Urgently Needed: International Workers Action to Break the Energy Blockade!

Cuba Alert! Zero Hour
to Defend the Revolution

The 176 Measures: Threat of Capitalist Restoration
Oppose Privatization! Workers Control, Now!

The Bureaucracy Is Bowing to Imperialist Pressure
What’s Key: Build a Genuine Communist Opposition

The following article is translated from Revolución Permanente No. 14, July 2026, the newspaper of the Grupo Internacionalista, Mexican section of the League for the Fourth International.

On June 17 and 18, moving at breakneck pace, the leadership of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) introduced, voted on and had the National Assembly of People’s Power (ANPP) approve a plan for “economic and social transformations” that, if implemented – even partially – could unleash a frenzy of privatizations that would threaten the foundations and historic gains of the Cuban Revolution. However, implementing these measures is a big question mark for a country under siege by the world’s most powerful imperialist power, a country lacking hard currency, where there is no capital to invest, and above all where there is no fuel. The “176 measures” are clearly an offer to yield to the demands of the U.S. administration of Donald Trump, but there is no indication that the recipient is interested in the offer. Quite the contrary.

The fact is that U.S. imperialism is doing everything in its power to subject the island to a crippling energy crisis while insisting on “regime change.” It is continuing the policy that has been a constant across all administrations in Washington since 1960: to eliminate the “communist menace” on its doorstep. It is hard to imagine that the intended investments, including the purchase of state-owned enterprises, will take place with the Communist Party in power. The counterrevolutionary gusanos¹ in Miami will never recognize the property rights of anyone who negotiated with the current leaders. On the other hand, it is easy to grasp the devastating impact that layoffs and the elimination of product subsidies outlined in the “transformations” would cause. However insufficient the provisions from the ration book (the libreta)² may be, they are vital.

The Cuban people today find themselves caught between the sword of the U.S. Southern Command and the wall of suffocating electricity shortages. The measures approved by the government go far beyond a mere “reform”: they are the negation of the socialized economy. They are the result of imperialist blackmail, not the inefficiency of state-owned industry deprived of inputs. The working people will pay the price for this privatization, whether it is creeping or galloping. That is precisely why it is crucial to organize opposition to it from within the labor movement. There will surely be a backlash from managers. A political crisis will then arise that urgently needs to be tackled now, before it is too late. Resolving it will depend on broadening the debate to include the working class as a whole, and all those committed to the Revolution.

Each of the 176 measures requires legislation or other action for its implementation. When cynically referring to layoffs (“workers who terminate their employment relationship”), it is specified that these must “follow an evaluation by the collegial management body,³ in agreement with the union, and subject to analysis at a meeting of members and workers.” So it’s necessary to push hard against layoffs in meetings of the “collective” (the personnel), and if management refuses, to impose workers control. Since the supply problems plaguing the Cuban economy cannot be resolved at the level of a single enterprise, it would be necessary to form plant or workplace committees, unite them into workers councils to defend the gains of the Revolution, and convene a national assembly of workers in the socialized economy.⁴

It must be made clear that there is indeed an alternative to surrender: to fight. And in the face of a crisis unleashed by an imperialist onslaught, this struggle must be, above all, international. Brave as Cuban workers are – coping with hellish conditions, constant blackouts, sometimes lasting more than 24 hours across the entire island, and shortages and scarcity of everything – to defeat a ruthless enemy, it is necessary to mobilize the forces of the working class throughout the Americas. It’s not just the sadistic Trump, the “progressive” presidents of Brazil, Lula da Silva, and Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum, are responsible for the Cuban people’s ordeal, as they have refused to send oil to the besieged island. Proletarian revolutionaries and class-conscious workers throughout the hemisphere must mobilize to break the energy blockade against Cuba: workers action is urgently needed to send fuel to Cuba, now!

Defending Cuba also requires fighting for the political class independence of the workers. Although many “friends of Cuba” and a large part of the Cuban leadership long for the era of Barack Obama, when the U.S. president traveled to Havana, his administration did not lift the sanctions that have stifled the island’s economy. The Democratic Party has always been and will continue to be a pillar of U.S. imperialism, pursuing the same fundamental goals as John F. Kennedy: the subjugation of Cuba to imperialist capital. In Latin America as well, the policy of many Cuba solidarity campaigns of forming popular fronts with bourgeois sectors can hinder effective solidarity at decisive moments. In contrast, resistance to imperialism anywhere in the world helps Cuba (thus Trump being bogged down in his war against Iran makes it harder for him to launch a military attack on the island).

