Tillbaka

Really, the fact that I'm too autistic to write an article about autism touches on the key point I wanted to make: that the problem we are facing is of a system that nullifies our creativity and steals our labour.

How ablism is a system of stealing our energy, and how that means things about how we should respond.

In general, I think it's most useful to look at the central 'isms' as systems of expropriation. They aren't just bad little thoughts inside people which can be educated away like a priestly exorcism.

Ablism, sexism, racism, classism, exist as systems that keep going because they keep on stealing our energy like vampires.

Now sometimes this seems hard to understand, even for leftists. Maybe Marxism has made us believe that (capitalism) takes our labour and makes it into **value**. So for a long time Marxists and other traditional socialists ignored areas of society where they thought value wasn't being created. They thought that women's struggle and antiracism were distractions from the factory where labour is stolen and value created.

But I think we need to look at labour-theft in a different way.

Consider the Toni Morrison quote:

"The function, the very serious function of racism is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being".

In other words, often the system of exploitation will take your labour only to destroy it, to burn your own energy before your eyes. No value created, but domination is reproduced.

It's here I think we need to look for inspiration in fighting ablism, in the theories of labour and exploitation that women and Black thinkers have articulated.

So I see ablism, not as some wrinkle in the system, but as *Ablist Supremacy*.

Just like White Supremacy and patriarchy, it is s system that lives off others' labour, but is centrally about control rather than capital reproduction per se, although economic production is part of it as well.

Just like how white supremacy exists to discipline the entire society and patriarchy exists to discipline all genders, so ablism exists to control everyone, because none of us are ever able enough. We all get ill, we all get old, we're all born young.

So ablism is an economic-authoritarian system of supremacy that looms like a big stick in the sky that can be used to beat anyone over the head. No sick days for you, no maternity leave for you. You're not able to handle the stress of this job? Sucks to be you.

Disability is the knife against everyone's throat, which can be used at any time.

@Loukas "Disability is the knife at everyone's throat". Damn. Well said.

@Loukas To some of us, certainly.