HISTORICAL BASES OF CONSERVATISM IN BRAZILIAN SOCIAL WORK: the configuration of conservative thinking in the process of preserving the capitalist order
Conservatism. Social Work. Reproduction of the bourgeois order. Postmodern neoconservatism.
This doctoral thesis discusses the foundations that made conservatism a structural feature of capitalist society and its relationship with social work in the process of preserving the bourgeois order. The objective of the study is to understand the social and economic relations that formed the basis for the constitution of conservatism and its insertion in the ideological and cultural aspects of the reproduction of class society, impacting a conservative offensive in social work that intensifies given the recent political and ideological scenario in Brazil. The bibliographic review was the methodology used in the research process, based on Marx's method from a historical, critical and dialectical analysis, taking as a methodological resource the immanent analysis of the texts used. Conservatism is understood here as a result of the ideological decay of the bourgeoisie, when it abandoned its revolutionary perspective and absorbed an anti-proletarian stance. This thought shows an irrationalism that marks an opposition and a refusal of materialism, becoming an ideological framework to sustain bourgeois domination. Bringing the discussion to the Brazilian reality, it is evident that the process of the country's socio-historical formation was a privileged locus for the structuring of conservative thinking in Brazil and for the constitution of its dominant moral values. Thus, the presupposition of this research is that the advance of conservatism in Brazil maintains an intrinsic relationship with the power structures established in the country, during its socio-historical formation process, and which last until the present time, perpetuating social and material relations that condition the reproduction of the capitalist order. This thesis shows that the advance of the multiple expressions of conservatism in social work, as a historically determined profession, points to a tension in the theoretical-critical debate within it, reflecting in the presentation of postmodern neoconservative trends that will cause inflections in its scopes ideological and political, since it affects professional training and professional practice, implying the regression of professional culture, compromising the implementation of their professional project and emptying the historical-critical perspective.