Date: Sat, 1 Jun 1996 14:32:03 -0400 (EDT)
From: Spoon Collective <spoons-AT-jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU>
Subject: Disability activist's introduction (fwd)




---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sat, 1 Jun 1996 16:12:30 GMT0BST
From: Steve jones <Steven.Jones-AT-newcastle.ac.uk>
To: aut-op-sy-approval-AT-jefferson.village.virginia.edu
Subject: Disability activist's introduction

Dear list owner,

The majordomo response mentioned that Aurtopsy was a closed list so I 
thought you might appreciate some details about myself.  My name is 
Steve Jones and I am currently a post-graduate student at the 
University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

I would like to take this opportuinty to reproduce some material which I have formerly 
used in articles on the issue of Disability and Class-Struggle which 
I believe would be of interest to other Autonomist Marxists if it was supplied, after 
editing, to the list. This has been composed from my own experience 
of physical disability, since early childhood, and through the experience of working 
inside the disabled people's movement (U.K.) for several years. I have also had the 
chance to refine these ideas after I coordinated the 'Disability and Capitalism' workshop
at the Conference of Socialist Economists 1994 and in conjunction with 
discussions with Werner Bonefeld at the department of Politics,University of Edinburgh.

My commitment to revolutionary struggle, through the realization of 
Communism in the daily struggle against Capitalism, comes directly 
out of my material experience of being physically disabled. I have 
struggled hard to argue against joining the eclectic bandwagon of 'Identity Politics,' and 
annd against diffusing the material issues of disability and demands of disabled 
people into being just another welfare-claim by a pluralist 
fetishised 'group'. I have rejected this because I believe it leads 
us into adopting the Sociological and petit-bourgois conceptions of 
our oppressors. Rather, I think it is crucial for revolutionaries to 
see Disablity as, in reality, just an intensive expression of the 
species-characteristic of human society i.e., society as a Totality 
composed of interdependent but heterogenous individuals. In short, have 
learnt that if we consciously remove the medical 'stigma' of 
Disability from our eyes then we can see that the 'Negative Labour' 
of Disability is, in fact, an intensive expression of a 'normal' heterogeneity.

Finding one of the forms of true human individuality in the difference of 
Disability is to break into a new way of thinking - in which Autonomist 
struggle and rejection of the Capitalist Industrial-system becomes an
ever-present possibility. Opposing such labels as 'Invalid' means re-valorising 
the self-esteem of many so-called Dis-abled people. In this way an 
Autonomist perspective on Disability becomes clear. The Disabling 
barriers in Society (wether in the built environment or simply the 
denial of income) derive from the contradictions of the Bourgeois 
commodity-form. What causes, chronically sustains and intensifies 
Disablement on humans is the world of Privatised objects tailored to 
the reproduction of brute Labour-power, and the chaining of the 
latter historical Slave to a 'productivist' division of labour for 
the steady fattening of the Bourgeois Ruling Class.

Speaking from experience, I know that the conscious 'self-valorisation' of Disabled 
people i.e., making them aware of their identity as facets of the wider working 
Class Struggle, is almost always taken as a direct challange to the Capitalist
establishment. Given the more fuller descriptions of 
'self-valorisation' and the 'Negative Labour' of Disabled people (see 
below) this is hardly surprising. But let me be clear here. In addressing the 
'Identity' needs of Disabled people, i'm not talking about putting a few Disabled 
people on Trade Union boards, or the Disability movement Leadership gaining 
emancipation for us all (?!) through the formal institution of a 
Disability Civil-Rights commission (U.K. 1995).  Civil-Rights campaigns 
are all well and good, as a very primitive starting-point. At best they allow us 
the 'conquest of the media', but again the image portrayed to the 
wider society (by the Bourgeois tabloids, as in Liberal political 
legislation) is of Disabled people as just another fragmented, 
insular 'group' whose needs can be neatly packaged by their own 
articulate elite. Such a basic starting-point can only lead to 
Revolutionary results if it presses both able and Disabled members of 
the Working Class to critically look at the formal catagories and 
material forms of Capitalism and to ask - "Why are we 
[Disabled people] fragmented into a specific minority in Capitalist 
society?".

