Slide #1 Title

Slide #2
Outline
I am planning to use 40 sources as, I’m sorry Dr. Carey, I do think for disability studies
courses there should be more leeway for students to use non-academic sources.
This is not the focus of my paper but disabled people are just as shut out of
academia as any other profession, I will be using 20 scholarly sources but I believe
there is so many amazing pieces out there written by disabled people on blogs and
independent publications, they may not be accredited but these people have
valuable perspectives to share.

Marta Russell was born in Clarksdale, Mississippi in 1951, becoming involved in the
emerging civil rights and anti-war movements in her teens. Despite having physical
impairments from birth, Russell did not identify as disabled for much of her early
life—her disability identity emerged much like mine, only after her disability
prevented her from continuing to work. As such, her analysis of disability largely
centers around the intersection of labor and disability.

While accepting the existence of impairment as a biological reality, and not denying
the role of sociocultural determinants that operate at the superstructural level, it is
important to recognize that the single most significant determinant of disability is
the organization of the mode of production based on the maximization of profit.
Economic exploitation, Marta Russell argued, contributes greatly to determining
who is both disabled and able-bodied.

For capital, labor power—the capacity to work—is the source of value. Thus, bodies
that can be exploited in the labor process are paramount. As a result, the inability to
work is instrumental in identifying individuals considered disabled. Thus, disability is
a social status representing the social and economic disadvantages experienced by
individuals with impairments, illustrating their oppression and marginalization, with
the most prominent reason for this being an incompatibility between their
corporeality and the requirements of exploitative wage labor.

Slide #3

Research Question: How has capitalism systematically used disability as a

justification for exclusion from labor, as a mechanism of forced poverty, people's
autonomy, value, and survival?
Thesis Statement: Capitalism has contributed to the definition of disability as an
economic deviance, justifying exclusion through a myth of productivity. Along with
Neo-Liberal values, our current labor structure forces disabled people into a
paradox, constructed to impoverish, surveil, and devalue anyone who challenges the
norm of “profitable” labor. This tension exposes how deeply capitalism equates labor
with worth, and how urgently we need alternatives that honor disabled lives beyond
work.

Slide #4
●​ The cult of productivity:
○​ critiques the idea that work equals freedom
○​ legal structures protect capital over workers
○​ capitalist ethics demand little from employers, much from the rest
○​ meaning of work for disabled people is individualized, not systemically
supported
●​ Historical roots of labor dogma & disability exclusion:
○​ marketing of the “employable” disabled person
○​ how monopoly capitalism reshaped welfare to punish non-workers
○​ capitalism’s cultural moralizing of "decay" through non-productivity
○​ surplus populations as a feature, not a bug, of capitalism

●​ “Access to work or liberation from work? Disabled people, autonomy, and

post-work politics” Graby 2015
○​ The influential analysis of the pioneering Union of the Physically
Impaired Against Segregation in the United Kingdom placed the
exclusion of people with impairments from work as the origin of
disablement
○​ Disabled People’s Movement have argued that waged work cannot be
the route to liberation for all disabled people, pointing out the paradox
of disabled people desiring to be included in the same economic
system which is responsible for their exclusion in the first place, and
whose values fundamentally privilege the ‘more able’.
●​ On Marta Russell’s Money Model of Disability
○​ The Money Model of Disablement - Marta Russell proposes a theory of
disability that rejects arguments about culture and identity, instead
charging that specific systems and values embedded within capitalism
are the primary driver of (and justification for) legal frameworks
 sanctioning the institutionalization and economic exclusion of disabled
people.
■​ A key question for Russell was: What do systems of production
and wealth accumulation gain from the way in which disability
certification frameworks are constructed and public benefits
allocated? Centered in an analysis of means-testing, war
spending, administrative burdens, and underfunded social safety
net supports, Russell’s work showed how a society obsessed
with optimization, efficiency, and cost-benefit analysis had
created a vast network of laws and institutions that worked
together to perpetuate what she called “the money model of
disablement,” better known as “the money model.”
■​ The Money Model of Disability, or “...persons who do not offer a
body…as laborers are used to shore up US capitalism by other
means.”
■​ Marta Russell’s watershed work on capitalism and disability has
been long overlooked and ignored by both the left and the
mainstream disability community. Russell is best known for her
work in disability studies, and her theory of disability is called the
“money model,” which this essay provides a brief overview of.
The money model is an important and understudied model of
disability alike in use, but quite distinct in politics from, the other
more widely-known and used models of disability within
disability studies like the social model, medical model, charity
model, or biopsychosocial model.
■​
●​ Disability justice and capitalism don’t mix
○​ A common complaint down generations of disabled campaigners is the
perceived failure of the wider left to engage seriously with disability
politics.
○​ Disability justice (DJ) was born from the experiences and wisdom of
queer Black and brown disabled individuals in the San Francisco Bay
Area more than a decade ago
○​ Disability justice has the ability to be a foundational tool of liberation
because it is based on 10 powerful principles: leadership of those most
impacted, intersectionality, anti-capitalist politics, cross-movement
solidarity, wholeness, sustainability, cross-disability solidarity,
interdependence, collective access, and collective liberation.
 ○​ White disabled figureheads are quick to grab on to the disability
justice label in an attempt to remain relevant. But they cherry-pick
those parts of the philosophy that fit their establishment world view.
Their cavalier attitude is steeped in white patriarchy and hierarchical
ableism, which accepts stigmas between disabilities. These individuals
either ignore the anti-capitalism tenet or morph it into ideas more
palatable to them.
○​ So first, these spokespeople disappear anti-capitalism from the
disability justice principles. Then they adorn themselves with the DJ
name, yet tout membership in capitalist political parties, fundraise for
them, and promote their candidates. They publicly demand an end to
the divisive tactics of the ruling class, yet uphold the fundamental
structures of the oppressors. This is exploitative and inexcusable.

