Commentary: “Capitalism & Disability: Selected Writings” by Marta Russell

This weekend I finished a collection of essays by disability rights activist, Marta Russell, called

Capitalism & Disability: Selected Writings.

Russell’s work was this month’s pick for a virtual book club held by Walela Nehanda— a non-binary, queer cultural worker. (become a Patreon member like me to support their work.)

TW: Suicide, institutionalization, poverty

Never before has a book radicalized me.

That word— radicalize— has such a negative connotation. It’s associated with terrorism, extremism, violence, and chaos. But why? The true definition of “radicalize” is to “cause (someone) to adopt radical positions on political or social issues.” But what is a “radical position”? What makes something radical? Radical is defined as “relating to or affecting the fundamental nature of something; far-reaching or thorough.”

Black political activist, philosopher, academic, and author Angela Davis defines “radical” as ‘grasping something at the root.’ Far-reaching or thorough, indeed.

the Code for Radicals: https://www.redbubble.com/people/codenoir/shop

Due to unfavorable associations, I contemplated picking another term other than “radicalize” to use in this piece. Words can be politicized to the degree that they are no longer useful because propaganda renders logic futile; I worried readers may see the word “radicalize” and stop reading. But no— I won’t abandon this word. I won’t hide it behind synonyms that wield far less power. Because if we run away from the word, we’ll forget (as many already have) that radicalization is healing.

Healing?? Yes.

My personal definition of “radicalize” is to piece together the truth— the truth of your own story. To listen so deeply, so to hear things left unsaid for centuries. To stitch back together something that was intentionally torn apart. To reclaim knowledge.

Unless you’re a member of the 1%, it is more than likely that your life has been negatively affected by the systems that govern our world (of course, to varying degrees based on identities.) Look back at your own life. People you’ve lost. People you love who need help but just can’t ever seem to get it. Look back even farther— look at your parents’ lives, your aunts’ and uncles’, your grandparents’ lives. Look back farther even than that. Look at your ancestors, many of whom you probably don’t know. But perhaps you know pieces of their story. Their journey. What did they face? War? Famine? Disease? Enslavement? Genocide? Such crises were initiated by something, right? Normally that something is a system. The struggles they faced— maybe they won or maybe they lost— were by-products of systems built intentionally. Once you start piecing together the truth of your life and your history, that system will grow more and more visible to you. Like your eyes adjusting to the dark.

That’s how Marta Russell’s book radicalized me. Slowly, I pieced together the truth of my own story. But it takes some grappling with— it’s painful. That’s why most people don’t see radicalization as healing, because the truth hurts. But the truth is what heals.

So why exactly did Marta Russell’s writing radicalize me?

To answer that question, you need to know a bit about my past and my family history.

My father died by suicide when I was six years old.

He wrote a letter, which I did not read until many years later as an adult. I won’t share any direct quotes from the letter, because it isn’t my letter to share. My father can’t give consent to his last words being broadcasted on the internet (which was barely even a thing when he was alive.) And many of the details are intimate to me and my family; it wouldn’t be right to include such sensitive information here. My vulnerability does have boundaries and I hope you all can understand that. For the purposes of writing this piece, I rummaged through my box of memories (old photos, notes from relatives, memorabilia, etc.), until I found the letter again. I read it once more, Marta Russell’s writing alive and ringing in my ears. And I pieced together the truth.

Capitalism killed my dad. Its presence is etched into each and every word of his suicide letter. Capitalism ensured that he was born into poverty and, due to unemployment, remained so until he died. This prevented him from accessing treatment for his mental illnesses and the culture of individualism born from capitalism convinced him that his disability was his own fault and that his best chance at avoiding institutionalization and supporting my brother and me financially was to die.

God, this is rough… for those of you reading who have lost someone to suicide, please take a deep breath here. I can feel myself crumbling under the weight of what I’m writing. I can only imagine it’s just as painful to read. The truth makes it worth it for me; I hope it’s worth it for you too.

Before we go any further, I’d like to tell you a bit about my dad.

