Imagine for a moment a 19th‑century factory: the deafening noise of the machines, workers with calloused hands, and endless workdays. Today the setting seems different—air‑conditioned offices, delivery drivers on motorcycles guided by mobile apps, night‑shift caregivers, or programmers in front of screens—but, according to researcher Dania Leyva Creagh, the “red thread” that unites workers of all times continues to be the same: the relationship of dependence on the means of production.
“From a Marxist perspective,” she explains, “both in the 19th century and today, the working class is defined by not being the owner of the means of production and being forced to sell its labor power to the bourgeois class. The exploitation of labor takes on more sophisticated forms, mediated by technology, but it retains the same root.”
For Leyva Creagh, contemporary capitalism has not eliminated social classes, but rather disguised them with new narratives. “We no longer speak of workers, but of ‘collaborators’; not of class struggle, but of ‘social dialogue.’ This responds to an ideological strategy that seeks to manipulate our subjectivity, erase the essential contradiction between labor and capital, and promote a fragmented and competitive identity that systematically weakens class consciousness.”
Even so, she maintains, the working class has not disappeared; it has transformed and diversified. “Today it includes workers, technicians, scientists, educators, health professionals, digital and agricultural workers. It has more knowledge and more technological tools, though it also faces new forms of exploitation.”
The Relevance of Marxism
On the role of Marxism in this context, Leyva Creagh is categorical: “Marxism is not a dogma, but a critical method for understanding the transformations of labor and the forms of domination.”
During the Industrial Revolution, Marx analyzed how technology served the process of capitalist accumulation. Today, artificial intelligence and automation reproduce that same logic. “Technology does not liberate the worker; rather it intensifies his subordination to capital. Marxism allows us to understand these processes and unmask the idea of ‘neutral progress’ which, in reality, benefits those who control the means and the information,” she argues.
She also asserts that Marxism proposes emancipatory alternatives and rescues the value of international solidarity. “In a globalized world, trade union struggles are also global. No worker is alone when defending their rights. Internationalist solidarity remains our most powerful weapon.”
Cuba in Collective Thought
Regarding Cuba’s recent participation in the 1st Theoretical Trade Union Symposium organized by the International Workers’ Institute, Leyva highlights that this entity, founded in Greece in 2022, “is a strategic space for articulation and collective thought of the working class on a global scale, allowing debate on common challenges in the face of the reconfiguration of capital and new forms of domination.”
For Cuba, she adds, participating in these meetings has a double value: it reaffirms the internationalist vocation of the trade union movement and makes visible a unique experience of workers’ organization and social justice, even under adverse conditions such as the blockade imposed by the United States government against our nation.
The CTC, together with academic institutions in the country, contributes a humanist vision based on the practice of those who have sought to build labor relations outside the logic of profit. “We contribute an ethic of commitment to social justice and class unity. And, at the same time, we receive an enormous wealth of analysis and experiences that help us rethink our trade union strategies,” she concludes.
