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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[–] 6 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago) (1 child)

Because very few people (including leftists) are interested in doing the uncomfortable and painful work of self-reflection needed to practice intersectionality.

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 15 hours ago

    Honestly I would say people are quite self-reflective and all that for things they care. Because of many reasons and the ones I listed above, people just consider disabled people a waste of their time.

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  • [–] 6 points 23 hours ago (1 child)

    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

    While I agree the market does posit the disabled in terms of their market usefulness, I disagree with the idea that disability was neutral in prior political economies. It’s well-documented that infanticide of disabled newborns was practiced in antiquity and into feudal times. So I’d argue it’s more that capitalism changed the framing of “usefulness” when it comes to the disabled than coming up with the concept.

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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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  • [–] 5 points 1 day ago (3 children)

    I think you're missing a key point: that capitalism is disabling, and labouring under capitalism has effectively been one mass disabling event after another.

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  • [–] [S] 4 points 1 day ago (2 children)

    That I did miss yes, thanks for pointing that out.

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  • [–] 2 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago) (1 child)

    And although you touched on it in your text, it is important to underline that disability is socially constructed in similar ways that race or gender are. Disabled people are oppressed because the way society is organized oppresses them. Systemic change and political can and must bring about a change to the conditions that oppress disabled people as part of it. This is at the heart of any intersectional action.

    Capitalism is unable of dealing with difference in any meaningful way unless it can be commoditized, it has a standardizing and conformizing impulse because they maximize surplus value. As you mentioned, the same logic is applied to the worker as a commodity, so the worker must be "standard" to be useful to the capitalist, and they will be disciplined to become standard, or made to pay the difference in surplus labor otherwise.

    I'm not saying a different material base will bring with it the end of patriarchy, homophobia, transphobia or ableism, far from it. But it is important to understand that the systemic oppression of difference is an emergent feature of capitalism working as intended, and therefore we must insist that all advocacy for workers includes and makes space for difference, as well as we have to ceaselessly advocate for ourselves to be included in wider political efforts.

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 15 hours ago

    Yes that's true, which, in my opinion, would require raising the social consciousness of everyone because even class struggle is tainted by logic of capitalism. It's like Lenin himself said 'class consciousness on its own breeds trade unionism, it is required that a socialist consciousness be cultivated amoung the workers', we have seen how all struggles are under logic of capitalism, most union struggles are under the logic of "A fair wage for a fair workday" it really leaves out people who can't fit in the definition of "fair workday"

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