[News] Who is the Failed State? Cuba, Revolutionary Ethics and the Moral Bankruptcy of Western Capitalism

[Anti-Imperialist News]

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Who is the Failed State? Cuba, Revolutionary Ethics and the Moral
Bankruptcy of Western Capitalism
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By Isaac Saney on July 30, 2025

Haitian women having their blood pressure taken at a mobile clinic staffed
by a Cuban medical brigade in Salomon market in Port-au-Prince.

The Cuban revolution endures despite more than 60 years of U.S. attacks.
One system exploits the people, while the other prioritizes their needs.
Which nation deserves the label of “failed’?

In an age where propaganda masquerades as truth and empire cloaks itself in
the garb of “democracy,” few lies are as pervasive—or politically useful—as
the assertion that Cuba is a failed state. This accusation, deployed with
relentless regularity by U.S. officials, corporate media, and neoliberal
ideologues, is meant to delegitimize a revolutionary and socialist project
that has refused to bow before empire.

But what does it mean to be a “failed state”? And more importantly, who
gets to define failure?

Let us be clear: Cuba is a besieged state, not a failed one. Under siege
from the most powerful imperial force in the world—the United States—it has
endured more than six decades of blockade, economic sabotage and
subversion. The U.S. blockade is not merely a trade, financial and
commercial embargo. It is an economic war designed to produce misery,
scarcity, and discontent. It is a deliberate and cruel attempt to collapse
a sovereign society. And yet, despite this onslaught, Cuba continues to
pursue a project rooted in ethics, equality, and human dignity. It does not
hide its problems; it confronts them.

Contrast this with the conditions in the so-called “developed” West. In the
United States—the wealthiest country in the history of the world—over 40
million people live in poverty, with millions more living one paycheck away
from destitution. Children go hungry. Entire communities are criminalized.
Access to healthcare is rationed by income. Gun violence, mass
incarceration, addiction, homelessness, and the erosion of democratic
rights are not aberrations; they are features of a system in which profit
trumps people.

In the United Kingdom, a country that once governed a vast colonial empire,
the situation is no better. Austerity has gutted public services. Food
banks have become institutionalized fixtures in working-class communities.
The National Health Service, once a global model of publicly funded
healthcare, has been bled dry by privatization. Homelessness is rising.
Inequality is deepening. And the political class blames the poor for their
own misery while rewarding the rich for their predation.

So let us ask: who is the failed state?

Cuba, despite having a GDP per capita a fraction of the U.S. or UK,
provides universal healthcare, free education through to the doctoral
level, and a literacy rate that surpasses many wealthy nations. Life
expectancy in Cuba is on par with the U.S.—a country that spends more on
healthcare than any nation on Earth, but still fails to provide it to tens
of millions. In the midst of devastating shortages caused by the blockade,
Cuba sent doctors to dozens of countries during the COVID-19 pandemic,
while the U.S. hoarded vaccines and the UK prioritized profits for
pharmaceutical companies.

And perhaps most importantly, when confronted with rising inequality and
hardship, the Cuban state does not blame the people. It does not
pathologize poverty. It does not criminalize desperation. It does not call
the poor lazy, or the vulnerable expendable. It recognizes that social
vulnerability is a collective challenge, not an individual failure.

As Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel recently affirmed, “The Revolution
does not hide its problems. It faces them with ethics and social justice,
even in the midst of extreme circumstances.” This is the essence of
revolutionary responsibility: to claim one’s people, even and especially in
their suffering. Unlike the leaders of capitalist states, who see the
working class and the marginalized as burdens or threats, Cuban leadership
speaks of the vulnerable as ours. “Our homeless. Our inequalities. Our
vulnerable youth.” In that single possessive word, “our”, is a world of
difference.

This is the living embodiment of Amílcar Cabral’s revolutionary axiom:
“Tell no lies, claim no easy victories.” Cuba does not pretend all is well.
It does not present a façade of invincibility. But it does not give up. It
does not disown the poor. It does not privatize social suffering or profit
from despair. It seeks, even amid crushing sanctions, to provide care.

More than thirty targeted social programs have been launched in Cuba to
address inequality and social distress. These are not neoliberal
“efficiencies” or charity-based palliatives. They are redistributive,
rights-based initiatives aimed at repairing and restoring the social
fabric. And they are pursued not because they are easy—but because they are
right.

Meanwhile, in Western nations that claim to be paragons of democracy and
development, politicians deploy rhetoric of “personal responsibility” while
enabling systems of exploitation. Homeless people freeze on the streets
while billionaires buy their next yacht. Prisons expand while schools
decay. Fossil fuel corporations rake in record profits as the world burns.
And rather than speak of our vulnerable, Western leaders speak of “those
people,” as if inequality and immiseration were a natural condition or
personal choice.

Again, we ask: who is the failed state?

Failure is not the inability to avoid hardship. It is the refusal to
respond to hardship with dignity and justice. A failed state is not one
that suffers, but one that abandons. By this measure, it is not Cuba that
has failed. It is those Western states that have abdicated any sense of
collective responsibility, any commitment to equality, equity, and any
belief in solidarity.

Cuba, on the other hand, chooses the harder road—the one lined not with
wealth but with principle. It stumbles, it struggles, but it does not
surrender. And in refusing to lie, to claim easy victories, or to devalue
human life, it reminds us of what a government can be: not a guardian of
the financial oligarchy but a steward of dignity.

So the next time the charge is made—Cuba is a failed state, ask: compared
to what? To a world where billionaires fly to space while countless
millions can not afford rent? To a system that sacrifices the poor on the
altar of profit? To societies that punish vulnerability and commodify
health, education, even life itself?

Cuba is not perfect. No society is. But it is a project still rooted in
justice, still committed to the people, still alive with revolutionary
ethics. That, in a world drenched in cynicism and cruelty, is not failure.
It is the kind of success that capitalism will never understand.

So let us ask again—clearly, honestly, and with conviction: Who is the
failed state? And which is the failed system?

*Isaac Saney *is a Black Studies and Cuba specialist and coordinator of
the Black and African Diaspora Studies (BAFD) program at Dalhousie
University in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Source: Black Agenda Report
<https://www.blackagendareport.com/who-failed-state-cuba-revolutionary-ethics-and-moral-bankruptcy-western-capitalism>
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