You can perfume this anyway you like but what we are seeing is a second-drawer emulation of the Chinese model: the formal introduction of an expanded capitalist market(and all the class differences that come with it) unaccompanied by any democratization of the political system. In other words, the worst of both worlds.
Indeed, one million people, 20% of the work force will lose their state job and be told to go be small scale capitalists, when they’ve no experience in this at all. And no safety net. I’m guessing the elites in Cuba already have businesses set up to exploit all these soon-to-be desperate workers.
(Standby, now, for the hilarious rationalizations for the introduction of savage capitalism into the Cuban economy by “revolutionary” Castro apologists here and abroad. NONE of whom will be able to say they had previously called for or supported such a radical move bit now magically think it’s great).
Here are just a few of the reactions; a) this shows that socialism is flexible and can work in Cuba, just wait!, b) the evil machinations of the US caused all of it, Castro is blameless, blameless I tell you, c) embarrassed silence, and the odds-on favorite d) well, Cuba never really was socialist any way.
This last one would actually be in agreement with what Cooper says.
What exists in Cuba has never been and is not socialism. It is a freakish state plantation capitalism. Not only are workers exploited directly by the all-powerful “people’s state” in which they have no voice — but for two decades now the same Cuban state has acted as a ruthless labor broker renting out portions of its oppressed and powerless work force to foreign private capitalists who have been allowed to set up shop in strategic sectors of the economy.
They’ve had a capitalist class for two decades now, and those elites will now plunder the rest of them.