Considerações iniciais para uma crítica do estado de bem-estar social na era PT

Abstract

The theme of the dissertation is the relation between capitalist accumulation, workforce and State in Brazil during the ‗Partido dos Trabalhadores‘ (PT) governments, and the structural crisis of capitalism (MÉSZÁROS, 2002; 2011). We develop an initial approach to the relation between capitalist accumulation, workforce and State, beginning in the mid XIX century and, particularly, in the period of Partido dos Trabalhadores‘ (PT) governments in Brazil. The dissertation has three chapters. In the first we present an initial development of the Marxian categories of commodity, capital, workforce, capitalist accumulation, wage, relative surplus population, industrial reserve army, concentration and centralization of capital, tendency of the rate of profit to fall and its counter tendencies. In the second chapter, we discuss the main characteristics of the Liberal, Fordist/Keynesian and Flexible patterns of accumulation. In the third chapter, we assess the debate around the relation between capitalist accumulation, workforce and State in Brazil beginning in the 1930‘s; we present the positions of Mercadante (2010), Pochmann (2014) and Singer (2012; 2015) that defend the new developmentalism together with the creation of a Welfare State in Brazil during the period of Partido dos Trabalhadores‘ (PT) governments and, according to the analyzes made by Behring e Boschetti (2009), Filgueiras e Gonçalves (2007), Filgueiras et al (2010), Gonçalves (2011; 2012; 2013), Behring (2004; 2010; 2012), Salvador (2012), Salvador and Teixeira (2014), Oliveira (2017), Arcary (2011), Costa (2013) and Netto (2017) we try to put in evidence elements to help developing a critical view of the ceration of a Welfare State in Brazil during PT‘s governments. Throughout the study, we observed that health care, education and social security remain divided in a low quality public sector and a better quality private sector, creating a duality among those who can afford and those who cannot. Housing, transportation, education, security and other are market policies, far from the universality defended by PT‘s governments. Employment and income policies are focalized, partial, discontinuous and based in income transference, with values that do not allow segments of the population the access to consumer goods. On the other hand, they are programs that can be terminated according to capital‘s interests. Thus, we concluded that there are elements in the available literature that support the hypothesis related to the nonexistence of a new developmentalism together with the foundations of a Welfare State during PT‘s governments.