A-Infos (en) Germany, Die Platform: Disability in Capitalism (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

Note: People with disabilities have various reasons for their 
self-identification. Here, we use the phrases "The person is 
disabled/person with a disability"/"disabled people" to emphasize that 
disability arises from societal structures. --- Currently, many 
disability rights activists are protesting against the reform of the 
Disability Equality Act. This reform is completely inadequate and shows 
us what inclusion in this society truly means: It must not cost anything.
Disability is a reflection of society: People with disabilities have a 
significantly higher risk of poverty and are more frequently unemployed. 
They are not disadvantaged because they are "different," but because 
performance, competition, and economic benefit define the standard of 
social participation. In capitalism, this affects them doubly: Higher 
living costs for assistance, assistive devices, or accessible 
housing-and simultaneously, disadvantages in the labor market. Those who 
cannot work or can only work to a limited extent are dependent on state 
support.

Social welfare support has primarily... The following goals are pursued: 
social security and the preservation of social peace, the lowest 
possible long-term care costs, and the (re)establishment of 
employability. The state finds itself caught in key areas of tension: 
between providing assistance and controlling, because those receiving 
benefits are also evaluated, categorized, and monitored; between human 
rights and budgetary constraints, since the UN Convention on the Rights 
of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD; 2006) formally strengthens the 
rights of people with disabilities, but its implementation repeatedly 
fails due to funding issues; and finally, between the ideal of 
"inclusion" formulated therein and the principle of utility in capitalism.

The result: The welfare state adapts people to society - not society to 
different needs.

This is evident in the activation paradigm: Those who cannot live up to 
the ideal of the self-reliant, self-optimizing individual are devalued. 
The Federal Participation Act (2016) contains explicit cost-cutting 
measures and demands self-responsibility to such an extent that it can 
lead to benefit reductions. The economization of disability services is 
evident in cuts to staff and services: clients are categorized into 
needs groups and receive standardized support instead of being supported 
according to their individual needs. The result is a two-tier system: 
those deemed "able" receive empowerment and opportunities for 
self-determination, while those deemed "unempowerable" are subjected to 
confinement, external control, and invisibility.

Even the idea of treating people with disabilities as "customers" who 
are "allowed" to pay for their own support sounds like autonomy-but it's 
problematic, because those without money are not attractive customers.

Around 300,000 people work in sheltered workshops without employee 
status and therefore without workers' rights-for an average of EUR225 
per month. They produce genuine goods and services for the regular 
market. These workshops receive government funding, and companies can 
partially fulfill their legal employment obligations by outsourcing to 
them, thus avoiding having to directly employ people with 
disabilities-in effect, they serve as subsidized, low-wage workers.

Workshop operators emphasize that their focus is on support, not 
production. However, the proclaimed goal - placement in the primary 
labor market - is not working: only about 80 people manage this 
transition each year. Workshops and special education schools simulate 
normality - they enforce the societal value of work (daily activity, 
work as a positive individual contribution, etc.) without enabling 
independence from social welfare and family support or social 
integration. These measures create a parallel sphere that exists outside 
the general labor market and the rest of society - not as a bridge to 
it, but as a permanent substitute. The UN Convention on the Rights of 
Persons with Disabilities has done little to change this: the number of 
workshop employees has even increased at times.

People with disabilities are often devalued because their disability is 
interpreted as an individual deficit. This discrimination is not an 
individual prejudice: the devaluation of people deemed "useless" has a 
structural basis. Mere anti-discrimination policies cannot eliminate the 
material causes of inequality.

Integration means that people with disabilities or migrants should be 
adapted to and integrated into the existing system. In contrast, the 
term "inclusion" is sometimes used, even by anti-capitalists, to 
describe how structures should be adapted to different needs and society 
should be designed to be diverse from the outset. In this view, 
diversity would be the norm, and people wouldn't even need to integrate 
because the structures would be adaptable. However, in reality, both 
terms are often used synonymously: inclusion or participation usually 
just means integration into the market.

As long as people's lives and participation depend on their access to 
money-that is, for most people, on their ability to work-no fundamental 
improvements in the situation of people with disabilities can occur.

Social welfare measures and reforms will not change societal standards. 
A truly inclusive society requires a revolutionary break with this system.

For the social revolution!

https://www.dieplattform.org/2026/07/06/behinderung-im-kapitalismus/#more-3649
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