A Review of Ina Dimitrova’s Disability in the Work Utopia: Images of Productivism Author: Anton Kolev, SofiaThe System is Killing Us, started a series of protests in the Bulgarian capital. A tent city arose in front of the National Assembly building in Sofia. The movement spread across the country. This was an enormous challenge for the government since, at that time, Bulgaria had assumed the presidency of the Council of the EU. The excessive pressure on the ruling elites brought ministerial resignations: of the Minister of Labour and Social Policy first, followed by the Deputy Prime Minister after he made incendiary statements about the protesters. Meanwhile, the protesters had challenged not only the government but also the nationally-representative organizations of the disabled.Life With Disability in the Work Utopia: Images of Productivism makes a timely intervention. More specifically, she takes stock with the reigning ideology of the protest movement, that of integrating people with disabilities in society through inclusion in the labour market via what she calls “the work utopia”. However, Dimitrova's research puts these local phenomena well into their historical context, exploring the relations between capitalism (classical and neoliberal) and socialism to disability.previously earned, insured and thus deserved, with the exploitation of our productive capacities, with our usefulness . I produce, therefore I exist for state and society. The limits of my existence are the limits of my productivity. Dimitrova claims that this specific ideological discourse governs us efficiently into desiring to be productive and that its consequences are – as she calls it – our “framed identities”. Here labour is understood as the supreme ideal, as joy -, prosperity - and identity -bringer, as man's only need and desire or what Josef Pieper once called total labour . This is exactly the ideological whirlpool in which the 2018 protests have plunged into. him Roma or immigrant, he can be temporarily unemployed or a woman on maternity leave, a disabled person and so on. Thus, we should ask ourselves, where do the injured, the infirm, the weak and thus the “unproductive“ in general fall into this production-at-all-cost framework? Which image do they personify? Are they ‘parasites’? Where do their loved ones – those who take care of them and become “unproductive” as well – fall into this diabolic hierarchical matrix of utility? The answer, in harmony with the neoliberal ethos, is that they do not fall in it but are cast overboard. And the only way they can “crawl” back is through paid work. And if they do, their “deserved” place is at its bottom. But how can “our” productive and exploitative society mobilise their latent and potential productive forces? Moreover, how do people with disabilities and their allies formulate the goals of their emancipatory struggle in the context of total labour? The author extensively examines many of the international policies and struggles in this direction, both past and present. Her conclusion is mainly disheartening. The Bulgarian activist movements, she argues, have failed to formulate an anti-systemic demand that is so essential for movements such as UPIAS in the UK and the IL Movement in the United States. A demand that is able to break from the socio-economical determinations of total labour. However, this problematic ethos, this evaluation of human existence according to its capacity to produce, is not an inherent and exclusive domain of capitalist states.Critique of the Gotha Program : “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs”. Substituting the last word with "work" in his The State and Revolution, Lenin remained fully committed to the imperative of productivism. The reasons for that are to be found in laggard construction of socialism in the Soviet Union where a world and a civil war had decimated the industrial workforce. To make up for that, the government sped up the country’s development by turning to the "reserve army of labour". In doing so, however, while pretending to subordinate the economy to human well-being, the Soviet state did exactly the opposite. Dimitrova illustrates this by showing how people with disabilities were hierarchically cared for, according to the causes that led to their disability. Thus, disabilities resulting from causes other than work-related accidents or military actions were relegated to the bottom of the hierarchy. Consequently, people born with disabilities were marginalized and do not possess the social privileges enjoyed by others. Reformulating the conditions in which medical expertise can “create” disabled people, the party leaders imposed a patronising and disciplinary policy in opposition to the capitalist one, perceived as “spoiling” its beneficiaries.productivity-at-all-cost discourse, but this time in its interiorized forms woven into the very substance of their struggle. The protesters, exclusively mothers, sharply emphasized the importance of the investment that society made into their children and, therefore, the benefits that it should obtain from people with disabilities. Benefits