http://dps.sagepub.com/Journal of Disability Policy Studies

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 DOI: 10.1177/104420730101200205

2001 12: 87Journal of Disability Policy StudiesMarta Russell

Disablement, Oppression, and the Political Economy  

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Disablement, Oppression, and the Political Economy

Marta Russell, Independent Journalist

Any struggle for freedom from oppression has something in common with Marxism. Marx’s contri-bution to history was to pinpoint the primary (but not the only) cause of oppression as economic. Thecapitalist class exploits wage earners for profit to the detriment of the working class. A primary sourceof oppression of disabled persons (those who could work with a reasonable accommodation) is theirexclusion from capitalist exploitation. Many disabled persons are unemployed or underemployedagainst their will. The social condition of disablement is reproduced by oppressive social relations ex-ercised through the mode of production. Industrial capitalism imposed disablement upon those non-conforming bodies deemed less or not exploitable by the owners of the means of production. Theprevailing rate of the exploitation of labor determines who is "disabled" and who is not. This analysisposits that capitalism (and social policy under capitalism) is detrimental to disabled persons whetherthey are workers, would-be workers, or people who are unable to work.

Any movement for social equality, or freedom from oppres-sion, has something in common with Marxism. In liberal capi-talist economies, such social movements often consist of reformefforts to enact civil and human rights legislation. The veryperception that there is a need for legal rights to protect mar-ginal classes of persons suggests that oppression exists, for ifmembers of a particular group were not oppressed, they wouldnot have barriers to remove nor rights to be gained. Marxistsidentify structural injustices that need rectifying and seek tochange society through action.

From here, however, Marxism parts ways with traditionalliberalism. Liberal solutions, Marx would argue, must fall shortof remedying oppression because liberalism fails to acknowl-edge the central role of productive activities and labor rela-tions in history. Specifically, liberalism fails to expose eitherthe way society is organized for the production of the mate-rial conditions of its existence or that the mode of productionplays the chief causal role in determining oppressive socialoutcomes. Marxism posits the principle motive for historicalchange is the struggle among social classes over their corre-sponding shares in the harvest of production. With respect tothe social condition of disablement, the focus is on the strug-gle of the class of disabled persons for the right to enter thelabor force and on the place the disabled body occupies withinthe political economy of capitalism. The term disabled is usedto designate the socioeconomic disadvantages imposed on topof a physical or mental impairment (Oliver, 1990). Bypassingbiological or physical anthropological definitions that makeit appear that impaired persons are naturally and, therefore,justifiably excluded from the labor force or that one is handi-

capped by ableist biases reflected in the physical environment,this article takes the view that disability is a socially createdcategory derived from labor relations. For this reason, disabled

persons is the nomenclature of choice rather than people withdisabilities. Disabled is used to classify persons deemed less ex-ploitable or not exploitable by the owning class who controlthe means of production in a capitalist economy.

This article presents an overview of Marxism, from the

theory of labor power relations to capitalism’s role in definingdisability, to show that our economic system produces thestate of disablement and that the prevailing rate of exploita-tion of labor determines who is considered disabled and whois not. The article then explains how class interests perpetuatethe exclusion of disabled persons (and others) from the work-force through systemic compulsory unemployment. Disabil-ity is conceptualized as a product of the exploitative economicstructure of capitalist society; one that creates the so-called&dquo;disabled body&dquo; to permit a small capitalist class to create theeconomic conditions necessary to accumulate vast wealth.

The Primacy of Production: Profits andthe Nonconforming Body

The man who possesses no other property than his

labor power must, in all conditions of society and cul-ture, be the slave of other men who have made them-selves the owners of the material conditions of labor.He can only work with their permission, hence live

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only with their permission.-Karl Marx in Critiqueof the Gotha Programme, 1895/1938, p. 3

Marx’s most significant contribution to history was topinpoint the primary cause of oppression as economic: Thecapitalist class exploits the working masses (wage earners) forprofit to the detriment (alienation) of the working class. Pri-vate property relations entail an exploiting owning class thatlives off the surpluses produced by an exploited nonowning,and thus, oppressed class. Feudal and slave-based modes ofproduction also had exploitative relations of production,though different than those of capitalism. The surpluses areextracted by different methods in capitalism, feudalism, andslavery (Engels, 1884/1969). Exploitation, in strict Marxist

terms, refers to the appropriation of surplus value through thewage relationship.

A primary basis of oppression of disabled persons (thosewho could work with accommodations) is their exclusionfrom exploitation as wage laborers. Studies show that disabledpersons experience lower labor force participation rates,

higher unemployment rates, and higher part-time employ-ment rates than nondisabled persons (Bennefield & McNeil,1989; Yelin, 1997). In the United States, more than two-thirdsof working-age disabled adults say they would prefer to work(National Organization on Disability, 1998). The U.S. CurrentPopulation Survey suggests that in 1998, only 30.4% of thosewith a work disability between ages 16 and 64 were in the laborforce, whereas 82.3% of same-age nondisabled persons wereeither employed or actively seeking work for pay. Only 26.6%of those with work disabilities were employed, compared with78.4% of nondisabled persons.

