Mudanças Demográficas, Reformas Previdenciárias e Mais-Valor Absoluto: Exploração Intertemporal no Capitalismo Contemporâneo

This article proposes a Marxian interpretation of many contemporary social security reforms. Demographic changes that have been happening since the first industrial revolution, including population ageing, imply a difficulty in replenishing the labor force, due to retirement, in a few countries. This phenomenon has important consequences for the production of value and surplus value, insofar as it affects the inflow and outflow of labor power in the circuit of capital as well as the redistribution of social funds by means of taxes and government transfers. Reforming social security, including increasing the minimum retirement age, helps keeping the flow of labor power into the circuit of capital for a longer time. This work sees this increased working time as a form of intertemporal absolute surplus-value extraction.