Structural Crisis, the State and Social Policy: Derivations in Social Work and Challenges for the Working Class

Abstract

We are living through unfavorable times for critical thinking.  Once again humanity is a witness to how conservatism assumes the cloak of totalitarianism and violence: coups masked in legality, xenophobia transverted into economic protection, totalitarianism transfigured as an alternative to overcome crisis, the best example “Make America great again”. I propose (...) to guide reflection along the following path:

First, a journey through some historical events that marked the XX century, particularly, a fundamental fact for our discussion: the forming of what some theorists call a “State of Wellbeing” and its relationship with the countries in the center of and peripheral to capitalism. This will be crucial to understanding at least two matters. The first, the reasons why the expansion of Public Policy in the mid XX century, with its particular characteristics, was possible and second, what would it mean for us as humanity to return to that kind of State and, concomitantly, that moment in history that made its rise possible.

In the second place, I would like to refer to the historical moment we as humanity are living today. Here I will attempt to point out some characteristics of current capitalist development that are the basis for the idea that there is a capital crisis of an unprecedented scale and that because it is a systemic crisis - involving the entire system that controls social relations with respect to capital -- it affects all spheres of life in society: it is a crisis of the modern State, a crises of subjectivity, a crisis of institutions, of bourgeois society, etc. 

In the third place, I will attempt to express some elements that I consider important and that I share with some contemporary authors, who analyze “social crises and movements” relating to the historical demands faced by humanity today, and on that basis, discuss some aspects about the role of a profession, such as Social Work, in the vast universe of social capitalist relationships.