In my first A-level economics class, at the age of 16, I was taught these guiding principles; people only produce if they can make a profit, humans have infinite desires, while resources are limited, so everything must be rationed through the price mechanism – demand and supply.

No concept of production for need or socialist economics appeared on the curriculum. This was the early 1990s, the socialist bloc had collapsed and neo-liberalism was triumphant, or so we were told. Over the previous ten years, British Telecoms, the British water industry, British Rail, British Gas and British Coal had been packaged up and sold off to corporations and share holders.

Rational economic man, it was said, would ensure efficiency through privatisation and competition, even while, in the following years, prices rose and accidents increased in these fundamental services of the economy. Darwinism was recruited to the cause, as underdeveloped countries were forced to 'liberalise' their economies, selling their natural resources to foreign investors, rolling back the state, and removing obstacles to the 'revolutionising' power of market forces. In Latin America, the 'lost decade' of the 1980s and the 'Washington Consensus' of the 1990s saw debt crisis, restructuring and liberalisation plunge millions more into destitution, with or without inflated GDP statistics.

Amidst this neoliberal onslaught, Cuba stood almost alone. The collapse of the socialist bloc countries between 1989 and 1991 cut off 80 per cent of Cuba's trade, GDP plummeted by 35 per cent and food shortages decreased caloric intake by nearly 40 per cent. The crisis was exacerbated by punitive laws tightening the US blockade in 1990, 1992, and 1996. Despite entering a 'special period in time of peace', the Cuban revolution did not renege on political commitments to socialist welfare, state planning and the predominance of state property, even while forced to introduce pragmatic reforms – limited concessions to market forces – to stimulate the economy and get vital goods to the people.