@quietmarc

Per my recent posts, this is a problem of prefiguration.

Namely, the configuration of our movements, the configuration of our advocacy, is so stuck in the rut of 19th century theory that it prefigures ignorance of disability at its core.

Without 21st century theory, to meet 21st century lived experiences, prefiguring disability among other issues as core to doctrine and praxis, we'll continue to watch so called "human-centered" movements fail. Such anachronisms cannot win out.

@beadsland @quietmarc

I guess this is because in 19th century European society, like 21st century society in much of the world, people with disabilities were so integrated that there was no need to talk about us as a separate group

Before modern medicine, pretty much everybody was disabled, one way or another

@NilaJones @quietmarc

Counterpoint, the way Marx defined the lumpenproletariat in many respects expresses a disdain for disabled folk (such as disabled veterans of the French wars), who Marx deemed to only show up in politics as tools of reactionary forces, so to "be used to combat the true proletariat in its efforts to bring about the end of bourgeois society".

Modern medicine aside, the workerism of 19th century theory glorifies one's exploitation as wage labor, this being the marker of revolutionary virtue, leaving everyone else as a "parasitic group" that "could not normally play a progressive role in history", thus "could not play a positive role in society".

Every time a Leftist complains that concern for disability or some other marginalized category is "splitting the movement", they are echoing sentiments of Marx (and likely many of his contemporaries who we might presume held similar opinion of those not abled enough to be targets of union organizing, which is to say targets of "class-consciousness").

Everyone may have been disabled, but not everyone was disabled in a way that marked them as lumpen. Marx invented a separate group for the express purpose of talking shit about them.