Slide #5

Section 1: The Dogma of Labor

The cult of productivity:

○​ critiques the idea that work equals freedom
○​ legal structures protect capital over workers
○​ capitalist ethics demand little from employers, much from the rest
○​ meaning of work for disabled people is individualized, not systemically
supported
●​ Historical roots of labor dogma & disability exclusion:
○​ marketing of the “employable” disabled person
○​ how monopoly capitalism reshaped welfare to punish non-workers
○​ capitalism’s cultural moralizing of "decay" through non-productivity
○​ surplus populations as a feature, not a bug, of capitalism

Slide #6

●​ “Does Work Make Us Free?” Toresini & Vallazza (2012)

○​ The goal was the political control of masses through the fundamental
mechanism of the feeling of guilt. Here we can find the roots and the
 basis of capitalism. The division of labour and the protestant spirit. The
name “Unreason” was applied to Magic Thought as a part of this
process. In the past, Reason gave psychiatry the mandate of
rationalizing Unreason.
■​ Capitalism = mirroring religion
●​ Magical thinking, or superstitious thinking, is the belief
that unrelated events are causally connected despite
the absence of any plausible causal link between them,
particularly as a result of supernatural effects.
●​ Religion and capitalism both demonize disabled bodies
■​ And then Reason says that this is an illness – mental illness.
■​ But building the world also means building the self. Work is a
form of slavery and a form of dependence. An addictive activity
which hurts us and at the same time makes us happy. Work is
simply a need for everybody. A need but also a right. This is one
of the roles of States, which they delegate to the so-called free
private initiative. In capitalism, which does not guarantee work
for everybody, the state and society as a whole have simply given
up on one of their responsibilities. Work makes us free to the
extent to which it brings about integration.

●​ “Class Privilege: How Law Shelters Shareholders and Coddles Capitalism”

Snider (2018)
○​ Capitalism's agenda is the endless pursuit of private accumulation of
socially produced wealth. In our system, the corporation--created by
law--is meant to hide this agenda, to distract us so that flesh and blood
capitalists can do what they like. But when the workings of the
corporation are examined, they reveal a betrayal of the very values and
norms that, for their legitimacy's sake, capitalists in our parts of the
world purport to share.
○​ The corporation is only an instrument for the system; it is not itself the
system. It is capitalism’s tool, and it has identifiable beneficiaries. The
corporation is the tool through which individual capitalists maintain and
perpetuate their dominance, the instrument which they use to enrich
themselves obscenely and to impoverish almost everyone else.
○​ They dictate live, materially and spiritually. They idolize money and the
power them. They prosper in a system of naked self-interest and
 impose its logic on all of us. This is wrong. It is a system abjures such as
sharing, mutuality, respect, and compassion. It nobility. Resistance
fighters Stéphane have “humanity who own how we it gives the that
ideals denies our potential for As French Hessel and Edgar Morin
lamented, is unable to attain humanity.”

●​ “The Undemanding Ethics of Capitalism” Niskanen (2009)

○​ Blaming a financial crisis on greed, however, is like blaming aiq^lane
crashes on gravity. Greed and gravity are always widi us, and capitalist
markets usually channel self-interest into mutually beneficial behavior.
On occasion, die public and private institutions that have die
responsibility to monitor economic behavior fail to perform dieir roles
before diere are large losses to odier parties.
○​ "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker,
that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest."