The struggle for integration into mainstream employ-ment is one key to ameliorating disabled persons’ social im-poverishment. It has been widely assumed that civil rights lawsthat prohibit employment discrimination on the basis of im-pairment would produce the desired results. But 10 years afterpassage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), despitea growing U.S. economy and a low aggregate official nationalunemployment rate (4%), the unemployment rate for theworking-age disabled population has barely budged from itschronic state of 65% to 71 %. According to a recent study, al-though many Americans reaped higher incomes from an econ-omy that created a record number of new jobs during 7 yearsof continuous economic growth (1992-1998), the employ-ment rates of disabled men and women continued to fall sothat by 1998, they were still below the 1992 level (Budetii,Burkhauser, Gregory, & Hunt, 2001).

Despite the hopes of civil rights proponents, it cannot bestated with any certainty that the ADA has drawn disabled per-sons into the labor force. To the contrary, studies show thatcivil rights laws have not produced the gains in employmentlevels, wage rates, or employment opportunities for disabledpeople that advocates expected (Moss & Malin, 1998; Oi,1996). Census data confirm that there has been no improve-ment in the economic well-being of disabled persons since

passage of the ADA. In 1989,28.9% of working-age adults withdisabilities lived in poverty; in 1994, the figure climbed slightlyto 30.0% (Kaye, 1998). Some scholars suggest the law is &dquo;a

compromise that is failing&dquo; (Krenek, 1994, pp. 1969-1970) and&dquo;least likely to help those workers with disabilities who are mostdisadvantaged in the labor market&dquo; (Baldwin, 1997, p. 52).

Historical materialism provides a theoretical base fromwhich to explain these conditions and outcomes. A class analy-sis makes apparent that it is neither accident nor a result of&dquo;the natural order of things&dquo; that disabled persons rank at thebottom of the economic ladder. Capitalism has certain dis-advantages, such as persistent vast inequalities (Rose, 2000;Wolff, 1995). A chief disadvantage is that many people are un-employed, underemployed, and impoverished against theirwill. Although capitalism has sometimes held the promise ofexpanding the base of people benefitting from it, for disabledpersons it largely has been an exclusionary system.

Economic historians, such as Karl Polanyi and E. P. Thomp-son, have pointed out that capitalist beginnings required amajor change in the concept of human labor. The effects onthe disabled population can be explained by tracing how workevolved under capitalism. In precapitalist societies, economicexploitation, made possible by the feudal concentration ofland ownership, was direct and political. Although a few own-ers reaped the surplus, the many living on an estate worked forsubsistence. With the advent of capitalism, the discipline oflabor was now economic, not political. The worker was &dquo; ‘free’in the double sense that he or she was no longer tied to a givenmanor and had the right to choose between work and death&dquo;(Harrington, 1989, p. 4).

Under Marx’s Labor Theory of Value, the basis of capi-talist accumulation is the concept of &dquo;surplus labor value&dquo;

(Marx, 1967, p. 167). The worker’s ability to work-Marx callsthis labor power-is sold to the capitalist in return for a wage.If the worker produced an amount of value equivalent only toher wage, there would be nothing left over for the capitalistand no reason to hire the worker. But because labor power hasthe capacity to produce more value than its own wages, theworker can be made to work longer than the labor-time equiv-alent of the wage received (Marx, 1867/1967). The amount oflabor-time that the worker works to produce value equiva-lent to his wage, Marx calls necessary labor. The additionallabor-time that the worker works beyond this, Marx calls sur-plus labor, and the value it produces, he calls surplus value.The capitalist appropriates the surplus value as a source ofprofits (Marx, 1867/1967). So writes Marx, &dquo;the secret of theself-expansion of capital [of profit] resolves itself into havingthe disposal of a definite quality of other people’s unpaidlabour&dquo; (Marx, 1867/1967, pp. 534-537).

To Descartes, the body was a machine; to the industrial-ist, individuals’ bodies were valued for their ability to functionlike machines. As human beings were gathered into the &dquo;sa-

tanic mills&dquo; (William Blake) to accomplish the task of capitalaccumulation, impediments were erected to disabled people’ssurvival. New enforced factory discipline, time-keeping,

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and production norms worked against a slower, more self-determined and flexible work pattern into which many handi-

capped people had been integrated (Ryan & Thomas, 1980).Nondisabled workers had value because bosses could

push them to produce at ever-increasing rates of speed andgenerate higher profits. But as work became more rational-ized, requiring precise mechanical movements of the body re-peated in quicker succession, impaired persons-deaf, blind,mentally impaired, those with mobility difficulties-were seenas less &dquo;fit&dquo; to do the tasks required of factory workers. Theywere increasingly excluded from paid employment on thegrounds that they were unable to keep pace with the &dquo;discipli-nary&dquo; power of the new mechanized, factory-based produc-tion system (Finkelstein, 1980). So it was that &dquo;the operationof the labour market in the nineteenth century effectively de-pressed handicapped people of all kinds to the bottom of themarket&dquo; (Morris, 1969, p. 9).

