Introductory Section
In Disability Studies and disabled people’s activist circles, divergences between different “models of disability” often stem from their adopters’ differing political strategies regarding how to respond to the individual model of disability that dominates contemporary capitalist societies. Some of the proposed strategies of the alternative models include reforming capitalism, highlighting injustices of exclusion and discrimination, and seeking to change attitudes, laws, and institutions within the confines of capitalism. On the other hand, the UPIAS 2 -inspired social model seeks to unravel structural oppression and abolish (capitalist) disablement altogether by creating new social relations and reorganising society.
Before moving further, a note is necessary to clarify my understanding of “disabling capitalism”. This concept can be found (only) in a chapter by Oliver and Barnes (2012) where they offer a history of the “rise” of disability as a category within capitalist societies. However, no definition of the concept of “disabling capitalism” is offered. My use of the term has been informed by the recent eclectic discussions surrounding the concept of “racial capitalism”, inspired by Cedric Robinson’s “Black Marxism” (2020), and Gargi Bhattacharyya’s “Rethinking Racial Capitalism” (2018) and “The Futures of Racial Capitalism” (2023). For Bhattacharyya, racial capitalism is “a set of processes that distribute populations into racialised categorisations and racialised opportunities as part of the process of accumulation” (2023, 3). Similarly, “disabling capitalism” reveals the internal relations between disablement and capitalism – that is to say, the fundamental role played by disablement oppression and exploitation within the reproduction of capitalism, and vice-versa. This reproduction takes place through categorisations of populations as disabled and non-disabled, the imposition of impairment-based hierarchies, and the productivism of the capitalist institution of work. These processes, alongside others within and outside the sphere of the wage, contribute to capital accumulation.
This article’s first section explores critiques of the UPIAS-inspired social model of disability and its uses as a “tool” for transformative action, rather than a “theory” of disablement. It then proposes that the UPIAS-inspired social model can be located within the paradigm of Pragmatism (à la Dewey, 2008 [1920]), thus indicating why social modelists have prioritised action over the development of a theory of disablement. Then, I highlight attempts at developing a social theory of disablement as oppression (see Abberley, 1987), followed by acknowledging repeated calls for the social model’s revival. In response to such calls and building upon the UPIAS-inspired social model, I propose a theory of disablement called the collective-materialist approach. The approach is “collective” due to its concern with collective struggle for enacting change, and “materialist” due to its roots within the materialist political tradition and methodology of Marxism. This approach incorporates five tenets, explored in the second part of this article.
1. The UPIAS-Inspired Social Model: From Pragmatic Tools to the Necessity of Theory
Reflecting on developments within Disability Studies 30 years after coining the social model, Mike Oliver offered a dispirited assessment: “Many academic papers and some books have been published whose main concern has been to attack, reform or revise the social model, and reputations and careers have been built on the back of these attacks” (Oliver, 2013, 1025). Similarly, Finkelstein (1997) and Sheldon (2006) characterised Disability Studies as “disabling”, as, according to them, Disability Studies no longer serves the emancipatory purpose it once upheld. With the increased sidelining of Marxist and UPIAS-inspired social model research, the period of eclipse within Disability Studies (with regards to its critical potential) has persisted beyond the publication of Oliver’s (2013) article. Whilst theories often “fall out of fashion” (Foster, 2021) and scholars are socialised into seeking to learn and contribute to the newest debates and paradigms of a discipline, new developments do not take place in a vacuum (Harding, 1987, 20), as illustrated below.
General Critiques of “the Social Model”
With the appropriation of social model language by the state, charities, and other social actors, the model has been broadened and transformed into an umbrella term that no longer strictly reflects its original normative aims. In particular, the role of capitalist social relations in the process of disablement has been ignored (Sheldon, 2006, 3; Clifford, 2020, 60). Finkelstein called the new developments “meaningless social models” (Finkelstein in Oliver, 2009a, 145), with the “rights”/liberal model being likened to “potpourri” due to its lack of anti-capitalist vision (2009a, 151). Thus, there has been confusion over what the social model has become and what it stands for. This ambiguity has been used by some scholars to declare the social model’s irrelevance (Shakespeare & Watson, 2002), whereas others (Crow, 1996; Oliver, 2009a, 50; Clifford, 2020; Jolly, 2003, 521) have called for its “reinvigoration” and continued adoption. However, it is important to note that understandings of “the social” in contemporary society have been subsumed to neoliberal and postmodern approaches and rationality (Davies, 2015; Jolly, 2003, 512), posing new challenges to what we mean when we refer to the “social model”. Furthermore, the idea and experience of “sociality” and our “very mode of social being” have been “exploited” and “penetrated by capital” (Cederström & Fleming, 2012, 7–8). At the same time, understandings of the social model have changed over time, with new developments within society. This has resulted in confusion over its meaning: “In recent times the social model of disability has even been so bent out of shape that it is confused with the ‘rights’ campaign agenda for legal safeguards” (Finkelstein, 2001, 3).
