Da essência do trabalho no capitalismo à sua forma histórica contemporânea: contribuições de A. N. Leontiev para o entendimento do sofrimento pelo trabalho

Abstract

This paper is the result of a theoretical and conceptual research which intended to outline, based upon Historical-Cultural Psicology, specially the work of A. N. Leontiev, elements for the understanding of suffering caused by labor in capitalist society. The purpose of the study was to build a contribution to the field of Occupational Health, in its Marxist approach, based on the Latin American Social Medicine. At first, it was analyzed the essence of capitalist social relations, which defines that the meaning of labor is its payment, not the content or the social significance of the activity being developed, thus producing a fragmented personality. On the other hand, in the historical form that labor relationships assume today, the productive restructuring principle generalizes itself as the ordinary means of capital management, changing elements of the worker’s activity, mainly in relation to: the nature and motives of this activity, bringing to its interior former external needs and expanding its motives and stimulation; the affective connection with labor, stimulating a process of emotional cooptation; the flexibilization of the process and content of labor, amplifying and breaking into pieces its constitutive actions. Therefore, increasing the labor load and, thereafter, worker’s abrasion, which may directly determine the health-illness process.