Direitos sociais dos moribundos: controle social e expropriação da morte nas sociedades capitalistas

Abstract

This is an analysis if public policies on death and dying under the control of the contemporary capitalism state. I investigate government action on the forms of death and dying with the transference of control from the state to the market place in the consumer society. I assume the existence of an organic relationship between the forms of death and types of state, which can be demonstrated by the analysis of the policies of assistance to the dying both in the social state as well as in the neoliberal state. I use the hermeneutic-dialectic method to investigate this relationship, as at the same time I use other more contemporary political theories. I understand that they way people die today is both a continuity and a rupture in the capitalist program of social control over bodies. This continuity/rupture is associated to forms of assistance to the dying, starting at the more state-controlled assistance to the the more marketoriented industry of death. The connection between one and the other are the mechanisms of social insertion of the dying in the consumer society, so that they can consume their own assistance. I conclude that the assistance policies through the concession of social rights -- lead the state to look after both the interests of the industry of death and also the will of the dying of not perishing without specialized assistance.