Makers of the Modern Mind
An Analysis of Disability and Ableism From a Marxist Perspective Jimmy Chen ’20 Walking through Lawrenceville, I see how all of our academic buildings have elevators and how many of our classroom signs are written in braille. Supposedly, our campus is quite disability-friendly, and the world outside our gates appears aware of those living with disabilities as well. The whole front of a public bus is reserved for the elderly and the physically impaired, most commercial businesses reserve parking spots closest to the entrance for the disabled, and many government-funded buildings such as courthouses and clerkhouses have wheelchair ramps. Although we attempt to integrate the lives of those living with disabilities with the lives of the able-bodied, the proportion of disabled people employed in the workforce is 19.1%, which is strikingly lower than the 65.9% figure representing the employment of able-bodied people (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics). Evidently, ableism, societal discrimination against those living with disabilities, is rampant. According to Fiona Kumari Campbell, a leading figure in disabilities studies who serves on the faculty at the University of Dundee, Scotland, ableism is “a network of beliefs, processes and practices that produces a particular kind of self and body (the corporeal standard) that is projected as the perfect, species-typical and therefore essential and fully human. Disability then is cast as a diminished state of being human” (44). But what exactly is “disability?” The two most common models used to define “disability” are the medical and social models. The medical model defines “disability” as “a physical or mental impairment of the individual and its personal and social consequences,” while the social model defines disability as “a relation between an individual and her social environment: the exclusion of people with certain physical and mental characteristics from major domains of social life” (Wasserman et al.). Although these two models are different, they are interrelated. The former is the more colloquial use of the word, while the latter contextualizes disability as a basis for ableism. Since ableism is a social discrimination practice that comes as a natural consequence of our capitalist society, I will show through a Marxist framework that our conventional models of “disability” are perpetuated by our societal norms and conventions, suggesting that ableism is best solved by dismantling our equation of economic value to human value. First, I will establish Marx’s model and critique of capitalism. In “Wage 37
