Is BRICS the Way Forward?

After witnessing Cuba’s ailing economy in a recent visit, Asoka Bandarage looks beyond BRICS for an alternative to both authoritarian socialism and neoliberal capitalism.

By Asoka Bandarage

I returned to the U.S. from Cuba just a few hours before President Donald Trump signed a memorandum on June 30 tightening the long-standing U.S. economic blockade. The memorandum includes a statutory ban on U.S. tourism to the neighboring island.

Despite a long fascination for the island nation, I did not volunteer for the Venceremos Brigade to Cuba during my college years. Finally, my wish to see the legendary island of anti-imperialist revolution — the so-called last bastion of socialism in the Western hemisphere — came true.  

I enjoyed Cuba’s resplendent land and waters, the vibrancy of its music and dance and the warm hospitality of its racially integrated people. I visited the impressive places and monuments of its colonial and modern history, receiving a wealth of interesting and intriguing information from my wonderful Cuban guides and other sources.

The history of Cuba is one of struggle and transformation. The original Taino people were extinct due to the Spanish conquest. The Revolution of 1898 brought liberation under scholar-poet José Marti, only to be followed by U.S. neocolonial rule from 1902 to 1959.

During the latter part of this period, the Batista dictatorship and his American business and Mafia connections dominated the island. 

The armed struggle culminating in the 1959 Revolution, led by Fidel Castro, Camilo Cienfuegos, Che Guevara and others, transformed the nation. The Cuban Communist Party under Fidel Castro’s rule (1959-2008) implemented widespread confiscation and wealth redistribution.

Throughout this period and up to date, the U.S. has maintained occupation of Guantanamo Bay (the first U.S. overseas military base) under a 1903 perpetual lease agreement following the Spanish-American War.

Cuba’s Present Crisis

Unfortunately, what I encountered in my home-stays and travel around the island was far from the thriving socialist society I had hoped to see. The once magnificent buildings in Havana and other cities are dilapidated and the streets strewn with litter. Lacking reliable public transportation, people stand on streets around the island patiently waiting to catch rides from any vehicle that will stop— among them, the still widely used pre-Revolution American cars and horse-drawn carriages.

The island is currently facing its worst economic crisis since the 1959 revolution. Long and daily power cuts, scarce internet connection, food and medicine shortages, and high prices are the realities of present-day Cuba. Some staple items like beans are nowhere to be found; rice production has declined and much is now imported. Sugar, too, has become an import in Cuba, which, until recently, was the leading sugar exporter in the world.

People cannot make ends meet with their meager incomes — a doctor’s monthly salary is approximately $50. Even by conservative World Bank estimates, 72 percent of all Cubans live below the poverty line. Beggars seem to be everywhere, with the African community descendant from slavery being the most economically victimized.

Young professionals, products of the island’s renowned free education and health care systems, are emigrating to the U.S., Europe and elsewhere, leaving mostly the elderly behind. Cuba reportedly lost some 13 percent of its 11 million population between 2020 and 2024, due largely to emigration. Financial remittances from emigrants are essential for their families’ survival at home.

In private, people complain bitterly about government mismanagement and corruption, expressing concern about the island’s future and people’s survival. Given state authoritarianism and repression, there is no independent media, visible organized resistance or public demonstrations.

The Cuban government blames U.S. sanctions and blockade, operative since the early 1960s, for the island’s economic strangulation. In contrast, the U.S. and its Cuban-American supporters blame socialism for Cuba’s failures.

Notwithstanding claims to be a leader of the international Non-Aligned Movement, Cuba withstood the 1961 C.I.A.-backed Cuban-American Bay of Pigs invasion and the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis by aligning itself with the Soviet Union, eventually becoming its client state.

The dismantling of the Soviet Union in 1992 and the recent Covid crisis have dealt severe blows to the Cuban economy and society. The decline in tourism, one of the most important sectors of the Cuban economy, will be further impacted by Donald Trump’s recent statutory ban on U.S. tourism.

Is the opening of Cuba to neoliberal capitalism — including global finance capital, the IMF, international intervention by the U.S. (and its Cuban-American supporters awaiting return of land and business confiscated by the Cuban Revolution) — the solution to Cuba’s current economic crisis?

