The renewed escalation of hostility by the Trump administration towards Cuba—through tightened sanctions, political pressure, and open ideological aggression—once again exposes a fundamental contradiction.
A country that presents itself as the "global model of democracy" continues to treat a small socialist island as a persistent threat. This is not a coincidence. It points to something deeper: what is being contested is not “democracy” in the abstract, but two fundamentally different ways of organizing power in society.
The answer is not complicated. What we are dealing with is not a comparison between democracy and its absence, but between two opposing conceptions of democracy—one grounded in the power of capital, the other in an attempt to organize political life beyond it.
This is where the discussion must begin. Democracy is never just about institutions on paper; it is always rooted in real social relations. The decisive issue is straightforward: who actually governs, under what conditions, and in whose interests?
In the United States, formal political rights exist, but they operate within a society marked by extreme inequality. A relatively small economic elite controls key sectors of the economy—and that influence does not stop there. It extends directly into political decision-making. The well-known study by Gilens and Page made this clear: when the preferences of economic elites diverge from those of the majority, policy outcomes tend to follow the elites.
Put simply: the majority participates, but it does not decide.
The institutional framework only sharpens this reality. The Electoral College allows candidates rejected by the popular vote to take office. The much-praised two-party system narrows political life to two formations that, despite differences in rhetoric, defend the same economic foundations.
This is not genuine choice—it is variation within limits set in advance.
And then there is the decisive factor: money. U.S. federal elections cost around $14 billion in 2020. After the Citizens United ruling, corporations and wealthy individuals gained the ability to spend without meaningful limits.
What this produces, in practice, is straightforward. Political competition becomes a financial competition. Visibility depends on funding. Viability depends on funding. Success depends on funding.
When money determines who can be heard, it also determines who can rule.
This brings us to the most persistent myth used to defend the system—the claim that “everyone is free to make his choices.” Once examined seriously, this argument falls apart.
Free to choose what, exactly—and under what conditions?
For millions in the United States, daily life is shaped by economic insecurity. A large share of the population cannot easily absorb even small unexpected expenses. Under such pressure, the idea of freely choosing between jobs or life paths becomes questionable.
A worker who must accept whatever employment is available in order to survive is not exercising freedom—he is responding to necessity.
The same pattern appears in the workplace itself. The widespread model of “at-will employment” allows employers to dismiss workers at any moment.
There is no real equality in a relationship where one side controls whether the other can live.
Health care tells the same story. Access depends on employment, income, and the ability to pay. Millions delay treatment or accumulate debt.
A right that must be purchased is not a right—it is access conditioned by class.
Education follows a similar logic. Student debt shapes decisions long after graduation—what job to take, where to live, how to plan one’s life.
Debt does not just burden individuals—it quietly limits their freedom to decide.
Even the electoral process reflects this structure. The Electoral College can override the popular vote, while the financial barriers to entry filter candidates long before voters are even presented with options.
By the time people vote, the field of choice has already been narrowed.
What emerges is not a system of unrestricted freedom, but one in which choices are structured, filtered, and constrained by economic power. Democracy remains at the level of form, while its substance is shaped elsewhere.
It is precisely at this point that socialist Cuba offers a fundamentally different model.
In Cuba, the electoral process is deliberately designed to remove the role of money. Candidates are nominated in neighborhood assemblies—not by parties, not by donors, and not through media campaigns.
Politics is not treated as a marketplace, and candidates are not commodities competing for investment.
This approach is reinforced by concrete institutional practices. The 2019 Constitution, for example, was preceded by a nationwide consultation involving millions of citizens and tens of thousands of meetings. Proposed changes were discussed, amended, and only then adopted.
Legislation, in this sense, is not handed down—it is shaped through participation.
Mass organizations—trade unions, neighborhood committees, women’s and student organizations—are integrated into public life in a structured way.
Participation is not occasional—it is built into the system itself.
The differences between the two systems are not subtle. They are structural.
In the United States, enormous sums determine political visibility.
In Cuba, private funding of candidates is not permitted at all.
In the United States, candidates rely on donor networks and party machinery.
In Cuba, they are nominated directly by citizens in local assemblies.
In the United States, campaigns are shaped by media and marketing.
In Cuba, all candidates are presented under equal conditions.
These are not variations within the same model. They reflect fundamentally different principles.
Participation patterns reinforce this contrast. Cuban elections consistently show high turnout, suggesting that people view the process as meaningful. In the United States, turnout remains significantly lower, reflecting a widespread sense that political participation has limited impact.
Where people feel their role matters, they engage. Where they feel it does not, they withdraw.
More fundamentally, the difference lies in the economic foundation of each system. In the United States, private ownership ensures that economic power and political influence remain closely linked.
In Cuba, social ownership changes that relationship.
When wealth no longer dominates political life, politics itself begins to take on a different character.
Fidel Castro captured this with a simple but decisive question: “What kind of democracy is it where the rich decide everything?”
That question remains unanswered by defenders of the U.S. model.
More options do not mean more freedom when all lead in the same direction.
The Cuban system rejects this framework and instead emphasizes representation through organized participation.
This is not a deficiency—it is a different way of structuring political life.
The contrast becomes clearer when looking at everyday experience. In the United States, political engagement is often reduced to periodic voting, shaped by media narratives and campaign cycles.
In Cuba, participation extends into local assemblies, workplaces and organizations.
One system produces spectators. The other attempts to produce participants.
All of this takes place under very different external conditions. Cuba has faced decades of economic blockade and sustained pressure. Yet it has maintained a political system in which money does not dominate public life.
The United States, by contrast, depends on the continuous flow of private funding to sustain its political processes.
One system struggles to limit the role of capital. The other cannot function without it.
The conclusion follows naturally. The United States does not represent democracy in its highest form. It represents a system where formal equality coexists with real inequality, where participation does not translate into control, and where economic power sets the boundaries of political life.
Cuba, despite its difficulties, points in another direction. It demonstrates that political systems can be organized in ways that limit the influence of wealth, expand participation, and orient decision-making toward social needs.
A system where money speaks louder than people cannot be considered democratic in any meaningful sense. A system that reduces political choice to selecting between pre-defined options is not freedom—it is managed consent.
Real democracy begins at the point where capital loses its power to decide. That is precisely the boundary socialist Cuba has attempted—under pressure, with contradictions, but in practice—to cross.
* Nikos Mottas is the Editor-in-Chief of In Defense of Communism.