Mark came from a Pittsburgh working-class family; they were steelworkers. Six-foot-five, with dark hair and a voice both resounding and tender, he was an intimidating presence. I remember being afraid of him, while, simultaneously, in awe. He called me “wisenheimer” AKA “smart ass”, ate Frosted Flakes for breakfast, played on an adult basketball league, and chain-smoked cigarettes. In the afternoons, we’d watch British comedy specials on VHS. He was a writer, a comic, an actor, a director— he loved the theatre, which is where he met my mother. Despite writing a number of children’s stories and screenplays, he wasn’t often paid for this work, but it represented his spirit better than any odd-job that he was paid for. A typical dad in many ways, he’d yell at me and my brother for turning on the overhead light in the car while he was driving, he wore grass-stained white tennis shoes and aviator glasses, which I stole and wore to daycare because they looked cool. (Now, I actually need glasses.)

While going through my mom’s storage unit last summer, I stumbled upon one of Mark’s old yearbooks from high school. Inscribed inside were notes from his classmates and nearly every single one said something along the lines of, “You’re the weirdest person I’ve ever met.” I wasn’t sure whether this was a compliment or not, but they were right. For birthdays or anniversaries, he’d draw handmade cards for my mom with a repeating character: Veloci-rabbit (part Velociraptor and part bunny). He also liked magic tricks (like pulling a spoon out of his ear or cutting off a fake, rubber hand, which he kept in a kitchen drawer.) I knew these were tricks, but one day he levitated. I saw him with my own eyes just lift off the floor. When I later told my mom, she remembered such a trick he’d play, but I was convinced it wasn’t a trick that time. To this day, I still wonder.

I think what made him strange was that, in addition to being a clown, he was deeply spiritual. Having grown up Catholic, he didn’t possess any fondness for organized religion, but he believed in God, ghosts, psychics, and the afterlife. Even though I don’t share his beliefs about heaven, I still feel him nearby. I’ll see him out of the corner of my eye and can’t help but wonder. He left me wondering.

Alongside all of these truths, there existed another version of him. He could be morbid. Dark. He was easily irritated, temperamental, and moody. To be honest, he could be a dick. He wasn’t always the best caregiver, leaving my mother to manage the cooking, housework, and the nitty-gritty of raising two little kids. Stubborn too. Looking back, I know now that he was lonely and deeply angry. And, in his loneliness, I think he made others lonely too, particularly my mom. Communication wasn’t his strong suit, but he cared, he loved, and he brought joy. He contradicted himself and lived a confusing life. And he confuses me to this very day.

But I understand more today, because of Marta Russell.

I’ve pointed the finger at many different things over the years as the cause of my father’s suicide.

At first, I blamed him for being “selfish” (though I know now that he wasn’t). Then, I blamed the divorce. I blamed myself too. It took years to convince myself that I wasn’t guilty of his death. Then I blamed his untreated mental illness. I blamed other people in his life. Eventually, I reached a place where I didn’t want to blame anything; it wasn’t anyone’s fault. Shit just happens. But 2020 has taught me a lot. I’ve seen things I never saw before. I’ve studied and explored. I’ve questioned. I’ve grown. And I’ve witnessed pain that is terrifyingly simple, pain that’s reparable but impossible to repair under current circumstances.

Now I understand that the blame is on capitalism.

How did capitalism kill my dad?

Let’s break it down:

First up, what is capitalism?

Capitalism is a system of private ownership and control of commercial enterprises, which are profit-driven to the sole benefit of those in power/ownership.

When we hear the word “capitalism” we think it simply refers to economics in general, as if our current system represents the only option for buying, selling, trading, and transaction. And this is because capitalism has convinced us that it is the only rational means of existence.

Marta Russell explains how pure economics, one cog in capitalism’s propaganda machine, affects our worldview.

"The founding principle for the dominant economic model of our day is 'pure economics' … a 'methodical individualism,' which treats society as nothing more than the apolitical aggregate of its component individuals, and strips the economic structure of any social dimension except the interaction of sole individual activity and projects."

