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The large majority of articles written outside Cuba about its process of “updating” its economic model (appropriately) address what they consider the economic effects, both of what has already been implemented, and of what will come next, a comprehensively debated issue. This work will consider an intimately related but fundamentally different aspect of the reform process. Many supporters of Cuba’s fifty-year effort to begin building socialism fear, and many opponents hope, that the economic updating process is the beginning of the road back to capitalism.

Whoever does not hope/expect, shall not find the unexpected; arduous is the search for and the access to it. -- Heraclitus, 540-480 BNE

The issue which has swept down the centuries and which will have to be fought sooner or later is the people versus the banks. -- Lord Acton, 1881

Why do the good lack tanks and airplanes? -- Brecht, 1940

1. Where We Are

 I

Al Campbell is Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of Utah, and a longtime member of the Steering Committee of the Union for Radical Political Economics. His research interests are the nature of contemporary capitalism and more human-centered alternatives. His most recent book is the edited volume Cuban Economists on the Cuban Economy (2013). al@economics.utah.edu

We pay tribute to two individuals who have greatly contributed to our work and who died recently--Ellen Meiksins Wood and Richard Levins.