Whether one accepts Marx’s Labor Theory of Value ornot, it undeniably explains the historico-social basis by whichthe commodity society turned labor power itself into a com-modity. Industrial capitalism created both a class of prole-tarians and a class of disabled who did not conform to thestandard worker body and whose labor power was effectivelyignored. A market-driven society meant that disabled personsperceived to be of less use to the competitive profit cycle wereexcluded from work. As a result, disabled persons came to be

regarded as a social problem, and the justification emerged forsegregating individuals with impairments from mainstreamlife and into a variety of institutions including workhouses,asylums, prisons, colonies, and special schools (Finkelstein,1980; Oliver, 1990).

Reproducing Disablement

Despite the availability of advanced assistive technology andan information-age economy that has expanded the realm ofjobs disabled persons could readily perform, body politics un-der standard business practice are still a part of the employmentstruggle of disabled persons today. Economic discrimination-the structural mechanisms that permit and even encourage asystemic discrimination against disabled workers-has notbeen fully confronted.

Productive labor under capitalism refers to the produc-tion of surplus value near or above the prevailing rate ofexploitation. Because the material basis of capitalist accumu-lation is the mining of surplus labor from the work force, theowners and managers of the businesses necessarily have to dis-criminate against those workers whose impairments add tothe cost of production. Expenses to accommodate disabledpersons in the workplace will be resisted as an addition to thefixed capital portion of constant capital. In effect, the prevail-ing rate of exploitation determines who is disabled and whois not. The U.S. Civil Rights Commission states that one of themost persistent criticisms of the ADA has been the issue of

how much it costs employers to comply with the employmentprovisions. Such business objections reveal labor market mecha-nisms that generate obstacles to employment of disabled persons.

Any executive knows that employer-capitalists will resistany extraordinary cost of doing business. For example, a lead-ing economist in the Law and Economics movement, RichardEpstein, states that the employment provisions of the ADA area &dquo;disguised subsidy&dquo; and that &dquo;successful enforcement underthe guise of ’reasonable accomodation’ necessarily impedesthe operation and efficiency of firms&dquo; ( 1992, p. 485).

Whether actual or falsely projected in any given instance,employers continue to express concerns about increased costsin the form of providing accommodations, anticipate extraadministration costs when hiring nonstandard workers, andspeculate that a disabled employee may increase worker’s com-pensation costs in the future (Russell, 2000). Employers, if theyprovide health-care insurance at all, anticipate elevated pre-mium costs for disabled workers. Insurance companies andmanaged-care health networks often exempt pre-existing con-ditions from coverage or make other coverage exclusionsbased on chronic conditions, charging extremely high premi-ums for the person with a history of such health-care needs(Johnson, 1997). Employers, in turn, tend to look for ways toavoid providing coverage to cut costs (Carrasquillo, Himmel-stein, Woolhandler, & Bor, 1999). In addition, employers typ-ically assume that they will encounter increased liability andlowered productivity from a disabled worker (Baldwin, 1997).

Disabled workers face inherent economic discriminationwithin the capitalist system, stemming from employers’ ex-pectations of encountering additional nonstandard produc-tion costs when hiring or retaining a nonstandard (disabled)worker as opposed to a standard (nondisabled) worker withno need for accommodation, interpreters, environmental mod-ifications, liability insurance, maximum health-care coverage(inclusive of attendant services), or even health-care cover-age at all (Russell, 2000).

The category of &dquo;disabled&dquo; as applied to the labor mar-ket is a social creation; business practices determine who hasa job and who does not. An employee who is too costly due toa significant impairment will not likely become (or remain)an employee (Russell, 2000). Census data tends to support thisview. For working-age persons with no disability, the likeli-hood of having a job is 82.1% (McNeil, 1997; National Insti-tute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research, 1998). Forpeople with a nonsevere disability, the rate is 76.9%; the ratedrops to 26.1 % for those with a significant disability (McNeil,1997). According to the 2001 National Organization onDisability/Harris Survey, employment rates are 19% for thosewith a severe disability, 51 % for those moderately disabled,and 32% for those with any disability.