●​ “What Work Means to People with Work Disability: A Scoping Review”

Saunders & Nedelec (2014)
○​ This meaning has been shown to vary from person to person and to be
important to health and well being. When a person is unable to work
due to a disabling condition, it is unclear whether this meaning remains
or is replaced by other meanings. The purpose of this scoping review
was to explore what was known in the existing literature on what work
means to those with work disability.
○​ Methods: The review involved identifying and selecting relevant
studies, charting the data and collating and summarizing the results.
○​ Results: Fifty-two studies explored the meaning of work for those with
cancer, mental illness, musculoskeletal disorders, brain injuries,
paraplegia, and AIDS. The studies revealed that, for most, work
continued to be meaningful and important. Common themes across all
types of disability included work being a source of identity, feelings of
normality, financial support, and socialization.
●​ “Advertising the Acceptably Employable Image: Disability and Capitalism”
Hahn (1987)
○​ Examines the historical patterns in the dynamics of capitalism that
contributed to the discrimination against people with disabilities by
promulgating mass imagery which promoted the exclusion of disabled
adults from the labor force and which consigned them to a subordinate
position in the social structure. Emergence of consumer economy; Role
of advertising in promoting images appropriate and acceptable forms
of personal appearance; Media reinforcement of alleged perfectibility
of human appearance.
○​ There seems to be little doubt that the mass imagery emanating from
advertising and the media has played a major role in perpetuating
discrimination against citizens with disabilities as well as other
oppressed groups In assessing the factors that have consigned
disabled adults to the ranks of the industrial reserve army in an
adaptable environment, public perceptions and attitudes may deserve
greater attention that the functionai impairment of a disability
○​ Moreover, this type of bias could be at least partially remediated by the
rigorous enforcement of anti-discrimtnation laws to promote impartial
treatment for women and men with visible disabilities in employment
as well as other public activities The quest for civil rights need not be
considered a bourgeoisie instrument designed to forestall revolution
○​ On the contrary, this goal may be viewed as a necessary historical
process in which oppressed groups seek to mitigate the impact of
prejudice imposed upon them by the idealized standards of appearance
promulgated by the unfolding dynamics of a capitalist system

●​ “Disability and Welfare Under Monopoly Capitalism” Matthews (2021)

○​ The article presents a historical-materialist analysis of the relationship
between disability, the body, welfare, and capitalism. Topics covered
include the Marxist understanding of disability, the disability policy in
Great Britain, and the Union of the Physically Impaired Against
Segregation's argument that a distinction must be made between
impairment and disability.
○​ Although neither Karl Marx nor Frederick Engels developed a theory of
disability, the origins of one can be identified within their analysis of the
relationship between capitalism and the body. Labor, Marx argued, is a
 corporeal phenomenon requiring the “exertion of the bodily organs”
with the laborer setting “in motion arms and legs, head and hands, the
natural forces of his body.”6
○​ The labor process, Marx asserted, dictates bodily actions, greatly
determining what type of bodily capacity is required to function within
the labor market. This gives rise to the idea of a normative bodily
capacity, with individuals having to possess a particular corporeal
potential to function as part of the labor force in general, operating as
“conscious organs,” who “coordinate with the unconscious organs of
the automation.”7
○​ Capital subsequently imposes conditions on workers, with their bodies
having to adapt to the tempo, demands, and expectations of the labor
process. Workers synchronize their own movements “to the uniform
and unceasing motion of an automation.”8 In this shift, “the machine
makes use of [workers]…it is the movements of the machine that [they]
must follow.”

