In response to the recent policy announcement to slash £5 billion of spending on Personal Independence Payments, Helena on Novara Media decried the Labour government as being “obsessed with work”, claiming that “this hasn’t been and shouldn’t be a Labour party principle”. She rejects the claim that “work is good for mental health”. This is illustrative of how far ‘the left’ has fallen from common-sense working-class politics. Not a long time ago, left-wing media would have strongly advocated for addressing unemployment, a message that workers in Britain could get behind. It seems that Novara believes one of two things; either disabled people can make no contribution to society, or “from each according to their ability” is a maxim consigned to history. We need to offer a Marxist alternative.
The conservative position is that claiming benefits has become more appealing and rewarding than working for a wage. Therefore, many people have become reliant on the state to provide for them, with some even going as far as falsely claiming to be disabled in order to maximise their potential earnings. The solution is to ‘motivate’ people into working by stripping back these benefits, rendering non-working as a less attractive option.
The liberal position held by many on the political left, is that anyone who chooses to describe themselves as disabled should be free to opt-out of work. Any attempt to bring more disabled people to the workplace is therefore inherently an attack on their freedom. While the words of the prime minister’s spokesperson are that “disabled people should not be treated as a write-off to society”, the liberal response is, ironically, that they should be.
The communist position, is that anybody with the ability to contribute to society but does not, is a loss to society. The primary reason that disabled people don’t work is because there are solvable barriers to them working. Our solution needs to be removing those barriers. We should campaign for the provision of jobs tailored to certain types of disability, meaningful implementation of workplace adjustments so disabled people can contribute, training and education that is accessible in the first instance so that necessary qualifications can in fact be held by disabled people, and most importantly all the necessary changes to see disabled people gain the ability to live meaningfully as equal members of society in all aspects of life unrelated to work.
As an example of how these latter two positions can clash, my work has a particular role that needs fulfilled each day, which essentially involves standing still for eight hours straight. Rather than coming together through our union and splitting this boring and strenuous task into a rotation of eight one-hour shifts, what we saw was people come up with medical reasons as to why they personally cannot fulfil that role. I know for a fact that for some of them, these medical reasons are nonsense. I can certainly sympathise with those who want to avoid such tedium so badly they would make up ailments they don’t have, but consider also how this example validates the communist position— it is not insensitive to say that, actually, nearly everyone would be unenthused at the idea of spending a whole shift stuck on their feet. Unfortunately, someone at work still has to spend eight hours a day on their feet, and now that a precedent has been set for giving medical reasons for not performing this task, it becomes a little more difficult to argue for the logical division I mentioned above. If individuals can avoid the task entirely because of a medical reason, why would they support doing a fraction of the task instead? Conversely, anyone arguing for the one-hour turns looks like they want to force the disabled to do work they are unable to do. Our solution shouldn’t be an individual one, but a collective one.
While wages stagnate and social mobility remains a fable, it’s only natural that workers search for a cause that is “out of their hands”. Often that search arrives us at disability, and as a result of this we have seen the advent of a new type of disability; neurodivergence. Nick Walker, an academic who has written extensively about neurodiversity for his blog Neuroqueer, outlines:
“Neurodivergent means having a mind that functions in ways which diverge significantly from the dominant societal standards of ‘normal.’
“Neurodivergence can be largely or entirely genetic and innate, or it can be largely or entirely produced by brain-altering experience, or some combination of the two. Autism and dyslexia are examples of innate forms of neurodivergence, while alterations in brain functioning caused by such things as trauma, long-term meditation practice, or heavy usage of psychedelic drugs are examples of forms of neurodivergence produced through experience.”
The term is a conceptual framework, that is used to group together and form discussion around a huge and vague gamut of people; it is not a condition in itself. Put simply, it doesn’t have a scientific definition which can be used to state “that person does fall into the category, and that other person does not”. It does include some conditions under its umbrella, which are scientifically defined like that, but neurodivergence itself does not and the anti-scientific perspectives of proponents of the term such as Walker are made clear by their explicit rejection of this as “pathologising”.
In everyday parlance, neurodivergence is given the weight of a testable condition, such as Autism Spectrum Disorder, without a qualified professional’s judgement. As said above, it describes a massive range of specific conditions with their own specific needs. Useful language should make things clearer to understand for everyone, but the term neurodivergence erases nuances and obscures what it is trying to describe. Taken to its logical end, it can describe both an individual who finds wearing an itchy jumper especially unpleasant and someone living with paralysing brain damage.
This vague term becomes especially objectionable when it collides with postmodernism. By rejecting any objective truth, definable irrespective of personal experience, postmodernism dictates that the supreme authority of reality is the self, rather than the material world. It is naked idealism, and due to its prevalence within the academy and the cultural left, it has pushed impractical, unscientific and half-understood concepts to the top of our discourse. This prevalence can be compared to an ‘echo chamber’, where proponents of postmodern concepts have an artificially inflated sense of surety in their beliefs, due to rarely engaging with an opposing perspective.
