Autism is incompatible with Capitalism, or how I learned to stop blaming myself and became a leftist.

Throughout most of my life I have never been a very politically informed person. I have always striven to live my life in a way that I thought was suitable for me. In this manner I tried to be as helpful as possible and to always do my best. People always told me that if I did that then that everything would be fine.. They were wrong.

When I was 18 years old I was diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder(or Asperger's Syndrome at the time due to the DSM(1) still being in it's Fourth edition). This diagnosis came after a rough divorce of my parents. This in combination with the financial trouble that followed caused me to suffer from some major mental health problems. This diagnosis did not a whole lot for me emotionally speaking but it did allow me to finally make sense of the issues I had ran into in my life at that point. It felt like everything finally made sense. I did not make mistakes and failed everything I tried because I was dumb, I was just Autistic! I was just not made for these kinds of things! It was like a light switch had turned on in my brain. However once you get over that initial realization you run into an issue, namely "What now?". You have your diagnosis and some medication but that's it. 

This is different now but when I was diagnosed I was barely an adult and at the time were there basically no resources for Autistic adults. Everything was aimed at kids and all I had was a diagnosis and a recipe for some anti psychosis medication. That was it, I was basically told to figure it out on my own. With this in mind I finished highschool and tried to attend college. I thought that if I informed people that I was Autistic then that they could help me with the issues I ran into. I was wrong. I have studied in 3 separate studies for 3 years and every year I ran into some kind of issue. Either the amount of information I had to work with was overwhelming, or the travel time to my college was too long and I ran into sensory overstimulation issues, or I had issues working with other people in situations where I was forced to do so. Each time I got a person(usually some kind of counselor or dean) at that study to talk to about this, and each time they could not help me. 

Let me tell you something. There is no better way to destroy your self esteem then to see everything you try end in failure and to see every project you do fall apart. In this time period I had an extremely low self esteem. I was blaming myself for what had happened to me and while my Autism diagnosis at first felt like a revelation, it now felt like a curse or a disease. I cursed my Autism and therefore myself and I often wished that I was never born. A few years after all of this however I began to get into left wing ideas and theory. This was mostly aided by the then nascent "breadtube" or left wing YouTube. I began to learn about systemic injustices and how often the things that happen to us are out of our control. How the way we structured our society inherently gives disadvantage to many people for arbitrary reasons. I also began talking a lot more to other Autistic people and I learned that many of them were running in the same problems in life that I was. This all made me think. Maybe I could not be entirely blamed for failing everything. Maybe I was just running into a systemic wall constantly. It should not be surprising that not much later I ran into some studies and theories that confirmed my suspicions. I ran into the Neurodiversity movement. This was a movement of people that would fight for the rights of Neurodiverse people, AKA Autistic people and people with other forms of Neurodiversity like ADD and ADHD. The more I read, the more I learned and the more I learned the more I realized that our society is not made for people like me.

Let me make this perfectly clear, as long as our current economic system of Capitalism exists and as long as people are enslaved to the system of wage labor is true liberation for Autistic people impossible. Capitalism judges the value of a person by how much they can work and if you cannot perform then you are "defective"(2). Society will punish you for aspects of yourself that are completely out of your control and you will always be stuffed into the box labeled "disabled". No matter how hard you work, how much you try to fit in, or how "high-functioning"(3) you are(gods I hate that term). There is no way that you will ever be able to get on top of the world on your own. This is discrimination based on someone's ability to work. We call this ableism. It does not apply to only Autistic people but it is a major part of our struggles.        

Capitalism is build on ableism(2). Like with racism, queerphobia and labor exploitation, it requires ableism to function. We cannot abolish capitalism without also abolishing ableism. They are tied together like a steam locomotive needs fuel and water. It cannot function without it. This is also why reform does not work. It does not matter how many "social workshops" you set up. It does not matter how hard you try to push disabled people into the labor market, it does not matter how many personal coaches and counselors you put on someone. We cannot live our lives the way that we want, in the manner that works the best for us as long as the current state of affairs persists. You cannot build a house on a broken foundation after all. 