●​ “Sombart’s war against the cultural decay of a capitalist world” Lenger

(2024)
○​ By 1914, Friedrich Sombart was well known world-wide as a historian
of modern capitalism and a knowledgeable sympathizer of the socialist
labor movement. He had, however, already begun to rewrite his analysis
of capitalism as a cultural critique of the modern world. The article
analyses how this cultural critique lent itself to the translation into
chauvinist hate speech when the First World War broke out. The
resulting pamphlet on "Merchants and Heroes" was gross even by the
standards of the time which helps explaining why Sombart was
increasingly isolated from his colleagues most of whom were like
Weber fierce nationalists themselves.
○​ Something like a miracle had healed “the complete cultural pessimism”
to which he confessed to have adhered before the war. Since the
cultural decay that had made him despair was the result of capitalist
development, the deeper meaning of war seemed obvious to him:
Sombart’s Germany had to function as “the final barrier against the
mud flood of commercialism”
 ●​ “A Marxist Approach to Disability: Notes on Marx’s Relative Surplus
Population” De Cabral (2022)
○​ demonstrate how Marx’s concept of a “relative surplus population” may
be used to scrutinise capitalism’s symbols, meanings, images, and
practices which reproduce ableism as the norm. Bringing this concept
to the centre of the analysis will help us rethink the impacts of class,
race, ethnicity, gender, and disability on the working-class.
○​ I will argue that the neoliberal Ideology of Competence, reproduced in
everyday life, is used to
■​ (1) strengthen and sustain the social division of labour;
■​ (2) disguise class divisions and meritocratic values and practices,
and
■​ (3) preserve bourgeois, ableist, racist, sexist, and ageist
practices.
○​ It is my expectation to contribute to the educational revolutionary
debate insofar as the education of disabled people may stand as a
counter-hegemonic practice alongside and intertwined with analyses
of race, ethnicity, and gender in their intersections with the impact of
class condition
○​ If our praxis is built upon the premises that a critical and revolutionary
education aims to transform lives and realities, hence, it is
counter-hegemonic to recognise those labelled as disabled people
beyond sociocultural and historical limitations imposed by capitalist
symbols, meanings, forces, practices, and ideologies.

Slide #7

Section 2: The Modern Labor Market & Disabled Workers

●​ Systemic barriers dressed up as personal failures:

○​ ideal worker norms disadvantage disabled employees
○​ importance of supervisor support in navigating exclusion
○​ "Employment First" as ideology, not empowerment
○​ Recent employment trends plateauing after COVID gains

"Employment First" is an ideology that prioritizes competitive integrated

employment (CIE) for all individuals, including those with disabilities, as the first
choice for employment. It's a systems-change framework that advocates for
individuals to be supported in finding and maintaining jobs in the general workforce.
The core principle is that individuals with disabilities should have the same
opportunities for work as anyone else, with necessary supports provided to enable
their participation

●​ Ableism and organizational fit:

○​ refusal to work as a right, not deviance
○​ social capital as the missing piece for inclusion
○​ productivity can increase with inclusion, but structures must shift
○​ systemic critique of workfare and reformism

Reformism is a political tendency advocating the reform of an existing system or

institution – often a political or religious establishment – as opposed to its abolition
and replacement via revolution.

Slide #8

●​ “Disability in the Labour Market: An Exploration of Concepts of the Ideal

Worker and Organizational Fit that Disadvantage Employees with
Impairments” Foster & Wass (2013)
○​ Debate begins by examining the origins of ideas that have shaped
approaches to work study and have influenced concepts of what
constitutes an ideal worker. Drawing on feminist critiques of
organisational analysis that have highlighted the gendered character of
processes, practices and values, it explores the relatively neglected
position of disabled employees.
○​ With reference to transcripts from four Employment Appeal Tribunals
brought under the Disability Discrimination Act, it illustrates how
standard jobs, designed around ideal (non-disabled) employees, create
a mismatch between a formal job description and someone with an
impairment. We suggest this mismatch is central to the
organisation’s resistance to implementing adjustments and also to
any radical approaches to include impaired employees in the
workplace

●​ “I noticed that when I have a good supervisor, it can make a Lot of

difference.” A Qualitative Study on Guidance of Employees with a Work
Disability to Improve Sustainable Employability” Schaap et al. (2023)
 ○​ Purpose: For employees with a work disability adequate daily
guidance from supervisors is key for sustainable employability.
Supervisors often lack expertise to guide this group of employees.
Mentorwijs (literal translation: Mentorwise) is a training for supervisors
to improve the guidance of employees with a work disability. The aim
of this study was to investigate the experiences of employees with a
work disability regarding: (1) the guidance from their supervisors (who
followed the Mentorwijs training), (2) which differences they notice in
the guidance due to the Mentorwijs training, and (3) what kind of
aspects they consider important in their guidance to achieve
sustainable employability.
○​ Methods: A qualitative study was performed with semi-structured
(group) interviews among twenty-one employees with a work
disability. Thematic analysis was performed to analyze the data.
○​ Results: Themes that followed from the interviews were: (1) work tasks
and conditions can facilitate or hinder sustainable employability: (2)
relationships among employees and with supervisors can affect
sustainable employability; (3) a desire for new opportunities and
challenges; and (4) a need for supervisor skills to facilitate sustainable
employability, i.e. appreciation, availability of help, dealing with
problems, listening, attitude and communication. According to
employees, changes were mainly noticed in supervisor skills.
○​ Conclusions: Employees with a work disability were very satisfied with
the guidance of supervisors who followed the Mentorwijs training. To
improve sustainable employability, training of supervisors should
focus more on adequate work conditions, providing employees
opportunities to learn new work tasks and improving supervisors’ skills
regarding appreciation, attitude and communication.