Therefore, those using neurodivergence as a hard scientific term have quietly advanced, unchallenged on the left, and have now become entrenched to the point where any pushback is perceived as a vicious attack. Merely questioning the validity of self-described neurodivergent status is typically met with horror, and the castigation of ‘moral repugnance’ for challenging an individual’s ‘lived experience’. It is similar to the vitriol levelled at those critiquing the other postmodern and immaterial concepts that the left has inexplicably given credibility to for several years, such as gender identity or queer theory. Indeed, much of the critique of neurodivergence can also be applied to the phenomena of ‘non-binary’ or ‘pansexual’ identities, being so subjective and vague they fail to describe any materially distinct circumstances.
I would argue that the offensive proposition in this topic is using language to erase all scientific nuance between a variety of conditions, that many people seek and are grateful to receive specific diagnoses and support for. As Walker writes, neurodivergence can describe both a child struggling in school due to dyslexia, and a car crash victim. As the vanguard, we need to be able to say that ‘neurodivergence’ is not a medical term or condition or disability someone can have, but rather an academic term that has been grossly misused to mean anything and nothing simultaneously. It is not something to be ‘reclaimed’ as its original meaning is still scientifically useless as a descriptor of disability, and we should instead stand for diagnosis by expert practitioners, as opposed to self-identification.
Returning to my original example one final time, it’s clear I get agitated about standing eight hours in a row doing nothing. My colleague likely feels the same. For me to say ‘actually I am neurodivergent, therefore my experience must be taken more seriously than yours’ is simply emotionally manipulating my colleagues. The fact is that is not a job anyone should be doing. When a community or workplace has issues, we organise to fix those issues, we don’t individually opt out.
There are very real, very serious, non-physical disabilities. These may need adjustments in the workplace, or other types of support. We cannot abandon the people who really suffer from these issues by treating neurodivergence as the same thing. If we’re to support any subsection of the working class, we need to agree who we’re talking about, and combat ideas which dissolve that subsection, by expanding it to mean anyone. We need to challenge neurodiversity, and hold that the unique nature of the human experience is not a disability.
“We’ve got a duty to fix the system, to ensure that safety net is always there for the most vulnerable and severely disabled, but also [that it] supports [people] back into work, rather than leaving people written off,” the prime minister’s spokesperson said. Many elements of the left have reacted to this sentiment in shock. Communists don’t disagree with this one bit. We are however in disagreement that this can be given as a justification for the antagonistic policy put forward by the Labour Government— one that will do nothing to support disabled people in finding work, and will only financially hurt them and their families. Anyone who thinks we would ever celebrate a policy which sees money lifted from the pocket of about 900,000 children who live in families on incapacity benefit, does not understand the communist cause. But anyone who thinks we would oppose other policies actually aimed at fighting unemployment among the disabled, also doesn’t understand the communist cause.
When speaking with my friend Jess, the Chair of the Unite Community Edinburgh branch as well someone currently unable to work due to disability, I asked her about what Labour’s proposals mean to her:
“Every time I’ve had a full time job I’ve had to leave – I would need to work part time. I grew up poor, I never went to uni, my experience of work has always been hospitality and retail, and the experiences there are so unwelcoming and alienating for everyone, not just disabled people. But this reality makes it so much harder for disabled people to get back to work. The Labour government can try to frame things in terms of the individual, but ultimately if you want to change things for all disabled people, you have to fundamentally change the relationship between people (disabled or not) and their work. Without properly funded NHS and secure, well equipped housing, you’ve failed to get disabled people back to work already.
“As a disabled person, I’m entitled to bring a carer to the cinema with me for free. I don’t want that. I didn’t ask for that. I want a council house and medical services that mean I can work again. The government refuse to put in place the building blocks to support us back to work, and then will no doubt point to our free cinema passes as a reason we’re too comfortable not working. I don’t want to go to the fucking cinema, I want to be able to work.”
The working-class movement has long fought against the bogus idea of “voluntary unemployment”. That there may potentially exist a tiny, indiscernible number of people who allegedly choose to be unemployed, is no excuse to cut benefits. We recognise that the unemployed are people who want to work, but for a myriad of reasons don’t have access to appropriate work. Unemployment is not the fault of those unemployed. I would never make such a brazen, condescending assumption that someone out of work must be a person who has no ambition in life, no desire to contribute to society, and no interest in getting a job. We campaign to see them employed once more. I think this approach would be shared by almost everyone on the left. So, why is this respect withheld from disabled unemployed people? Why must disabled people be ‘othered’ into a category that the left treats as incapable? Why does the same left that demands we don’t use the word ‘imbecile’ insist on treating disabled people like imbeciles?
Phill Kelly is a member of the Young Communist League’s Edinburgh branch
