Social responsibility as a social protection strategy in modern capitalism

Abstract

This article presents historical and contextual elements that promoted the emergence of social responsibility, based on critical analysis and on social totality to understand the study object beyond its endogenous meaning. The study starts from the counter-reform of the state in the 1980s – which was caused by the needs of the capitalist mode of production and was carried out for its reproduction – and describes how the counter-reform was implemented in Latin American countries, based on Structural Adjustment Plans. These plans used strategies to privatize social services, such as the notion of social responsibility that increases the bourgeois hegemony by coordinating corporate’s and civil society organizations’ actions with the rationale of shared responsibility, supported by politico-ideological and economic particularities that enhance the value of capital.