●​ “From employment optional to “Employment First”: Explaining two cases of

state-level disability policy change” Giordono (2022)
●​ This study uses the Advocacy Coalition Framework to illuminate the black box
of policy change with a comparative study of two states, Washington and
Pennsylvania, which adopted "Employment First" policy aimed at prioritizing
employment services for individuals with disability. The study reveals that
policy change in both states was associated with organized stakeholder
mobilization, strategic framing and narrative, and bureaucratic activism, all in
 an environment of heightened stakeholder attention to the issue. That said,
the two states followed distinct paths, with early policy change in
Washington stemming from service provider mobilization, suggesting the
importance of policy feedback mechanisms.

●​ “Trends in disability employment” Trendlines (2024)

○​ Recent trends suggest that gains in employment for people with
disabilities may be leveling off after a period of significant progress
that narrowed the gap between their employment rates and those of
non-disabled workers. While overall employment has seen an increase,
the gains are not as rapid as in previous years. This leveling off is being
observed in both employment and labor force participation rates

●​ “Right to work or refusal to work: Disability rights at a crossroads” Blattner

(2020)
○​ But this emphasis on the right to work necessarily excludes people who
cannot work and undermines their claims to other rights. A disability
rights program founded on a work ethic that goes along with the right
to work draws lines of inclusion and exclusion, cultivates harmful ideas
of worthiness, produces a duty to work, and de-values alternative
modes of living. Solutions to better deal with the fraught intersection of
work and disability are thus unlikely to emerge from singling out the
disability rights movement
○​ Points of interest:
■​ States have crafted a range of policies to give effect to this right,
but these have not changed the reality that most people with
disabilities are either unemployed, facing poverty, or are socially
excluded.
■​ Post-work scholarship makes a compelling case that the right to
work cannot be remedied for people with disabilities by looking
at their experience alone; the problems at the intersection of
disability and work might be particularly pronounced or obvious,
but they are part and parcel of wider issues plaguing the world of
work as currently conceptualized.
■​ To make the right to work for people with disabilities, we must
reconsider issues of time, value alternative ways of being, build
 social, economic, and political scaffolds to make visible and
effective people’s experiences at and expectations of work, and
exercise a refusal to work.

●​ “Increasing the social capital of people with disabilities. The Council on

Quality and Leadership. ” Friedman (2022)
○​ Social capital is a concept that recognizes that people’s relationships
and social networks are an important aspect of a person’s health and
quality of life. In fact, social capital has been shown to improve people’s
physical and mental health outcomes (Rodgers et al., 2019).
○​ Social capital can improve access to resources, resilience, and mutual
aid; it can also help people survive in natural disasters or as they
navigate living in poverty (Hawkins & Maurer, 2010; Kyne & Aldrich,
2020; Mithen et al., 2015). Hence the name social capital – our social
networks can literally serve as a form of capital or asset to improve our
wellbeing, like money can.
○​ There are a few different perspectives on social capital. While some
people view social capital in the context of civic engagement and
politics, we’re focusing on social capital specific to people’s social ties,
as that’s most relevant to human services

●​ “Disability and Employment: Considering the Importance of Social Capital”

Potts (2005)
○​ In addressing the high rate of unemployment among persons with a
disability, job programs focus on making jobs accessible and building
prospective employees' human capital, but tend to overlook causes of
unemployment rooted in the use of social capital to match employees
with jobs. Social capital in the form of social networks is known to be
important to the employment success of persons without a disability,
and is probably also important among persons with a disability. The
impact of social capital on employment chances, along with the
prospect that persons with specific types of disability may have less
effective social networks, may account for some portion of the
unemployment rate among persons with a disability. Could
employment be improved by building the social capital of persons with
a disability?
●​ “Inclusive Manufacturing: The Impact of Disability Diversity on
Productivity in a Work Integration Social Enterprise.” Narayanan & Terris
(2020)
○​ The study uses panel regression analyses to test the impact of
disability diversity (number of disability categories and evenness of
disability category dispersion) of workers in a production line using
detailed multiyear data on the productivity of apparel manufacturing
cells.
○​ Results: Two key insights emerged from the analyses. First,
productivity can be enhanced by increasing the diversity of workers
with disabilities in the workforce within a garment-manufacturing cell.
Specifically, productivity is best at moderate levels of disability
categories in a team. Second, team productivity is higher at greater
levels of evenness of disability category dispersion.
○​ Managerial implications: The analysis in this paper sheds light on the
potential benefits of integrating individuals with disabilities into
organizations and its implications on productivity. Specifically, the
study finds evidence that having moderate levels of disability
categories on a team with higher levels of evenness in disability
category dispersion is associated with better productivity rather than
having a concentrated team focused on a specific disability. The
implications of the results and limitations for the study as well as its
potential insights into the context of social enterprises that employ
individuals with disabilities are discussed

