Raul is more radical than his brother. He became a communist before Fidel. The only hope is that with his age, unless Castro's son, "Fidelito" takes over, that he doesn't remain in power for long.
I seem to remember that Fidelito was seriously estranged from his father. Wasn't that particular wife of his pretty discontented with Castro?
I read a fairly comprehensive biography of Fidel and that seemed to be so.
I will say that I think Fidel really did try, with minimal cynicism, to make Communism work, and I give him credit for that. He took a lot from the economy from his personal use but not nearly as much as he could have. This all being said, in the end that didn't prevent his government from becoming a nasty dictatorship.
I'm glad I visited Cuba even though I supported an oppressive regime by doing so. You can't understand how bad things are unless you see them for yourself. In the end, the only way to keep a communist or socialist system is to create huge numbers of unfair rules to block human enterprise so that nobody becomes richer than their neighbor. Until you see how that works in practice, you don't understand it.
A really good example of this was restaurants. Nearly all Cuban restaurants are awful. Why? Because the government, in a bid to share in the profits, insists on selling them food purchased from the farmers at awful prices. So the farmers send their worst quality swill to the government, and the government sells it to the restaurants.
The most expensive places, at the very top end of the market, buy this food and sell it on the market for what little it can bring. Then they buy the good stuff from the private markets. But places that are not so expensive have to use it because their sales are counted against state food store purchases.
This produces a horribly distorted system where running a good restaurant you can be proud of is very difficult. And State restaurants are almost as "good" as private ones because they both use the same bad food as a base.
I rented a room in someone's house. The people I rented the room from became good friends and they would prepare good food for me by buying it from the market and preparing it themselves. But if they had opened a restaurant they would have had to serve the same swill as anyone else.
I think it's worth visiting a communist country to see what it's like. In a perverse sense it's too bad they're going the way of the dodo, because they will no longer serve as a warning sign for others. But in the end, I can't wish that people be enslaved just to provide that kind of entertainment. Only a Communist would be that cruel.
Cuba is a beautiful place and a wonderful nation with fantastic potential, and I look forward to seeing what it will become after Castro.
D