Yoani Sánchez recently imagined for her readers a blissful, free market-economic future for Cuba. Entitled “Neoliberalismo,” the post hailed Cuba’s new economic reforms as an early sign that the “sirens of capitalism” would one day prevail over the “false illusion of utopia” (Marxian political-economic utopia a lo cubano) that the Cuban revolution has insistently pursued for so long. Was this real? Or was she poking fun? I’m not sure, but I’m going to take this idea seriously here.
The post didn’t include a word about actual economic policy or civil liberties. That wasn’t the point. The point was to dream.
In my somewhat dubious position as a Latin Americanist grad student at the University of Chicago,[1] I’ve learned a bit about the foundations of free market economic theory, and the outcomes that it has rendered in practice. Neoliberalism grew out of the theory that a truly free market and a truly free society are fundamentally interdependent—one cannot exist without the other. Here, any form of government regulation or social service program that interferes with the market is thought to stifle the “freeness” of society. There is a lot more to it. But this peculiar, abstract notion of freedom of all things and people is the golden rule. Like Cuba’s rendition of Marxism, this too is a utopian model. I’m not sure if Yoani meant to pit one utopia against another, but that is what she has done.
