Political Economy of Health and the management of the pandemic in Spain

Abstract

Capital, as with other essential functions of the production and reproduction of the workforce, has historically maintained a contradictory relationship with the health of workers. The intensification of work and the precarization of employment, which give rise to the increase in the so-called absolute surplus value, affect the wear and tear of the labor force and limit its possibilities of reproduction. The improvement of working conditions and public health, which can contribute to the increase in relative surplus value, cease to do so when labor power becomes too cheap and superfluous. The institutionalization of occupational health and safety regulations, as well as the subsidiaries public health services at the beginning of the 20th century, have been two key regulatory devices in the West for these ambivalences and contradictions. Contradictions that have intensified with the development of expanded capital accumulation, globalization, and the inter- and intra-national polarization of the collective worker. The objective of this article is to address the health management of the pandemic as a privileged scenario to analyze these devices and their effects: starting from the most basic determinations of the political economy of health, it proposes to analyze the different health devices implemented in the pandemic and how these have served to deferentially distribute the exposure and protection to the COVID of different groups based on their role in the productive and reproductive system.