Data from the Equal Employment Opportunity Com-mission (EEOC) suggests a strong relationship between dis-ability onset and employer firings. The most prevalent causeof complaints disabled workers file with the EEOC are overinvoluntary termination of employment upon disablement

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(U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, 1998, p. 212). Of the171,669 employment discrimination charges filed with theEEOC for the period of July 26, 1992, through February 28,1998, 53.7% involve the issue of discharge, and another 32.1%involve the failure to provide reasonable accommodation (Na-tional Council on Disability, 2000, Section 3.3.5.2). The ADAitself explicitly states that employers are not required to pro-vide an accommodation if it would impose an &dquo;undue hard-ship&dquo; on the business. The disabled person’s theoretical rightto an accommodation is really no right at all; it is dependentupon the employer’s calculus.

Managers and owners, in general, have only tolerated theuse of disabled workers when they could save on the variableportion of cost of production, resulting in lower wages forworkers. The sheltered workshop is the prototype for justify-ing below-minimum wages for disabled people, based on thetheory that such workers are not able to keep up with the aver-age widget sorter. According to the Washington Post, 6,300 suchU.S. workshops employ more than 391,000 disabled workers,some paying 20% to 30% of the minimum wage: as little as$3.26 an hour and $11 per week (Branigin, 1999).

Census Bureau findings substantiate that disabled work-ers’ pay in the regular labor market also fall to the low end ofthe wage scale. In 1995, disabled workers holding part-timejobs in the private market earned on average only 72.4% of theamount nondisabled workers earned annually (Kaye, 1998).Such wage differentials were also observed for those workingfull time. Median monthly income for people with work dis-abilities averaged about $1,511 (women) and $1,880 (men)-as much as 20% less than the $1,737 to $2,356 earned by theirnondisabled counterparts. Over a lifetime, this disparity inearnings represent tens of thousands of dollars lost to disabledworkers (and pocketed by business).

In liberal capitalist economies, redistributionist laws likethe ADA are necessarily in tension with business class inter-ests, which resist such cost-shifting burdens. Representativesof small and medium businesses, such as the U.S. Chamber ofCommerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, theAmerican Banking Association, and the National Federationof Independent Business, opposed the ADA. Supply-sideeconomist Paul Craig Roberts warned on the day the Act wassigned that it would &dquo;add enormous costs to businesses thatwill cut into their profits&dquo; (Shogun, 1990, p. A26). Writing forthe 7th Circuit in 1995, Judge Richard Posner, a self-appointedprotector of the interests of business, relates the businessschematic of cost-benefit analysis to the ADA:

If the nation’s employers have potentially unlimitedfinancial obligations to 43 million disabled persons,the Americans with Disabilities Act will have im-

posed an indirect tax potentially greater than thenational debt. We do not find an intention to bringabout such a radical result in either the langauge ofthe Act or its history. The preamble actually &dquo;mar-kets&dquo; the Act as a cost saver, pointing to &dquo;billions of

dollars in unnecessary expenses resulting from de-pendency and nonproductivity.&dquo; The savings willbe illusory if employers are required to expendmany more billions in accommodation than will besaved by enabling disabled people to work. (YandeZande v. State of Wisconsin Department of Adminis-tration).

Marxian political economy tells us that disability op-pression has less to do with prejudicial attitudes than with anaccountant’s calculation of the present cost of production ver-sus the potential benefits to the future rate of exploitation.Discrimination can be ameliorated, but not eliminated, bychanging attitudes. Only a system of material production thattakes into account the human consequences of its develop-ment can eliminate discrimination against disabled persons.

Surplus Population,Compulsory Unemployment, and

the Reserve Army of Labor

Other oppressive forces erecting obstacles to the employmentof the disabled population relate to compulsory unemploy-ment in a capitalist economy. Under Marx’s General Law ofCapitalist Accumulation, unemployment is not an aberrationof capitalism, but a built-in component of the market econ-omy (Marx, 1867/1967). The &dquo;surplus-population,&dquo; or &dquo;reservearmy of labor,&dquo; includes the official unemployed and all thoseparts of the population, whether part of the work force at agiven time or not, who might become part of the work forceif the demand for them grew. Marx explains that the businesscycle &dquo;depends on the constant formation, the greater or lessabsorption, and the reformation of the industrial reserve armyor surplus-population&dquo; because the economic system dictatesthat larger numbers of workers must be seeking work than em-ployers will never recruit (Marx, 1867/1967, p. 593).

As touched upon earlier, disabled people were driven tothe bottom of the labor pool by early dynamics of capitalistindustrial production. Marx recognized this effect. He in-cluded in the stagnant surplus-population impaired personsleast likely to be employed (Marx, 1867/1967). But now thatdisabled persons could work with an accommodation as called

for by the ADA, there is at least the potential that this stagnantgroup of would-be workers may join the active reserve armyof labor.

