POLÍTICA SOCIAL E CAPITALISMO

NEXOS HISTÓRICOS E TENDÊNCIAS ATUAIS

Abstract

This theoretical essay seeks to provide some reflections on social policies, with emphasis on trends and challenges in the face of the current capital crisis. From a critical-dialectical reading of reality, social policies are understood as one of the mediations adopted by capital to attenuate conflicts between classes, particularized by State action since the phase of monopoly capitalism. In times of progressive and continuous attempts by capital to rise to profit rates, based on neoliberal proposals, there are trends of retraction by the State in the totality of the social fabric. In this context, the worsening of social inequalities and the exponentiation of the exploitation of the workforce are observed, which come to coexist contradictorily with minimalist and underfunded social protection measures, to the detriment of massive investments in macroeconomic policies granted to the process of capital appreciation, whose the working class were most happy. Although “we are in the eye of the hurricane”, it is necessary to appropriate the foundations that led to the devising of resistance strategies in the face of ongoing incursions, in which social policies appear as a mediating component, in the face of the degrading conditions that have plagued the working class.