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Working class experience and science in the struggle for health and social emancipation

Abstract

As a contribution for the field of Collective Health/Workers’ Health, this essay develops a reflection on the relationship between the working class experience and science in the struggle for health and social emancipation. We start with the question - Can capitalist production and health be compatible? - to point out, in the first part, the prevailing response offered nowadays by the Brazilian trade union movement. In the second and third sections, we analyze some studies referring to the historical experience of workers’ confrontation to capital, especially in Italy in the 1960s-1970s, to think about both the answers to the proposed question and the theory and practice relationship. Then, we discuss the contributions and limits of the Italian worker’s struggle for the Health Model. This legacy enables us to restore the meaning of class in the science and experience relationship. In the sixth part, we present experiences of the Brazilian workers’ health struggle as resistance to capitalist exploitation, and we return to the initial question. We highlight, in the pointed out problematic, the meanings of “right to health” and of health, understood as working class struggle, acquired within the spheres of knowledge production and health actions.

Keywords:
science and working class experience; workers’ health; capitalism and health; Italian working class model

Fundação Jorge Duprat Figueiredo de Segurança e Medicina do Trabalho - FUNDACENTRO Rua Capote Valente, 710 , 05409 002 São Paulo/SP Brasil, Tel: (55 11) 3066-6076 - São Paulo - SP - Brazil
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