Disability Studies scholars such as Crow (1996), Crowther (2007), Shakespeare (2006), and Goodley (2011, 2013, 632–634) have claimed that the social model of disability does not provide enough explanatory value to the analysis of disability and impairment. Moreover, according to Waldschmidt, the social model is “a little dusty” (2018, 73). Criticism of the social model (more broadly) and the UPIAS-inspired social model has been articulated often on the grounds of political beliefs and strategy. Social modelists adopt an alleged “ideological purity and isolationism” (see Crowther, 2007, 794). Theirs is an “outdated ideology” (Shakespeare & Watson, 2002) that is “old-fashioned and out of tune” (Goodley, 2013, 633). Its adherents have “hijacked” the term “disability” to “render it into an indoctrination camp” and “reintroduce it, under supervision, as part of the Politically Correct vocabulary of the day” (Miles, 2011, 10–11). The social model is said to be underpinned also by “authoritarian Marxism and economic determinism” (Meekosha & Shuttleworth, 2009, 50). It follows that UPIAS’ terms do not reflect the experiences of the subjects of disablement who do not have physical impairments (Mollow, 2013, 417), and the model does not advocate for particular values for policy formation (Degener, 2017, 34–35).
UPIAS-inspired social modelists have also been accused of being too critical of cure, treatment (Kafer, 2013, 6) and diagnosis (but diagnosing “the environment” nonetheless) (Siebers, 2019, 40–41), not acknowledging that the subjects of disablement are also disabled by their impairments (Shakespeare, 2006), and not generating measurable/positivistic concepts for comparative studies (Grönvik, 2009, 13). Further, critics have alleged that “the social model” (broadly defined) naturalises and does not consider impairment as social (Tremain, 2002). Its focus on the collective nature of disability as oppression neglects and denies individual lived experience of impairment (Kafer, 2013, 7; Morris, 1991, 10) and of “depression as a state of suffering” (Mollow, 2013, 417). In the US, the social model has already been castigated to the realm of the past: “Disability Studies has disposed of the social model because it simplifies a complex relationship between people’s impairments and disabilities” (Bailey & Mobley, 2019, 29).
The denunciation of the UPIAS-inspired social model within the academy is consistent with activists’ analysis of how the same academy has disengaged with Disabled People’s Organisations that seek a radical transformation of society (Rae, 1996). In agreement with Abberley (1987, 13–14), I argue that merely describing the effects of a disabling society is not enough if it does not lead to collective social action for fundamental change. Contrary to calls for the demise of the (UPIAS-inspired) social model, I argue that its enthusiastic revival is long overdue.
The UPIAS-Inspired Social Model as a Tool for Emancipation
Responding to the criticisms above, Oliver (2009b), Finkelstein (1996), Thomas (2004), Morgan (2022), Barnes (2012b, 18), Barnes and Mercer (2005), Oliver and Barnes (2012, 23–24), and Clifford (2020, 19) have argued that the social model is simply a “tool”, rather than a “social theory”. It could be considered a “hammer” (Oliver, 2004) or a “heuristic device” (Barnes, 2012b, 18) created by the Disabled People’s Movement to dismantle processes of disablement. More explicitly, the social model “is a practical tool, not a theory, an idea or a concept” (Oliver, 2004, 30). It is “not a social theory of disability and it cannot do the work of social theory” as it cannot “explain disability in totality” (Oliver, 2009b, 27–28). Bitterly, Oliver and Barnes (2012) remark that the model has been unjustly criticised for matters that its proponents had never claimed to have answers to. In their words, “what began life as an aid to professional practice has been slaughtered on the altar of theory for not explaining everything about impairment and disability” (Oliver & Barnes, 2012, 11).
Models, therefore, are assumed by UPIAS-inspired social modelists not to “explain” disability but to offer (through application) new insights into particular social matters, starting with an analysis of oppression (Finkelstein, 2004, 16; Oliver, 2009b, 27–28; Morgan, 2022, 109). One of the legacies of putting the (UPIAS-inspired) social model into practice, Finkelstein argues, consists in the creation of new “words to describe the way society is constructed so that we become disabled” (2004, 17). It follows that models are “merely tools for gaining insight into an existing stubborn problem so that the future may be changed” (Finkelstein, 1996, 3–4). Indeed, the social model’s tools have been used extensively by the Disabled People’s Movement over the past five decades (Clifford, 2020; Slorach, 2016; Williams-Findlay, 2020a, 2020b), and their perspectives are informed by their respective historical and socio-political contexts. Defending the social model further, Oliver posits:
We should neither seek to expose inadequacies, which are more a product of the way we use it, nor abandon it before its usefulness has been fully exploited (Oliver, 2009b, 27–28).
In response, posthumanist Disability Studies scholar Dan Goodley stipulates that social modelists’ work represents in fact a “totalising commitment to historical materialism or a hardline radical structuralist approach to the study of disablism” (2014, 34). For Hughes, Goodley, and Davis (2012, 309), the model is “far from atheoretical” due to its historical materialist foundations, with social modelists being “empiricists” who “play down theory”.
Perhaps it is surprising that the UPIAS-inspired social modelists have argued not to have developed a theory of disablement. Having considered their statements (above), it emerges that one of the underlying factors in not having developed a theory is related to their political, methodological, and philosophical inclinations that prioritise praxis and practical problem-solving of social matters. This strategy arose from the particular context of activism outside the academy that has adopted a prefigurative kind of politics. Indeed, the “core feature” of the UPIAS-inspired social model has been “action” that could change society (Clifford, 2020, 320). Furthermore, UPIAS’ constitutional documents (1976a, 1976b) make repeated references to “problems”. This is the result of UPIAS’ political strategy of subverting the idea that the problem of disablement lies within the individual, and instead pointing to society and capitalism as the causes of the subjects of disablement’s problems. A prioritisation of action and problem-solving is also shared by the philosophical (and political) Pragmatism, as developed by Dewey (2008[1920]), James (2010[1907]), and Rorty (1982).
