This week in people of interest: Marta Russell
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, best articulated in Russell’s 1998 book, Beyond Ramps: Disability at the End of the Social Contract, posits that disabled people are not, as they are often framed in dominant culture, a “burden to society,” but are actually a valuable resource. As Russell explains: “…persons who do not offer a body which will enhance profitmaking as laborers are used to shore up US capitalism by other means.” Disabled people are a nexus around which the capacity for surplus labor power can be built (often financed in part by federal money)—whole sectors of our economy have sprung forth from the money model, which has normalized the commodification of things, systems, and places that maintain disabled bodies in pursuit of squeezing profit from the money which passes through disabled people towards their survival and care. For example, nursing homes, Russell argued, are not places of rest and comfort, but a strategy for commodifying the “least productive” so that they can both be “made of use to the economic order” and free up the labor supply of those who love and wish to care for them. This system benefits neither the workers nor disabled people, only what Russell called the “owning class.” US disability policy, instead of being oriented around supporting the needs of disabled people, sanctions and facilitates the capitalist capture of nearly all aspects of disablement, impairment, chronic illness, and disability, including the way that “reasonable accommodations” are commodified (as explored by Ruth Colker in her essay for this symposium).
Russell was not just a theorist but also was a long-time disability rights activist. Throughout the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s she was involved in disability advocacy and organizing with ADAPT, Not Dead Yet, and the ACLU. Her efforts focused on policy interventions like assisted suicide laws and SSDI cuts, campaigns that challenged the many stigmatizing portrayals of disabled people sold to the public via the charity industrial complex, and more formal organizing and direct action with ADAPT agitating for home and community-based services as alternatives to nursing homes and other institutions of warehousing. As Nate Holdren argues in his piece for this symposium, Russell’s significant contributions to both disability theory and Marxism were crucially informed by her work in social movements. This connection between theory and praxis is reflected not just in the subject matter of her work, or in her citational practices, but also in the empathy, clarity, and rage with which she argues for the need for the left to begin to engage in a broad refusal of the economic valuation of life.
Russell’s political writing was extensive, covering the topics she organized around as well as more explicit political economic analysis of US policy and critique of the disabling effects of the then-expanding criminal justice system. Russell’s work was also highly critical of the liberal disability rights movement, arguing that disability rights discourse would benefit from embracing leftist thought and political economic analysis. Russell’s approach rejected the court-oriented civil rights strategy that was widely celebrated by liberal disability organizations and activists in the post-ADA era. This strategy, she argued, only sought to tamp down the violence caused by the ways that the state interacted with disabled people; instead, she focused on the political economic, not merely the “cultural” forces, driving systemic oppression of disabled people—an approach on which Jules Gill-Peterson expands in her essay for this symposium.
The lack of exposure that Russell’s small yet incredibly powerful body of work has had cannot be overstated. Her books are hard to find, there is one major printed collection of her essays, and one important book of essays about or incorporating her work. Until Capitalism and Disability: Selected Writings by Marta Russell was published by Haymarket Books in 2019, no comprehensive volume of her collected writings existed, nor was there broad citation of them within disability studies or law. Three years prior, when legal scholar and her former collaborator Ravi Malhotra edited Disability Politics in a Global Economy, an important anthology dedicated to Marta Russell’s memory, it was one of the first times Russell’s work was broadly celebrated within a purely academic context.
— from The Law and Political Economy Project.
As always, we ask that in order to participate in the weekly megathread, one self-identifies as some form of disabled, which is broadly defined in the community sidebar:
“Disability” is an umbrella term which encompasses physical disabilities, emotional/psychiatric disabilities, neurodivergence, intellectual/developmental disabilities, sensory disabilities, invisible disabilities, and more. You do not have to have an official diagnosis to consider yourself disabled.
Mask up, love one another, and stay alive for one more week.
I’m so tired and I’m tired of being tired all the time.
GOOD mega post btw
Edit: Adrestia’s Revolt has an amateur audiobook narration of Capitalism and Disability by Marta Russell
Edit parte deux: I can’t fucking stand talking to the general population about the internal experiences of people with disability. I hate it and I made the mistake of doing it recently and it was maddening - somewhere on social media there’s discussion about the ableist tropes in a fairly recently released book. I haven’t read it but the story goes that the visually-impaired protagonist who is also a superhero (major supercrip ick vibes!) identifies closely with Batman. Apparently, according to the critic who is themselves disabled, the story goes along and the protagonist only becomes competent after his blindness is cured. Gross.