There are many factors that affect the reserve army oflabor. Some of them, like the detailed division of labor andmechanization internal to the process of capital accumulationand the manipulation of credit availability by the U.S. FederalReserve System, are intentional mechanisms of state policy.This section of the article focuses on the role of the state in

augmenting the reserve army through monetary policy.U.S. monetary policy as carried out by the Federal Re-

serve, a system of quasi-independent banks, overseen by a

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board of governors appointed by the President, affects inter-est rates and illustrates how U.S. capitalism preserves the re-serve army of labor. The reserve army is actually much largerthan the officially unemployed. For example, the Bureau ofLabor Statistics put official unemployment at 6.4 million inApril of 2001, but another 3.2 million people work part-timebecause they cannot find a full-time job and 4.4 million whoneed jobs are not counted because they gave up looking. Thereal jobless rate is closer to 14.0 million, or 9.6% of the laborforce-more than twice the official rate.

According to mainstream U.S. economists, large num-bers of people are left jobless because a threshold of unem-ployment is necessary to avoid inflation and maintain thehealth of the American economy. The theory of a &dquo;natural rateof unemployment,&dquo; or nonaccelerating inflation rate of un-employment (NAIRU) has dominated macroeconomics forabout 25 years (Friedman, 1968; Gordon, 1997). The Full Em-ployment and Balanced Growth Act of 1978 (the Humphrey-Hawkins Act) mandates that the Federal Reserve Bank

promote full employment, but the Federal Reserve connectslow unemployment with inflation in disregard of theHumphrey-Hawkins Act. Since the 1970s, the Federal Reservehas instead assumed the task of fighting inflation by raisinginterest rates, slowing economic growth, and keeping em-ployment in check (Henwood 1998; Humphrey-HawkinsReport).

There are central bankers who reject the NAIRU theory,and these have adopted the Taylor Rule, making their anchorof economic policy the sustainable rate of growth. Under thistheory, growth becomes unsustainable when unemploymentgets below 3%. Under either theory, mainstream economicpolicy makers assume the need for a reserve army of labor,holding that at least 3% to 6% of the population must be un-employed at all times.

Underlying the Federal Reserve’s steering is a ratio be-tween employment and unemployment or enlarging the ac-tive reserve army of labor is its desire to regulate wages. Marxexplains,

[Wages are not] determined by the variations of theabsolute numbers of the working population, butby the varying proportions in which the workingclass is divided into an active army and a reserve

army, by the increase or diminution in the relativeamount of surplus population, by the extent towhich it is alternately absorbed and set free (Marx,1867/1967, p. 593 ).

Tight labor markets or a labor shortage means a smalleractive reserve army and greater pressure for wage increasesfrom labor; as unemployment goes down, labor costs go upbecause workers are more secure to press for wage increases

(Kalecki, 1971; Pollin, 2000). Before Marx, Adam Smith ob-served such a mechanism and originated the truism that thepower relationship between workers and capitalists changes

with the employment rate. Smith wrote, &dquo;The scarcity of handsoccasions a competition among masters, who bid against oneanother in order to get workmen, and thus voluntarily breakthrough the natural combination of masters to not raise

wages&dquo; (Smith, 1776/1993, p. 68). A shortage of labor forcescapitalists to raise wages.

Two mainstream economists, David Blanchflower andAndrew Oswald, have produced evidence that all things beingequal, unemployment depresses wages (Blanchflower & Os-

wald, 1994). Economist James Galbraith has also shown thatpower, and particularly market or monopoly power, changeswith the general level of demand, the rate of growth, and therate of unemployment. He explains that &dquo;in periods of highemployment, the weak gain ground on the strong; in periodsof high unemployment, the strong gain ground on the weak.&dquo;(Galbraith, 1998, p. 266). Unemployment rates are the out-growth of class struggle over the distribution of income andpolitical power (Pollin, 2000). Even Alan Greenspan, theChairman of the Federal Reserve Bank, admits a class rela-

tionship : a primary purpose of U.S. monetary policy is to keepwages down (Greenspan, 1997).

So, in terms of the political economy, enlarging the ac-tive reserve army of labor is good for business because havingmore people desperate for work keeps competition for jobshigh and workers’ wages down, thereby protecting profit mar-gins that are sacred to the interests of capital. This explains inpart why the government, in the recent tight labor market, hasended the entitlement to welfare for millions of women whoare now forced into the labor market and why it has taken aninterest in promoting the employment of disabled persons, agroup whose employment needs have historically been re-jected : as the available reserve army gets depleted, there is aneed for more persons to join the labor pool to keep wages incheck (Russell, 2001).