Capitalism performs a strange dance, wherein it places fault on the individual, thus creating an individualist/pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps culture, and then persuades us that it is a system as natural as the water cycle, thereby silencing political critique. This is no accident; it is a ritualistic dance necessary for capitalism’s existence.

Samir Amin, an Egyptian-French Marxian economist, political scientist, and world-systems analyst argues that,

"[Pure economics is] a preoccupation with showing that 'the market' rules with the force of natural law, producing not merely a 'general equilibrium' but the best of all possible equilibria, guaranteeing full employment in freedom, the 'social optimum' and this preoccupation is nothing but the expression of a fundamental ideological need, the need to legitimize capitalism by making it synonymous with rationality-- which, in conformity with bourgeois ideology, is seen as nothing more than the use of technically rational means for the individual pursuit of mercantile profit."

So, while capitalism would like us to believe otherwise, it is unnatural and does not constitute the totality of our economic options. It has not existed forever. And it will not last forever.

Where, then, did capitalism come from?

According to Ibram X. Kendi’s How to Be An Antiracist,

“Capitalism emerged during what world-systems theorists term ‘the long sixteenth century,’ a cradling period that begins around 1450 with Portugal (and Spain) sailing into the unknown Atlantic. Prince Henry’s Portugal birthed conjoined twins — capitalism and racism — when it initiated the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade of African people.”

From its origins, capitalism is a system of hierarchy, where the powerful few harm the many and then profit from that harm. But how was this allowed to happen?

Capitalism’s birth required a radical shift in the meaning of human labor. (We’ll explore this shift more in-depth when we talk about unemployment.)

The industrial revolution harbored that shift. In factories, the human body was commodified and viewed as a machine. Rather than our work bringing value to our lives, capitalism ensures that our work brings value to the “exploitative class” (the elite) at the expense of our own well-being. Once we accepted that paradigm shift, year by year capitalism’s teeth sank deeper and deeper into us.

Now, hundreds of years later, capitalism is both unchanged and evolved.

As Marta Russell put it so beautifully,

"Capitalism may be changing by 'revolutionizing' into variations of itself -- but it always remains unchanged."

Capitalism’s central mechanisms cannot change; otherwise, the system would cease to exist. But it does evolve in the sense that the harder it forces itself upon the world, the more violent it becomes, and to evade punishment for that violence, it must occasionally shape-shift.

The title of the book is Capitalism & Disability, so where does disability come in?

Well, Marta Russell (as well as many Marxist thinkers) argues that capitalism invented the disability category.

Again, we find ourselves in need of some definitions, as many of us don’t fully understand the meaning of the word “disability” or “disabled”. Much like capitalism, we think we know, but we are only shown a piece of the puzzle.

According to Marta Russell,

"Disability is a social experience which arises from the specific ways in which society organizes its fundamental activities. Work, transportation, leisure, education, and domestic life disable persons when they are not accessible. We are 'disabled' by the way a society is organized."

When I first read this definition, my jaw dropped.

For as long as I can remember, “disability” to me meant that someone had an impairment that hindered their ability to function “normally” in modern society. The term referred more to the condition (whatever form it came in) than the experience of being disabled. But Marta Russell’s definition is the other way around. It isn’t one’s impairment that limits ability; it’s society’s organization that makes impairment limiting. If society were organized in a way that didn’t criminalize/pathologize impairment, then people with those impairments could participate meaningfully in societal and economic life without added suffering.

My dad was disabled. He had impairments that made day-to-day activities challenging because his body and mind did not conform to the way society is structured. He had undiagnosed mental illnesses. (I believe he was bipolar given his symptoms and the fact that I was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder II earlier this year, but the sad truth is that we will never know for sure.) I think it’s also fair to say that he struggled with anxiety, which has a major impact on one’s health. Due in part to the mental illnesses, genetics, and the fact that he could not afford treatment, other ailments popped up that compounded his suffering, like chronic back pain and digestive issues. (I inherited some myself.) However, it wasn’t until reading Capitalism & Disability that I even considered my father disabled. In my colonized imagination, only those who were wheelchair users, terminally ill, or otherwise visibly impaired were disabled. Because my dad’s impairments didn’t manifest in a visible way, the thought of him experiencing disablement never occurred to me. Today, we call this an invisible disability.