which would be embodied by the figure of social exchange and most of all – by the payment of taxes. This invokes the idea of “normal citizenship” understood mainly through the figure of the diligent and tax-paying citizens. Moreover, the mothers talk about their own “payback”, their own reward from the becoming-productive of their child. Their own labour becomes meaningless if and when their children fail to be productive and useful for society. Therefore, the worst possible scenario for their children, according to the protesters, is to be seen as “parasites”; to be reduced to clients of the welfare state, who rely solely on its “mercy”. The total labour imperative is persistent, all-pervading, absolute. The productivist ethos’ most demanding feature crystallizes as the one that makes people with disabilities and their primary carers feel alienated, dis-placed and most of all - placeless. Those who cannot find their place , who are placeless under the productivist sun, are also useless. exteriorized , here the structural differentiation comes from inside, from the activists themselves. This interiorized fragmentation , which the author calls “disability spectrum” is once more based on the productivism imperative. The different categories of disabled people also involve their carers, insofar as they are the ones who directly benefit from their capability to produce. Their parents are also their defenders. They defend them from all other disabled people - the ostensibly “unproductive” ones. It will come as no surprise that in this war within the movement, the completely unproductive ones are cast as “parasites”. But such a division hierarchically orders suffering itself. “How much does he suffer after being educated and physically healthy, even though he is blind?”, asks one of the mothers. One does not have to be blind to understand that blindness does not let you fit equally into the unfettered market competition narrative. One of the important lessons of Dimitrova’s study is that the productivist logic is incapable of delivering emancipation. Most likely, it will relegate the struggle in the apolitical kingdom of neoliberal, self-help individuality. At its worst, it might lead to more exploitation, to more productivism, embodied in the rising popularity of social entrepreneurship, to which Dimitrova turns in the final part of her study. The case study in focus here is “Ole Male”, a private endeavour of two business ladies and passionate supporters of the mothers’ protests.community driven by the ideals of entrepreneurship”. Dimitrova takes “Ole Male” as a paradigmatic embodiment of the productivist ethos. An embodiment of the “cruel promise” of autonomy, well-being and dignity through more and more work. She carefully examines the intrinsic premises of the initiative. We can assume that if the struggle stays within this very framework, “Ole Male” will be only the beginning of the profits generated on the back of these people.individualized the problem . Hence, we have witnessed a resistance that, in its attempt to fight back the system, stiffened it. The Bulgarian activists have missed pointing at the productivist ethos or the fantasy about the "free competition" as the primary cause of their miserable condition. They have neglected the very essence of capitalist production, accumulation, exploitation and subsequent atomization of society, which bring about the accidents that led to the disabilities in the first place - poorly adjusted working spaces, car crashes, wars, interpersonal and intimate partner violence, polluted environment, etc. Consequently, we, the leftists, have also failed to push the movement in more progressive directions. It is this deficit in radical imagination that Dimitrova’s study also attempts to redress. But even though we failed, this should be a lesson for all future movements. Thus, Dimitrova’s main conclusion is that if society is willing and able to incorporate a significant proportion of people with disabilities and their carers in the production process for the sake of dignity and autonomy, precisely the opposite effect will be achieved. It will serve as an excuse for the exclusion and lack of social benefits for the completely incapable ones. The future struggles concerning people with disabilities must transcend the boundaries of total labour and, therefore, of the productivist ethos itself.Life With Disability in the Work Utopia: Images of Productivism , is published by KOI books with the financial support of Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung. It will be launched on September 25th in the National Students’ House, Sofia at 6 pm.
Author: Iva Marčetić
Author: Nikola Kovačević
Authors: Igor Štiks/Krunoslav StojakovićOn the morning of 15 April 2009, students of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences (Filozofski fakultet) in Zagreb interrupted classes to declare a blockade (blokada) of the premises. What began as just another student strike against the rampant commercialisation of higher education would become the day the Left was born—or rather re-born—in the post-socialist Balkans.