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

Book Details

Publisher : Bristol University Press
Published : February 2027
Cover : Paperback
Pages : 256
Category :
Psychotherapy and Politics
Category 2 :
Forthcoming
Catalogue No : 98625
ISBN 13 : 9781529259032
ISBN 10 : 1529259037

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This book offers a fresh and critical take on the relationship between disability, work, and capitalism in the UK. Challenging the idea that disabled people are ‘non-workers’, it shows how society is dependent upon their everyday paid and unpaid activities. Drawing on research with disabled participants, it expands what counts as work: from care, assistance, and work for the state to resistance and rest.

The book centres disabled people’s own critiques of precarious work and productivism, highlighting how disability is fundamental to debates on class and exploitation. Insightful and collaborative, it rejects the productivist lens through which disability is often approached, and rethinks possibilities for a non-capitalist organisation of society.

Reviews & Endorsements
Table of Contents
About the Author(s)
Customer Reviews

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

Introduction

Part I

1. The Politics of Disablement Under Capitalism
2. The Politics of Work in the Social Factory
3. Disablement and Work in the UK: Policy and Political Contexts

Part II

4. Identity and Journeys into the Gig Economy
5. Waged Gig Economy Activities
6. Lifelong Probation Through the State and Society
7. Assistance Work and Activities Conducive to Rest
8. Subversion and Collective Self-Activity

Part III

9. Critiquing Productivism
10. Horizons to Move Towards