One way capitalism interacts with disabled people is through unemployment.

As I said, Mark came from a working-class family. He managed to get an associate’s degree, but he struggled to retain part-time and temp work throughout his life. Every two years he would somehow lose his job or need to find something else. A cycle. Full-time work was hard to come by and unreliable.

This is no accident.

Remember how capitalism cultivates individualism? Because of this dominating ideology, Americans tend to blame individuals for unemployment (laziness, poor work ethic, entitlement, etc.) My father blamed himself too. But the truth is that our economic system would collapse if everyone was employed with a living wage. Unemployment is REQUIRED for capitalism to work.

Look at the Federal Reserve.

Marta Russell writes,

"Although the Humphrey-Hawkins Act directs the Federal Reserve to adhere to goals of full employment, Federal Reserve monetary policy is based on the theory that a certain level of unemployment is healthy for the economy; it caters to investors' interests by manipulating interest rates to quash growth, which, in turn, cools down hiring. This, they rationalize, controls inflation but, more importantly, it protects profits and investments on Wall Street… Since the 1970s, the Fed has assumed the task of fighting inflation by raising interest rates, slowing economic growth, and keeping unemployment in check."

This may sound like a lot of economic jargon but stay with me here. This is important.

When unemployment is high, employers have the upper-hand. Why? Because they can drive down wages. People get desperate enough for work and they’ll accept any wage, even if it’s below minimum wage.

When unemployment is low (meaning people are employed), workers have the upper-hand. Why? Because they can negotiate wages to earn more.

So of course the Federal Reserve and other institutions of capitalism in America want unemployment to be high. They can force workers to compete against one another for the most meager of wages.

And which group of people tend to be the most chronically unemployed? Disabled people.

Why are disabled people the most unemployed? To answer that, let’s go back in history.

What did disabled people do pre-capitalism? They worked the land in ways that were feasible to them or otherwise contributed to the family’s well-being through trade or domestic work.

Russell writes,

"Notwithstanding religious superstition about disabled people during the Middle Ages, and significant persecution of them, the rural production process that predominated prior to the industrial revolution permitted many disabled people to make a genuine contribution to daily economic life."

Even under other oppressive economic systems, like Feudalism, when peasants/serfs worked the aristocracy/nobility’s land from cradle to grave, disabled people played an active role in work. Were there limitations that disabled people experienced that non-disabled people didn’t? Yes, but disabled people still worked; they were exploited just like everyone else.

So when did it change? When were disabled people shut out of employment?

The industrial revolution offered laborers a new exploitative landscape after the fall of feudalism. Workers were no longer tied to a piece of land. They moved into growing urban centers, into factories, where bodies were viewed as production machines. And if your body didn’t work like a machine, then you weren’t profitable enough to hire.

By promoting an economic culture that sees bodies as either profitable or unprofitable, capitalism disabled people and therefore created the concept of disability that we know today.

Russell writes,

"Industrial capitalism thus created not only a class of proletariats but also a new class of 'disabled' workers who did not conform to the standard worker's body and whose labor power was effectively erased and excluded from paid work. As a result, disabled persons came to be regarded as a social problem and a justification emerged for segregating them out of mainstream life."

In non-disabled people’s imaginations, disabled people are unemployed because they can’t do the work that’s required of them, due to their impairment(s). But the truth is that most disabled people could work if they were given reasonable accommodations. For instance, if you’re Deaf or Hard-of-Hearing, having an interpreter at work is a reasonable accommodation. But employers don’t want to give reasonable accommodations because it will affect their bottom line.

To understand this, you need to understand how employers make profits.