●​ “Re-thinking disability, work and welfare: New perspectives on work and

disability.” Barnes (2012)
○​ Drawing on a socio/political or social model of disability perspective
this paper argues for a reconfiguration of the meaning of disability and
work in order to address this problem. It is also suggested that such a
strategy will make a significant contribution to the struggle for a fairer
and equitable global society.
Slide #9

Section 3: Work as Identity & the Violence of Denial

●​ Labor and self-worth:

○​ Employment boosts well-being but often excludes disabled people
○​ Relational perceptions matter: inclusion is social
○​ Identity formation is linked to work access
●​ The toll of not belonging:
○​ Ableism in academic labor
○​ Language, policy, and the construction of “inclusion”
○​ Ability capitalism and legal regimes
○​ Early education: pedagogy of solidarity

Slide #10

Section 3: Work as Identity & the Violence of Denial

●​ “The Difference a Job Makes: The Effects of Employment among People

with Disabilities” Schur (2002)
○​ Using the Survey of Income and Program Participation and two recent
national household surveys, this paper provides new evidence on the
effects of employment for people with and without disabilities.
Comparisons are made not only on economic measures but also on a
variety of social, psychological, and political measures in order to gain a
more complete picture of the particular value that employment can
have for people with disabilities and of the importance of policies to
increase their job opportunities.

●​ “Self-other overlap: A unique predictor of willingness to work with people

with disability as part of one’s career” Ioerger et al. (2019)
○​ ross-sectional surveys of college undergraduates to explore:
■​ 1. whether an association between self-other overlap and
willingness to work with PWD exists, and
■​ 2. whether self-other overlap is a unique predictor, controlling
for attitudes and empathy.
 ■​ Study 3 investigated whether self-other overlap is associated
with the groups with whom the students indicated they want
(and do not want) to work as part of their career.
○​ Results Across the three studies, self-other overlap was uniquely
associated with students' willingness to work with PWD as part
of one's profession, even when controlling for attitudes and
empathy.
○​ Conclusions Self-other overlap may be an important additional factor
to take into consideration when developing interventions targeted
toward promoting working with PWD.

●​ “Disabled capitalists: Exploring the intersections of disability and Identity

Formation in the World of Work” Galer (2012)
○​ Many people with disabilities share the mainstream ethos that
participation in the competitive workforce constitutes a primary
feature of their identity. While unpaid work may fulfill the desire to be
productive and provide a sense of purpose and contribution, the
cultural imperative to achieve personal autonomy partly through
material independence situates paid employment at the centre of
personal identity formation.
○​ While disability activists struggle to carve out an empowered
collective identity instilled with rights-based protections, many people
with disabilities identify with the liberal individualism upon which
participation in the capitalist labour market is largely based.
■​ Individuals with disabilities seek not simply to shrug off an
identity defined by burden, but to claim an identity marked by
self-fulfillment. Within the world of paid work, then, tension and
compatibility co-exist regarding the nature and value of identity
development for people with disabilities.

●​ “Cripping Conferences: An Autoethnographic Exploration of Disability in

Academia” Bowman & Dudak (2025)
○​ This paper employs autoethnography to expose the conference
experiences of disabled scholars within the academic and library fields,
highlighting the systemic barriers found in these professional settings.
In integrating personal narratives with theoretical insights, this study
 highlights how rigid conference spaces and norms do not
accommodate disabled bodyminds, which hinders professional
development.
■​ Autoethnography is a research method where researchers use
their personal experiences and self-reflection to explore and
understand cultural and social phenomena, blending
autobiography and ethnography to examine how personal
stories intersect with larger societal issues

●​ “Disability Politics, Language Planning and Inclusive Social Policy” Corker

(2000)
●​ “Ability capitalism: law’s constitutive Role in constructing disability”
Williams (2024)
●​ “A Pedagogy of Solidarity: Resisting Capitalism’s Disabling Processes in a
Primary Grade Classroom.” Ritchie (2024)

