[Marxism] Ravi Malhotra: The Political Economy of Disablement: Advances and Contradictions

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                [Great analysis of Disability...DOQ]

         THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF DISABLEMENT: ADVANCES AND
                           CONTRADICTIONS
                   Marta Russell and Ravi Malhotra
Having a disability is conventionally regarded as a personal tragedy which the
individual must overcome, or as a medical problem to which the individual must
become adjusted. In 1976, however, the Union of the Physically Impaired Against
Segregation in Britain made a significant advance when it pointed out that 
?disability
is something imposed on top of our impairments by the way we are unnecessarily
isolated and excluded from full participation in society?.1 Among those 
concerned
with disability it soon became common ground that ?it is society which disables
persons with impairments?.
This social model of disability2 necessitates a rethinking of prevalent 
definitions.
Leaving aside biological or physical-anthropological definitions of disability 
which
make it appear that impaired persons are ?naturally? and, therefore, 
justifiably,
excluded from the mainstream labour force, even quite mainstream definitions 
have
serious shortcomings. The World Health Organization, for instance, defines
impairment (the condition of being deaf or blind, or having impaired mobility or
being otherwise impaired) as the physiological ?problem?; disability as 
restricted
functions or activities resulting from an impairment; and handicap as the
?disadvantage resulting from the impairment or disability, that limits or 
prevents the
fulfillment of a role?.3 This terminology has been criticized by social model 
theorists
of disability because it relies primarily on medical definitions and uses a bio-
physiological definition of normality. Further, ?the environment? within which 
this
?disadvantage? is located, ?is represented as ?neutral?, and any negative
consequences of this approach for the person with an impairment are regarded as
inevitable or acceptable rather than as disabling barriers?.4
Reconceptualizing disability as an outcome of the political economy, however, 
also
requires acknowledging the limitations of the ?minority? model of disability, 
which
views it as the product of a disabling social and architectural environment. In 
this
view the fundamental source of the problems encountered by disabled persons is
prejudicial or discriminatory attitudes, implying that by erasing mistaken 
attitudes
society will accept ?difference? and equality will flourish.5 This approach 
diverts
attention from the mode of production and the concrete social relations that 
produce
the disabling barriers, exclusion and inequalities facing disabled persons.
In contrast, we take the view that disability is a socially-created category 
derived
from labour relations, a product of the exploitative economic structure of 
capitalist
society: one which creates (and then oppresses) the so-called ?dis-abled? body 
as
one of the conditions that allow the capitalist class to accumulate wealth. 
Seen in
this light, disability is an aspect of the central contradiction of capitalism, 
and
disability politics that do not accept this are, at best, fundamentally flawed 
strategies
of reform or worse, forms of bourgeois ideology that prevent this from being 
seen.

Full: http://www.yorku.ca/socreg/RusMal.htm

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