“Na saúde e na doença até que a morte os separe”: trabalho e saúde nos tempos do capital

Abstract

The present study analyzes the problem of illness related to work conditions, identifying the main diseases and their manifestations in different social formations, particularly those produced under capitalism. We take up the basis of material production and of community's disease up to the early modern capitalism, aiming to unveil the relationship between work and illness and its determinations in capitalist society.The research is undertaken by an analizyses of the literature and has become a reference theoretical of the Marxian perspective. It appears that in earlier societies men lived with different diseases, among them, the pests that contributed to decimate populations. By the poor development of productive forces, these comunities could not control the diseases involved, and attempts of control had no effect in most cases because of the scientific ignorance of the causative agents of these diseases. In these societies, the spreading of disease was associated with transcendental, religious and mythical causes. however in capitalism, during the nineteenth century, with the changes ocurring in the working methods and in the process of industrialization, gradually the causative agents of disease were revealed by the scientific discovery. In contrast, poor living conditions of workers led to the development and spreading of many diseases, considering the intense work day that happened from the competitive stage until the age of monopolies. permeated by contradictions, the capitalist system at the same time that allowed the development of productive forces and science, and was able to eliminate several diseases in the course, kept unsanitary conditions because their goal is not to decimate the disease just mitigate its social consequences. In the contemporary restructuring of production, socio-occupational diseases acquire a different setting because it keeps physical diseases and increase mental illnesses that are directly related to technological change and intense exploitation of labor. are identified more subtle forms of capital controls that emphasize the work autonomy and masks the need to expand the extraction of surplus labor. as for the state, it becomes clear its function complementary to the reproduction of capital, as reflected in complex instances lucrative as the pharmaceutical industry, private health plans, equipment companies and the various services that make up the medical-industrial complex. Finally,in the dynamic development of capitalism, workers are found subsumed by exploitation and casualization of labor, whose logic produces a variety of illnesses that affect their reproduction entirely, controled partly by the socio-metabolic system of the capital.