The grinding crisis in Cuba demands a revolutionary political response. The 176 measures are the desperate response of the leaders of the Cuban bureaucratically deformed workers state who see no alternative to capitulation in the face of the superior economic strength of the empire of the north. With their nationalist outlook, they have pursued the impossible Stalinist dream of “peaceful coexistence” with imperialism, the corollary of the dogma of “socialism in one country,” which is the antithesis of the Leninist program of international socialist revolution. What proved impossible for the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), the world’s largest country, is even less possible for a small nation “just 90 miles” from the United States. The urgent defense of Cuba depends on forging a genuinely communist leadership and extending the revolution into the “bowels of the imperialist monster,” as [Cubas’s historic independence leader] José Martí put it.

The U.S. Seeks to Cut Off All Trade with Cuba

The “Economic and Social Transformations” were presented by Cuban president and first secretary Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC), and by Political Bureau member and prime minister Manuel Marrero Cruz to the National Assembly of People’s Power (ANPP), and were explicitly endorsed by former Cuban president Raúl Castro Ruz. They contain a wide range of measures that strike at the heart of the socialized economy. These include: “Transforming socialist state-owned enterprises into commercial corporations with shares or equity interests,” ensuring only that the state maintains a “majority stake” in strategic enterprises. Also included are the sale of state-owned enterprises to “domestic and foreign” individuals or entities; “transition to a model of financial planning” guided by “market signals”; and the introduction of private banks. It calls into question the state monopoly of foreign trade, and much more.

Implementing this plan, as we have pointed out, would result in the dismantling of the planned economy and in privatizations that, given the lack of large quantities of capital in Cuba, would soon turn Cuba into yet another U.S. neocolony. However, although it is very detailed, the plan lacks overall coherence. It is a list of offers that reads more like a real estate prospectus. Are you, the owner of a small or medium-sized business, looking to expand your company? You can now hire more than 100 employees. Are you, a U.S. investor, looking to buy properties for tourism? Foreign investment is now permitted even in Old Havana, and to leave no room for doubt, “real estate businesses may conduct sales transactions for residential units.” Etc., etc. That said, finding a buyer is another matter entirely.

Speaking at the CARICOM⁵ summit on the island of St. Kitts on February 25, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said of Cuba, “if they want to make those dramatic reforms that open the space for both economic and eventually political freedom for the people of Cuba, obviously the United States would love to see that.  We’d be helpful.” The measures approved on June 17-18 appear to be tailored to these proposals. But when, on March 16, Deputy Prime Minister Oscar Pérez-Oliva declared that “Cuba is open to maintaining a fluid commercial relationship with U.S. companies,” the gusano Rubio immediately responded that this would not be enough, that “they need to put new people in charge.” Donald Trump was more explicit: he said that Díaz-Canel has to go.

The U.S. subsequently issued a series of mandates that make any commercial relationship with Cuba impossible. On May 1, Trump signed Executive Order 14404, which imposes sanctions on any person or company that has “materially assisted, sponsored, or provided financial, material, or technological support for, or goods or services to or in support of, the Government of Cuba.” In particular, it focused on the energy, mining and financial services sectors. It targeted the joint-venture mining company Moa Nickel S.A., a producer of nickel and cobalt. Its Canadian operator, Sherritt, shut down operations at the mine in June. Washington gave banks until June 5 to sever ties with Fincimex, part of the Cuban armed forces’ conglomerate GAESA. On June 6, Visa and Mastercard stopped working in Cuba.

In addition to the total fuel embargo, which has forced ten airlines to cancel service to the island, Executive Order 14404 seeks to block almost all trade with Cuba. In May, two of the world’s largest shipping companies, Hapag-Lloyd and CMA CGM, suspended operations to the country, as did the Melilla and Iberostar hotel chains. On June 10, Secretary of State Rubio imposed sanctions on the Cuban state-owned oil company Cupet. After Cuba authorized the importation of oil by private individuals in February – a move that the League for the Fourth International warned would open the door to imperialist blackmail – a Florida-based company, Vanguard Energy, announced plans to ship up to 250,000 barrels in a tanker. But it was soon forced to cancel the project because the fuel was to be stored in facilities leased from Cupet.