The UPIAS-Inspired Social Model and the Necessity of Theory
Although the philosophical tenets of Pragmatism have only been acknowledged as underpinning the American Disability Studies and Movement (Albrecht, 2002), the UPIAS-inspired social model, too, has been developed within an implicitly Pragmatist paradigm. The pragmatic method “concentrates on beliefs that are more directly connected to actions” (Morgan, 2014, 1051). Through this paradigm, “knowledge develops through attempts to solve problems with practical consequences” (Prasad, 2021, 5). Although they do not reference Pragmatist scholarship in their work, Barnes (2012a, 475), Oliver and Barnes (2012, 23), and Oliver (1996, 2009b) occasionally use the term “pragmatic” when discussing the purpose of the social model. For instance, Oliver posits that the model represents “a pragmatic attempt to identify and address issues that can be changed through collective action, rather than medical or other professional treatment” (2009b, 25).
We can assume that “tools” are to be pragmatically used for different ends and purposes, with Beckett and Campbell persuasively arguing that the social model should be considered an “oppositional device” (2015, emphasis added). Positioning the UPIAS-inspired social model as a tool for emancipation (not a “theory”) has been useful for imagining, organising, and struggling for alternative institutions and social relations in the UK and beyond. One of the most concrete legacies of both the American- and UK-based disabled people’s movements is the Independent Living (IL) philosophy/movement (Barnes & Mercer, 2005, 529–530; Russell & Malhotra, 2002, 217). Its tenets were adopted by activists in the UK in the 1980s, when the first Centres for Independent/Integrated Living (CILs), controlled by the subjects of disablement themselves, were set up (Barnes, 2012b, 14–15; van Toorn 2021, 58–68; Beesley, 2019). These strategies align with Pragmatist advocacy for democratic problem-solving and participatory action, with communities seeking to “identify the issues that matter most to them, define those issues, and pursue them in ways that are the most meaningful to them” (Kaushik & Walsh, 2019, 11).
In a similar vein, Oliver stresses the urgency of turning the social model into action, instead of “reducing disability activism to the kind of intellectual masturbation in which academics sometimes engage” (2004, 25). On the other hand, the fact that no particular theory underpins the UPIAS-inspired social model (Finkelstein, 1996, 3) has allowed for the model to be more easily co-opted, appropriated, and depoliticised by various social actors and the state. An example of such depoliticisation is the UN Disability Committee’s (UNCD) statement that the UK Government’s punitive Work Capability Assessment (WCA) is “aligned” with the social model. The assessments are, allegedly, “based on the understanding that the barriers to work are societal; therefore, those with functional capability above a certain threshold can, with the correct support and opportunities, work” (UNCD, cited by Clifford, 2020, 314). However, despite the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) appearing to display a readiness to remove social “barriers”, their interpretation of the origins and constitution of barriers works to serve capital accumulation – with the UNCD legitimising this interpretation through the quote above. In relation to a different social setting, Finkelstein notes that at “conferences, workshops and training sessions”, the social model has “progressively degenerated into a sterile prescription for ‘explaining’ our situation” (1996, 3), without concrete calls for action to change the aforementioned situation. Such a practice negates UPIAS’ aims (as presented in their founding document):
We as a Union are not interested in descriptions of how awful it is to be disabled. What we are interested in, are ways of changing our conditions of life (UPIAS, 1976a, 5).
Whilst stressing the importance of understanding the social model as a tool, UPIAS-inspired social modelists noted that a theory of disability was both missing and necessary:
In UPIAS we felt that our struggle for emancipation needed to be informed by theory. We had always hoped that we would have time to develop and debate such a theory. But it was not to be. The disability movement still awaits an explanation of the social laws that make, or transform, people with impairments into disabled people (Finkelstein, 2004, 16).
Oliver concurred by stating that the UPIAS-inspired modelists “never claimed” that the model is a “theory of disability” and that “theoretical debates still needed to take place” (2004, 25). The key debates that have taken place so far are acknowledged below.
Early Developments of a Social Theory of Disablement As Oppression
Abberley (1999), Barnes (2012b), Thomas (2007), and Morris (1993) are (broadly) social model activist scholars who have discussed disability as social oppression. According to Abberley (1999, 7) and Barnes (2012a, 472–473), Marx and Engels wrote about disabled people in the context of their impairment being caused by unsafe working conditions, but the latter’s analysis offers a theory of impairment, rather than disablement. Abberley further argues for a break from modernist social theory (including Marxism) due to what he deems as an inherent productivism in these theories’ analysis of living in capitalist societies, and in their utopian projections of alternatives to capitalism (1996, 1999). In other words, these social theories regard work as a defining factor for human flourishing, citizenship, social membership, and social integration (Abberley, 1999, 9, 1996, 77). Such theories, he continues, are inherently oppressive as they exclude people deemed not to be “able” to undertake waged work. The subjects of disablement, it follows, are implicitly or explicitly blamed for their exclusion due to having impairments, chronic illness, being neurodivergent, d/Deaf, and/or experiencing mental distress. However, oppression is not natural, inevitable, or just (Abberley, 1987, 7).
Abberley makes the case for the use of “oppression” as a foundational concept of a social theory of disability (1987, 1999, 2002). This is because “disabled people” (as a collective) are socially ascribed undervalued and inferior societal roles compared to non-disabled people, with the latter (and the structures of disabling capitalism) benefitting from this inequality. Notably (especially for the next section), Abberley marks a distinction between oppression and exploitation, the latter being commonly considered to take place within the realm of waged work only, and to arise through class relations (1987, 8). In an anti-productivist fashion, he suggests:
the abolition of an individual’s disablement is ultimately dependent upon and subordinate to the logic of productivity (Abberley, 1996, 74).
