Imagining Alternative Futures with Gig Economy Workers Subjected to Structural Disablement Oppression and Exploitation

Based on a research project called 'The Politics of Disablement and Precarious Work', this talk explores the critiques and vantage points of twenty-seven UK-based gig economy workers subjected to disablement oppression and exploitation, in relation to what it means to be a ‘productive member of society’ and what alternatives could be found to the productivism of the current institution of work in the UK and beyond. Thus, the talk also presents participants’ critiques of the principle of ‘productivity’, what they would replace this principle with, and what they would do if money were no object. The reflections shared by participants as co-visionaries in this project offer insight into how to struggle collectively (through trade unions, Disabled People’s Organisations, and other collectives) towards the new horizons of a transformed society. The horizons are based, concretely, on alternative social relations prefigured against and beyond the capitalist wage system and its productivist and disabling dogma of work. Centring participants’ political aspirations in the way adopted in this project (through the ethico-political praxis of seeking and amplifying under-represented vantage points) goes against the mainstream individual model of disability’s narrow search for the subjects of disablement’s pathologised ‘needs’ that ignores questions of their desires and collective struggles for flourishing. Indeed, as hooks put it, ‘imagination is one of the most powerful modes of resistance that oppressed and exploited folks can do and use’ – and put into practice (2010:61). With hooks’ perspective in mind, two cautionary notes are warranted. First, Cholbi (2018) points out that desires underpinned by a productivist orientation towards ‘work’ can be understood as an adaptation (‘adaptive preference’) to the constraints of everyday life in current capitalist societies - a ‘desire formed under, and in response to, unjust circumstances of work’ (2018:14). Second, Deranty (2022) emphasises that (waged) work can and does have social and collective value for individuals, despite its constraints upon their everyday lives. However, rather than seek to reveal deeper meanings behind participants’ perspectives or selectively rescue the limited usefulness of work undertaken for a wage, this talk instead points to the contradictions that the participants have faced in their everyday lives and what they perceive as the way out of such contradictions. The findings in this paper are of relevance to activists, political economists, and sociologists interested in advancing a solidarity-based politics from below that no longer sidelines or omits the structural processes of disablement which have characterised capitalist oppression and exploitation from its beginnings and until its end. At the same time, this talk is also an intervention in Disability Studies, which has generally abandoned its commitment to the social model of disability and Marxism since the mid-1990s (Chis 2023). To this end, I put forward the argument that a synthesis between post-'68 Marxisms and disability politics is necessary (with empirical research that adopts a workers' inquiry as a method that can support the imagining and organising for alternatives to capitalism) is long overdue.