Last Friday, Raul Castro, Cuba’s president, appeared to reorient his country by specifically abandoning one of brother Fidel’s core beliefs. “Socialism means social justice and equality, but equality of rights, of opportunities, not of income,” he said at the closing session of the country’s rubberstamp legislature in an address broadcast nationally. “Equality is not egalitarianism.”
The ditching of egalitarianism came in the same speech in which Raul proclaimed that his government would “preserve the principles achieved by the Revolution.” Language like this is obligatory for communist parties, which have trouble admitting failure. Cubans in the government, like their counterparts in China and North Korea, deny that any changes are taking place. “We’re simply perfecting what we already have, tweaking our socialist system,” said one official recently. “Fidel will be with us forever. His legacy will transcend time. Cubans will never leave Fidel behind.”
They already have. “I now think for myself,” said a factory worker. “That’s truly revolutionary, knowing that you’re responsible for your own destiny.” Because poor folk like him see things differently, Raul, who succeeded his brother in February, has had to make cosmetic changes and tweak ideology. Yet even minor changes are important in transitional communist societies like Cuba. They signal that real change is coming, and those signals in turn accelerate changes in the thinking of the masses. As one American diplomat said, Cubans are already burying Fidel’s legend and have “moved on.”
As a result, the European Union is lifting symbolic sanctions on Cuba. Brussels’s move, intended to encourage further change, is certainly premature. In fact, Raul has yet to implement structural economic reform and has maintained the state’s infrastructure of repression. But Europe’s mistake may not matter much. Cuban society is progressing, and Raul has just been forced to redefine socialism. His theoretical leap, although important to ideologues, is almost irrelevant because Cuba is now developing beyond his control.