The main target of Trump’s executive order is the Grupo de Administración Empresarial S.A. (GAESA), a business conglomerate within the structure of the Revolutionary Armed Forces that was created during the “Special Period”⁶ of the 1990s to combat the economic blockade imposed on Cuba. It operates a network of tourist facilities (Grupo Gaviota), runs several supermarkets and gas stations and manages the port of Mariel – all aimed at generating hard currency.⁷ Using loaded terms like “opaque,” “secretive” and “a mafia-like state within the state,” the imperialist and gusano propaganda machine has tried to portray GAESA as an ogre precisely because it has been a key weapon in defending Cuba against the brutal economic war that U.S. imperialism has waged against it for 65 long years. 

To attract the desired foreign investment envisioned in the 176 “transformations,” approval from Washington is needed. This endorsement has not been forthcoming, nor will it be, because what the imperialists seek is to overthrow the Cuban Revolution. That is the “logic” behind the ridiculous legal indictment in May against Cuban leader Raúl Castro for the (justified) downing of the plane carrying the “Brothers to the Rescue” provocateurs in 1996 (see box). Then, on June 23, a Washington spokesperson described the 176 Cuban measures as “long overdue and ultimately superficial smoke signals” from Havana. At the same time, new sanctions were imposed on five companies, including two that handle nearly all of Cuba’s international transactions and one that serves as the main warehousing agency for the state, private companies and foreign firms.

In short, Cuba’s “transformations” will not be viewed favorably by the Trump administration, and without that support, it is nearly impossible for the country to attract foreign investment to increase production (and productivity, which depends on the introduction of new technology). Simply to survive with a minimum standard of living requires breaking the energy blockade, and any improvement requires eliminating or substantially reducing the economic blockade that dates back to the early 1960s. Substantial privatization of industry, energy, communications, etc., will not achieve the supposed increase in efficiency, no matter how rigid state-owned enterprises may be. And in the meantime, the resulting mass layoffs and price increases for basic necessities could lead to internal unrest . . . and a mass exodus.

Abandoning the Planned Economy: Blow Against Workers

The Communist Party leadership insists over and over that the purpose of the 176 measures is “to advance the defense of socialism” (President Díaz-Canel, at the plenary session of the PCC Central Committee on June 17); and that it is “to preserve the achievements of the Revolution and guarantee the continuity of socialism” (Prime Minister Marrero, at the National People’s Power Assembly on June 18). Díaz-Canel told the Congress of the Cuban Workers Confederation (CTC) on June 27, “We do not propose – nor will it ever be our intention – to restore capitalism in Cuba! It is a matter of … saving the Revolution and its undeniable social achievements, because we will never renounce the majority’s aspiration for socialist construction.” He also spoke there of saving “the socialist orientation of the economy.” Aspiration? Orientation? It is the reality of the socialized economy that is at stake.

And in reality, these measures undermine the foundations of the workers state. In addition to the importation of fuel by private and foreign capitalist entities – the dangers of which we have already pointed out – state entities, municipalities and cooperatives are now authorized to export, import and retain foreign currency revenues; “natural persons” (individuals) are permitted to make “commercial imports through non-commercial channels”; and the “partial dollarization of the economy” is formalized. Although it is claimed that such measures “do not imply granting foreign trade powers,” in fact they undermine the state’s monopoly of foreign trade. Combined with the effort to foster by multiple means a substantial capitalist sector (“non-state economic actors”), the measures as a whole threaten the pillars of Cuba’s socialized economy.

The 176 measures refer to “moving toward a model of financial planning in which the state gradually shifts away from the physical allocation of resources, giving greater weight to market signals.” This amounts to abandoning a planned economy. Planning based on financial indicators is by no means socialist; it is practiced by several capitalist countries. France, for example, adopted it after World War II, establishing a Planning Commission that existed until 2006. Although such “indicative planning” can guide the development of different sectors in the medium or long term, in the day-to-day functioning of the economy it would be the market and the (capitalist) law of value that determine what to produce, rather than a decision based on social needs.

Since the state monopoly on foreign trade, economic planning and the entire state sector would be weakened and jeopardized by the impact of the 176 measures, how can the bureaucracy that governs the Cuban state insist that it is defending or saving socialism? When they speak of “socialism,” they invariably point to public education and healthcare, which are indeed great achievements of the Cuban Revolution and a beacon for all of Latin America. But while they are achievements of a socialized economy, and officials vow to keep them free of charge, that in and of itself is not incompatible with social-democratic-style capitalism. In reality, these jewels which are Cuba's pride and joy would be undermined in a market-driven economy.