Employers accumulate wealth through the labor of their employees. A worker’s ability to work is called “labor power.” That labor power is sold to the employer in return for a wage. But this in and of itself is not where profit comes from.

Russell explains,

"If the worker produced an amount of value equivalent only to her wage, there would be nothing left over for the capitalist and no reason to hire the worker. But because labor power has the capacity to produce more value than its own wages, the worker can be made to work longer than the labor-time equivalent of the wage received."

Surplus value is where profits are made. Surplus value is the difference between the revenue made through selling a product and the cost of manufacturing that product. If an employer can make a product cheaply (by not paying their employees living wages, for instance), they can then sell that product at a price that earns them a profit. That profit doesn’t go into the pockets of the employees; it goes to the employer and their investors.

"Profit, as such, essentially resides in underpaid labor."

To actually make a profit off of your labor power, the employer finds ways to exploit you, their customers, and the earth’s resources.

If an employer is looking to hire, they will prefer the cheapest candidate.

What do I mean? Well, with the passage of the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990), employers were “required” (though rarely enforced) to not discriminate against a disabled candidate while hiring and to provide reasonable accommodations for disabled employees. If your employer pays for your health coverage, then they will most likely see a disabled employee as a more expensive choice because they may require health care services that non-disabled employees may not. Drawing money away from the employer’s profit margins and into health care for employees means that the employer won’t be making as much money. Same thing for reasonable accommodations.

As Russell points out,

"Because the material basis of capitalist accumulation is the mining of surplus labor from the workforce, the owners and managers of the businesses necessarily have to discriminate against those workers whose impairments add to the cost of production."

Disabled people are more likely to be unemployed and to suffer from chronic unemployment because employers can’t make as much profit off of their labor. Employers couldn’t make as much profit off of my dad and so they kept him unemployed and in poverty.

And poverty is terrifying.

At this point, you may be thinking, “Okay, what about benefits? Benefits alleviate some of that poverty, right?” Technically yes, but realistically no.

Disabled people can claim SSDI benefits (Social Security Disability Insurance) to supplement their low income or unemployment. On top of that, you can also claim unemployment benefits (sometimes) as well as specific welfare programs, where applicable. But, as much as the exploitative class accuses federal and state assistance programs of being “handouts” and responsible for growing “dependence” on the government, the truth is that these programs offer pathetic levels of financial assistance that provide a flimsy safety net at best and at worse can’t cover the essentials people need to survive.

Mikki Kendall, in her 2020 book Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women that a Movement Forgot, writes about the ludicrous nature of the bootstrap mentality paired with the reality of working-class life.

“Despite conservative narratives about ‘lazy people’, roughly 40 percent of SNAP [Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program] recipients are already working, and simply using food stamps to supplement their salaries and keep themselves capable of being in the workplace.”

And this is not just applicable to SNAP. Because Russell’s examples come mainly from the late nineties through the late 2000s, let’s look at an example from 2020. Again, Kendall writes,

“Take Illinois, for example, where a single parent receiving TANF [Temporary Assistance for Needy Families] for one child is eligible for a maximum of $412 a month. Even the most ardent proponent of mandating independence should realize that that isn’t enough money to cover the basic needs of two people.”

To make matters worse, assistance programs are difficult to access in the first place.

Russell explains,

"Already SSDI can be extremely difficult to obtain owing to denials and the need to appeal one's claim. Too often lawyers must be hired to do battle with the Social Security Administration. The process is rife with undue stress and economic hardship. Some applicants are made to wait one to two years for a final determination… After these applicants lose their jobs and while they wait for SSDI, the former workers' homes are often foreclosed on and they lose their cars and savings. Many become homeless."

While the exploitative class has convinced Americans that benefits are a form of entitlement, those benefits are barely accessible and, should one be lucky enough to gain that access, the amount is barely enough to get by. Furthermore, benefits are insecure, meaning they can be taken away.

Marta Russell shares the story of a quadriplegic woman named Lynn Thomson.

