Capitalism, Ableism, and the Glamorization of Productivity

Content warning: mentions of the Nazi regime

Obtaining an ADHD diagnosis was hard. The stigma surrounding cognitive disabilities and the endless hoops the medical system made me jump through certainly contributed, but the worst part was everyone around me insisting that I was faking it and that nothing was truly wrong with me. The first thing my mom said to me when I told her I suspected that I had ADHD was that it couldn’t possibly be true. After all, I had such good grades, a fact even my doctors used as evidence against me. I did eventually get diagnosed. Nonetheless, I wasn’t prescribed medication, because my doctors continued to judge my ADHD as “not really much of a problem.” It didn’t matter that I’d grown up being told I was wasting all my potential being lazy and disorganized. Or that I had been bullied my entire life because I was considered too weird and too annoying by my neurotypical peers. Or that I’d had several recent mental breakdowns because of my overwhelming workload. My grades were excellent, which meant my ADHD apparently wasn’t much of a problem.

I am not the only one who’s faced this issue. Many neurodivergent people who aren’t officially diagnosed, or were diagnosed in adolescence or adulthood, speak of a very similar experience. Over and over, we’re told essentially one thing: that our suffering doesn’t matter as long as we measure up to everyone else’s standards of worthiness and that those standards are tied inextricably to our capability to achieve. It doesn’t matter if we bleed ourselves dry in our efforts to do so; if anything, we are encouraged to endure unimaginable levels of mental and physical anguish in order to be conventionally productive, only for this display of productivity to be leveraged against us. We are inspirations if we demonstrate our capabilities, paragons of human resilience who require no support, or we are tragedies if we accept our impairments, hopeless cases no level of support could possibly fix.

The truth is, we’re neither inspirations nor tragedies; we’re human beings. Yet that is meaningless in a society defined by capitalism, where people are not humans but resources. And what worth is a resource if it has no extractive value? Indeed, Hans Asperger, the Austrian psychologist after whom Asperger’s Syndrome is named, defended the few high functioning autistic children he deemed intelligent, yet he participated in the Nazi child killing program. This case, while horrifying, is not unique. Disability history is brimming with countless examples of violence, systemic abuse, forced sterilization, and murder, especially since the advent of eugenics in the nineteenth century. Disabled people, by virtue of our comparatively limited ability to be conventionally productive, were judged unworthy of the right to live and reproduce. 

Make no mistake. While it’s disabled people that bear the brunt of the harm dealt by this capitalist ideal, everyone suffers under it. We’ve all heard friends brag about the all-nighters they’ve pulled as if they were trophies. We all know people who seem glad to hustle away at their workplace at the cost of their personal lives, never realizing that they’re actually being exploited. We’ve all justified skipping meals and turning away friends to complete a project, and we’ve all worked despite being sick or exhausted. At some point in our lives, we’ve all prioritised productivity over all else, often to significant personal detriment, and not many of us have paused to consider whether it’s worth it. 

Yet we cannot simply break away from productivity, not when lower working hours mean less pay and when lower grades mean less opportunities to obtain better, more secure jobs. Especially not amidst a historic cost-of-living crisis and the fourth consecutive year of a pandemic, all of which have shown how broken our welfare systems truly are. While your inability to be productive may not put you in a concentration camp anymore, it can absolutely render you homeless. It’s not surprising, then, that so many of us buy into the belief that our ability to achieve is what renders us worthy as people, because that idea is anything but metaphorical for many. Their human rights to food or shelter are in fact inextricably tied to their value as a resource within the capitalist machine.

One thing is clear: neither disability justice nor broader collective wellbeing can be achieved within a capitalistic framework. Oft-touted solutions like self-care and accommodations, while certainly well-meaning, are nowhere near enough. What we need is nothing short of a radical shift away from capitalism and hyper-individualism. On a structural level, we must not only strengthen social supports but universalize them, granting everyone access to not just basic necessities but also adequate comforts regardless of their ability or inclination to work. On a cultural level, we must thoroughly re-evaluate our collective priorities and move away from a profit-centric economy to a people-centric society. Furthermore, we must build and bolster communities, mutual support systems, and networks of care. We must transition from independence to interdependence, because the truth remains that none of us, able or disabled, can survive without relying on one another. 

In a non-capitalist world centred around interdependence and community care, I’d likely have had a far easier time asking for and receiving the supports I needed. I’d likely never have felt like my prospects for a career and future hinged upon my schoolwork, and I’d likely never have had a breakdown if I couldn’t manage my workload. I’d likely never have felt the shame of not measuring up to the standards of others, and my suffering might have been heard, recognized, and alleviated instead of being callously brushed over simply because my grades were fine. 

Community care is how we decenter one’s individual productivity and recenter our collective humanity. Community care, and not individualistic self-care, is what holds the key to genuine disability justice, and what will ultimately pave the way to our greater collective wellbeing.