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A review by teyn
Capitalism and Disability: Selected Writings by Marta Russell by Keith Rosenthal, Marta Russell
5.0
This was so good! An in-depth look at some things I already knew and an eye-opener for a few more concepts! It took quite a while to read because it can be heavy and heartbreaking at times, but it was good to have my instincts about capitalism as it relates to disability reaffirmed from an academic and statistical standpoint.
My favourite quotes were:
"disability is a socially created category derived from labor relations, a product of the exploitative economic structure of capitalist society"
"By focusing on curing so-called abnormalities and segregating those who could not be cured into the administrative category of “disabled,” medicine cooperated in shoving less exploitable workers out of the mainstream workforce."
"Discrimination can be ameliorated, but not eliminated, by changing attitudes. Only a system of material production that takes into account the human consequences of its development can eliminate discrimination against disabled persons."
"Capitalism set up production dynamics that devalued less exploitable or non -exploitable bodies, and Social Darwinism theorized their disposability. If it was natural that disabled persons were not to survive, then the capitalist class was off the hook to design a more equitable economic system"
"If workers were provided with a federal social safety net that adequately protected them through unemployment, sickness, disability, and old age, then business would have less control over the workforce because labor would gain a stronger position from which to negotiate their conditions of employment, such as fair wages and safe working conditions."
"What is the purpose of an economy— to support market-driven profits or to sustain social bonds and encourage human participation? Is it acceptable to reduce the productive activities of persons to commodity wage labor? Is the capacity to produce for profit an acceptable measure of human worth? Is it defensible to hold in contempt bodies that do not produce the way the capitalist class demands, leaving disabled persons to struggle on low wages or meager benefit checks or to be institutionalized?"
"inequality is a product of differential power, rather than differential skill"
"Anti-discrimination laws cannot bridge the systemic employment gap, and individual rights cannot reach the root of the parity predicament created by the economic structure."
"economic suffering, low wages and poverty are not the result of individual moral failings or a pathological “dependency” nor a decline in the Protestant work ethic, but rather, are built in to the structure of modern capitalism"
"There is no “equal opportunity” when the most important economic decisions about investment, choice of technology, work processes, and the organization of work itself are in the hands of a tiny elite of corporate owners"
"Unless disabled people see ourselves as active creators of equality (which means undoing capitalism, which can never be made equitable) we will be doomed to be tools of the owning class, and our people, like other oppressed groups, will remain impoverished."
"we must call for a drastic social and economic restructuring of the organization of work. We must create a social order based on equality, an order that does not punish those who cannot work, that does not make “work” the defining measure of our worth, and that offers counter values to the prevailing productionism which only oppresses us all."
"Some of the wealthiest people in this country are “dependent” upon corporate subsidies. Middle-class homeowners are “dependent” upon mortgage interest rates being tax -deductible. Why not view disability supports as part of the same largess, rather than framing them negatively as leading to dependency, paternalism, or “welfare”?"
"If democracy is the practice of promoting social equality where more people participate in governance, then capitalism with its economic tendency to concentrate wealth works against that equality, because wealth and ownership reside in fewer and fewer hands...There can be no democracy without economic democracy."
My favourite quotes were:
"disability is a socially created category derived from labor relations, a product of the exploitative economic structure of capitalist society"
"By focusing on curing so-called abnormalities and segregating those who could not be cured into the administrative category of “disabled,” medicine cooperated in shoving less exploitable workers out of the mainstream workforce."
"Discrimination can be ameliorated, but not eliminated, by changing attitudes. Only a system of material production that takes into account the human consequences of its development can eliminate discrimination against disabled persons."
"Capitalism set up production dynamics that devalued less exploitable or non -exploitable bodies, and Social Darwinism theorized their disposability. If it was natural that disabled persons were not to survive, then the capitalist class was off the hook to design a more equitable economic system"
"If workers were provided with a federal social safety net that adequately protected them through unemployment, sickness, disability, and old age, then business would have less control over the workforce because labor would gain a stronger position from which to negotiate their conditions of employment, such as fair wages and safe working conditions."
"What is the purpose of an economy— to support market-driven profits or to sustain social bonds and encourage human participation? Is it acceptable to reduce the productive activities of persons to commodity wage labor? Is the capacity to produce for profit an acceptable measure of human worth? Is it defensible to hold in contempt bodies that do not produce the way the capitalist class demands, leaving disabled persons to struggle on low wages or meager benefit checks or to be institutionalized?"
"inequality is a product of differential power, rather than differential skill"
"Anti-discrimination laws cannot bridge the systemic employment gap, and individual rights cannot reach the root of the parity predicament created by the economic structure."
"economic suffering, low wages and poverty are not the result of individual moral failings or a pathological “dependency” nor a decline in the Protestant work ethic, but rather, are built in to the structure of modern capitalism"
"There is no “equal opportunity” when the most important economic decisions about investment, choice of technology, work processes, and the organization of work itself are in the hands of a tiny elite of corporate owners"
"Unless disabled people see ourselves as active creators of equality (which means undoing capitalism, which can never be made equitable) we will be doomed to be tools of the owning class, and our people, like other oppressed groups, will remain impoverished."
"we must call for a drastic social and economic restructuring of the organization of work. We must create a social order based on equality, an order that does not punish those who cannot work, that does not make “work” the defining measure of our worth, and that offers counter values to the prevailing productionism which only oppresses us all."
"Some of the wealthiest people in this country are “dependent” upon corporate subsidies. Middle-class homeowners are “dependent” upon mortgage interest rates being tax -deductible. Why not view disability supports as part of the same largess, rather than framing them negatively as leading to dependency, paternalism, or “welfare”?"
"If democracy is the practice of promoting social equality where more people participate in governance, then capitalism with its economic tendency to concentrate wealth works against that equality, because wealth and ownership reside in fewer and fewer hands...There can be no democracy without economic democracy."