Slide #11

Section 4: Welfare, Surveillance, and the Politics of Control

●​ From support to scrutiny: how the welfare state became a site of social
control
○​ Global welfare regimes discipline disabled people differently
○​ Changing labor markets reshape benefits access
○​ Austerity politics weaponize welfare
○​ authoritarian capitalism restructures even public services

Austerity politics refer to economic policies implemented by governments to reduce

public debt and deficits, typically involving spending cuts and/or tax increases.
These measures aim to achieve fiscal stability but can have significant social and
economic consequences

Related to and overlapping with state capitalism, a system in which the state
undertakes commercial activity, authoritarian capitalism combines private property
and the functioning of market forces with restrictions on dissent, complete lack of
freedom of speech or significant limits on it
 ●​ The productivity myth in disability policy:
○​ innovation without systemic change isn’t enough
○​ historical review of work policy for disabled people
○​ “non-productive” labor as revolutionary space

Slide #12

●​ “Disability and the Worlds of Welfare Capitalism” O’Brien (2015)

○​ I find that residents of generous welfare states are significantly more
likely to report a disability net of self-reported health,
sociodemographic, and labor force characteristics and, notably, that
this association extends to younger and more educated workers. I
argue that welfare state context may directly shape what it means to
be disabled, which may have consequences for evaluations of welfare
state performance and social exclusion.

●​ “In/validating disability : changing labour markets and out of work disability

benefits” Morris (2018)
○​ The thesis pulls together four different areas of study which are key to
understanding why the disconnect has occurred.
■​ The first area of research and analysis relates to the position and
importance of the administrative category of disability to the
functioning of capitalism, arguing that it is impossible to fully
understand the current position of disabled people who are
unable to engage in waged labour without considering their role
and position in the capitalist mode of production.
■​ The second area is strongly linked to the first and concerns the
history and current situation of out-of-work disability benefits
in the UK, making links with what is known about changes in the
labour market.
■​ The third area uses documentary analysis to chart the
development of the conceptual framework underpinning the
current validating device, the Work Capability Assessment,
showing how a system was created which treats disabled
people’s experiences as contentious.
 ■​ The fourth area directly relates to disabled people’s experiences
of the assessment process. Data from focus groups, interviews
and online surveys explores both how people experience the
assessment and the nature of the relationship that is created by
the validating Device.

●​ “‘I’ve always felt these spaces were ours’: disability activism and austerity
capitalism: Reflections on City’s interview with DPAC” Humphry (2023)
○​ Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC), examining their practices of
resistance within the broader structural frame of austerity capitalism.
This enables an exploration of how capitalism has constructed
disability as an exclusionary category over time to support the
accumulation of wealth, from urban industrialisation to austerity
capitalism.
○​ The paper also engages with Gargi Bhattacharyya’s argument that
■​ austerity is deployed through a post-colonial logic of
racialisation, exploring how this notion may be applied to
disabled welfare claimants.
■​ It also explores her argument that austerity marks a shift
towards a post-consent politics but argues that both coercion
and consent are key dimensions of state governance that seek
to produce public acquiescence to punitive policies that threaten
disabled people’s livelihoods and lives.

●​ “No Justice, Only Struggle: Academic Restructuring and Library Labour in

Authoritarian Capitalism.” Zvyagintseva & Ribaric (2022)
○​ cause excess death and disability, the war in Ukraine, the intensifying
effects of climate change, and increasing inflation have all signaled that
we find ourselves in a new era, one that can be described as
authoritarian capitalism.

●​ “Successful vocational rehabilitation innovations: Building a better

toolbox” Foley et al. (2020)
 ○​ OBJECTIVE: This paper introduces articles in the Special Issue to tell
the story of the SGA Model Demonstration from design, testing, and
impact evaluation.
○​ METHODS: The SGA Model Demonstration began reviewing
administrative data, collecting expert opinion, and exploring current
practice in eight state VR agencies. After an eighteen-month period of
capacity building, two state VR agencies randomized local offices and
implemented a rapid coordinated team approach.
○​ RESULTS: State VR agencies are successfully participating in rigorous
research activities including model demonstrations with experimental
designs.
○​ CONCLUSIONS: Model demonstrations that include experimental
designs are effective strategies to improve knowledge and build a
better practitioner toolbox to advance employment outcomes of VR
clients.

