The purpose of this article is to reflect on the relationship between the public and private in the bourgeois state and about the relationship of these spheres in terms of confronting the social question. It begins by presenting the origin of these relationships at the development of bourgeois society, and then contextualizes the situations and relations that arose with the transition to monopoly capitalism. It seeks to demonstrate that in the various phases of capitalism, economic, political, social and cultural strategies are constructed to respond to the demands generated by the contradiction between capital and labor. It concludes by pointing to the current forms of these strategies which, reformulated since the 1970's, indicate new standards of intervention in the social question.
bourgeois state; public; private; social question