A dialética da redução de danos como projeto ético-político para outro projeto societário

Abstract

This thesis is a theoretical essay and aims to analyze the praxis of Harm Reduction (HR) with regard to the possibilities for the construction of an emancipatory ethical-political project. We start from the conception that the “drug issue” can and should be seen as multifaceted throughout the human trajectory. Each situation, with regard to the way of socially approaching the issue, reflects transformations that are permeated by various nuances over time. Within the complex relationship of determinations that surround this phenomenon, we can see that, within the capitalist mode of production (CMP), drugs acquire the status of commodity, thus becoming a phenomenon that generates consequences in the context of modernity and, its structural elements and their ideology are strengthened through prohibitionist ideology. This ideology is so closely linked to the reproduction of the present social order that it can be identified even during governments that set out to express the interests of the working class and groups subjugated and oppressed by this order. HR is historically a strategic line of care construction and a theoretical-practical place to be disputed that is crossed by historical conjunctures. In turn, it is also possible to identify a process of theoretical emptying and an excess of pragmatism in many interpretations and actions about and with HR, which reminds us of the need for a critical theoretical approach. In this thesis, we start from Marxian social theory and the Marxist tradition as the basis for our reflections and analyses. However, we know that even this tradition has not historically had a univocal relationship in the debate on drugs. In this sense, we realize that, within the Marxist perspective, throughout its history, in several of its speeches and theoretical analyses, there was a departure from the theme, for various reasons such as, for example, superficial and simplistic interpretations of this determination of drugs, or even a moralism about the working class and its revolutionary horizons. The aim is to bring to discussion how HR practices, even with anti-prohibitionist and progressive ideas and conceptions, often remain linked to an expression of management control of the working class, ultimately expressing the interests of the dominant classes. Consequently, they end up joining the reproduction of the CMP. This does not deny the contributions that the HR debate and practices brought and still bring, especially to face an issue so permeated with ideology, prejudice and violence. However, a critical reading is essential to contribute to a more effective field that can reveal the root of the “drug issue” as a contemporary problem. In short, the thesis defended here is that HR can and should be an instrument for analyzing and transforming social relations and, to this end, it is necessary that we can dialogue with the trajectory developed so far, but also that it can express itself as an ethical-political project affiliated with the project of radical transformation of reality. In other words, under penalty of being absorbed by the very structure it aims to combat, the agenda of a RD, in addition to being anti-prohibitionist, needs to be anti-capitalist.