Is BRICS the Alternative?

Government mismanagement, corruption, repression and authoritarianism, economic collapse, agricultural decline, lack of employment, shortages of fuel and food, rising prices, powerlessness, despair and labor emigration characterize much of the world following neoliberal policies today.

These countries also face the threats of international intervention, regime change, sanctions and blockades if they attempt to strike out on independent paths of economic and political development outside Western-dominated neoliberalism.

Is BRICS the alternative to both authoritarian socialism and neoliberal capitalism, the path to resolving the crisis in Cuba and much of the world?

The Global South-led BRICS constitutes Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates as well as 10 partner countries including Cuba, Belarus, Bolivia, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Nigeria, Thailand, Uganda, Uzbekistan and Vietnam. Today, the BRICS countries together are estimated to account for 56 percent of world population, 44 percent of global GDP.

The BRICS alliance provides a much-needed platform to explore alternative mechanisms like the New Development Bank and bilateral trade agreements to reduce reliance on Western financial institutions, such as the IMF and currencies, specifically the U.S dollar.

While BRICS rejects certain aspects of Western dominated geopolitics and hierarchical North-South relations, it upholds neoliberal economic principles: competition, free trade, privatization, open markets, export-led growth and globalization, unfettered technological expansion.

BRICS aims to advance its members within the existing global capitalist order, rather than create a fundamental alternative to the capitalist paradigm which prioritizes profit-led growth before environmental sustainability and human well-being.

As such, corporate hegemony, concentration of wealth by a global elite spanning the North and the South as well technological and military domination are not challenged.

Neither does BRICS challenge political authoritarianism within its member countries or the possibility of the emergence of forms of authoritarian capitalism. Composed of countries unequal in size, economic and military power, BRICS may also easily reproduce unequal exchange and new forms of colonialism in south-south relations.

False Alternative

Although barely noticeable to a visitor, China is quietly replacing the former Soviet Union as Cuba’s benefactor, expanding its economic activities on the island.

Since 2018, Cuba has joined China’s Belt and Road Initiative, the massive infrastructural project connecting some 150 countries around the world. While the U.S. is tightening its trade blockade, China has become Cuba’s largest trading partner and the primary provider of technology for infrastructure, telecommunications, renewable energy sources, the tourism industry and other important areas of Cuba’s development.

Some critics of U.S. imperialism tend to see China as a benevolent alternative to U.S. and Western domination. The political and military intentions of Chinese economic expansion can only be known in the future.

According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, China has increased its nuclear arsenal by 20 percent from an estimated 500 to over 600 warheads in 2025.

According to U.S. government sources, China has also established satellite intelligence infrastructure or “spy bases” in Cuba that can target the United States commercial and military operations.

Cuba, located only some 90 miles from the Florida coastline, could well be drawn into the geopolitical confrontation between the United States and China as it was during the Cold War between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, the Cuban Missile Crisis being a case in point.

Even though the world is moving towards an inexorable market and technologically controlled reality, the rationality of this trajectory must be questioned.

The need for balanced ecological and social frameworks upholding bioregionalism, local control of resources, food self-sufficiency need to be considered. Freedom of expression, right to dissent, and collective organizing undermined by both neoliberal capitalism and socialist authoritarianism must be upheld.

This requires the awakening of consciousness to create a human society founded on wisdom and generosity over competition and exploitation.

The words of the great 19th century Cuban patriot, José Marti (1853-1895) are still applicable to the transformation needed in both Cuba and the world:

“Happiness exists on earth, and it is won through prudent exercise of reason, knowledge of the harmony of the universe and constant practice of generosity.”

Asoka Bandarage  has served on the faculties of Brandeis, Mount Holyoke and Georgetown  and is the author of books including Colonialism in Sri Lanka; The Separatist Conflict in Sri Lanka, Sustainability and Well-Being: The Middle Path to Environment, Society and the Economy,  Crisis in Sri Lanka and the World and numerous other publications on global political economy and related subjects. www.bandarage.com.

The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.

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