"She tried to earn some extra money by stuffing envelopes at home. Unbeknownst to Thomson, the work she did was in violation of SSA regulations. When she reported her income to SSA, they responded with a letter stating that she had received an overpayment and that her benefits would be terminated until it was paid back. SSA claimed that her Medi-Cal and attendant benefits would also be cut off. Losing one's attendant is a ticket for a nursing home, but loss of Medi-Cal is a death sentence to a quadriplegic. SSA was wrong about this part; she would not have lost her Medi-Cal. But she was never told this, and after a protracted and demeaning contest with SSA, Thomson killed herself, leaving a recorded message saying that the reason for her suicide was that SSA had put her through hell and she could no longer live with the anxiety."

This story becomes real for many more people when state and federal governments decide to cut funding to benefits programs. In my home state of Tennessee, back in 2004, former Governor Phil Bredesen cut off 191,000 Medicaid-eligible patients from TennCare (our state’s version of Medicaid). What happened? People suffered.

Marta Russell writes,

"Journalist John Spragens reported from Tennessee on the TennCare cuts. One story he told was about a forty-eight-year-old man who had a bipolar condition and thought he would be cut from TennCare and unable to get his meds. Bob wrote a note to his family and a poem for his sister. 'I know what a burden I'm going to be, and I don't want to put you all through it,' he wrote. He went to the local cemetery, called 911, and told the dispatcher that they could find him on his mother's tombstone. Then, he pulled out a gun and shot himself...'"

As you can imagine, this particular story hit really close to home for me. Although my father died in 2002 (two years before Phil Bredesen’s TennCare cuts), the trend towards this end began under Reagan. And although my father didn’t receive disability benefits and therefore didn’t rely on them as much as Lynn Thomson or the man from John Spragens’ story, the fear of homelessness and the anxiety of inescapable destitution played just as much of a role in my father’s death. Before Mark died, our little family unit filed for bankruptcy and my mother’s paychecks went directly to the bank. My parents separated and, shortly after, he died. It is undeniable that financial struggles were integral to his death.

Another reason why poverty can be terrifying is that should your poverty reach a degree where you are houseless, the institutions are there to swallow you up. This brings us to the ever-present enforcer of capitalism’s rules: institutionalization. My father’s suicide letter directly addresses institutionalization, particularly his fear of it.

In the letter, Mark knows he doesn’t look “well” and that he is acting strangely. He speaks to the dread of someone noticing and sending him “to an asylum.” My father feared losing control of himself and his autonomy. Mark knew how close he was to institutionalization, though some may have described this as paranoia. How could one not be paranoid? With institutionalization comes the fear of abuse and powerlessness. If you feel hopeless before a system, suicide can become appealing.

Why is institutionalization so bad? Especially today, after decades of reform?

Institutionalization is frightening because of how institutions treat people, especially disabled people. Inside institutions, human beings experience a number of abuses, like being punched, kicked, choked, groped, and sexually violated. Often times those inside deal with untreated bedsores, malnutrition, dehydration, and illness caused by inadequate sanitation. Prisons are notoriously filled with houseless people, many of them disabled, and guards frequently confiscate things like wheelchairs and hearing aids. Guards are also known to move the furniture around inside blind prisoners’ cells. Prisoners experience psychological torture in isolation cells and sensory deprivation tanks. For disabled people, institutionalization is the norm, whether the institution is a prison, asylum, or nursing home. Disabled people set an example for anyone who doesn’t abide by capitalism’s demands.

Marta Russell writes,

"[The institution] is repressive in that all those who either cannot or will not conform to the norms and discipline of capitalist society can be removed from it. It is ideological in that it stands as a visible monument for all those who currently conform but may not continue to do so: if you do not behave, the institution awaits you."

But what does institutionalization have to do with capitalism?

According to Marta Russell,

"Institutions in general, including prisons, have functioned to support the accumulation of capital and the social control of the surplus population, including the reserve army of unemployed left adrift by an economic system which dictates that large numbers of workers must be unemployed."

