Acessibilidade / Reportar erro

Common good production in capitalism: a critical reading through the public policies linked to social rights

We've learned that the state is responsible for the production of common good. Besides, it protects the collectivity and always acts according with public concerns - which, theoretically, would be convergent to the concerns of those who are under its empire. We will see that this is no more than a recurrent and indispensable illusion for consolidation of a bourgeois democracy. Nevertheless, it is indispensable to think about an immanent state analysis, in order to, later, understand the existing limits in its acting as a supposed most important producer of common good. Here is a recurrent illusion about the idea that the state, while promoting the collective interest, is the common good production pillar. Well, once capital is the process of money accumulation by extracting a surplus-value, the state takes its higher expression as an intrinsic relation with the capital logic. Once money is the universal equivalent, it is important that, for its circulation, a guarantee does exist, being an indispensable agent to promote such. Without commodities' production and circulation there is no capital. Without such guarantee agent which shall consolidate the daily exchange process through the universal equivalent (money), there is no capital. Without a guarantor of such production and circulation - the state - there is no capitalism. The common good production through the public policies is linked to social rights in their context and we need a critical Marxist reading to understand such an issue.

Public Good; State; Marxism


Faculdade de Saúde Pública, Universidade de São Paulo. Associação Paulista de Saúde Pública. Av. dr. Arnaldo, 715, Prédio da Biblioteca, 2º andar sala 2, 01246-904 São Paulo - SP - Brasil, Tel./Fax: +55 11 3061-7880 - São Paulo - SP - Brazil
E-mail: saudesoc@usp.br