The beginnings of an answer can be made by taking a broad 'Holistic' 
perspective on the issue, as above - tying the obstacles and injuries which 
Disabled people constantly come up against into the overall structural 
limitations of Capitalism. Hence we can say that the source of Disablement 
in Modern society is the private-ownership of the means of production, 
which creates one-sided commodities which (either wittingly or otherwise) 
incrementally harm people through: pollution, poisening, clinical side-effects,
espionage, incapacitation by war-machines  etc.,.In addition we can 
suggest that, because of the structural contradiction in the Capital Class-relation 
(originally noted by Marx) i.e., the incremental rise in the Organic 
Composition of Capital and declining average Rates of Profit, will lead 
to a gradual clawing back of public-spending, an intensification of 
the abstraction of labour in the division of work tasks and so an 
intensified material and ideological pressure on society to only 
reproduce itself as an aggregate of homogenous units - each one 
mirroring as close as possible an ideal-type of brute Labourpower. 

However, we must also articulate the fact that, in the direct experience 
of Disabled people, the worst protagonists of the Class establishment
are not Boureois commodities as such, but what Marx called 'the 
Agents of Capital'. We need to highlight how State Monopoly-Capital has 
spawned whole tiers of Bureaucratic apparatuses and Technocrat Occupational 
Groups which sit upon and stifle, as best as they can, the life-blood and Class-
Struggle which emenates out of Disabled people. The presence of 
comrades in such State-Capitalist work roles (care-managers, Social 
Workers, senior Nurses, Occupational Therapists (O.T.'s), Doctors etc.,) should not 
restrain us from pointing out these facts - otherwise we are just bowing down 
to the Capitalist/Trade Union imposed division of labour (and wage loyalties) 
and putting these pseudo-differences before our greater political unity as 
equal members of the Working Class.

It is imperative that the stigmatisation of Disabled people by the ideology of 
middle-class occupational groups is seen as a direct legacy of the general 
postwar strategy of the expansion of the State-sector in the Advanced 
Industrialised States of the OECD, as a political maneouvre for the 
displacement of Class-consciousnes and fragmentation of unity 
amongst the masses. In the case of Medical consultants and associated 
'specialist' staff, the stigmatised notion of 'Disability as Tragedy' 
prevails with the greatest intensity. State-sector Medical 
institutions reek of Capitalist conformity: empiricist reflective 
corridors, militarised devotion to conserving supplies, and 
standardised equipment - trolleys, bedpans, even National Health Wheelchairs are 
standardised!. The Doctors OT's etc., in their starched White-Coats physically 
embody the misanthropic ideal of reducing each person in society (or 
at least those who enter their field of 'knowledge') into an atomized abstract unit
which is uncritically reflective of each others homogenized 
labour-power. This is the experience of oppression for Disabled 
people, but of course there is nothing novel about the Ruling-Class 
using the petit-Bourgeoisie as an agency for the demobilisation of 
the Working-Class! The recent media promotion of Medical professionals and 
other 'Emergency' Occupational Groups in Soap-Dramas further 
caricatures the reality that these groups unwittingly serve an 
otherwise crucial function for Capitalism. I.e., the perversion of 
socially-useful knowledge (let's call it Science) by the white-collar 
division of labour. Hence senior Doctors symbolise the backbone of Late 
Capitalism - a middle-class clique able to impose the 'fashions' of 
exclusive (privatisely produced) knowledge upon the lower Classes, 
with especially the technical/rehabilitative/surgical wing acting as a vital filter 
and promotional device for siphoning public-funds into Industrial and 
Real Estate corporate pockets.

This incestuous, symbiotic clasping of State, academic, technocratic and 
corporate hands in the stagnating era of Late Capitalism is 
undoubtedly profitable; but the whole enterprise is being continuously undermined 
and compromised by the Negativity of Disabled people, that is, by the 
Negative Labour of their 'self-valorisation'. This is because the 'Disabled person' 
does not fit-in with 'Medicalised' discourse and Bourgeois Scientific 
world-view (described above), nor the material interests of the Capitalist employers of 
the economy. Disabled people intensively express the heterogeneity of 
individual Human beings, seen as particulars of the Totality of Human 
society. This heterogeneity can quite easliy fall into a resemblance 
of an Occupational Therapists Taxonomy of geriatric diseases! But 
whilst such an effect is not sought here we feel it is necessary to 
list several facets of Human heterogeneity - in order to get a view of 
the concrete circumstances in which the Negative Labour of 
'self-valorisation' takes place. 

