When Communism Works It Works Amazingly

The island nation struggles to keep the lights on but has inoculated 90% of population with home-developed vaccines.

It's a funny old world eh ... no, I take that back, we are a funny species while/whilst the actual world is just fine and dandy. We've come up with many ways of living together, working together, sharing the world with each other ... ok, we've come up with many ways of trying to get the most of everything for ourselves. We've given these differing ways names, feudalism, communism, or capitalism run via dictatorships, monarchies, and democracies, and in all manner of combinations alongside many many others ways of 'coming togethers'.

None are perfect, none fit us 100%, none work at all times in all situations, and none are better or worse than the other. Some people like apples, some like bananas, some like bananas on holiday but not at work, some are only into chips and can't stand apples until all there is are apples.

Cuba, is a full-on communist country, possibly one of the last to pursue Marxism–Leninism, a fusion of the original ideas of German philosopher and economic theorist Karl Marx, and Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin. The country/party pursues state socialism, under which all industries are nationalised, and a command economy is implemented.

Like I say, some people like apples, some like bananas, and there are some that don't care as long as they control the bowl.

I, being from "the West" (a label given to a view of 'apples' and not a point on a globe that is relative to where you stand), am meant to hate communism and all it stands for, so say the West's fruit bowl controllers. 

A nurse shows a dose of the Soberana-02 Covid-19 vaccine during clinical trials in March 2021, Photograph: Reuters

But then there's the following story, Cuba’s vaccine success story sails past mark set by rich world’s Covid efforts.

... this spring [2001] Cuba became the smallest country in the world to successfully develop and produce its own Covid vaccines [Soberana-02]. Since then its well-staffed, if dilapidating universal health service, has rolled out injections at a fast clip, inoculating even young children (all vaccination on the island is voluntary).

11 million people, all sorted without any help from outside, astounding and deserve way more recognition than they get.

Cuba’s highly centralized, state planning system – one of the last in the world – goes some way to explaining this paradox. When there is political will from the top, objectives can be driven forward; when there’s a lack of direction, the island’s rigid, Kafkaesque bureaucracy can elevate passing the buck to an art form.