Jimmy Chen ’20… An Analysis of Disability and Ableism From a Marxist Perspective

Makers of the Modern Mind An Analysis of Disability and Ableism From a Marxist Perspective

Jimmy Chen ’20

Walking through Lawrenceville, I see how all of our academic buildings have elevators and how many of our classroom signs are written in braille. Supposedly, our campus is quite disability-friendly, and the world outside our gates appears aware of those living with disabilities as well. The whole front of a public bus is reserved for the elderly and the physically impaired, most commercial businesses reserve parking spots closest to the entrance for the disabled, and many government-funded buildings such as courthouses and clerkhouses have wheelchair ramps. Although we attempt to integrate the lives of those living with disabilities with the lives of the able-bodied, the proportion of disabled people employed in the workforce is 19.1%, which is strikingly lower than the 65.9% figure representing the employment of able-bodied people (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics). Evidently, ableism, societal discrimination against those living with disabilities, is rampant. According to Fiona Kumari Campbell, a leading figure in disabilities studies who serves on the faculty at the University of Dundee, Scotland, ableism is “a network of beliefs, processes and practices that produces a particular kind of self and body (the corporeal standard) that is projected as the perfect, species-typical and therefore essential and fully human. Disability then is cast as a diminished state of being human” (44). But what exactly is “disability?” The two most common models used to define “disability” are the medical and social models. The medical model defines “disability” as “a physical or mental impairment of the individual and its personal and social consequences,” while the social model defines disability as “a relation between an individual and her social environment: the exclusion of people with certain physical and mental characteristics from major domains of social life” (Wasserman et al.). Although these two models are different, they are interrelated. The former is the more colloquial use of the word, while the latter contextualizes disability as a basis for ableism. Since ableism is a social discrimination practice that comes as a natural consequence of our capitalist society, I will show through a Marxist framework that our conventional models of “disability” are perpetuated by our societal norms and conventions, suggesting that ableism is best solved by dismantling our equation of economic value to human value.

First, I will establish Marx’s model and critique of capitalism. In “Wage 37

Labour and Capital,” Marx writes that the worker sells his “labour power” to the capitalist in exchange for wages (Marx 204). Because the worker’s “sole source of livelihood is the sale of his labour power, [he] cannot leave the whole class of purchasers, that is the capitalist class… it is his business to dispose of himself, that is, to find a purchaser within this capitalist class” (Marx 205). Within this capitalist class, the worker’s labor becomes a commodity that is bought and sold, and the price of his wage will correspond to fluctuations of the market’s supply and demand (Marx 206). Eventually the worker’s wage will settle as “the price of the necessary means of subsistence” (Marx 206). The worker’s wage is driven down to a point where the wage merely suffices for the worker to support himself day to day, but ultimately, the worker is unable to accumulate wealth, or capital, for himself. Marx writes further in Capital, “The directing motive, the end and aim of capitalist production, is to extract the greatest possible amount of surplusvalue, and consequently to exploit labour-power to the greatest possible extent” (385). The capitalist class is not driven by individual motive—it is driven by the collective forces of the market. Labor is simply another commodity in this market, devoid of human faces and character.

Our capitalist society hastens the creation of disabled workers. As Marx states, “In handicrafts and manufacture, the workman makes use of a tool, in the factory, the machine makes use of him” (409). The proletariat class is forced to work extensive hours each day to subsist. These long hours take a toll on the workers’ physical health. Marx writes in Capital that “Modern Industry, indeed, compels society, under penalty of death, to replace the detail-worker of to-day, crippled by life-long repetition of one and the same trivial operation, and thus reduced to the mere fragment of a man” (413). Marx acknowledges that the worker has no real choice as to whether or not he will work the increasingly long hours—if he does not, he will fail to generate the wages necessary to cover his subsistence; if he does, he is merely feeding back into the capitalist class, generating more capital for the bourgeoisie, cementing their position of control and exploitative power. Even our modern day concepts of “full-time,” “part-time,” and “work day” are “institutional manifestations of time-spending as the means by which one secures personal livelihood” (Pass 53). Ingrained in our common rhetoric is an obligation for work in order to subsist.

A valid objection to Marx’s argument that the so-called bourgeoisie exploits the disabled is the fact that there are numerous policies in place whose purpose is to protect the disabled workers’ rights, and in some cases, promote their employability. The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 guarantees that “people with disabilities have the same rights and opportu- 38

