By Isaac Saney *
Amid one of the most severe economic moments since the triumph of the Revolution—and under the weight of a suffocating, ever-expanding U.S. imperial siege—Cuba is attempting something that remains almost unthinkable in the so-called advanced capitalist democracies: it is involving its citizenry directly, consciously, and systematically in charting the country’s economic future. While the wealthy western nations increasingly marginalize their own working populations, Cuba insists that the resolution of the crisis must be a collective, participatory, and profoundly democratic undertaking.
On October 26, 2025, the Cuban government released a comprehensive 92-page programmatic document outlining a far-reaching roadmap for confronting the country’s current economic challenges. This blueprint articulates a coordinated effort built around 10 general objectives, 106 specific objectives, 342 concrete actions, and 264 indicators and targets—a level of detail that underscores both the gravity of the situation and the seriousness of the proposed response. The overarching goal is clear: to advance the gradual recovery of the economy and to overcome the complex and multifaceted crisis facing the nation, a crisis exacerbated by external pressures, structural vulnerabilities, and the intensification of the U.S. blockade.
Through this framework, the government aims to mobilize institutions, enterprises, territorial bodies, and the population in a unified effort to stabilize and revitalize the country’s economic life.
Far from treating the population as passive spectators to high-level technocratic decisions, Cuba has embarked on an expansive national process of consultation, debate, and popular input tied to the Government Program to correct distortions and revitalize the economy. This program—composed of ten general objectives and 106 interconnected specific objectives—has become the framework through which the state seeks to address the crisis with the people, not over their heads.
Popular Consultation as a Framework of Governance
During a session of the Council of State chaired by Esteban Lazo Hernández, and attended by President Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez and Prime Minister Manuel Marrero Cruz, the country’s leadership underscored the centrality of the mass consultation unfolding between November 15 and December 30. Díaz-Canel described this process as a “participatory and contributory exercise of collective construction”—a mechanism not only for strengthening the Government Program through the population’s proposals, but for deepening public understanding of the economic challenges and mobilizing society for their resolution.
This is not democracy as periodic elections or focus-grouped messaging; it is democracy as substantive engagement. The aim is to ensure that the population is not merely informed of decisions but is drawn into the process of deliberation, critique, and co-creation. In a context of extreme scarcity, intensified blockade pressure, and deep structural constraints, Cuba insists on the principle that the people must be protagonists of the country’s economic reconstruction.
By contrast, in western capitalist countries—where political systems claim democratic superiority—working people are systematically excluded from meaningful economic decision-making. Policies shaping austerity, taxation, labour markets, monetary policy, and social programs are dictated by technocrats, corporate executives, employers’ associations, and unaccountable financial institutions. Elections change little; voters are treated as consumers of political brands, not active participants in forging a national course. The result is widespread political cynicism, alienation, and a sense that politics is something done to the people, not with them. Cuba’s approach stands as a rebuke to this hollowed-out model.
The Government Program: Crisis Management through Collective Input
Central to Cuba’s strategy is the understanding that economic stabilization cannot be imposed from above. As Deputy Prime Minister Oscar Pérez-Oliva Fraga emphasized, the Program operates through a system of constant monitoring, debate, and public discussion. This reflects the nature of Cuba’s economy—an open, trade-dependent system in which key imports such as fuel and food are distorted by the U.S. blockade and by the country’s forced exclusion from the international financial system. The blockade’s intensification, coupled with Cuba’s placement on the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism, severely obstructs banking operations, investment flows, and the basic functioning of trade.
Given this hostile terrain, the Program seeks to strengthen internal capacities: increasing domestic food production, incentivizing national industry, reducing import dependency, and fostering the development and autonomy of socialist enterprises and territorial governments. The objective is not simply economic adjustment but a transformation of the economic system that preserves social equity and socialist principles.
Macroeconomic Stabilization Without Abandoning the People
Minister of Economy and Planning Joaquín Alonso Vázquez highlighted the government’s efforts to reduce the fiscal deficit, acknowledging that while progress has been made, the deficit remains high and continues to generate inflationary pressures. Crucially, the Cuban leadership insists that stabilization must occur “without anyone being left behind,” without creating negative social impacts, and without sacrificing workers or pensioners. This stands in stark contrast to Western neoliberal practice, where macroeconomic stabilization—usually driven by austerity—almost always falls on the shoulders of the poor, working class, and racialized communities.
Despite enormous constraints, Cuba has managed to keep the current account of the state budget in surplus and contain monetary issuance. The government is simultaneously working to improve the National Tax Administration Office, combat price violations—more than one million detected—and restructure foreign currency management. These measures aim at economic order, not violence against the social fabric.
Production, Autonomy, and the Socialist Enterprise
A core pillar of the Program is revitalizing the socialist state enterprise and enabling territorial governments to participate more robustly in economic development. Pérez-Oliva noted that Cuba must produce items—such as sugar, honey, charcoal, and agricultural goods—that are currently underutilized or underproduced. Import substitution is not framed as a neoliberal obsession with self-sufficiency, but as a strategic priority to retain scarce foreign currency and strengthen national sovereignty.