How many disabled persons are there to potentially jointhe active reserve army? The Economic and Social ResearchInstitute finds 2.3 million unemployed disabled people couldbe working with accommodations (Meyer & Zeller, 1999). Butthis appears to underestimate the disabled reserve army. Thereare 17 million working-age disabled persons, 5.2 million ofwhom are working (Trupin, Sebasta, Yelin, & LaPlante, 1997).This leaves 11.8 million either officially unemployed or not inthe labor force. Seven out of 10 disabled persons age 16-64who are not employed say that they would prefer to be work-ing (Harris, 1998b). Thus, as many as 8.3 million workerscould be enlisted in the active reserve army. Furthermore,there are indications that disabled persons may be significantlyunderemployed, preferring to work full-time when they areonly employed part-time. Between 1981 and 1993, the pro-portion of disabled persons working full-time declined by 8%,while the number working part-time for both economic andnoneconomic reasons increased disproportionately (Yelin &

Katz, 1994).Significantly, there is a large pool of disabled persons to

utilize as buffers against higher wages and lower profits (Rus-

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sell, 2001). Disabled persons, however, are the last class of per-sons seeking the right to enter the workforce at a time whenunemployment levels are the lowest they have been in nearly40 years and may be below what the investor class traditionallywill tolerate. As such, the employment expectations of disabledpersons are likely to outstrip material gains due to the limitseconomic policy makers place on growth (Russell, 2001).

As Marx explains, &dquo;the reserve army belongs to capital asif the latter had bred it ... a mass of human material alwaysready for exploitation&dquo; (Marx, 1867/1967, p. 592). The stag-nant category, being the most disposable, can be rendered su-perfluous at the slightest downturn of the business cycle. Bydesign then, the U.S. economy imposes compulsory unem-ployment on millions of people and fails to meet their mate-rial needs, with the disabled population, the least employed,at the bottom of the labor pool.

Class Interests Regulating theLabor Supply in Disability Policy

It is often claimed that disabled persons are invisible, disre-

garded by mainstream society, and irrelevant to the workingsof society. This analysis has attempted to explain that the &dquo;un-employables&dquo; have been deliberately shut out of the labor forcedue to a capitalist economy that so far has dictated their ex-clusion by measure of economic calculations that favor thebusiness class. It further posits that disabled persons are fur-ther oppressed in capitalist societies by having been purposelyshifted onto social welfare or segregated into institutions forsimilar reasons-to keep workers who could not be profitablyemployed out of the mainstream workforce but also to exertsocial control over the entire labor supply.

Marx explains that capitalism is a system of &dquo;forcedlabour-no matter how much it may seem to result from freecontractual agreement&dquo; (Marx, 1867/1967, p. 819). It is coer-cion because capitalists own the means of production and labor-ers do not. Without ownership of factories and other meansof production, workers lack their own access to the means ofmaking a livelihood. By this very fact, workers are compelledto sell their labor to capitalists for a wage because the alterna-tive is homelessness or starvation or both. Deborah Stone inThe Disabled State convincingly argues that in order to re-structure the workforce for the demands of early capitalistproduction, it was first necessary to eradicate all viable alter-natives to wage labor for the mass population.

Labor is a resource to be manipulated like capital andland. Stone writes, &dquo;the disability concept was essential to thedevelopment of an exploitable workforce in early capitalismand remains indispensable as an instrument of the state incontrolling labor supply.&dquo; (Stone, 1984).

Regulating the composition of the labor force throughsocial policy became key to ensuring an ongoing exploitablelabor supply. Disability became an important boundary cate-gory through which persons were allocated to either the work-

based or needs-based system of distribution. In the United

States, disability came to be defined explicitly in relation to thelabor market. For instance, in some workers’ compensationstatutes, a laborer’s body is rated by impairment according toits functioning parts (Berkowitz, 1987). In Social Security law,disabled means medically unable to engage in work activity(Berkowitz, 1987).

Our institutions (particularly medical and social welfareinstitutions) have historically held disablement to be an indi-vidual problem, not the result of economic or social forces(Barnes, Mercer, & Shakespeare, 1999; Oliver, 1990). They haveequated disability with physiological, anatomical, or mental&dquo;defects&dquo; and hegemonically held these conditions responsiblefor the disabled person’s lack of full participation in the eco-nomic life of our society. This approach presumed a biologi-cal inferiority of disabled persons (Hahn,1986). Pathologizingcharacteristics such as blindness, deafness, and physical andmental physical impairments that have naturally appeared inthe human race throughout history became a means of socialcontrol that has relegated disabled persons to isolation and ex-clusion from society (Oliver, 1990). By placing the focus oncuring the so-called abnormality and segregating the incur-ables into the administrative category of disabled, medicinebolstered the capitalist business interest to shove less exploit-able workers with impairments out of the workforce.

This exclusion was rationalized by Social Darwinists,who used biology to argue that heredity-race and disabilitystatus-prevailed over the class and economic issues raised byMarx and others. Just as the inferior weren’t meant to survivein nature, they weren’t meant to survive in a competitive soci-ety. For 19th century tycoons, Social Darwinism proved a mar-velous rationale for leaving the surplus population to die inpoverty. Capitalism set up production dynamics that devaluedless exploitable or nonexploitable bodies, and Social Darwin-ism theorized their disposability. If it was natural that disabledpersons were not to survive, then the capitalist class was off thehook to design a more equitable economic system-one thatwould accommodate the body that did not conform to thestandard worker body driven to labor for owning-class profit.

