In yet another blow to the failed communist experiment, Cuba has announced that it will now allow the purchasing and sale of private property. Even the Castro regime can’t keep up the disastrous policies of left-wing utopian society any more.

 HAVANA (AP) — Cuba announced Thursday it will allow real estate to be bought and sold for the first time since the early days of the revolution, the most important reform yet in a series of free-market changes under President Raul Castro.

The law, which takes effect Nov. 10, applies to citizens living in Cuba and permanent residents only, according to a red-letter headline on the front page of Thursday’s Communist Party daily Granma and details published in the government’s Official Gazette.

The law limits Cubans to owning one home in the city and another in the country, an effort to prevent the accumulation of large real estate holdings. It requires that all real estate transactions be made through Cuban bank accounts so that they can be better regulated, and says the transactions will be subject to bank commissions.

The precedent is far more important than the details, of course. You have a society supposedly all about collectivism and state ownership admitting it needs to allow private ownership and wealth accumulation. Cuba will now also generate tax revenue as home sales will be subject to an 8% tax levy.

“This is a very big step forward. With this action the state is granting property rights that didn’t exist before,” said Philip J. Peters, a Cuba analyst at the Lexington Institute in Arlington, Virginia. “If you think about it from the point of view of a Cuban family, it converts their house from a place to live into a source of wealth or a source of collateral. It’s an asset that can now be made liquid.”

The move towards a free market and away from communism has Cubans hopeful about the future.

“This is going to help me because I have some money and now I will be able to buy a better house,” said Oscar Palacios Delgado, a 68-year-old office maintenance worker, adding he hoped the government would enact other changes to make it easier for Cubans to find building materials for home repairs. “This law will benefit many Cubans.”

This is just the latest tacit admission by Cuba that the communist system has failed. Previous reforms included allowing the establishment of small businesses, laying off a half-million government workers, and — as of October — beginning to allow Cubans to buy and sell vehicles.

While Raul Castro, who took over from his brother Fidel, has insisted Cuba will remain a socialist country, he has admitted that the current system isn’t working and needs to move towards free market policies. It’s yet another victory for free market ideals and another blow to the ideal left-wing society fantasized about on college campuses in America.