To accomplish this, enterprises must achieve greater financial autonomy and responsiveness. The goal is to transform the Cuban business environment so that economic actors operate within a stable macroeconomic framework, a functional exchange market, and an efficient system for accessing wholesale inputs—all while maintaining the socialist commitments to equity, universal rights, and protection of the vulnerable.
Social Protection and the Role of Cadres
Cuba’s approach remains anchored in social justice. Deputy Prime Minister Eduardo Martínez Díaz highlighted that the state is currently implementing more than 30 social programs through 13 major policies, supported by national, provincial, and municipal commissions. These initiatives strengthen public healthcare, education, and the implementation of the Code for Children, Adolescents, and Youth.
At the grassroots level, cadres play a decisive role in explaining, debating, and mobilizing communities around the economic measures. Far from the western stereotype of top-down socialist bureaucracy, this is a model of socialist democracy rooted in popular consciousness, communication, and collective responsibility. As Jorge Luis Broche Lorenzo noted, the Program is a tactical tool aligned with Cuba’s long-term socialist model, and its success depends on the synergy between economic policy and political mobilization.
Contrasting Models: Popular Power vs. Mass Alienation
In advanced capitalist societies, economic restructuring, crisis management, and policy design are driven by corporate lobbying, elite interests, and financialized imperatives. The masses are spectators to decisions made behind closed doors. Whether the issue is inflation, recession, war spending, or tax policy, the majority has little input. Even the most progressive leaders are constrained by corporate power, donor class pressure, and economic structures dependent on inequality. Participation is limited to voting every few years and watching political theatre masquerade as democratic deliberation.
Cuba’s process — however imperfect, however challenged by scarcity, bureaucracy, or external aggression — operates on different ethical and political terrain. It insists that socialist democracy requires the active involvement of workers, communities, and institutions in shaping the economic path. It insists that consciousness, debate, and collective mobilization remain indispensable to national survival. And it asserts that the dignity of the people cannot be sacrificed to satisfy market forces or foreign coercion.
The Meaning of Participation Under Siege
Cuba’s attempt to confront its economic crisis through mass consultation, socialist democracy, and a participatory government program offers a profound lesson in a world increasingly governed by oligarchic capitalism. Under extreme pressure—blockade, sanctions, financial exclusion, global inequality—Cuba chooses to expand rather than contract popular participation. It refuses to accept the neoliberal logic that economic decisions belong to experts and elites. Instead, it engages its people as agents of transformation, defenders of sovereignty, and co-authors of the nation’s future.
This commitment to popular participation is not an aberration or a temporary response to crisis; it is a defining feature of the Cuban Revolution. Time and again, Cuba has turned to its people as the principal source of legitimacy, creativity, and political strength. The nationwide debates on the 2019 Constitution and the recent Family Code—among the most extensive and inclusive democratic consultations in the world—demonstrate the Revolution’s insistence that major transformations must emerge from broad social dialogue.
Most poignantly, the Workers’ Parliaments of 1994 stand as a testament to this ethos. In the depths of the Special Period, between January and April, more than 80,000 meetings were held across the island, engaging over four million workers who discussed, debated, and generated thousands of proposals to confront the economic crisis triggered by the collapse of the Soviet Union and the socialist bloc. These historic processes illustrate that Cuba’s present national consultation is not an exception but part of a deep revolutionary tradition in which the people are the protagonists of their own destiny, even—and especially—under conditions of profound hardship.
In contrast, the advanced capitalist states—wealthy, powerful, and unencumbered by external siege—systematically exclude their own populations from meaningful participation. The crisis of western democracy is fundamentally a crisis of representation, disconnection, and oligarchic domination.
Cuba, facing far greater obstacles, insists on a different way: a path where the people, through struggle, debate, and collective will, chart the course of their society. It is an affirmation that socialism is not merely an economic model but a form of popular power—and that even in the harshest conditions, the people must remain its authors and its protagonists.
* Isaac Saney is a Black Studies and Cuba specialist and coordinator of the Black and African Diaspora Studies (BAFD) program. He holds a PhD in history from the School of Oriental and African Studies – University of London. His teaching, research and scholarship encompass Cuba, Africa, the Caribbean, Black Canadian history, the global Black liberation struggle, and reparations. A major area of his research is Cuba’s relationship with Africa. Isaac was also the Director of Dalhousie University’s Transition Year Program, the ground-breaking program founded in 1970 to redress the educational barriers and injustices that confront the Mi’kmaq Nation, other Indigenous peoples in Canada, and the African Nova Scotian community. Isaac is a long-time community activist and participant in the anti-war movement and the anti-racist struggle and passionately believes in the collective power of the people to transform the world in ways that bring forth equity, justice, and human dignity. His roots lie in the African Nova Scotia community and the Caribbean.