The argument presented above represents an important contribution to Disability Studies and politics, although Abberley’s distinction between exploitation and oppression (i.e. where and how they take place) presents some limitations briefly presented here. First, Abberley takes for granted the assumption held also by the orthodox Marxists he was critiquing, that oppression occurs within the socially reproductive/private sphere of unwaged work, whilst exploitation takes place within the “productive”/public sphere of waged work. Second, Abberley regards the domain of capitalist production as emerging through the sphere of waged work, and social reproduction as being part of the domain of ideology. More concretely, in his analysis of oppression, Abberley does not consider the waged and unwaged work undertaken by the subjects of disablement as being productive and a part of both capitalist oppression and exploitation. Thus, whilst critical of productivism, Abberley nonetheless fails to consider the subjects of disablement’s exploitation through unwaged work.
Following the increasingly different, if not contradictory, uses of the social model –including its co-option by the state – scholars and activists have called for the UPIAS-inspired social model to be reinvigorated and its “anti-capitalist nature” reclaimed (Williams-Findlay, 2020b, 143–144; Oliver, 2009a, 50; Clifford, 2020, 309–315; Jolly, 2003, 521; Boxall, 2019). A theory of disablement would facilitate conversations and collective organising within and between Disabled People’s Organisations, as well as between Marxist/materialist scholars and anti-capitalists more generally. As we shall see below, post-1968 Marxist scholarship does not uphold the productivist values that Abberley critiques. These recent developments within Marxism approach waged and forms of unwaged work in a way that overcomes the latent and earlier strands of (disabling) productivism found in orthodox Marxist analyses of impairment (see Cleaver, 2002, 2017; Munro, 2021, 2022; Bhattacharyya, 2023; Glazer, 1983). However, the work undertaken by the subjects of disablement and its relationship to disabling capitalist exploitation and oppression has yet to be analysed through this recent scholarship. In the following section, I offer indications of what a theory of capitalist disablement/disabling capitalism could entail and the scholarship through which it could develop. I also briefly articulate five main tenets of this theory.
2. The Collective-Materialist Approach: A Social Theory of Disabling Capitalism
Whilst “theory” as a concept is often taken for granted and under-defined in scholarly work, when explorations of its meaning do take place, they indicate that its meaning is highly contested and “rife with lexical ambiguities” (Abend, 2008, 184). The proposed theoretical framework of this article is a social theory that embodies “a normative, and indeed political, account” (2008, 180) of disabling capitalism. The normative goal of this approach is the abolition of disablement, re-organisation of the institution of work, and transformation of social relations so everyone can live self-determined lives. At this point, a caveat regarding the intentions behind the development of this theory is necessary. The collective-materialist approach presented here does not negate the UPIAS-inspired social model, as this theory has been developed with many of the tools of the social model literature. Thus, I propose that this paper be considered the beginning of a conversation for the long-needed theory of the UPIAS-inspired social model, through which emancipatory knowledge and action can emerge. Any deviations from UPIAS-inspired social modelists’ concepts are articulated here in the spirit of a “comradely critique” (Slothuus, 2021) and “good conversation” (Birmingham Autonomous University, 2017).
With the collective-materialist approach to disablement, I build upon the strengths of the UPIAS-inspired social model (as suggested by Barnes, 2012b, 24) to advance conceptualisations of living within and organising against and beyond disabling capitalism. This advancement can be undertaken by synthesising the social model literature with post-1968 Marxisms (Autonomist, Open, Queer, Feminist, and Black Marxisms) and the theoretical and political horizons from Critical Political Economy and critical social theory. This approach stands on the shoulders of the authors cited in this paper, among others whose work is overtly and purposefully critical and political.
The collective-materialist approach is underpinned by the materialist philosophy of internal relations, as presented in the work of Marxist scholar Bertell Ollman (1998, 2003, 2015). Through this philosophy, the researcher observes ongoing processes of change, movement, and struggle (Ollman, 2003, 63–69) and analyses the interconnected social relations that make up the social world in its totality (Ollman, 1998, 340) – here, disabling capitalist societies. In the sections below, I propose five tenets of the collective-materialist approach for undertaking such analysis: considering disablement as exploitation (alongside oppression); the analytical usefulness of the concept “subjects of disablement”; the centrality of collectivity in the politics of disablement and work; autonomy and Independent Living; and anti-productivism.
Tenet One: Disablement as Oppression and Exploitation
Disablement constitutes not only oppression within capitalism, but also exploitation across waged and unwaged spheres of work. Work, in turn, is “transferred” across social spheres (see Glazer, 1984; Glazer-Malbin, 1976) through struggles between capital and waged/unwaged workers. This transfer takes place in particular and concrete ways for people with impairments, who are neurodivergent, chronically ill, D/deaf, and/or who experience mental distress.
In orthodox Marxist and mainstream research, the concepts of work and exploitation have often been narrowly applied to waged work, implicitly reproducing hierarchical distinctions between so-called “productive” and “unproductive” people. Within these frameworks, a worker is defined according to rigid criteria: workers are those involved in employment as active agents with capacity to provide labour-power on “the market” for a wage. Outside waged work, Russell and Malhotra (2002, 215–216) remarked that impaired bodies are commodified (and/or turned into consumers) through institutionalisation and “home care”, generating profit for the private sector. However, this perspective, too, assumes that the subjects of disablement are only oppressed and (inadvertently) passive “consumers”. Thus, those not engaged in the wage relation are deemed passive, “disabled” (in the individual model sense), work-shy, work resisters, “slothful”, and/or lazy (Morris, 1991, 181; Graby, 2015; Dearing, 2021; Soldatić, 2019, 71, 127). They do not work (unless they have a wage), hence they are not exploited. It follows that the subjects of disablement are thus exploited only through their jobs.