Russell elaborates,

"Though transfer to nursing homes and similar institutions is almost always involuntary, and though abuse and violation of rights within such facilities is a national scandal, it is a blunt economic fact that, from the point of view of the capitalist 'care' industry, disabled people are worth more to the Gross Domestic Product when occupying institutional 'beds' than they are in their own homes."

Our institutions aren’t there to nourish us or our society; they are there to extract wealth from us by force.

If you’re disabled, one little thing can mean the difference between life and death. After 40-odd years of it, my father couldn’t take it anymore. He believed that he was worth more dead than alive, financially, because capitalism indoctrinates us to equate what’s in our wallets with our worth. And he felt that his death would at least give my brother and me access to his life insurance money. Mental illness contributed to his suicide, but it was money that pushed him. By money, I don’t just mean the dollars in his pocket; I also mean the system that makes money a life or death factor in one’s life and the system that intentionally discourages mutual aid, communal care, and meeting the needs of human beings, rather than corporations. Capitalism.

At this point, some of you may feel a bit overwhelmed, not just by the information, but by the political implications of this knowledge. One implication being the urgent need to reject capitalism and do something else. But this might feel like a big leap, especially if you are new to studying capitalism. Truth be told, I’m new to this too. And I’ve arrived here slowly. Over the course of 25 years, my opinions migrated from “Capitalism is an unfortunate necessity,” to “Maybe we can change capitalism to work better,” to “Capitalism can not be reformed; we must dismantle it.” It took me (as a white person who in many ways benefits from capitalism) to witness fascism with my own eyes before I could grasp capitalism at the root. And there is still so much to learn. The bottom line is this: it’s okay if you need time to piece together your own story, to reach the questions whose answers possess the power to radicalize.

If not capitalism, then what?

If we acknowledge that,

"… economic suffering, low wages, and poverty are not the results of individual moral failings or a pathological 'dependency' nor a decline in Protestant work ethic, but rather, are built into the structure of modern capitalism,”

then we can build something else. Returning to Samir Amin,

“… pure economics is not rational, it is a para-science (not a science as it claims to be), which needs replacing with a reality-based approach."

What would a reality-based approach look like? Such an approach would have to answer the question of what an economy is for.

Is the purpose of an economy “… to support market-driven profits or to sustain social bonds and encourage human participation?"

In the economy of the latter, each person has a fundamental right to a livelihood (full employment at a minimum of a living wage and quality disability-sensitive universal health care). A year ago, maybe I’d have said such a notion was “pie in the sky.” But today I realize just how badly capitalism wants me to believe that a better world is not possible. By shifting our priorities away from violent military conquests, for example, we’d have enough money to take care of each other. What a radical thought.

But it’s one thing to nail down the thing you want to fight against. It’s another to know what you’re fighting for.

Me? I’m fighting for healing. If you know anything about intergenerational trauma, then you know that this shit haunts families. Once one person in a family dies by suicide, it becomes much more likely that someone else in that family will too. It’s unfortunate math. I recognize that capitalism killed my dad and that it will more than likely kill me too… somehow. I’m fighting for healing so that maybe I can survive it or, even if I can’t, that my children may survive it. Maybe if I fight hard enough, then they won’t just survive but thrive.

I want you to know— whoever you are— that it took everything in me to write this piece. I’ve had to face my father’s death again, experiencing that pain wholly new. I’ve had to face my own mortality; how much I share with Mark and how likely it is that I follow in his footsteps. I’ve wondered if this truth will ever make it to people who knew my dad and how it might make them feel. I’ve contemplated deleting the entire post. I’ve cried.

But I know that I’m not alone. I’d wager that capitalism has killed people you love too in one way or another. I’ve seen it nearly kill other people in my life who were fortunate enough to survive. Maybe you’ve survived it yourself.

If you’re still here despite capitalism’s best attempts, if your friend or family member is still here, I see you.

More than anything, I hope that you find the truth (or the truth finds you.) I wish for you moments of comfort, joy, and rest as you grapple with that truth (or as it grapples with you.)

Last edited: Sunday, January 3, 2021