Most of over two million incapacity-benefit claimants are casualties of post-Fordist capitalism

Evidence

It is typical of New Labour that it should have committed itself, so early in its third term, to removing people from incapacity benefit, as if most people claiming the benefit were malingerers. In contrast with this assumption, it doesn’t seem unreasonable to infer that most of the people claiming incapacity benefit — and there are well in excess of two million of them — are casualties of Kapital. A significant proportion of claimants, for instance, are people psychologically trashed as a consequence of the capitalist realist insistence that mining was no longer economically viable (though, even considered in brute economic terms, once you factor in the cost to taxpayers of such benefits, the arguments about “viability” seem rather less than convincing). Many have simply buckled under the terrifyingly unstable conditions of post-Fordism. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1407

Categorization

• QUESTION: Fisher’s claim that deeming mining ‘uneconomical’ is dubious once benefit costs factor in — worth checking the actual arithmetic of pit closures vs. ongoing benefits.
• SEED: The ‘incapacity benefit as hidden unemployment/disability ledger’ angle — how the welfare state records capitalist casualties as individual malingering — could make an essay on the politics of diagnostic categories.
• XREF: connects to: Policies framing benefit claimants as malingerers conceal that most are casualties of deindustrialization — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No…, 81; Most British Incapacity Benefit claimants are casualties of deindustrialization, not malingerers — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No…, 81; Most incapacity benefit claimants are casualties of capitalist restructuring — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1407 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Most incapacity benefit claimants are casualties of capitalist restructuring #expands (0.95) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1407
• Most incapacity-benefit claimants are casualties of deindustrialization, not malingerers #qualifies (0.85) — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 81