We ought to consider the nature and conceptualisations of the work undertaken by the subjects of disablement through all social relations and spheres of activity. Glazer’s (1983, 1984), Munro’s (2022), and Cleaver’s (2017) scholarship is particularly useful here. For instance, I follow Glazer’s contention that “consumption work” is central to the reproduction of capital(ism), and it could be conceptualised as direct work for capital (1983, 34). Another key concept coined by Glazer is “work transfer”: the process through which capitalism reorganises and redistributes (women’s) work, from waged to unwaged spheres: “the shift of tasks from a paid worker to an unpaid family member or friend” (1983, xi). Finally, purposeful activities are commodified and decommodified through the struggle between labour (workers) and capital (Glazer, 1983, 1984; Cleaver, 2017).
Through transfer from waged to unwaged spheres of activity (or vice-versa), newly drawn lines mark changing divisions of labour: whilst the “amount” of work may stay the same at a societal level, its conditions, distribution, and the agents who undertake it continue to change. Capital (through the state, employers, and other social actors) tends to (re)organise work to maintain lower wages and to reduce the overall proportion of work that is waged (Glazer, 1983). Concurrently, increasing work is being imposed on an unwaged basis (Munro, 2022; Cleaver, 2017). It has also been documented that the subjects of disablement –in particular – are forced into precarious jobs unwanted by non-disabled people and into unwaged roles as a condition for minimal social security (Soldatić, 2019, 71–72; Dearing, 2021). Therefore, “work” is not static – it “flows” across social spheres, because of struggles between (waged and unwaged) workers and capital. This collective resistance can be found in trade unions, Disabled People’s Organisations, and other social formations and movements.
It follows that work and exploitation are not exogenous to the structural reproduction of disablement. With capitalism as the root of disablement, the exploitation of its subjects is internally related to their oppression, as part of the totality of capitalist disablement. Finally, as the subjects of disablement undertake much of the unwaged work within the “social factory” (Tronti, 2019) of society, those acknowledged here are fundamentally part of the working class. Here, I extend the “work transfer” thesis to the work undertaken by the subjects of disablement in disabling capitalist societies. Thus, most of the unwaged work of all subjects of disablement is constitutive of disabling capitalist exploitation and oppression, whilst prefigurative work against-and-beyond disabling capitalism is a source of prefigurative politics and change (Chis, 2023). This occurs in a similar way to how, through racial capitalism, “value might be extracted from populations through non-wage routes” but also through “the realm of social reproduction” (Bhattacharyya, 2023, 4). The particular differences and commonalities between the concrete conditions of exploitation, oppression, and prefiguration are empirical matters requiring further exploration.
Tenet Two: The Analytical Usefulness of the Concept “Subjects of Disablement”
The commonality between people with impairments, who are neurodivergent, chronically ill, D/deaf, and/or who experience mental distress within disabling capitalist society is that of being subjected to disablement (oppression and exploitation).
Oppression and exploitation through capitalist disablement occur not simply because people – as discrete individuals – experience mental distress, have impairments, are chronically ill, neurodivergent, and/or D/deaf. In other words, in capitalist societies, the commonality between all the aforementioned groups does not simply rest in their so-called bodymind “differences”. Indeed, capitalists with impairments, who are chronically ill, experience mental distress, are D/deaf, and/or neurodivergent exist as agents of capital who are shielded from undertaking disabling work (Galer, 2012). The wealthiest person on the planet (Elon Musk) is an autistic man (Luterman, 2021). Thus, we cannot consider the collective of the subjects of disablement in isolation from class, race, gender, sexuality, and imperialism.
On the other hand, the concept “subjects of disablement” conveys the collective experience of disablement oppression and exploitation in current capitalist societies, regardless of whether individuals with the aforementioned characteristics self-identify or are identified by the state as “disabled”. The conceptual difference between “subjects of disablement”, “people with impairments, who are chronically ill, neurodivergent, D/deaf or experience mental distress” and “disabled people” allows for analysis and a distinction between collective subjectivation, individual experiences, and various approaches to identity. “Subjects of disablement” will remain an unchanging phenomenon as long as capitalism exists. Conversely, the terms used for neurodivergence, impairments, distress, deafness, and illness, and adherence to the political and/or state-ascribed term “disabled” will continue to change over time.
Tenet Three: Centring “The Collective” Within the Historically Contingent “Social”
The agency and power of collective struggle ought to be placed at the forefront of analyses and action against structural disablement – hence the approach’s emphasis on “the collective”.
The “social” of the social model of disability has been articulated in contrast to the individual model of disability and its methodological individualism. This distinction has resulted in important advancements in thought and praxis. However, within a theoretically agnostic social model, the “social” has largely coincided with an under-theorised “society”. Thus, as a concept, “the social” is imprecise, constantly changing, and open to being used for non-materialist, individual model purposes; in other words, this concept is prone to “elite capture” (Táíwò, 2022).
Alongside “the social”, an emphasis on collective action, organisation, and struggle is key for distinguishing the political project of the collective-materialist approach from models of reformist persuasions. Disablement is a structural phenomenon that produces collective experiences (with differing individual effects), and as such, meaningful social transformation can occur through self-organisation for collective action and empowerment. The emphasis on the collective is underpinned by anti-reductionism, which “acknowledges the importance of micro-level accounts in explaining social phenomena, while allowing for the irreducibility of macro-level accounts to these micro-level explanations” (Levine et al., 1987[online]).
