The Cuban revolution was a unique phenomenon in many respects. It revolved around the personal charisma of Fidel Castro, a young lawyer who successfully carried out a guerrilla warfare that overthrew the military regime of Fulgencio Batista. The aim of the revolutionaries was to redistribute wealth through land reform and Communism. By late 1960, the state owned a significant portion of the means of production. The sense of nationalism led the revolutionaries to turn to socialism away from the United States. 

 In the first sixteen years of the revolution, the Communist Party played no important role but concentrated on the development of mass mobilisation of labour, women, students, farmers and defenders of the revolution. The role of the Party was simply to co-ordinate and supervises the tasks of the state and mass organisations without administering them. The Communist Party became the locus of political power. The Party, the State and the Government are thus functionally differentiated. 

 The revolutionaries had inherited a capitalist economy that relied on sugar production as well as an economy that was unable to generate sufficient jobs to absorb surplus labour. In the first two years after the revolution itself, house rents were lowered, free universal education established, social security made available to all workers, Agrarian Reform Law began the redistribution of land, transportation costs were lowered, and child care centres were subsidised by the state. 

 Banking, export-import, industry, construction and transportation and energy were taken over by the state. Since Cuba did not have material incentives, moral incentives were used to motivate workers.