Broad morphological differences clearly do not fit into the 
symmetrical boody-forms which are best suited to exploitation by 
Cosmetc, Apparel and Media Capitalists. Musculo-Skeletal 
'deformations' and Neurologically-related weakening restrict movement and 
mobility,and therefore break the Labour-time imperative of the Law of 
Value and work upon Capitalist machinery. Sensory-sentivity 
differences interfere with ideological forms of communicatuion in 
Class-Society e.g., interfere with media such as linear print,the 
atomized word, 'BBC English', Traffic-Signals, employer instructions, 
pomotion and advertising media  - in short the icons 
through which Labour-power is corralled into the 'negative freedoms' 
of Bourgeois society. Capitalists and their State and middle-class functionaries
are directly slapped in the face by disabilities ........  unfinished 
edits. Will be completed in further communication.

Revolutionary politics needs to reflect this dimension of human experience if it is
to succeed in the total  overthrow of Class-rule. What I really meant 
therefore by 'valorisation' of Disabled people is what occurs in those acts of 
personal rebellion, often inspired by a flame of opposition to the
technical, bureaucratised, social-monstrosity which Late Capitalism is
evolving into. For my own part, I have witnessed, participated and
recieved punishment along with other Disabled people for :
anti-establishment Graffiti, destruction of 'special' e.g.,
Orthopeadic equipment, forced adaptation\combination or 'Bricolage' of
Capitalist commodities to better meet diverse needs (an act which
blends to a certain degree with the former destruction), disrupted
proceedings at 'special' State-sector institutions, absconded without
leave from said institutions, barricaded and occupied rooms in an
institution, committed Arson, and damaged the private property of a
'Principal' member of Staff at an institution.

Autonomus Disability politics must reflect the truth 
that - there are in fact two worlds! i) The world of Human society, 
which is a 'Totality' as each particular dialectically reflects, in 
their heterogenous individuality, the multi-faceted needs of 
Humankind. This 'Underground Society' permenantly quests for free and unlimited 
access to resources in order express its species-essence - which is "To do 
natural things in an unnatural way". Humans of whatever physical and 
mental form are therefore inexorably engaged in this revloutionary struggle to synthesize
their environment, the material world, into diverse use-values to both meet 
subsistance needs and for personal creative action. ii) The second 
'world' is the antipathy of the first. It is the Class-Society of 
Procrustes in which individual heterogeneity must be racked and 
dissected to fit the virtual-world of Capital. In this sphere humankind is being dragged into an ever-more 
intensified division of labour - leeching productivity out of 'normal' 
limbs and neurons via Technocratic Capitalist machinery.  And in Capitalism today the 
ruling circles can now spy on the silicon-horizon the realization 
(through politically-neutral Scientific means!) of a Global work arena in 
which the struggle of the toilers may be ultimately stifled by a 
bio-technological erasure of human differences. Therefore an 
Autonomous, conscious engagement in 'Disability as Struggle' must, and 
will, inevitably lead to outright sabotage and rebellion against the 
expanding Capitalist work-machine and the institutions and officials 
of the Bourgeois State which service it. 
In conclusion - what we really have here is 'Disablement' as a 
contradiction which  moves between the two poles of the above Dualistic picture.
The experience of Disability will range from - being imprisoned beneath the 
misanthropic tendencies of privatised-space emerging out of Late 
Capitalism, to Disabled people taking advantage of every opprtunity for active 
Class violence/subversion that can be stolen from the Ruling-Class by the Bricolage 
of existing commodities and through access to privatised use-values (Telematic 
communications, computers etc.). It is now up to Autonomist and 
Direct Action movements to lead the way beyond a Civil-Rights 
formulation of' Disability. Only 'Disability as Struggle' will open 
our eyes to raise political consciousness and so push the tendencies 
of development in Late Capitalism towards the polarity of the Working 
Class.



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