Are disabled people working class?

Last month, I expounded on what exactly is the working class and who belongs to the working class. A reader reached out to me afterward to suggest that I could’ve expanded on people who are part of the working class but that others wouldn’t generally see them as the working class.

I thought it was a great suggestion, so I’ve decided to do a short series expanding on my original post. Each week, I publish a new post in the series, exploring one of the groups that seems to be sitting outside what people consider to be the working class.

Last week, I looked at whether retirees are working class. The week before, I explored whether stay-at-home parents are working class. In my first post of the series, I discussed whether self-employed people are working class. This week, I’m answering the question of whether disabled people are working class.

This is a tricky one, given that there are all sorts of disabilities out there, which can have a little effect on one’s ability to work and a great effect on one’s ability to work.

Before we get to that, however, let’s review what “working class” means.

In last month’s post, I mentioned that belonging to the working class depends on one’s relationship to the means of production: if one owns or controls the means of production, then one belongs to the owning class. Otherwise, one belongs to the working class.

As I indicated last month, means of production is also known in economics as the four factors of production: land, labour, capital, and entrepreneurship.

And by that definition, disabled—at least generally speaking—are working class, since they don’t own the means of production.

Now, of course, there may indeed be some disabled people who do own the means of production. Perhaps they’re blind and they own a company that employs workers. Or maybe they’re in a wheelchair and own an apartment building that they rent out to workers. In cases such as those, the disabled people wouldn’t be working class—they’d be part of the owning class, since they own land, labour, capital, and entrepreneurship.

But I think it’s safe to assume that people like this make up a small percentage of disabled people.

Remember, “working class” refers to one’s relationship to the means of production, not how much you make or what type of job you have.

As such, if someone is disabled to the point that they can’t hold down a job, that doesn’t mean they aren’t working class. The fact that they don’t own or control the means of production makes them working class.

Whether the disabled person is a machinist in a wheelchair, a nurse with hearing aids, a blind teacher, or someone who has to live on government benefits, they’re working class.

Because they don’t own or control the means of production. You don’t need to have a full-time job working for someone else to be working class.

So, are disabled people working class? While there may be some disabled people who are owning class, probably most belong to the working class.