While much progress has been made and the worst years of the Special Period have long since been left behind, Cuba’s centrally planned economy remains trapped in a vicious cycle: wages and salaries are not only insufficient to cover all basic necessities, they are too low to act as much of a stimulus to productivity. Yet increasing worker’s incomes depends on achieving higher levels of productivity and efficiency.

Largely a legacy of the Special Period, this structural dysfunction stunts Cuba’s economic and social progress and blocks its definitive exit from this crisis period – even with the solidarity of oil-rich Venezuela. Excessive subsidies, low wages and the parallel circulation of two currencies corrode the economic and ethical foundations of Cuba’s socialist project. They are inseparable evils that cannot be solved in isolation since they are really three sides of the same coin, to stretch the analogy.

Much of what is obsolete about the Cuban model of socialism flows from, or is reinforced by, this core structural dysfunction – such as paternalism,  a pervasive, many-sided and deeply entrenched negative phenomenon that has both material and psychological dimensions. This structural dysfunction must be transcended if the revolution is to achieve what Fidel, in his landmark November 2005 speech at Havana University, called “true and irreversible socialism.”

So we’ve come full circle, back to Fidel’s November 29005 warning that the revolution could destroy itself through its own errors and weaknesses, an implicit acknowledgement of the need for structural and conceptual changes, some of which Fidel touched on in his speech that night: dismantling the edifice of universal state subsidies and gratuities – apart from those guaranteed in Cuba’s socialist constitution, such as the right to free health care and education – in order to reassert the socialist principle of “to each according to their work”; and forging a real culture of public criticism and debate within the revolution.

It should be stressed that the legacy of the Special Period is far from wholly negative. Most importantly, the Cuban Revolution has endured – an epic feat of resistance that deserves to be studied by revolutionaries everywhere, not only for its hard-won lessons but above all because it’s so deeply inspiring. Today, Cuba confronts the challenge of carrying through a radical overhaul of its socialist model with the benefit of the enduring lessons and remarkable achievements of the Special Period.

One is the world's first and so far only large scale transition to low-input sustainable agriculture, symbolized by the hugely successful urban farms and gardens that are as much about growing community as they are about growing food and green medicine. Another is the ongoing “energy revolution”, which has cut carbon emissions and oil consumption, installed millions of new energy-efficient light globes and appliances in Cuban homes, modernised and decentralised the entire electrical power generation and distribution system, and redistributed wealth in favour of working people via the imposition of a steeply progressive electricity tariff, which also encourages savings.

The Battle of Ideas, launched in 2000 to reassert socialist values eroded by the market concessions, also deserves to be highlighted.  At the heart of the hundreds of social, cultural and educational programs and projects encompassed in the Battle of Ideas is the graduation of some 40,000 young revolutionary social workers and the many vital tasks they have been assigned. Above all, the Special Period has taught Cubans how to so much with so little by drawing on a wellspring of solidarity and by harnessing the creative potential of a well educated and highly skilled workforce in the search for solutions.

Cuba has had to learn how to run a modern tourism industry almost overnight; cobble together spare parts for its living museum of pre-revolution American cars and Soviet trucks; and develop a nascent medical biotechnology sector into a world-class research and development complex that has invented, among other things, the only effective vaccine for meningitis-B and the anti-cholesterol drug Policosanol, derived from sugar cane, that can be bought in Australian pharmacies.