nities as everyone else,” and the The Rehabilitation Act of 1973 prohibits the discrimination against people with disabilities in employment (U.S. Department of Labor). However, these policies may not actually protect the disabled as well as they advertise—instead, the disabled are placed in a position of structural disenfranchisement because of these policies. For example, an employer can pay a disabled worker much less than the minimum wage under the Fair Labor Standards Act (A. Campbell). In effect, the employer is actually tapping into a labor market that he previously could not access due to the minimum wage. Instead of paying an able-bodied person to complete the work at the minimum wage, current US federal law allows employers to pay a disabled person as little as $1 per hour for this very same productive output (A. Campbell). There are multiple consequences of this. First, this is a clear exploitative maneuver to undercut workers and further drive the market price of labor down, thereby increasing the profit of the capitalist and further increasing workers’ competition to sell their labor. The second, more minute yet crucial detail is that this action seems to be an act of good faith, a company employing those deemed “unemployable,” as “Capital consists not only of means of subsistence, instruments of labour and raw materials… it consists just as much of exchange values. All the products of which it consists are commodities. Capital is, therefore, not only a sum of material products; it is a sum of commodities, of exchange values, of social magnitudes” (Marx 208). The capitalist generates social authority from their business practices and receives praise from the public. Such positive response from the public regarding the payment of disabled people under the minimum wage, in turn, continues to feed the capitalist ideology that disabled people are inherently less valuable because of their inability to produce as much as able-bodied people. Out of our two models of disability, the social model provides us a better understanding of what is truly occuring on the most fundamental level of the capitalist society. Through industrial capitalism, “a new class of ‘disabled’ who did not conform to the standard worker’s body and whose labour-power was effectively erased” was created (Russell and Malhotra 213). “Disability” is simply a social division mechanism born out of capitalism which keeps influence in the hands of the bourgeoisie.

Since our societal norms and conventions define what “disability” is and perpetuate ableism within our capitalist society, we must scrutinize where we derive value in humans. While the capitalist class derives human value from the productivity of workers, I contend that a derivation of human value based on market value is not sufficient or even inherently useful. The market makes arbitrary distinctions between humans based on a human’s 39

Makers of the Modern Mind capability to run a machine to its maximum production capacity. These arbitrary distinctions ultimately create two classes known as the “able” and “disabled.” This class distinction is perpetuated through societal conventions such as the legalization and normalization of paying the “disabled” seven times less than their “able-bodied” counterparts. To make a meaningful step towards eradicating ableism, we cannot simply provide accessibility parking spaces and ramps for those we deem as “disabled.” Instead, we must make a fundamental change to our understanding of the relationship between economic value and human value.

Works Cited

Bengtsson, Staffan. “Out of the frame: disability and the body in the writings of Karl Marx.” Scandinavian Journal of Disability Research, vol. 19, no. 2, pp. 151-60, DOI:10.1080/15017419.2016.1263972. Accessed 6 Feb. 2020. Campbell, Alexia Fernández. “A loophole in federal law allows companies to pay disabled workers $1 an hour.” Vox, Vox Media, 3 May 2018, www.vox.com/2018/5/3/17307098/workers-disabilities-minimumwage-waiver-rock-river-valley-self-help. Accessed 8 Feb. 2020. Campbell, Fiona Kumari. “Inciting Legal Fictions: Disability’s Date with Ontology and the Ableist Body of the Law.” Griffith Law Review, vol. 10, 2001, pp. 42-62. Hall, Melinda C. “Critical Disability Theory.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2019 Edition), edited by Edward N. Zalta, 21 Dec. 2019, plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2019/entries/disabilitycritical/. Accessed 7 Feb. 2020. “Laws & Regulations.” U.S. Department of Labor, www.dol.gov/general/ topic/disability/laws. Accessed 8 Feb. 2020. Marx, Karl. Capital, Volume One. 1867. The Marx-Engels Reader, edited by Robert C. Tucker, 2nd ed., New York, Norton, 1978, pp. 294-438. ---. “Wage Labour and Capital.” 1847. The Marx-Engels Reader, edited by Robert C. Tucker, 2nd ed., New York, Norton, 1978, pp. 203-17. Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. Manifesto of the Communist Party. 1848. The Marx-Engels Reader, edited by Robert C. Tucker, 2nd ed., New York, Norton, 1978, pp. 469-500.

Pass, Lauren Elizabeth. “The Productive Citizen: Marx, Cultural Time, and Disability.” Stance: An International Undergraduate Philosophy Journal, vol. 7, Apr. 2014, pp. 51-58, DOI:10.5840/stance201475. Accessed 6 Feb. 2020. Russell, Marta, and Ravi Malhotra. “Capitalism and Disability.” Socialist Register 2002: A World of Contradictions, vol. 38, 1 Jan. 2002, pp. 211-28, socialistregister.com/index.php/srv/article/view/5784/2680. Accessed 6 Feb. 2020. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. “Persons with a Disability: Labor Force Characteristics Summary.” United States Department of Labor, 26 Feb. 2019, www.bls.gov/news.release/disabl.nr0.htm. Accessed 7 Feb. 2020. Wasserman, David, Asch, Adrienne, Blustein, Jeffrey and Putnam, Daniel. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2016 Edition). Edited by Edward N. Zalta, 21 June 2016, plato.stanford.edu/archives/ sum2016/entries/disability/. Accessed 7 Feb. 2020. Wolff, Jonathan. “Karl Marx.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2017 Edition), edited by Edward N. Zalta, 21 Dec. 2017, plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2017/entries/marx/. Accessed 6 Feb. 2020.

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