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Copying a thread over that I wrote on bsky months ago bringing a #Marxist perspective into #disability politics, a lens of analysis I find severely lacking.
"Too disabled to work" does not necessarily mean "too disabled to do tasks." It often means "so disabled that zero employers want to hire you."
There are a fuckload of office jobs I could do with reasonable accommodations. Unfortunately, as soon as any interviewer sees my cane and autistic mannerisms, my fate is predetermined.
"work" under capitalism is a construct in this way. likewise, disability (unlike an impairment) is defined in relation to the dominant modes of production under capitalism at any given time. Dyslexia went largely unnoticed until the workforce was required to read.
an impairment is what it is, e.g. needing glasses. following the glasses example, needing glasses (for nearsightedness and farsightedness) is NOT a disability because society fully accommodates it without question. glasses are completely normalized, so people who need them face no oppression for it.
the same can't be said for being unable to lift 10 pounds.
I understand the appeal of the argument that "if you need glasses, you have a disability it's just 100% accommodated and normalized by society", as a gotcha to ableists. But that is not a materialist definition of disability. Disability is something you get actually oppressed for.
Not all impairments are disabilities (e.g. the glasses example), and not all defined disabilities are impairments or even medically sound (e.g. Trump Derangement Syndrome as posited by the MN GOP).
There is no explanation for ableism and disability that includes completely made-up nonsense diagnoses which doesn't differentiate between a disability and an impairment. The GOP wants to treat Trump Derangement Syndrome like a real mental illness, but that's not even remotely medically sound. It's not the first time.
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