[The state, social class and health].

This paper analyses the health policies implemented in Argentina during the last four decades, relating their application to concomitant development strategies that were underwritten by political projects advancing different 'societal models'. Our hypothesis is that, in Argentina over the last four decades, there have been three major attempts at adjusting the internal needs of capitalist development to the conditions imposed by the world capitalist system. Such strategies, globally termed 'populist', 'developmentalist' and 'authoritarian', imply a modification of the relationships between state and economy (mode of development) and between state and society (mode of hegemony). They also involve peculiar ways of approaching the contradiction between accumulation and distribution, and consequently, different methods for solving social problems and alternative paths to the consolidation of a hegemonic project. Within this context, both the rationale offered by the state for its proposed health and welfare policies, as well as the actual implementation of these policies conforms to the basic principles of each of the models in force. In the populist model, the political project involves a progressive expansion of the participation of the popular sectors, both in the labour and consumption markets and in the political system. Its health plan conforms with this model by recognizing the state's responsibility both to increase its participation in health services and to promote corporativist activities in the sector, in accordance with the global mobilization/incorporation policy controlled by the mass organizations. In the developmentalist model, emphasis falls on the need to privilege accumulation over distribution; investments in infrastructure are treated as a priority as they are considered indispensable to ensure the future generalization of public welfare. The argument is that the impact of medical assistance on labour productivity must go hand in hand with the creation of job opportunities from economic development. Finally, the authoritarian model excludes the promotion of concensus politics in an effort to radically transform the articulations between state and society. The disciplinary function of the market is used to concealing both a serious lack of interest in the population's living conditions and an iron decision to subject the totality of social life to the rationality of a system where social injustice stands as the society's bastion.