PCC leaders also promise that they will ensure “social justice,” and that the reforms will generate “greater riches,” which they will distribute “with the greatest possible social justice” (Díaz-Canel at the CTC). However, there is no guarantee that the free-market changes will increase production, while it is certain that they will produce greater inequality (this is even their intention, at the Central Committee he himself called for “producing with equity, not with egalitarianism”). And the elimination of subsidies for basic necessities, the introduction of differentiated wages and rising layoffs will, by definition, be acts of social injustice that all class-conscious workers and genuine communists must resist with workers action. To put it bluntly, promises of future wealth do not put food on the table.

Resist the Surrender of the Socialized Economy at Every Step

While the dreamed-of wave of foreign investment is not about to materialize, what is coming is the elimination of subsidies, layoffs and a sharp rise in prices for food and other necessities – all attacks on the workers that must be opposed and resisted. The measures which are truly urgently needed go in the opposite direction: mobilizing the creativity and power of the workers, fighting for workers control in the enterprises. It’s necessary to impose the will of the workers collective against those petty-bourgeois managers who dream of privatizing them, and against foreign capitalists who seek to snap up at bargain prices what has been built by the toil and sweat of the Cuban workers. Are there suspicions of corruption at GAESA? Let a workers commission inspect its books, as part of defending the socialized economy!

Díaz-Canel said at the CTC Congress, “To this day, no one has explained – much less demonstrated in practice – how socialism is to be built in a nation under the conditions of siege that Cuba has endured at the hands of the world’s greatest power since the very beginning of the victorious Revolution….” This goes to the heart of the matter. It is not possible to “build socialism in a single country” (Stalin’s anti-Marxist formula), especially not in a small country on the doorstep of U.S. imperialism; instead, international workers struggle is required, extending throughout Latin America and into the very heart of U.S. imperialism. Resistance by workers in Cuba against measures similar to those being imposed on workers, peasants, and indigenous peoples in Bolivia could inspire a proletarian response across the entire continent.⁹

Although Trump has imposed a total blockade on Cuba, he doesn’t hold “all the cards,” in his favorite phrase. The president in Washington wants to repeat his Venezuelan lightning coup, when he kidnapped President Nicolás Maduro and seized control of the country’s oil. Trump envisioned repeating that “feat” against Iran, with disastrous results for U.S. hegemony. And Venezuela is not the same as Cuba. The “Bolivarian” government was, and is, a bourgeois-nationalist regime, based on a capitalist economy with all the contradictions that entails. Cuba, on the other hand, is, and has been for decades, a workers state – although deformed by a bureaucratic government – with a socialized economy. The Cuban state has a cohesion that the Venezuelan regime lacked.

The regime of Stalin and his successors in the Soviet Union, after seven decades in power, finally succumbed to the economic and military pressure of imperialism in 1989-92. In contrast to Stalinism’s illusory nationalist policy, Leon Trotsky – co-leader, alongside Lenin, of the October Revolution of 1917—outlined the perspective of permanent revolution. This holds that in countries under the yoke of imperialism, even democratic tasks – such as real national independence – can only be achieved by the proletariat taking power, supported by the peasantry, and by extending the socialist revolution into the heart of imperialism. Genuine Trotskyists always defended the USSR, just as today they defend Cuba, China, Vietnam and North Korea against imperialist siege and counterrevolution.

The Cuban government is, without a doubt, bureaucratic. The fact that it approved the 176 measures, which entail a fundamental change in the entire Cuban economic system, by unanimous vote at back-to-back meetings of the Central Committee of the PCC and the ANPP in just 48 hours is proof positive. A true revolutionary workers democracy would have given rise to vigorous debate over these “transformations,” which can only wreak havoc on the household budgets of working people. In Bolivia, when the reactionary government enacted a sweeping package (paquetazo) of measures in December 2025 that eliminated fuel subsidies, it raised the minimum wage to an utterly inadequate amount of 3,300 bolivianos, equivalent to US$316. Under the Cuban paquetazo, the new minimum wage will be 3,120 CUP, equivalent to US$5 – impossible to live on and meet basic needs at market prices!