●​ “Disability at Work: A Look Back and Forward.” Schur et al. (2017)

○​ Purpose This article presents new evidence on employment barriers
and workplace disparities facing employees with disabilities, linking
the disparities to employee attitudes.
○​ Methods Analyses use the 2006 General Social Survey to connect
disability to workplace disparities and attitudes in a structural equation
model.
○​ Results Compared to employees without disabilities, those with
disabilities report: lower pay levels, job security, and flexibility; more
negative treatment by management; and, lower job satisfaction but
similar organizational commitment and turnover intention. The lower
satisfaction is mediated by lower job security, less job flexibility, and
more negative views of management and co-worker relations.
○​ Conclusion Prior research and the present findings show that people
with disabilities experience employment disparities that limit their
income, security, and overall quality of work life.

●​ “Disability as multitude: re-working non-productive labor power. ” Mitchell

& Snyder (2010)
 ○​ While theorists must continue to critique the ravages of poverty that
result from chronic unemployment, the article employs Hardt and
Negri's concept of multitude as a means of imagining alternative value
for "non-productive bodies" (Empire)-particularly in their ability to form
alternative networks of existence and resistance to normative relations
of consumption, competition, and class conflict.
■​ Such an active engagement with concepts of corporeality (i.e.
the body as active mediator of the world rather than passive
surface of imprintation) is critical to a more fully politicized
realization of disability as instrumental to what Spinoza called
the "radical potential of true democracy."

Slide #13

Section 5: The Mental & Social Costs of Dogmatic Labor

●​ Mental health and burnout: Exacerbated by disability

○​ Capitalism exacerbates disability and mental illness
○​ Ableist assumptions in care work undervalue disabled lives
○​ Social Reproduction Theory meets disability

●​ “Mental health, disability and capitalism. ” Badcock (2025)

○​ A mental-health crisis is sweeping the globe. Recent estimates by the
World Health Organization suggest that more than three hundred
million people suffer from depression worldwide. Furthermore,
twenty-three million are said to experience symptoms of schizophrenia,
while approximately eight hundred thousand individuals commit
suicide each year.1 Within the monopoly-capitalist nations,
mental-health disorders are the leading cause of life expectancy
decline behind cardiovascular disease and cancer.2
 ●​ “Disability and the Implicit Temporality of Care Work: Three Ableist
Assumptions of Social Reproduction Theory” Frantz (2019)
○​ Social reproduction theory (SRT) attempts to tie Marxist analysis of the
expansion of value to the social relations through which labor powers at
the basis of that expansion of value are themselves produced and
continuously reproduced. What then might those committed to SRT as
a mode of concretizing Marxism be able to say regarding “disability”?
After all, if SRT is focused on the reproduction of labor powers, and the
disabled are often marginalized and altogether excluded from freely
developing and then actualizing their labor powers, there might seem
to be a real problem for theory.1 Behind this worry are three critical
thoughts regarding the very idea of “labor powers” which can pose
problems for some versions of SRT.

●​ “Social Reproduction Theory and disability” Neel et al. (2024)

●​ “Increasing the social capital of people with disabilities.” Friedman (2022)

Slide #14

Section 6: What is a“Post-Work Future”?

●​ What if work wasn't the pinnacle?

○​ autonomy and liberation over forced inclusion
○​ employer narratives still center "value," not dignity
○​ neoliberal capitalism and environmental disablement
●​ What does radical inclusion look like?
○​ Russell’s revolutionary disability politics
○​ inclusion means structural upheaval
○​ Ability capitalism and legal regimes
○​ Refusal and/or inability to work becomes a political demand, not
deviance

Slide #15
 ●​ “Access to work or liberation from work? Disabled people, autonomy, and
post-work politics.” Graby (2015)
●​ “ “Reframing disability in the labour market: narratives of value told by
employers” ” Lundberg (2022)
●​ “NEOLIBERAL CAPITALISM AND DEBILITATION: A case study of
disability, political economy & environment in Sweden” Woodworth (2017)
●​ “Capitalism & Disability: A symposium on the work of Marta Russell.”
Adler-Bolton & Vierkant (2022)
●​ “Disability politics are Anticapitalist Politics.” Novara Media (2021)
●​ “Right to work or refusal to work: Disability rights at a crossroads,
Disability & Society” Blattner (2020)

Slide #16

Conclusion

Revisit: Disability is not a failure to meet labor standards—labor standards are

designed to fail disabled people.

Call to action: Reframe inclusion not as access to exploitation, but as freedom from
coercion.

If capitalism demands a world where only the “productive” survive, then we must
deliberately change workplace values and carve out a spot in our future for the
so-called unproductive.