Assistência social e reprodução da força de trabalho: análises e perspectivas da política social no Serviço Social Brasileiro

Abstract

This research deals with the theoretical analytical approaches identified in the Brazilian Social Work's theoretical production about social policy and the specificity of social assistance and its relation with the process of labour power reproduction. The object of this study was the conceptions expressed by Social Work authors about social policy and social assistance in their relation to the labour power reproduction. Therefore, this research‟s central problem is: what is the relationship between the conception of social assistance, the social policy and the labour power as mediation between state and society present in the Brazilian Social Work‟s theoretical production? The goals were: 1) to grasp the theoretical-methodological foundations of the social policy conception within Social Work literature; 2) to identify the perspectives used in such analyses of the capitalist state and their relation to the labour power reproduction; 3) to analyse the specificity of social assistance as state mediation in relation to the labour power reproduction. On the methodological assumptions, this work is essentially a theoretical one, subsidized by bibliographical research as a process of collection information addressing the Social Work literature. The results are presented from the apprehension of three analytical perspectives, which are organized in two parts: Part I - Social policy and citizenship standard: 1) The confrontation with poverty (Social policy and the confrontation with poverty: the social reproduction of subaltern classes); Part II - Social policies, class struggle and capital accumulation: 1) The perspective of class struggle (Social policy, social totality and political struggles); and 2) The dynamics of interdependence between the State and capital (Social policy and the dynamics between the State and the process of capital accumulation). Finally, the analysis endorses that the real apprehension of social policy‟s social function – and its particularity as social assistance – emerges in the context of monopolistic capital. Because the historical of social policies is based on the labour force reproduction, it is necessary, in order to grasp its founding determinations, to focus on the perspective of totality in the relationship between politics and economy, namely, on the basis of reciprocity between the capital and the State. It is concluded that the contemporary implications in the field of social rights, and therefore of social policies, need to be apprehended with the determinations of capital in its limits presented and in expansion in times of structural crisis. It is also important to concern the impact of that on the process of devaluation of labour power, keeping this reproduction in the frontier of survival.