Disability and class

Carrol Cox cbcox at rs6000.cmp.ilstu.edu
Thu Jun 18 15:45:23 PDT 1998


Doyle Saylor writes:


> Hello everyone,


> Marta Russell writes (June 16, 98, Tuesday):
> "The corporate "solution" to disablement-institutionalization in a
[SNIP]

<<(Doyle) Independence for a disabled person, aside from mobility access, strikes deeply into the heart of the Capitalist system concept of individual liberty. For example aside from needing attendent care, what about the independence of schizophrenics! I mean where is the autonomous line to be drawn for true independence? Or language related problems? Or Kervorkian, who "assists" the disabled to suicide without making sure they had independence of harsh social realities from the U.S. economy?>>

[SNIP]

(Preliminary: Doyle has included far more in this post than can be thoroughly discussed in less than two or three months of exchanging posts. So I'm concerned here only with this paragraph -- and only with a few of the topics it raises.)

1. "For example aside from needing attendent care, what about the independence of schizophrenics! I mean where is the autonomous line to be drawn for true independence?"

First, why turn it into a metaphysical question by invoking "true independence." I have fairly close relations with two schizophrenics, one being a friend's daughter and the other being man who serves with me on the board of a local "drop-in" center managed by the local DMDSG and NAMI.

The young woman lives in her own apartment, gets her meds paid for, mostly sees to herself, only occasionally (as when some jerk took to beating her up for the fun of it) needs "intrusive" outside help. She visits her mother once in a while and some of their conversations are almost wholly rational. She's never wholly free from voices apparently, but her meds prevent those voices from wholly ruling her. One of her sisters also had the illness, and committed suicide. The other sister is free of mental illness. She needs no attendant care. (I don't know whether the state, insurance, or her mother pays for her meds, but I think she gets disability payments.)

The other friend developed schizophrenia while in college. He comes from one of those famous "dysfunctional families," though whether that had anything to do with *causing* the disorder is unknown (and at present unknowable). After dropping out of school, he has now begun taking classes again, lives very well by himself, and teaches a course in creative writing at the drop-in house.

It would probably illegitimately impinge on the young woman's "independence" to force her to work. Bill would be a bit better off if there could be socially useful "make work" for him, with not too much pressure to perform. (He would of course perform *better* the less the pressure was.)

2. "Capitalist system concept of individual liberty." I'm not sure what you mean here. One takes account of that (however you define it) in forming strategies of struggle, as one takes account of any empirical reality, but there is no reason it should have any influence on *our* "concept" of what we want for disabled persons or what they themselves should demand.

What ever concept the "system" may have should not interfere with us demanding (as Sweezy and Magdoff have argued) for the institution of a huge "make work" program modelled on the WPA (as opposed to the PWA or, now, workfare). A demand for a living wage for the disabled, with whatever work they can or should do being a separate matter, could easily be part of a demand for a WPA. It creates the jobs that fit the skills of those needing jobs, rather than insisting that the workers have skills for the jobs created, and since some of the disabled can do nothing, they should be paid for doing nothing. And a working class growing in unity and strength could probably raise enough hell in Bloomington Illinois (for example) to persuade the city that it had better pay my friend's daughter a living wage for attending some sort of conversation circle for (say) 3 or 4 hours a week.

In sum, when "we" ask how to define the disabled, and what sort of demands they might make for themselves and "we" might support, "we" means the more conscious part, at any given time, of the working class, including the disabled themselves, and our criteria are essentially those which we would expect a socialist society to use. They will probably conflict with present empirical reality, but that's why we call it struggle.

Carrol



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