What should we work for? Notes toward an ethnographic theory of value in the contemporary Cuban labor market

Abstract

Through the means of ethnographic fieldwork, carried out during seven extended visits to the Cuban capital of La Havana and Cienfuegos between 2007 and 2017, this article aims to investigate how the concept and the ultimate purpose of ‘work’ have been changing in contemporary Cuba, due to the set of reforms recently enacted in the labor market. Stemming from Graeber considerations on the “politics of value”, I analyze how, in the Cuban traditional planned economy, ‘work’ was the core of the social project whose aim was not to produce profit but to ensure basic needs to the whole citizenry. Finally, I seek to argue how, in more recent times, work is the nest of a complex values’ transformation and a turning point in joining the Marxist-Leninist social project.