(CNN) -- Fidel Castro told a visiting American journalist that the "Cuban model" no longer works, an apparent admission of failings in the communist economic model introduced by his revolution more than 50 years ago.
"The Cuban model doesn't even work for us anymore," Castro told Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic in an interview last week. Goldberg published parts of the exchange on a blog Tuesday and Wednesday.
Castro's younger brother and successor, President Raul Castro, has said as much in numerous speeches since taking the reins of power in 2006.
More recently, he said that a full fifth of state jobs could be redundant and that the government would have to review its role in the country's economy.
A few small changes have already been introduced: allowing more private enterprise for farmers and barbers, for example.
Goldberg said that Castro's statement was in response to a question about whether the Cuban model was still worth exporting.
"Did the leader of the Revolution just say, in essence, 'Never mind?' " Goldberg wrote.
The comments come amid speculation that the two brothers are divided on the economic issue and that Fidel Castro might not wholly support Raul's changes.
Fidel Castro has studiously avoided domestic topics in his many public appearances over the last couple of months.
That sound you heard was from the heads of all the Cuba apologists heads exploding.
PS: did the Cuban model ever work to begin with? I don't think so.
Fidel Castro says his comment on Cuban model was misunderstood
Havana, Cuba (CNN) -- Former Cuban President Fidel Castro said Friday that he was misinterpreted when he recently told an American journalist that the Cuban model no longer works.
In a speech at the University of Havana that was then broadcast on Cuban TV, Castro said he meant "exactly the opposite" of what was understood by Jeffrey Goldberg, who was interviewing him for The Atlantic.
According to Goldberg, when he asked Castro during an interview last week if the Cuban model could be exported, the 84-year-old former leader answered: "The Cuban model doesn't even work for us anymore."
The comment was widely interpreted as Castro's admission that the Soviet-style economic model he introduced after his revolution no longer works.
Goldberg wrote on The Atlantic's blog that he turned to Julia Sweig of the Council on Foreign Affairs, who was present at the interview, "to interpret this stunning statement for me."
"She said, 'He wasn't rejecting the ideas of the revolution. I took it to be an acknowledgment that under "the Cuban model" the state has much too big a role in the economic life of the country,' " he wrote.
On Friday, Castro said that he was correctly quoted but that, "in reality, my answer meant exactly the opposite of what both American journalists interpreted regarding the Cuban model."
"My idea, as the whole world knows, is that the capitalist system no longer works for the United States or the world," he said. "How could such a system work for a socialist country like Cuba?"
