Groucho Marxism

Cuba is currently facing a severe oil shortage and a deep economic crisis. The United States began blocking oil tankers heading to Cuba in February this year, targeting companies such as the Mexican state-owned Pemex and threatening countries with tariffs should they attempt to break the blockade. In March, Miguel Díaz-Canel, the First Secretary of the Cuban Communist Party, publicly confirmed for the first time that his government was engaged in diplomatic talks with the United States aimed at addressing the severe US imposed oil and energy blockade that has left Cuba facing crippling fuel shortages and widespread power outages. Nonetheless in May, Minister of Energy and Mines Vincent De La O’levy announced that Cuba had run out of oil and diesel.

Although it is generally accepted that the crisis is being caused primarily by the US fuel blockade, many analysts and human rights observers also place blame on the Cuban government. According to these observers, decades of centralized economic policies, a lack of investment and maintenance in domestic energy infrastructure, and the collapse of key agricultural sectors like sugar have made the economy deeply vulnerable. The military-led conglomerate GAESA reportedly controls up to 70% of Cuba’s economy and is claimed to hold an estimated $18 billion in assets. Critics argue that GAESA’s absolute control over the most lucrative sectors of the Cuban economy—including tourism, retail, ports, and banking—has systematically hollowed out the state’s resources.

These critics allege that instead of investing in public infrastructure, healthcare, or electrical grids, the conglomerate hoards immense profits offshore or funnels them into elite interests. For example, in the wake of the Obama-era normalization of relations between the US and Cuba, GAESA went on a massive hotel-building spree, adding thousands of rooms. When US restrictions tightened again, these hotels sat empty, resulting in wasted capital that could have been used to stabilize the country’s broader energy and food needs. Furthermore, analyses by geopolitical research institutes such as the Journal of Democracy indicate that funds from state enterprises have been diverted to tax havens or the military, leaving the general public to suffer extreme shortages of food, medicine, and power.

The existence of GAESA demonstrates that Cuba is not a socialist country. The Cuban government controls the economy and essentially acts as a single huge corporation, extracting surplus value from the population. This is state capitalism, not socialism – which raises the question of why the US is so keen to bring about regime change. The usual explanation that the US wants to prevent the spread of socialism does not hold water in light of the state capitalist nature of the Cuban regime. The same question arises when considering the US’s desperation to bring down the Soviet Union and its satellites. It should be noted that the Soviet Union is often argued to have been a ‘deformed workers state’ rather than state capitalist; but either way, it wasn’t socialist.

In aiming to bring about the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US was motivated to bring down a rival geopolitical hegemon. That explanation does not apply to Cuba. Rather, I think that the US is motivated by wanting to take for itself the surplus value currently being extracted by GAESA. Regardless of the explanation, it is clear that the US blockage of Cuba is not being done for the benefit of the Cuban people. How can it be, when many have died as a result? A 2026 report by the Centre for Economic Policy and Research found that tightening of US sanctions contributed heavily to an increase in Cuba’s infant mortality rate between 2018 and 2025. If infant mortality rate had remained stable, roughly 1,800 fewer infants would have died.

In assessing who is responsible for the Cuban crisis we must take into consideration the aims and motivations of the parties involved. Many of the mistakes made by the Cuban government – for example, building too many luxury hotels – can be attributed to a combination of incompetence and bad timing rather than malfeasance. The Cuban government may be corrupt, authoritarian, and indifferent to the suffering of the Cuban people; but it is not deliberately trying to bring about economic collapse. The US government, on the other hand, is trying to do exactly that. No modern nation would survive for long without a steady supply of oil, regardless of how advanced its infrastructure is. Cuba would probably still be a poor country without the US blockade; but it would not be on the brink of disaster.