Ethics, politics and Social Work

Abstract

The central thesis of this article is that the definition of the strategic objective of the praxis of social worker as an emancipated society represents a great advance for the profession. As does any advance, it has confronted a conservative reaction that should not be underestimated. In addition, this advance was not made without difficulties. In particular, by assuming the form of an ethical-political process, it suggested a complementarity between ethics and politics that has serious problems and which, in the final analysis, is incompatible with the strategic definition of the profession mentioned above. The paper argues from a Marxist perspective that no political action is ethical. There is an ontological antagonism between ethics and politics. A completely ethical position is only possible in a society that is not based on capital and therefore, beyond is politics. It is also argued that a complementarity between ethics and politics is only possible in an idealist and bourgeois world view (Weltanschauung) with all of the related problems.