" The sociocultural climate in the Northern countries has become more impetuousand cold. In many places the social architecture has been disposed of.Are the Northern capitalist bourgeois countries moving away from a state ordercommitted to the social welfare and moving towards an order that is exclusivelybound to the rationality of the capitalist market? This study discusses this issue inthree steps. Initially, it presents some points of diagnoses of the present socialsituation in Germany and contrasts them with selected data about Brazilian societywith the purpose of better explaining them. In the second step, the authordevelops the thesis that the profound transformations in Western industrial countriesare structurally similar to the transformation processes that are taking placein the developing countries . Finally, the study deals with the meaning andsignificance of those social transformations for social work."