Capital cycle matrix and disease generatio

a proposal for analyzing social determination of health from working conditions

Abstract

This paper proposes an analytical matrix that articulates the capital cycle with disease generation from working conditions, contributing to critical thinking in collective health based on social determination. The research develops a matrix of social and financial accounting by social classes, highlighting health provision as a structural element of the capitalist accumulation process, complemented by a disease generation matrix related to working conditions as an extension of working hours, labor intensity, and precarity.

The analysis starts from the Marxist understanding that health is not only determined by material conditions of existence but is socially produced through capitalist production relations. The capital cycle M-C-M' (Money-Commodity-Money plus surplus value) is expanded based on Ruy Mauro Marini's notes to include the health dimension as a constitutive element of the capital valorization process. Labor power, as a special commodity, is simultaneously a source of value and an object of capitalist exploitation, generating structural contradictions that express themselves in the health field.

The proposed matrix articulates four main dimensions: (1) class structure and occupational insertion, analyzing how different positions in the productive structure determine living and working conditions; (2) work process and disease generation, examining excessive working hours, work intensification, precarization, and their biopsychosocial repercussions; (3) financial circuits and health provision, mapping capital flows in private and public health by social classes; and (4) primitive accumulation and health expropriation, investigating mechanisms of value appropriation through the precarization of living and working conditions.

The study shows how the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated processes of work precarization, intensification of working hours, and flexibilization of labor relations, generating a sanitary crisis that exposed the structural contradictions of neoliberal capitalism. The analysis demonstrates that workers' health is not a mere externality but a central component of accumulation logic, where the exploitation of labor power simultaneously generates surplus value and illness.

The research contributes theoretically by advancing the analytical operationalization of social determination of health, offering conceptual tools to understand the articulations between capital, labor, and health. The proposed matrix allows visualization of how different social classes experience distinct health-disease trajectories according to their po