So, if workers truly have a “voice and a vote,” as Díaz-Canel asserted to the CTC Congress, if they determine the country’s course – as it should be in a workers state – then it is imperative for genuine communists to oppose and organize resistance against these anti-worker measures, which seek to sell off the assets of the working class to capital. But serious resistance against this disastrous policy cannot be merely reactive; it must present an alternative. To defend the socialized economy and the gains of the Cuban Revolution, a proletarian political revolution is necessary, based on an assembly of workers councils. And the axis of such a revolutionary Marxist policy is that there is no solution just within the narrow confines of a Cuba besieged to the point of suffocation. The struggle must be escalated to the international level. For starters, we call on the workers of Latin America to demand that their governments immediately send oil to Cuba, and to enforce this through workers action.¹⁰

In the face of the capitulatory stance of the government leadership, genuine communists must make use of cracks in the bureaucratic wall to defend the interests of the working class and the Revolution. In a speech at the CTC Congress, Díaz-Canel admitted that “among the people” there are “those who have doubts and are concerned about the impact these measures may have on socialist construction,” asserting that “this is for the best” because they, too, “are defending the Revolution.” So, when in debates over layoffs, for example, the bureaucrats seek to silence the opposition, it is worth citing this. And when the first secretary of the PCC asserts that “the Socialist State Enterprise … will continue to be the fundamental pillar of the economy” (Díaz-Canel’s speech at the Central Committee), one can recall these words as they try to sell those enterprises (or parts of them) to capitalist bidders.

This does not mean that all small-scale privatization should be rejected: nationalization in Cuba sometimes reached extremes, and petty-bourgeois sectors can make a valuable contribution to socialist construction. Moreover, at times it is necessary to take a step back, as in the NEP (New Economic Policy) of the 1920s in the USSR. But that temporary policy, which has been cited ad nauseam to justify pro-capitalist reforms in Cuba, is light-years away from the 176 measures that undermine the core of the collectivized economy. We must combat, step by step, these counter-reforms that harm workers and benefit the capitalists who exploit their labor to enrich themselves. And we must emphasize the need to adopt an overall program, the only one that can save the Cuban Revolution: the program of Lenin and Trotsky for international socialist revolution.

Return to the Program of Lenin and Trotsky

As for what is to be done, in Lenin’s famous phrase, the answer cannot be a return to a Castro-era “golden age,” as disappointed Fidelistas and Guevarists (of whom there are surely many among those who have doubts about the new measures) might think. Let’s be clear: the approval of the 176 “transformations” is a declaration of political bankruptcy by the Communist Party. Not only does it renounce the line it has defended for decades (with, as noted, its fundamentally Stalinist character), but it would also throw overboard the most fundamental interests of Cuban workers. Yet there are hundreds of thousands of communists in the PCC, as well as unaffiliated leftists, who wish with all their hearts to defend the revolution to which they have dedicated their lives. We want to discuss with them, because there is indeed a revolutionary way out, an alternative to the Stalinist dead end, and that path is to return to the internationalist program of Lenin and Trotsky, the program of Red October.

The League for the Fourth International, whose founders were leaders and cadres of the ICL when it was the voice of revolutionary Trotskyism, continues the program of the Spartacist tendency that today’s reborn ICL has almost completely discarded. Ours is the history of the authentic Trotskyists who fought against the capitalist reunification of Germany, calling in the DDR (the German Democratic Republic, the deformed workers state in the east) for a proletarian political revolution in order to fight on both sides of the Cold War border for a “red Germany of workers councils” in a Socialist United States of Europe. We also fought to the end in the USSR against the Yeltsin-Bush counterrevolution. In both cases, we reached out to cadres of the Stalinist Communist Parties, as well as to military personnel, who wanted to fight for genuine communism. The core of this revolutionary and internationalist program that we defended then is crucial today in defending Cuba (and also China, which remains a central target of the imperialist war drive).

When we speak of the international spread of the revolution, it is important that those inside and outside the besieged island who wish to defend it grasp the enormous impact the Cuban Revolution had, from the Southern Cone of South America to Mexico and throughout the Caribbean, all the way to the United States and Europe, as well as Africa and many other parts of the world. An intrepid struggle of the workers against abandonment of the socialized economy and the surrender of the Revolution’s gains to its sworn enemies – against the transformation of the rebel island into a client state and neocolony of Uncle Sam – could inspire a new generation of young activists around the world, a working class under attack from relentless and racist anti-union campaigns, war-weary populations of imperialist countries and oppressed peoples beset by imperialist wars.

The primary responsibility for making the prospect of international socialist revolution a reality rests with those who are fighting in the imperialist countries that are besieging Cuba – in the U.S. and also in Europe – and in the countries of Latin America, where capitalist governments (including those in Mexico and Brazil, which in the past have posed as “friends of Cuba”) have bowed to the threats of the Yankee plunderer Trump and are complicit in the energy stranglehold on Cuba. Urgently needed is international workers mobilization to break the suffocating blockade, and to fight to forge communist parties like the Bolsheviks of Lenin and Trotsky.  ■

To contact the Internationalist Group and the League for the Fourth International, send e-mail to: internationalistgroup@msn.com

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