Social analysts describe the disability needs-based systemas a privilege because &dquo;as an administrative category, it carrieswith it permission to be exempt from the work-based system&dquo;(Stone, 1984, p. 28). In conservative terms, disability can bedescribed &dquo;an essential part of the moral economy&dquo; (Stone,1984, p. 143). In the public debate over redistribution of soci-etial resources, public assistance is viewed as legitimate forthose deemed unable to work, but the disabled individuals on

public benefits under U.S. capitalism do not have any objec-tive right to a decent standard of living, even with privilegedstatus, nor is the definition of disability etched in stone. AsStone pointed out, the definition of disability is flexible, thestate (which evaluates disability status) controls the labor sup-ply by expanding or contracting the numbers of persons whoqualify as disabled, often for political and economic reasons(Stone, 1984).

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Neither privilege nor morality theories adequately de-scribe the function of the needs-based system. A politicaleconomy analyst would ask what role do public disabilitybenefits play to further the machinations of production andwealth accumulation?

The vast majority of those on Social Security DisabilityInsurance (SSDI), the deserving workers involuntarily severedfrom their wages, are not privileged. They are financially op-pressed by less than adequate aid. Public disability benefitshover at what is determined an official poverty level. In 2000the Department of Health and Human Services set the povertythreshold for one at $8,350. Because $759 was the average per-month benefit that a disabled worker received from SSDI and

$373 was the average federal income for the needs-based Sup-plemental Security Income (SSI), the annual income of morethan 10 million disabled persons on these programs was be-tween $4,000 and $10,000 that year. The extremely low SSIbenefit was set up for those with no work history or notenough quarters of work to qualify for SSDI: the least valueddisabled members of society.

It would not accurately describe the depth of povertyfaced by those on disability benefits, however, without ex-plaining that the current system of measuring poverty datesback to the 1960s. Government has never adjusted the equa-tion to take into account the sharp rise in housing, medicalcare, and child-care costs of the following 4 decades that havealtered the average household’s economic picture. The UrbanInstitute concluded that in order to be comparable to theoriginal threshold, the poverty level would have to be at least50% higher than the current official standard. If basic needswere refigured to the modern market, almost a quarter of theAmerican people would be deemed to be living in poverty(Ruggles, 1990).

Most important, public policy that equates disablementwith poverty means that becoming disabled (a nonworker)translates into a life of financial hardship, whether one haspublic insurance or not, and generates a very realistic fear inworkers of becoming disabled. At base, the inadequate safetynet is a product of the owning class’s fear of losing control ofthe means of production. The all-encompassing value placedon work is necessary to produce wealth. The American workethic is a mechanism of social control that ensures capitalistsof a reliable work force for making profits. If workers were pro-vided with a federal social safety net that adequately protectedthem through unemployment, sickness, disability, and old age,then business would have less control over the workforce be-cause labor would gain a stronger position from which to nego-tiate their conditions of employment, such as fair wages andsafe working conditions. American business retains its powerover the working class through a fear of destitution that wouldbe weakened if the safety net were to actually become safe.This, in turn, causes oppression for the less valued nonwork-ing disabled members of our society; those who do not pro-vide a body to support profit making (for whatever reason)are relegated to economic hardship or institutionalized to

shore up the capitalist system (Russell, 1998, pp. 81-83). Nurs-ing homes, for instance, have commodified disabled bodies sothat the least productive can be made of use to the economicorder. Disabled persons contribute to the Gross DomesticProduct when occupying a bed in an institution where theygenerate $30,000 to $82,000 in annual revenues and con-tribute to a company’s net worth-commodification is a rootof institutional oppression (Russell, 1998, pp. 96-108).

A materialist analysis suggests that capitalism has createda powerful class of persons dependent upon the productivelabor of some and the exclusion of others. Business ownersand Wall Street investors rely on the preservation of the statusquo labor system (not having to absorb the nonstandard costsdisabled workers represent in the current mode of productionor the reserve army of unemployed). Judge Posner’s quote ear-lier explains the calculus. The U.S. work-based/needs-basedsystem is a socially legitimized means by which business andinvestors can economically discriminate and &dquo;morally&dquo; shiftthe cost of disabled workers onto poverty-based governmentbenefit programs rather than be required to hire or retain theunemployables as members of the mainstream workforce.

Consequently, disabled individuals currently not in theworkforce collecting SSDI or SSI who could work with an ac-commodation are not tallied into employers’ cost of doingbusiness. Employers do not pay direct premiums for Social Se-curity disability programs. (The cost of direct government andprivate payments to support disabled persons of employableage who do not have a job is estimated to be $232 billion an-nually). Instead, disabled persons have no right to a job. Civilrights laws do not intervene in the labor market to mandateemployment of disabled persons (not even to adhere to affir-mative action, much less to a quota system like Germany’s);rather, these costs are shifted onto the shoulders of the work-

ing class and the low middle class who pay the majority of So-cial Security taxes while business and our economic system isabsolved of responsibility. This analysis is not suggesting thatbenefits be dissolved; employment discrimination is related toreliance on public aid because those who experience labormarket discrimination are also more likely to need public as-sistance (Boushey, 2000). It does suggest that capitalism is asystem that forces nondisabled persons into the labor marketbut also just as forcefully coerces many diasbled persons out.Oppression occurs in either case.

