capitalist methods into the Cuban economy, the reduction of Marxist education in schools, the replacement of social media metrics for political work, and the growing independence of a military-economic apparatus from all forms of accountability. The essay concludes by suggesting that socialism today means the desire to die for the state that claims it.

It is not cynical to conclude that when the mediator is missing (i.e., the institution through which a class exerts its power) and when the democratic nature of socialism was determined by a deceased leader, then when the pedagogy fails, and when the measures pass, and when the horizon is no longer visible, what can be called socialism is nothing but sacrifice. Ubieta is truthful about where he arrives and states it clearly. This is where one can judge that a program has been substituted with a willingness to die for socialism.

The working people of Cuba deserve better than that proposition. We do too. The tasks here are not complex. End the Blockade. Oppose the Indictment. Oppose the tariffs placed on Cuba’s fuel suppliers. Oppose the Threats of Invasion. Do these actions without giving even one word of political support to the Cuban government. Do these actions without claiming that GAESA’s accounting records are invented by imperialism. Extend solidarity to any Cuban worker who raises—in a factory or a hotel or a state-owned enterprise being restructured—the question posed and then tabled by Ubieta: Who controls this? By what right?

He asked if socialism exists in Cuba. To preserve everything he wants to preserve, one could respond: The revolution was real. Its internationalism was real. Girón and Cuito Cuanavale were real. What was established on top of those events was a state-administered administration of value that was governed paternally and that is currently being dismantled by the same apparatus that built it in their own self-interest at the cost of the people while under siege created by the United States.

· Enrique Ubieta Gómez, "Cuba en la encrucijada del 'Nuevo Orden Trumpi/fascista,'" Cubaperiodistas, 28 July 2026, text dated 26 July 2026. English translation in two parts as "Cuba at the Crossroads of the 'New Trumpist/Fascist Order,'" World-Outlook, July 2026. Quotations here follow the Spanish; the division into two parts is the translator's. ↩ ( #user-content-fnref-1 )

· On the framework, see Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte , and Max Weber, Economy and Society , vol. 2, ch. 12, on patrimonial administration and the non-separation of household and office. ↩ ( #user-content-fnref-2 )

· Hal Draper, The Two Souls of Socialism (Berkeley: Independent Socialist Press, 1966), and Karl Marx's Theory of Revolution , vol. 1, State and Bureaucracy (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1977), pt. 2. ↩ ( #user-content-fnref-3 )

--
Tony


-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group.
View/Reply Online (#43135): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/43135
Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/120879203/6024700
-=-=-
POSTING RULES & NOTES
#1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
#2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived.
#3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern.
#4 Do not exceed five posts a day.
-=-=-
Group Owner: [email protected]
Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/10173629/6024700/1441833971/xyzzy [[email protected]]
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-