Resumen

Política social del neoliberalismo y la infancia . Rev Cubana Salud Pública [online]. 1997, vol.23, n.1-2, pp. 33-46. ISSN 1561-3127.

The world economic system, that is, capitalism, is in crisis. Inspite of the social, economic and political failure of the bureaucratic methods, there are just a few investigators and intellectuals that do not agree with the fact that capitalism has perpetuated the crises. Many investigators have dealt with this topic from the time of Marx and Rosa Luxemburo up to the present. Habermas has analysed and reflected about the crisis of the late or advanced capitalism. According to this author, "the crises appear when the structure of a social system admits less possibilites to solve the problems than the ones necessary for its conservation". Habermas uses the theory of systems to make an analysis of the problems of legitimation in late capitalism. What is interesting about the interpretation, among other thigs, is that the crises "are not the result of contingent alterations of the environment, but of imperatives of the system inherent in its structure, which are incompatible and cannot be arranged into a hierarchy". In this situation, the social integration is in danger and processes of desintegration of social institutions take place. In these cases we can talk about crises of social identify. Poverty is one of the problems capitalism has not solved. Several economic theories have appeared since the beginning of the century as palliative of the social differences and injusticies. Undoubtedly, the Keynesian policy has been the most knoow through the so-called benefactor state. Neoliberalism is much more than a macroeconomic doctrine, "it supposes an ethical ideological and cultural conception". It can be understood as a sacial model or paradigm. It is linked with liberalism of the classics as regards the importance of the individual and market in society, but it has significant differences in connection with the conception of external mechanisms regulating the market. There are also market conceptual differences in its conception of the theoretical knowledge and of the political functioning.

Palabras clave : PUBLIC POLICY; POLITICAL SYSTEMS [history]; CHILD WELFARE [trends]; HEALTH SERVICES [trends].