Social Conflicts, Ideology, Culture, and Social Work

Abstract

This is a historical moment of intensification of the class struggle, with expressive social conflicts, and a strong tendency towards world barbarism. This scenario is no different in Brazil, where it is possible to see regression in labor rights as capitalism expands the exploitation and alienation of work, and advances in the deterioration of labor and gains in social security. Against this backdrop, this second issue of Revista Katálysis in 2019 presents the intriguing theme Social Conflicts, Ideology, Culture, and Social Work. When reflecting on the Brazilian society, immerse in the contradictory movement of the neoliberal capitalism, it is crucial to emphasize the power of ideology in shaping culture, concealing reality, and exposing social conflicts as an expression of class antagonisms. The country has presented a high level of complexity and a wide range of regressive policies in the different fields of social life, which is demonstrated in two elements of its current historical dynamics. First, the profoundly violent processes, guided by the neoliberal ideology, disguised as "fighting" the violence itself, and "defending" moral principles of preserving family and society, under the hegemony of financial capital. Second, the processes of resistance as a historical category that is expressed by opposition movements and protest oppression, as a counterforce, as a reaction to subordination, exploitation, and humiliation posed by the capitalism that faces now a crisis observed worldwide. These two processes are at the base of the current Brazilian context. They remind us of Rosa Luxemburg's thought when, in the second phase of the imperialism's apogee she expressed, in the same way as Marx, the challenges we would have to face in the future: socialism or barbarism. According to Mészáros (2001, p. 79), Marx placed the first version of this idea "within the ultimate historical horizon of the contradictions then unfolding." For Marx, in an uncertain future, to save our existence, we would be forced to make certain choices regarding the societal order. We understand that, at this very moment, we are living the future tendency that Marx and Luxemburg predicted. Therefore, our historical moment leaves no room for conciliatory choices if we are to confront the numerous world and national problems. The issues to be addressed are many, from chronic structural unemployment to international and national social, economic, political and military conflicts, which result from the incapacity of capitalism, in its historical phase of hegemonic imperialism, of offering solutions to the contradictions of the system. For Mészáros (2001, p. 80), "only a radical alternative to the established mode of controlling social metabolic reproduction can offer a way out of capital's structural crisis," i.e., a radical socialist mass movement to build a civilized future for humanity. In this direction, ideology and culture have an active role in specific historical processes and are fundamental ontological categories intertwined with each o...