Anyway, one comment reply is like “Batman? Erm, Daredevil is right there Sweaty”. Now I don’t know shit about capeshit but I gleaned that Daredevil is blind, so I say “Are blind people only permitted to identify with blind characters?” in a semi-ironic way. Someone else comes in my replies telling me that Daredevil is the right fictional character for the protagonist to identify with because, get this, apparently Daredevil has a superpower that means he effectively isn’t blind. Wonderful!
So the people trying to force blind people into the blind people’s box and corralling their interests and who they might identify with to blind people-only are also completely ignoring the disabled person who is criticising the trope that the disabled protagonist only becomes competent after their disability is cured and they are saying that, no actually, the right thing is for this protagonist to identify with what is apparently becoming a literary trope of the disabled-but-effectively-not-disabled superhero who is capable because their disability is made non-existent. They are literally ignoring and talking over the top of a disabled person to say who disabled people should identify with and that this whole trope is perfectly suitable and, in fact, it’s completely appropriate. Fuck me.
So I lay into them in the replies. I make a well-reasoned case for why, actually, identifying with Batman is much more realistic:
Batman is a normal person, without any special superpowers, and thus he is far more relatable than a person who has magic powers on this basis alone.
Batman is only a superhero because he has an armoury of gadgets and devices that, when used, help him to achieve his goals. One fairly close metaphorical reading of this would be that this is not unlike the experience of many people with disability to rely upon all sorts of accessibility tools in order to get the job done.
On top of all that, Batman is surrounded by people who seemingly have these special, magical abilities that he lacks and it’s through his use of accessibility tools that he is able to achieve a rough parity with those around him. One reading of this could easily be that, if Batman lived in a world exclusively populated by superheroes and supervillains, he could be considered disabled (at least in a metaphorical sense) and he literally relies upon accessibility devices to function well in this world where he is disabled. Whether you agree with this reading or not doesn’t really matter tbh because if a person with disability made this case to me and said that this is why they strongly identify with Batman, I’d be like “Yep, that makes complete sense to me!”
Anyway, what do I get in the replies?
“No, that’s completely unrealistic. Batman is a billionaire which is the only reason why he can get those devices. It’s much more realistic for the protagonist to identify with the blind, disabled-but-not-actually-disabled fictional character who has magical powers than it is to identify with a billionaire.”
Shutupshutupshutup!!
It’s more realistic for a blind person to identify with a person who has magical powers than it is for a blind person to identify with an average person who happens to be rich? Are you kidding me?? What, are there no people with disability who are wealthy? Is it more within the realms of possibility for a blind person to get some magic powers and a miracle cure for their disability than it is for them to get an inheritance or to win the lottery??
Like, just fuck right off and keep going.
Imagine providing a financial breakdown as a justification for why it’s wrong and completely unrealistic for a blind person to identify with Batman and why they must identify with a person who, for all intents and purposes, is as realistic as a wizard or a fairy. Even if, if, that logic itself was solid, the fact of the matter is that people who are blind (and people with disability more generally) are ✨diverse✨ and they can view things from all manner of perspectives and they can have just as broad a spectrum of opinions as anyone else does. Put 30 blind people in a room and I’m sure that you’re going to get at least one person who loves Batman and another person who loathes him.
The argument that a blind person identifying with Batman is unrealistic is as valid as saying that it’s unrealistic for any person to identify with Batman. Get a fucking grip. These people clearly haven’t developed past that phase that children reach in preschool where they tell the black kid “You have to be Black Panther because he’s the black superhero”.
I just hate it. I basically never talk to people about my own internal, personal experience of being multiply-disabled because invariably I get people ignoring what I say and then butting in to share their deep wisdom and insight into my own disability so that I’m faced with the choice between a high-conflict situation of calling them out on their ableist bullshit which, honestly, I don’t have the spoons for or I get to play nice, which only makes me a bad disability advocate and it makes everything worse for me and the entire community of people with disability. Ugh. So I just shut up and avoid the situation entirely. I need to practice leaving dead air in the conversation for long enough for it to become awkward before saying “Well, I need to go” or something.
Excellent, thank you for linking that. I have a few more authors I’d like to spotlight in future weeks, too. There is a lot of literature out there for the intrepid (angry & persistent) info junkie.
If you give me a heads-up I can see what audiobook offerings are available for the titles and if there are pirated versions of official audiobook narrations I can source them and upload them to TankieTube. Feel free to send me a DM if you don’t want to spoil the upcoming posts.