Lingering Questions

A Marxian analysis demonstrates that the employment pre-dicament of disabled persons is produced by the economicand social forces of capitalism. The mode of production is keyto explaining the organization of society, to preserving exist-ing class relations of production. It is neither arbitrary norirrational that disabled persons have been excluded from edu-

cation, transportation, and other social spheres. Rather, it

is logical that such a state of affairs would exist as long as

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disabled persons have little value as workers to the capital-ist class.

The civil rights model holds that disabled persons needthe protections afforded by the ADA to help shrink the per-vasive gaps that still exist between them and nondisabled

Americans. This equal opportunity approach, however, as-sumes that the employment needs of disabled people can besolved under our present economic system. Liberal analysisfails to inform that civil rights law (even if enforced and suc-cessful) only have the power to redistribute the maladies ofunemployment, poverty, and oppression, not to ensure thatevery person’s material needs are met (Russell, 2000). Theeconomy dictates that large numbers of the disabled popula-tion will be left jobless or working at subminimum wages re-gardless of disability civil rights laws. Is this acceptable? Is thedisability rights movement’s goal only to see that some, noteven all, disabled persons are &dquo;free&dquo; to be boldly exploited likeeveryone else?

Liberalism presumes a free, rational, autonomous hu-man can exist under capitalism, but oppression is a permanentfactor of any class-based economic system. Marx saw capital-ism as a block to workers’ autonomy. Economic change, hedeemed, was necessary for the full realization of each person’shuman potential. Marx’s final goal, however, was not eco-nomic revolution, but human change.

Erich Fromm points out that &dquo;the goal of [Marx’s] athe-istic radical humanism was the salvation of man, his self-

actualization, the overcoming of the craving for having andconsumption, his freedom and independence, and his love forothers&dquo; (1994, p. 139). Marx believed that individual auton-

omy is interwoven with and dependent upon social relations.Labor power is something that must be created and controlledin a manner appropriate to the maintenance of the capitalistsocial relation. Exploitation is a common feature of all modesof production that are split into classes. Alienation is a conse-quence of the mercantilization of human life as a whole by thecapitalist relations of production. Wage labor is the transfor-mation of human energy into a commodity like any otherpiece of matter. So, if the masses were to have freedom andautonomy, Marx believed there must be a transformation ofalienated, meaningless labor into productive, free labor, notsimply employment or employment at higher wages by a pri-vate or state capitalism.

In our society, humane concerns are subsumed by themarket’s tyranny, the inversion or camera obscura of what isneeded to foster an inclusive, cooperative, and healthy society.Questions that need to be brought to the forefront might in-clude the following: What is the purpose of an economy for:to support market-driven profits or to sustain social bondsand encourage human participation? Is it acceptable to reducethe productive activites of persons to commodity wage labor?Is the capacity to produce for profit an acceptable measureof human worth? Is it defensible to hold in contempt bodiesthat do not produce the way the capitalist class demands, leav-ing disabled persons to struggle on low wages or meager bene-

fit checks or to be institutionalized? How can the realm ofwork be reorganized to provide accommodations for all, andhow can all members of society be embraced and rewardedwhether they work or not?

The disability rights/independent living liberation strug-gle provides a strong motive for historical change. There is anopportunity to reconceptualize disability and to eliminate dis-abled peoples’ oppression. We must contest the biological ra-tionale for the exclusion of disabled persons from the realmof work and replace it with a materialistic rationale calling fordrastically and justly altering the political economy.

The fundamental questions of class power raised byMarx must be addressed politically if the long-term goal of asociety of equals, where &dquo;from each according to his [dis]abil-ity, to each according to his need&dquo; (Marx 1875/1938, p. 10,

[dis], author’s addition) is to materialize.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Marta Russell is an independent journalist and the author of BeyondRamps: Disability at the End of the Social Contract (Common CouragePress, 1998), recipient of an Honorable Mention from the Gus-tavus Myers Program for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights inNorth America at Boston University. She was the co-producer/correspondent for a PBS documentary titled, &dquo;Disabled & the Cost of

Saying ’I Do,&dquo;’ on marriage disincentives in Social Security policy,which earned her a 1994 Golden Mike Award for best documentaryfrom the Radio and Television News Association of Southern Cali-fornia. Address: Marta Russell, 16022 Moorpark Street Unit 301, En-cino, CA 91436-1448 (e-mail: ap888@lafn.org).

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