Capital Doesn’t Spare The Disabled

Capital doesn’t even spare disabled labor from its appropriation “adventure”. The business goes on in all lands, from the metropolis to the poor periphery in the world system.

In the UK, Guardian reports: “Some long-term sick and disabled people face being forced to work unpaid for an unlimited amount of time or have their benefits cut under plans being drawn up by the Department for Work and Pensions.” (Feb. 16, 2012) Experts fear this could further harm the sick and disabled persons. The policy could mean that those diagnosed with terminal cancer but have more than six months to live; accident and stroke victims; and those with mental health issues could be compelled to undertake work experience for charities, public bodies and retailers. There will be provision for sanction in case of failure by the disabled “beneficiaries” as “Ministers feel sanctions are an incentive for people to comply with their responsibility.” Already 8,440 disabled persons have faced sanctions during the period Sept. 2010-Aug. 2011 “for offences like missing interview with advisers ‘without good cause’”.

A simple truth is told by the news: A civilized face on a barbaric heart, and that heart is owned by capital. The question of morality or immorality doesn’t arise as capital manufactures its morality or immorality, and it doesn’t matter whether those are acceptable to humanity or not. Appropriation is the standard of its morality.

Observations have been made by responsible British citizens on the issue. One among those is: “The idea that disabled people should work but receive no financial recognition for contributing is perhaps a level of abuse in and of itself.” (Neil Coyle, director, Disability Rights UK, ibid.)

Spare-not-even-the-disabled attitude is not a new phenomenon. Philip Davies, Conservative backbench MP suggested last year disabled persons should work for less than the national minimum wage. It’s a reflection of attitude, and a reflection of a situation: dead thirst for profit – at any cost, and from any one.

Without appropriating labor-power capital can’t survive, and it takes all opportunities in this “venture”, a thievery or robbery. In the UK, Guardian reports, “[u]npaid jobseekers have been forced to clean private homes and offices for more than a month at a time under government employment schemes […]”A government contractor compelled jobseekers to work as unpaid cleaners in houses, flats, offices and council premises under the scheme. One of the biggest providers of the scheme compelled jobseekers to work unpaid in its own offices. Employers were using unpaid schemes to fill seasonal vacancies. At the same time, there is “mounting evidence that the controversial policy is reducing the overall availability of paid work by replacing temporary jobs and overtime for other staff.” (Feb. 24 and 29, 2012)

Is it – unpaid labor for unlimited amount of time of the disabled, unpaid labor of jobseekers – a civilized way to maximize profit? It’s not only the case of jobseekers. Capital doesn’t spare children. The issue of child labor is the burning fact in all most all lands.

Even, the beggars, the persons playing musical instruments on street corners, the child pushing crippled mother or father sitting in hand made cart in a Third World anarchic city, the blind begging for hours are not spared. All of them are to work for long, undefined period of time, for simply having a few bucks for day-to-day living, and this goes on and on in countries and countries. Even, labor power is appropriated from these near-demolished souls.

It’s an old, much old hard fact although there are learned persons, scholars in essence, trying to ignore this bitter fact of capital. Citing Daily Telegraph, January 17, 1860 Marx quoted county magistrate Broughton Charlton: “Children of nine or ten years are dragged from their squalid beds at two, three, or four o’clock in the morning and compelled to work for a bare subsistence until ten, eleven, or twelve at night, their limbs wearing away, their frames dwindling, their faces whitening, and their humanity absolutely sinking into a stone-like torpor, utterly horrible to contemplate ….” He quoted the Children’s Employment Commission First Report (1863): “William Wood, 9 years old, was 7 years and 10 months when he began to work. He ‘ran moulds’ […] He came every day in the week at 6 a.m. and left off about 9 p.m. […] J. Murray, 12 years of age, says: “[…] I come at 6. Sometimes I come at 4. I worked all night last night, till 6 o’clock in the morning. I have not been in bed since the night before last. There were eight or nine other boys working last night. […] Fernyhough, a boy of ten: ‘I have not always an hour (for dinner). I have only half an hour sometimes […].’”

Has this reality changed? This has persisted. This has been expanded, this has been spread to neo-colonies named “offshoring”, this has been spread from blue collar employees to white collar ones, this has been modified with so-called flexible work hours, this has been spread with the concept of work at home.

And, “some more” have been added: The issue has been taken away from the table, the issue is being presented in a distorted way – definitions have been changed so that there is confusion. Now, ostaads or pundits in the service of capital don’t call a spade a spade. They innovate tricky terms that hide stark truth. The question of rights is wiped away from people’s “mind”. Casting away all shrouds, state is taking the role of appropriator. So called civil society, a group of persons trusted by status quo, is defining agenda – political, social, economic, class. So, labor power can be robbed for indefinite period of time, so, labor power can be appropriated without any payment, so, as a Guardian reader made comment, the “enslavement of the sick and disabled” goes on.

Slave owners had to provide food, etc. to slaves, factory owners are to pay for necessary labor. But here, unshackled rule of appropriations goes on. For long, it is going on in Third and Fourth World countries. In many of these countries, lumpens have usurped labor leadership, the bribed First World labor leadership defines perimeters of trade union activities and employs persons for that purpose. Now, it is going on in the First World also. Is it a decline in class awareness? Is it power of cooption? Whatever the answer is, the fact of unbridled appropriation confirms the old antagonism, the antagonism between appropriator and appropriated.