UPIAS-inspired social modelists already have a collective approach to politics in their praxis; this article centres it within the collective-materialist approach (theory). Finkelstein argues that the UPIAS model offers an “outside-in” approach to analysing disablement (2001, 4), i.e. their analysis starts from the general level of analysis and moves to the particularity of individual instances. This method is in line with Black Marxist activist and scholar Ambalavaner Sivanandan’s approach to the relationship between “the political” and “the personal” (2008). According to Sivanandan, the well-known claim that “the personal is political” encourages fragmentation in (what should be common) struggles. Instead, he stresses that the political is personal; his comparison between the two approaches to politics is worth quoting in full:
The personal is the political is concerned with what is owed to one by society, whereas the political is personal is concerned with what is owed to society by one. The personal is the political is concerned with altering the goalposts, the political is personal is concerned with the field of play. The personal is the political may produce radical individualism, the political is personal produces a radical society. The personal is the political entraps you in the self-achieving, self-aggrandising life-style of the rich, the political is personal finds value in the communal life-style of the poor (Sivanandan, 2008, 53–54).
In the quote above, Sivanandan turns neoliberalised politics on its head by revealing its individualistic underpinnings. Treating individual instances of disablism as “haphazard happenings” (Ollman, 2003, 148), in isolation from systemic systems of oppression and exploitation, cannot become building blocks for social transformation (Táíwò, 2022; McWade et al., 2015, 307). Relatedly, reflecting on the recent past of disabled people’s struggles in the UK since 2010, Clifford attests:
Disabled people’s experiences since 2010 have taught us that looking to those in power to make everything better only ends in disappointment; to guarantee the changes we need, it is up to us to take action and demand those changes (2020, 308).
Therefore, disablement abolitionists share a common ground by organising, connecting, collectivising, and transforming individual troubles into public issues. Accountable and transformative perspectives can be achieved through “deliberate, concerted struggle” from the position we find ourselves in (Táíwò, 2022, 199) and in solidarity with struggles led by other socially exploited and oppressed groups. Matters related to immigration, incarceration, sexuality, job occupations, anti-imperialist struggles, class, gender, race, housing arrangements, and more, are all related within the totality of disabling capitalism (Yeo, 2020; McWade et al., 2015). Through a collective-materialist approach, we oppose atomism (individual or collective) and argue for autonomist self-realisation instead (Cleaver, 2017, 4), manifested through collective action to create ruptures in the processes of oppression and exploitation. Such ruptures can be triggered through strikes, sabotage, collective bargaining (within and beyond waged work), and prefigurative ways of living communally and interdependently through reorganising purposeful activities.
The emphasis on the collective does not simply centre consensus building. Rather, following DuFord (2022), (anti-exclusionary) conflict within and across solidarity groups is a constitutive part of democratic life, prefigurative work, and struggle. Coalitional politics through social solidarity (Táíwò, 2022; DuFord, 2022; Introna & Casagrande, 2019) requires a praxis with a universalising outlook that connects the interlocking oppression and exploitation mediated through disability, race, gender, sexuality, class, ecology, and imperialism. The onus is on all social movements to become attentive to disability politics and ensure their work does not reproduce the structures and practices of disablement. The collectivism of an anti-disabling emancipatory politics centres the autonomy of the subjects of disablement who may or may not have ever been part of the wage system. This approach would valorise “non-working lives” thus:
If we are to look at disability as a form of oppression, we need to develop views of what a society would need to be like for impaired people not to be disabled, in order to develop effective policies to combat social exclusion (Abberley, 2002, 120).
The academic sphere’s role in contributing to Abberley’s vision can be played positively through re-establishing coalitional solidarity (lost since the mid-1990s), sharing resources and sustainable infrastructures, and ceding power to democratic organisations of self-organised disabled people – as the political composition of disability (Chis, 2023). This would decrease academia’s hierarchical tendencies and the moralistic/atomistic radicalism that underpins much of its research production, helping facilitate the education of future “Professions Allied to the Community” (Finkelstein, 1999).
Tenet Four: Seeking Autonomy and In(ter)dependent Living
In(ter)dependent Living (based on relational, collective autonomy) stands firmly at the heart of the collective-materialist approach, as a way of living to strive for.
Most social research is laden with productivist assumptions (Abberley, 1996, 2002). The state and capital owners have framed waged work as a marker of morality, worth, and a good in itself, work compulsion being a rite of passage for (mere) survival and a coping mechanism to extract meaning out of meaningless jobs (Fleming, 2015, 23; Graeber, 2015). In capitalist society, autonomy is replaced by the ideology of “self-sufficiency” and the capacity/access to undertake particular types of work. For instance, Work Capability Assessments test the subjects of disablement’s individual “functioning capacities”, with those who pass the state-imposed threshold of functionality being deemed “independent”. However, the level of autonomy granted within the workplaces where job seekers are forced to join is not assessed. Conversely, when the subjects of disablement cannot access waged work, they face nudges, monitoring, financial sanctions and destitution (Geffen, 2013, 51). Relatedly, whilst undertaking research for this paper, the following news story was published:
A coroner has called on the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to make urgent policy changes, after it ordered a disabled patient to leave hospital to visit a job centre despite being severely ill with a condition that later killed him (Pring, 2022).
