This article connects the contemporary crisis of modernity to the crisis of the Welfare State in the West and to its so far incomplete establishment in ‘Latin’-America, with special reference to Brazil. The reflexivisation of modernity is thus linked to a discussion of citizenship and social police which harks back to the definition of the principles of social policy, focusing on the possible alternative of ‘generative politics’ as a means of creating new forms of collective solidarity. The crisis of dialectical thought and the problem of social change are thereby tackled and a different way of understanding them is put forward, in accordance with new sorts of contemporary sociability.