I have been thinking about it a lot, I don't think simple bigotry is a reason , it is something more fundamental. I am going to analyze this phenomenon with dialectical materialism, instead of using plain Marxist class analysis, I want to use dialectical materialism. I don't think a simple class analysis will ever properly cover this topic, plain class analysis focuses a lot on waged labour, it doesn't focus on the whole class society. I am gonna use Silvia Federici's criticism of Marx and well here so with that let's start.

First Marx talks about beginning of capitalism with primitive accumulation, for Marx this is about enclosure of commons and pushing previous peasantry into proletarian work, however for me this also means subjucating the things which weren't in the logic of markets to its logic, markets did exist in feudal times but they were secondary capitalism brings a point where production for market, the commodity production being the primary form of production. This means things like rights of disabled people are now question of whether they are useful to the market, previously existence of disabled people was neutral, they could do anything which was in capability, but now with factories being the place of production, if someone couldn't work in factory they were a 'burden' which eventually leads to the divisions of labour across the dispossed classes, we all are dispossed, we don't own any private property, able-bodied or not we all labour for our keep but the system interacts with us differently the able-bodied cishet man is the ideal worker, he is rewarded the most, then there are people who are engaged with half the wages or no wages in case of many immigrant domestic workers. Marx on the whole discussed the able-bodied cishet worker and that person is still the revolutionary subject today, we are reduced to objects of history along with majority of femme presenting people.

Secondly, Marx talks about capitalism as a progressive force something that brings progress, but I think that's because Marx considers the start of it with industrial revolution. I market he start of capitalism after discover of Americas, the start slave trade and genocide became the characteristics start to form here even if the capitalists haven't captured the power yet.amd feudal lords still rule the land. If we look at it this way, we can see instead of progressing towards something great, class is essentially decaying into less and less humane forms, for disabled people this means their existence now is reduced to cold mechanical logic of capitalism, until now they were allowed to exist, life wasn't a utopia or amazing but it wasn't bad either, it was life but now the project is to kick out disabled from the society as it became less and less humane. If we see it from the four stages of development talked about by Marx himself them we see it, first primitive communism was a place where classes didn't exist and humans lived a very different life, disabled people lived without classes, then slave society came and now the disabled were ostensibly pushed into a separate life from able bodied, then feudalism came and under single religious bodied disabled people were forced into private lives, with advent of capitalism now there's an active genocide of disabled going on.

Now thirdly, I want to merge these two points, this shows us that the reason most leftists don't keep disabled people and other dispossed classes as a class of workers in the center with other workers is because they are still stuck in analysis of Marx and Engels withe everything they got right and everything they got wrong, some read Lenin so they have better analysis of imperialism, some further read Mao so they have understanding of self criticism as well however in the end, their analysis also lack the things which the figures they read lacked knowledge. A good framework understands its own limits and by subsuming everything to logic of worker-capitalist contradiction, it becomes reductionist and leaves out the disabled people, and reproductive work of women.

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[–] 9 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Question: can you explain a bit further what you mean about leftist sidelining of people with disabilities? I'd like to hear what you have to say about that.

You make a very good and interesting point with people being treated as commodities in market systems. Capitalism constantly runs on a labor surplus and necessitates what Marx calls the "reserve labour army" of unemployed (and in less developed countries the peasants too). Therefore, to a capitalist, given the option between hiring a person with more disabilities and one with less, they'll bias towards hiring the lesser disabilities, just as much as they'll hire more trained personnel.

Under socialist non-market systems, this premise disappears because there's no artificial labor shortage, all the working class is put to work under a planned economy and the employer, whether it be the state or coops or worker run state companies, doesn't have this choice because society allocates labor based on the capabilities of workers and the needs of the economy, so there is nothing economic preventing people with more disabilities from working. This was to a large extent true also in feudalism, because labor surplus didn't exist.

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  • [–] [S] 5 points 1 day ago (2 children)

    By sidling I mean that the struggle of the disabled workers and disabled in people aren't centered. While the rights and benefits which are more favourable to the able-bodied cishet workers are favoured and fought for, the rights and benefits which favour disabled people are often ignored or not considered important. You can see it in ways many times what am organisation doesn't fight for, wheelchair access is one simple thing but even more important are things like hiring practices and discrimination law. The law that based on quality of work below minimum wage can be paid is inherently ableist because now capital can point to the bias that disabled people are less capable and do worse work to pay them less.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 day ago* (1 child)

    You can see it in ways many times what am organisation doesn't fight for,

    Do you have specific examples?

    The law that based on quality of work below minimum wage can be paid is inherently ableist because now capital can point to the bias that disabled people are less capable and do worse work to pay them less.

    Most leftist and orgs I'm familiar with are staunchly against anyone being paid less than minimum wage(and that's at the very least most believe everyone's wages should be increased, although (rightly) some do not discuss it in favour of advocating directly for proletariat socialist revolution instead of incremental reforms to capitalism)

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  • [–] [S] 3 points 1 day ago

    For examples I think the the $15 dollar minimum wage movement is enough of an example where it has won many raises for minimum wage workers. However I have never seen any org agitate for same wage no matter the quality since it is often used as an excuse to underpay disabled people, I know people have to fight many fights but it is quite damning in my opinion that no one has questioned this law.

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