In search of lost time: notes on the political determinants of the SUS crisis

ABSTRACT This paper shows that there is a historical crisis of the political subjects that organized the foundation and construction dynamics of the Welfare States in the postwar period and that manifests itself in the late temporality of the construction of the SUS (Unified Health System). The crisis can be located in the change process of the liberal tradition, which came to have the neoliberal paradigm as dominant. The first part of the paper presents the political foundations, genesis, and development of the neoliberal thought, locating its frontal attack on the cultures of solidarity, fraternity, of universalism. Then, it shows how this international crisis affected the political subjects of the SUS, forming a context that, if not able to deconstitutionalize it, undermined its financial bases and its public legitimization. The third part points out that the historical renegotiation around the SUS would go through a (re)construction of its political subjects in a new coalition, through the reencounter of the cultures of democratic republicanism and socialism. Restoring sanitary awareness in this new civilizing horizon, renewing its public language and its ability to bring the new social movements together, the SUS project would reunite its destiny to the process of refounding the Brazilian democracy which is now in crisis.