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Disabling Capitalism: A Critical Inquiry Into Work, Productivism and Disablement

Author(s) : Cerasella Ioana Chis

Reviews and Endorsements

'In Disabling Capitalism, Chis crafts a ground-breaking anti-productivist, collectivist and disability abolitionist vision. It makes essential reading for our age of intensified capitalist disablement and precarious work.'
Arianna Introna, Open University

'Disabling Capitalism offers compelling research underpinning a vital political analysis of how 'welfare' policies and economic structures and practices organise work, work that can be unseen, unpaid and unequally valued. By centring the lived experiences of disabled people navigating on-demand labour, Chis challenges the persistent (and harmful) belief that work-centric policy is inherently benign. Her bold contribution opens up new ways of understanding work and disability, and invites us to imagine more hopeful futures.'
Harriet Clarke, University of Birmingham

'Ioana Cerasella Chis prompts a powerful rethinking of disablement and work, revealing how disabled people sustain society while challenging disabling capitalism.'
Saori Shibata, University of Sheffield

‘In their incredibly timely book, Chis makes the groundbreaking argument that the abolition of capitalist disablement is the only way to stop the onslaught of its eugenics-style transhumanist ‘progress’.’
Phoebe V. Moore, University of Essex

'Disabling Capitalism is a timely, original and intellectually compelling intervention that rethinks disability, work and exploitation. Grounded in rich empirical research, it challenges conventional assumptions while offering a powerful vision of disability justice beyond productivist understandings of work. This important book will shape debates across disability studies, political economy and sociology.'
Karen Soldatić, Toronto Metropolitan University

'Although Karl Marx spelled out and illustrated how capitalism disables waged workers through various forms of alienation – depriving them of 1) control over their work, 2) of cooperation with co-workers rather than competition, 3) of control over their products and finally 4) of their ability to realize their own humanity in self-directed activity – and how it disables unwaged workers through the denial of income, he neglected the specific ways capitalism disables people with mental or physical impairments, both on the job and off. In this book Ioana Cerasella Chis provides a long-overdue remedy to this neglect by spelling out the structures through which capitalism disables those with various impairments. Unlike Marx, who only dreamed of a “workers’ inquiry” in which waged workers could testify about their alienation and exploitation, Ioana’s collaborative work with people with impairments gives us their reports both on their disablement and on their efforts to craft alternative ways of being, against and beyond capitalists’ ever-increasing attempts to extract as much work from them as possible. In so doing, she reveals too long overlooked realms of exploitation, refusal and efforts to move beyond the capitalist subordination of life to work and takes up the issue of how to link their struggles with those of others.'
Harry Cleaver, University of Texas at Austin

'Disabling Capitalism is a crucial contribution that will undoubtedly re-shape how we all think about disablement, work and capitalism. Wielding an impressive range of contributions from across Marxist theory, the book sheds light - in ways that are far more often concealed from view - on the intrinsic nature of disablement as a fundamental feature of capitalism. In doing so, it offers a vital, and yet concrete, abolitionist approach to praxis - as a concrete route to resistance, and with the potential for emancipation. Everyone who lives in capitalism should read this book!'
David J. Bailey, University of Birmingham