Well of course we live in a dollar-denominated capitalist hegemony today, and with globalization as it is anyone who wants to be a part of the world stage needs to put up or shut up, especially with the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 (which itself had market-based reforms toward the end). But that doesn't meet it _has_ to be that way, so much as that's just the current political happenstance.

Cuba is perhaps an interesting case study – and maybe it would be a lot more successful than it is today if it weren't so heavily sanctioned and embargoed by the United States – given that it's in a lot of ways still in its Cold War era. But it's hard to deny that for all the resources they've been stripped of (and attempted US-backed coups, and a non-mutually-agreed-US military base / prison on their land), that they've found some modern degree of success for what they have: very high education rates due to universal education, universal healthcare that is ahead of US-aligned peer-countries in the Caribbean, a respected culture of exporting medical professionals around the world, developed their own (effective) covid vaccine because the US sanctioned them from receiving any significant doses and now have the highest vaccination rate in the world, rising per capita gdp and household wealth... and they are, technically/in-name and more-so since the passing of Castro, a democracy (though the US government would say otherwise, but in my opinion if you'd consider modern-day Turkey, Ukraine, Hungary, or Poland a western democracy then so is Cuba), and yet also communist in most facets.