What “health promotion” are we talking about? a Marxist critique for reorientation towards a strategic horizon

Abstract

It is discussed how health promotion, reduced to a “small policy”, came from the intense reformist agenda provided by progressive governments in Brazil (2003-2016) to ratify social democracy as a method of taming the capital-labor conflict. For this, an argumentative exposition under the historical-dialectical materialist method was made on four essential themes. The first, on the “shortening” of the idea of health promotion. The second, on the “New Health Promotion” and its purposes in a new pattern of capitalist accumulation. The third, on the hegemony of “small politics” and the place of health promotion in the period of Brazilian progressivism. The fourth, on social democracy and its way of domesticating radical concepts. Finally, brief considerations are made on the paths that the promotional debate must follow to reactive its radical nature.