Work, social being and health care: an approach from Marx and Lukács

This paper aims to develop a theoretical analysis of care using an ontological approach. We use Lukacsian theoretical categories, inspired by Karl Marx’s theory, to delimit care as a particularity of social praxis, based on work. Like any praxis, care change shapes through history under different appearances. Within capitalism, it takes a particular form, in accordance with the determinations of the process of creation of value that is concomitant with its reification, enabling the “realization” of a certain surplus value objectfied in the “dead labor”, embodied by the production of care. It also allows the transformation of caregivers in possible sources of surplus value and transforming care in value. A typically capitalist contradiction is thus consolidated, since care, in its essence, corresponds to the particular practice able to meets healthcare needs, although in capitalism, it is subsumed within market needs.

Capitalism; Communism; Delivery of health care; Work