The principle of Independent Living has been a core demand of the Disabled People’s Movement in the UK since the 1970s – centring the self-determination of the subjects of disablement, active participation within society, choice, and control over what happens to and around them “at work and as members of the community” (Barnes & Mercer, 2006, 33). Through Independent Living (and institutionally through Centres for Independent Living, run by and for the subjects of disablement), disabled activists focus on the opportunity to dismantle the cycle of imposed “dependency” (Morris, 1993, 27–28; Oliver, 2009, 103) and the top-down conceptualisation of “care” (Woodin, 2014, 249; Chis, 2024) that exist through current state-shaped infrastructures. Independent Living entails “disabled people having adequate support to be able to live and participate in the community with the same opportunities as non-disabled people and with choice and control over that support” (Clifford, 2020, 54).
The “independence” invoked in the Disabled People’s Movement’s proposals for Independent Living is not of the neoliberal kind. It refers to people currently subjected to disablement having “control over their lives, not that they perform every task themselves” (Brisenden in Morris, 1993, 23; Barnes & Mercer, 2006, 33; Morris, 2001, 8). It could equally be called “interdependence” instead (Barnes, 2000, 452). Indeed, independence as self-sufficiency is “neither possible nor desirable”, and it frames the social category “disabled” as lacking and dependent (Graby, 2015; Woodin, 2014, 248). Autonomy, on the other hand, is – put simply – independence from capitalist processes, time, and control (Berardi, 2009, 75–76). Taking the ideas above into consideration, Graby and Greenstein (2016) propose the term “relational autonomy” due to its genealogical meaning that centres self-determination (always in-relation) rather than self-sufficiency, emphasising relatedness as part of our socialised being-in-the-world. Reflecting on the relationship between her and her personal care assistant, Johnson offers an excellent critique of self-sufficiency:
I sometimes think how strange it would be to do these morning things in solitude as non-disabled people do, and to regard, as many of them do, a life like mine as a dreadful and unnatural thing. To me it is so natural to feel the touch of the washcloth-covered hands on flesh that is glad to be flesh, to rejoice that other hands are here (McBryde Johnson in Goering, 2015, 137).
Independent Living, therefore, means moving beyond the liberal demand of “equality of opportunity” and towards “guaranteed material outcomes” (Zarb, 2004, 7–8). It also entails transforming “professions allied to medicine” into “professions allied to the community” (Finkelstein, 1999). In a prefigurative fashion, the Centres for Independent Living set up in the UK by disabled activists have, arguably, already offered “embryonic services” and created possibilities for such transformation of professions (Finkelstein, 1999, 2). Thus, to prefigure (through trade unions, activist groups, and Disabled People’s Organisations) is to think about the role that people currently subjected to disablement would have in a non-disabling society (Abberley, 1996, 67–68) and find practical ways to bring these possibilities into current society. With the identification and prefiguring of the world we wish to inhabit, we can identify the work that could be completely abolished (Jones, 2018, 79), expanded on, and/or transformed – for non-disabling capitalist ways of relating to one another.
Tenet Five: Anti-Productivism and the Transformation of Work
Struggles for abolishing disablement ought to take an anti-productivist stance that seeks the transformation of the institution of work through collective struggle for autonomous/self-determined and interdependent modes of living.
Alongside Abberley’s anti-productivist (and mostly theoretical) argument for destabilising the centrality of work from the social organisation of society (1987, 1996, 2002), Barnes argues for the recognition of a wider variety of activities outside of employment, as “work” (2012a). Noting Marxist feminists’ strategies of revealing social reproduction as work, Barnes and Mercer (2005, 537) and Barnes (2012a, 480) identified a series of activities that only the subjects of disablement undertake frequently. These activities are related to “health maintenance” and routines such as “getting out of bed, washing, dressing”, taking part in consultations as service users, and employing/managing Personal Assistants (Barnes, 2012a, 480). Although these activities take time and energy, within capitalist societies they are not conceptualised as “work” due to them not producing services or goods for others to consume (Barnes & Mercer, 2005). However, this is where Barnes and Mercer’s argument ends – whilst demanding greater valorisation of activities, they fail to question the capitalist system’s institution of work as a whole. Separately, Oliver made a nuanced (albeit brief) suggestion for “broaden[ing] our idea of the nature of production itself”, including the “production of ourselves” (1999, 189).
Informed by the anti-productivism of Autonomist Marxism and anarchism, the collective-materialist approach opposes the “work-based model of social membership and identity” (Abberley, 1996, 74). Whilst removing the social restrictions standing in the way of accessing waged work is important, these strategies ought not to be an end in itself – inclusion into waged work is not desired by or suitable for, everyone (Dearing, 2021; Graby, 2015; McKenna et al., 2019). A struggle to abolish disablement ought to be a struggle against the capitalist imposition of work as a vehicle for social control and, by implication, for a different kind of social relations (Cleaver, 2005, 127; Russell & Malhotra, 2002). A transformation of work would end the distinction between “productive” waged work and all other forms of work that currently take place outside the wage. Abberley (1996, 2002), Barnes and Mercer (2005) and Barnes (2000) argue that the starting point for such transformation can start with articulating an alternative system of non-productivist values – this can be done through a prefigurative politics.
Instances of “prefigurative politics” can be found in struggles and debates of anti-racist, feminist, Autonomist Marxist, and other movements (Raekstad & Gradin, 2020, 20–28) as well as through Disabled People’s Organisations’ anti-disablement politics, campaigning groups, trade unions (Aronowitz, 1998), and various other collectivities, alliances, and social relations (Abberley, 1996, 75; Bailey et al., 2018; Greer, 2016, 169). A useful definition of prefigurative politics is “the deliberate experimental implementation of desired future social relations and practices in the here-and-now” (Raekstad & Gradin, 2020, 10, emphasis added). The term started to be adopted more actively in the UK in the 1970s, with the emergence of anti-authoritarian and anti-oppression New Left Movements (Raekstad & Gradin, 2020, 8–10; Leach, 2013).
