Obama’s new Cuba policy: McDonald's in Old Havana?

Marce Cameron examines Obama’s new Cuba policy: McDonald's in Old Havana?

What is clear is that restoring US-Cuba diplomatic relations and lifting the blockade will not, in and of itself, allow US corporations to dominate Cuba once again. Nor will it trigger a wave of privatisations of Cuba’s socialist state property, or an end to Cubans’ constitutional right to health care and education at all levels free of charge.

That would require the demolition or degeneration of two institutional pillars of the revolution: the Cuban Communist Party and the socialist state it leads. That is precisely what the blockade has failed to achieve.

The failure of the blockade to destroy the revolution — and Obama’s decision to act on the recognition of this failure — should be seen for what it is: a triumph of Cuba’s working people over half a century of brutal siege by the mightiest empire in history. Rather than recognise this inconvenient truth, Obama repeated the myth that the blockade has failed to bring about Iraq-style regime change because it has “provid[ed] the Cuban government with a rationale for restrictions on its people.”

The myth that the revolution is propped up by the blockade is widespread among both liberal critics and admirers of socialist Cuba. In reality, the blockade has failed to bring about regime change for two fundamental reasons: millions of ordinary Cuban citizens remain deeply committed to the revolution’s core principles; and the calibre of Cuba’s communist leadership. Obama wasn’t going to congratulate his adversaries.

Emphasis Mine

Capitalists regard their system as superior to all others. They think that people turn to Socialism, Communism, or Anarcharism out of simple ignorance. They cannot comprehend that communal control of the means of production is even possible, let alone superior to Capitalism despite the mounting evidence.