Children and elderly persons are both largely, but not entirely, excluded from productive labor. This was not the case as recently as the 20th century; thanks to labor organizing, children are, for the most part, no longer expected to til, suffer injury, and die premature deaths in factories, mines, and fields. But among the poor, especially among the oppressed peoples, many children still work from adolescence to help provide for their families. Lacking the capacity for self-defense and self-advocacy, abuse against children and elders is not only rampant, but really built into the structure of class society. However, we find among the dominant classes that elderly persons have no trouble holding onto their property in old age, and that children are prepared from infancy to carry forth the rule of the dominant classes; this even extends to the children of the constructive and destructive ideological laborers (the petit-bourgeois public intellectuals and the “pig” class), who often follow in their parents footsteps.
Age is thus a kind of actual disability-relation, and functions as disability above.