Put simply, prefigurative work entails “forming the structure of the new society within the shell of the old” (IWW 2022 [1905]) or planting the seeds for a new future – that is, undertaking work that establishes social relations that are antagonistic to those of disabling capitalism and that “secure autonomous forms of social reproduction” (Bailey et al., 2018, 31). This is, therefore, a rejection of hierarchical, vanguardist politics that is assumed to wait for change to happen after the revolution, and an assertion that there cannot be a distinction between means and ends (Raekstad & Gradin, 2020, 31–35; Leach, 2013). Prefigurative politics entails developing powers, drives, and consciousness through praxis (reflective practice), which in turn leads to being and relating to others and the world more generally outside the impositions of capital accumulation (Raekstad & Gradin, 2020, 21). The purpose of prefiguration may include “substituting or supplanting”, to “experimentation, innovation and learning”, “preparing or resourcing collective actors”, “directly achieving something in the here and now” and emphasising the “micropolitics of political activity” (Yates, 2021, 1044).
Despite their recent ascendance within scholarly and activist writings and practice, the term and theory of prefiguration have been critiqued for being loose; overly privileging local, small-scale practice; overlooking the role of organising and centralisation; collapsing the means and the ends of prefigurative work, and romanticising prefiguration more generally (Parker, 2021). However, a clear distinction between “strategising” and “prefiguring” is often difficult to make, as both elements are present within the work that seeks to change society (Yates, 2021). In any case, collective struggle “increases class capacity” (Fincher, 1984, 310), and anti-productivism is part of the dismantling of the oppression and exploitation of the subjects of disablement.
Concluding Remarks
More than a decade ago, Oliver argued against the abandonment of the social model of disability, and encouraged scholars to refine it instead: “The continuing use and refinement of the social model can contribute to rather than be a substitute for the development of an adequate social theory of disability” (Oliver, 2009b, 27–28). This article has followed Oliver’s advice by building on the strengths of the social model and opening its foundations to recent scholarship outside Disability Studies. In short, this paper has shown that the disablement (oppression and exploitation) of people with impairments, who are neurodivergent, chronically ill, D/deaf, and/or who experience mental distress is reproduced through subjectivation mediated by capitalist social relations – through the subsumption of human activity to capital accumulation. These are all historically specific phenomena that have been, and can further be, challenged and changed through collective struggle. Whilst identifying the work undertaken in everyday life is important, I depart from Barnes’ and Mercer’s (2005) call for valorisation. Instead, these activities and their producers are subjected to exploitation (not only to oppression), and they directly contribute to the reproduction of disabling capitalism. Finally, prefigurative work represents the starting point for a social re-organisation of society in which social institutions, roles, and values are transformed so that everyone can lead self-determined lives. Autonomy and In(ter)dependent Living can only be achieved through the material transformation of everyday life within all spheres of activity.
Acknowledging and emphasising interdependency, autonomy and collectivity offers the possibility of posing a threat to the social order and opening possibilities for liberation. The struggle to abolish disablement (as social oppression and exploitation) is always-already a struggle against-and-beyond work, for disablement itself is socially reproduced through and in relation to the coercive institution of work and the wage system. A complete destabilisation of “the assertion of the rights of the human ‘being’ against the universalisation of human ‘doing’” is necessary for a consistently liberatory theory of disability (Abberley, 1999, 14) and an end to productivist values or “romanticism of productivity” (1996, 69) – an attitude that even Marxists subjected to disablement and non-disabled people have replicated (for critiques of this approach, see Graby, 2015; Withers, 2012, 87–93; Abberley, 1999; Introna & Casagrande, 2019). This destabilisation needs to (Finkelstein, 1996, 3) and can be (Withers, 2012, 89–90) done whilst actively refusing the “compensatory” tragedy approach to disability that argues only for social security, sheltering, and the isolation/segregation of the subjects of disablement from the rest of society.
To seek the abolition of the current coercive institution of work that governs society, it is necessary to assess the dynamics between the work that takes place through different spheres of activity. Such mapping and analysis help to identify the sphere of prefiguration and struggle for the expansion (with time and resources) of particular forms of work at the expense of capital-mediated activities. Beyond inquiring how the subjects of disablement undertake work, collective-materialist scholarship and campaigns ought to consider why certain types of work were created in the first place, what purpose they serve in relation to disabling capitalism, and what role they serve in the subjects of disablement’s lives.
A politics of disablement abolition through a collective-materialist approach holds that activities conducive to rest, support, self-support, and collective self-activity are key to autonomy, In(ter)dependent Living, and social transformation. The early Twentieth Century Socialist slogan “We want bread and roses, too” still rings true. Aiming only for “basics” such as the demands for Universal Basic Income and Universal Basic Services does not address the underlying causes of oppression and exploitation. Indeed, reformist aims are not socially transformative enough. Instead, I suggest an orientation towards an (ecosocial) Universal Abundance of Means of Production, freely interdependent exuberance embedded within mutual recognition, energy, rest, collectivity, and joy (and the list ought to never end). These matters are separate from the realm of the state and capitalist social configurations. Whilst some scholars seek to incorporate the subjects of disablement in a disabling capitalist society, I argue that the subjects of disablement ought no longer to be denied their rightful and already-active place in the political collective of “the working class”, as dissenting actors of social change against-and-beyond disabling capitalism.