Capitalist society lives on the myth of the individual. Especially in the so called western world. This myth claims that if you are unable to function in society then it is your own fault. "Maybe you did not work hard enough" they jeer at us. "Pull yourself up from your bootstraps" the trust fund babies of the world yell at us. This rhetoric is false. No amount of hard work will ever get you at the top of the world as an Autistic person. Not without some kind of capital to back you up. Even these "self made millionaires" had some kind of investor backing them up. And before you hustle culture people start jumping down my throat: I have worked myself to the point of a burn out on 2 occasions. This has drastically lowered my sensory input tolerances and crippled my capability to work in extremely noisy environments, most likely permanently. You can say a lot of things about me, but I was not lazy nor was I unmotivated and I resent any claims made to the contrary. The bottom line is that Capitalist society denies me and people like me the chance to live our lives to our fullest extents in ways that work the best for us. 

This is infuriating to me. I find it abhorrent and despicable that our society is like this. More importantly I find it abhorrent and despicable that so many people are okay with this. I have made a few gestures in the past where I talk about Ableism in left wing spaces(4) and I don't want to dwell too long on this but there exists a serious problem of work fetishism in our society. Everyone regardless of political affiliation is obsessed with work which puts me a legally disabled person into a difficult position. It has never been said to my face but I have encountered more then a few people who made disparaging comments about how expensive disabled people are to society. I would like to remind those people that the Nazis used similar rhetoric to justify their murder of hundreds of thousands of disabled people under their Aktion T4 program(5).

We should not put up with this. We should not be accepting this. We should be fighting this corrupt system and all that it entails. From capitalism to the state that protects it. From the disgusting mentalities that perpetuate ableism to the very nature of how we socialize. 

This is why I call myself a leftist. Not because of any theory I have read but because my lived experiences have left me with this conclusion.         

For all the flaws that exists within the left wing movements of the world, for all the bickering and splitting, for all the drama and all of the pointless debates are left wing movements our only choice for liberation. This is the main reason why I am a leftist. Because I want liberation for us all. Liberation from injustice, unjust hierarchies and freedom from scrutiny and alienation. 

I want a world where Autistic people can choose their own destiny in their lives, freely without a society telling them what to do or finding ways to exploit us. I want a world where we can live without the fear of being discriminated against for our Neurodiversity. I want a world where we don't need to worry about such things as masking anymore.  We need to make sure that the left wing movements across the globe understand that Ableism needs to be fought and is part of the class struggle as well. We need to fight for our freedom with our comrades, to make sure that our struggle is not neglected by the winds of revolution. I know that the chance of our liberation happening in my lifetime will be incredibly slim, but I have to fight on, if not for myself then for the people that will come after me. That is why I am writing this article. 

I call on all Autistic people and everyone else that has been alienated from society due to their Neurodiversity to join us in our struggle against the Ableist Capitalist states that perpetuate our suffering! Only the abolishment of these obsolete hierarchies and the building of egalitarian structures to take their place can bring us liberation!

LET THE OPPRESSORS TREMBLE BEFORE OUR COMBINED POWER! WE HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE AND FREEDOM TO GAIN!

   

Notes and sources:

1. The DSM(short for Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders) is the standard classification for mental disorders used by mental health professionals in the United States and Europe(and beyond). It is currently in it's 5th edition. 

2. https://monthlyreview.org/2021/01/01/disability-and-welfare-under-monopoly-capitalism/

3. "High Functioning Autism" is an ableist term that I loathe to use. Nevertheless it is still often used by those who wish to reform our capitalism system into being more palatable for us and as such I have decided to include it here.

4. See my article: "The Left, Ableism and a conversation we need to have"

5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aktion_T4