Despite such bouts of wishful thinking, the U.S. capitalist rulers know there is something fundamentally different about Cuba compared to other countries in the world today. What is it that distinguishes Cuba and its leadership?

Above all, Cuba shows what a socialist revolution can accomplish. Led by the Rebel Army and July 26 Movement, working people not only overthrew a bloody U.S.-backed dictatorship in 1959, but took political power out of the hands of the ruling capitalist families and established a workers and farmers government.

To Washington’s amazement, the new revolutionary government could neither be intimidated nor bought off. Every act of imperialist aggression was met by millions of determined workers and farmers who pushed the revolution forward. In this process, ordinary working people have transformed themselves. Cuba’s revolutionary leadership has been marked by its efforts to advance the literacy and culture of working people of all ages. It has demonstrated its commitment to combat racial discrimination and promote women’s equality. It has stood by its guarantee to farmers that they can work the land free from debt slavery or threat of eviction.

Acting as citizens of the world, Cubans have joined in anti-imperialist struggles around the globe, from Congo to Bolivia to Syria. Some 300,000 served in Angola alone, helping defeat invasions by the racist regime in South Africa and contributing to its overthrow. Today, tens of thousands of Cuban health-care personnel provide competent, dignified medical care in some of the most remote regions of Africa and Latin America.

Cuba’s course of working-class cooperation and solidarity is in stark contrast to the dog-eat-dog reality of capitalism in the United States and elsewhere. In today’s world of imperialist wars abroad and the employers’ drive against living standards and job conditions at home, the Cuban Revolution points a road forward for working people everywhere.

That is why the billionaire rulers of the United States and other countries are bent on undermining and overthrowing the Cuban Revolution. They have failed in their efforts, however, not only to militarily destroy the revolution but to find any wing of the government or the armed forces that can be corrupted toward a pro-capitalist course.

Unlike the wannabe capitalists of the bureaucratic castes and Stalinist parties that dominate the former Soviet Union, China, and other workers states, Cuba has a leadership that for five decades has looked to the mobilization and organization of working people.

These divergent courses are graphically illustrated in Africa. In Zambia, copper miners recently rebelled against the starvation wages, dangerous conditions, and seven-day workweeks they face in mines owned by profit-hungry Chinese state companies. In contrast, many in Africa know that Cuban internationalists have given their lives to African liberation struggles without taking anything in return.

The Wall Street Journal editors and their ilk are incapable of understanding why the Cuban Revolution does not take the so-called Chinese model or any “transition” toward capitalist exploitation. But for workers and farmers around the world, Cuba shows what we are capable of accomplishing if we organize our potential power and chart a course to make a revolution and join the worldwide struggle for socialism.
 
 
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