Cuban Revolution

Is this real? This seems ridiculous. Why would they have owned all that stuff in Cuba, if the revolution had already stripped them of their shit?

Do you guys think Cuba was ever socialist? I've seen a couple anons here and on leftypol who while they still like them they believe that it was just a national liberation movement and never really achieved socialism. What are your thoughts on this?

No, Castro was just another state capitalism Stalinist.

I should've specified I wanted actual respones and not meme answers like this one.

It is true that Fidel and most of the 26th of July Movement was fueled mostly by national liberation and patriotism, which resounded with most of the Cuban population who were tired of being the dirty backyard of rich gringos, sugar production for the US and a growing disparity between cities and the countryside. It was mostly Che who turned Fidel towards Marxism-Leninism, and while there are more quotes of Fidel to speak on favour of socialism and communism, there are a few quotes where he alludes that he was never a "real" communist and didn't quite believe in it, same with Thomas Sankara for example.

However, due to political alignment and the influence of Che and grassroot communist cells in Cuba, it did adapt a model largely based on the Soviet Union, but the popular support for the Castro government came also mostly from an emerging petit bourgeois class in Cuba, which sought to throw out American venture capital and comprador bourgeoisie, which didn't really affect the country not much in the material base (untill the mid-90s, Cuba clearly was socialist) but survived in ideology. I do not believe Castro's rants against Krushchevite revisionism are based on theoretical disargeements rather than on geopolitics, Castro has hoped that the USSR would have taken a harder stance and did not remove the missiles from Cuba, because Cuba never ceased to be in grave danger to be a snack for Uncle Sam, and with the USSR too far away to respond, their security was jeopardised. It's just that during that time, disagreements between communist states regarding geopolitical issues were masked through theoretical rethoric by calling each other "revisionist" - Hoxha being the exception, since that guy was genuinely autistic in his dogmatism.

That being said, Cuba's centrally planned allocation system largely collapsed in the mid-90s due to the dissolution of the USSR, and while it has recovered, some changes have been made and markets play an increasingly important role in the Cuban economy. I am not talking about small shopkeepers like haircutters or one-family-farms being largely independent (seriously, who cares about that shit) but talking about the fact that are plans to merge their Peso with the Convertible Peso. which would be de facto the end of the monetary control of the Cuban state within the planned economy, and the law of value clearly starting to govern ares of the Cuban economy more and more, like hundreds of government workers being fired and practically being unemployed on a labour market consequently (turning labour power into a commodity again). However, the Cuban leadership, while unclear about their adherence to Marxism-Leninism, seems to be genuine in their attempt to follow their own path to socialism and to genuinely trying to create a socialist society for their people.

As for the question whether or not Cuba is a socialist society right now: While there the socialist mode of production does exist in Cuba, capital seems to more and more dominate the overall Cuban economy, for which I would mainly blame the fall of the USSR and its repercussions and the geographical situation of the country, being a small island in the backyard of the US. Cuba is still a dictatorship of the proletariat though.

So Cuba was once a socialist country, ma nifested through a centrally planned economy but in the 90s they stopped being socialist. What economical system would you say Cuba is today? State capitalist maybe?

That was what they owned in Cuba before the revolution.

rofl in what way?

I think he meant it in the sense that according to marxist analysis the "stages" of dialectical evolution of modes of production and economical/social systems goes like this (from left to right):
Capitalism–DotP–Socialism–Communism
So during a DotP, a capitalist mode of production and capitalists still exist, kind of like USSR during 1918-1928. That being said though, that would imply that the cuban government was still on their path to build socialism, which I guess is debatable.

It's hard to say. Probably varying between a low stage of socialism and very regulated state capitalism with various forces within the Cuban society pushing into either direction. Here is hope that the new government wants to pursue the former, under Raul I thought Cuba's path was clear, I am glad he is now somewhat marginalised now, being a hero of the revolution does not make you immune to revisionism (although I do understand that the material conditions of Cuba after the crisis in the 90s left him little choice).

In Cuba there is a socialist mode of production that clearly dominates the heights of the Cuban economy, but there is an emerging national capitalist/petit bourgeois class and on the lower level of the economy value-indicators regulate production. This class will eventually demand further concessions to liberalise the economy, and the government will face a predicament whether or not to declare them kulaks or to make concessions again - which have been canceled recently, upsetting them.

A directly democratic, cooperative, participatory and communal workers democracy for starters, which exercises power over the heights of the Cuban economy, which are means of production in the most important branches of industry that are commonly owned.