Description
Luke Beesley – “But for them it is not a question of rights. The political struggle is won”: Disability in socialist Cuba through British Marxists’ eyesAbstract: The internationalisation of disability politics is, generally, treated as an elite affair; involving cosmopolitan policy wonks, large (somewhat distant) federations of national activist groups, or ‘rights tourists’ – whose experience in developed nations allowed them to become leaders of under-developed national movements. Less appreciated are bi-lateral relationships between activist groups; which provided movements’ grassroots with opportunities for comparative analysis of shared struggles, and critical reflection on liberation strategies.
This presentation analyses one instance of such a relationship, a study of disablement in socialist Cuba conducted by members of Britain’s Union of the Physically Impaired Against Segregation (UPIAS), and facilitated by the Havana Branch of the Associacion Cubana de Limitados Fisicos Motores (ACLFIM – Association of Mobility Impaired Cubans), to whom the Cuban state had devolved much of the provision of specialist disability services. The Marxist dominated British group were both excited and troubled by their empirical findings. By democratising disability services and putting them in the hands of disabled Cubans, the island had effectively removed antagonistic contradictions between helpers and helped. The results of this had not, however, prevented many forms of disablism – including segregation, medicalisation, institutionalisation, and poor urban access – from being widespread in Cuban society.
These findings problematised UPIAS’s original definition of disability oppression – which it had characterised as a ‘by-product’ of capitalist labour processes and national welfare economies (factors largely absent in Cuba’s political economy). I indicate how UPIAS’s conceptualisation of capitalism’s role in disablement broadened in response to the Cuban experience, becoming more sensitive to global regimes of accumulation and nation building projects in capitalist international orders. For the Cuban case, this facilitated a nuanced account of the role of imperialism in structuring disablement. For the British situation, it encouraged UPIAS members to engage more closely than hitherto with the rapidly changing composition of British capitalism.
Bio: Luke Beesley teaches Political Science at the University of Manchester, and is a Doctoral Candidate at the Centre for Applied Philosophy, Politics and Ethics at the University of Brighton. His work reconstructs Marxist theory developed in historical Disabled People’s Movements, and applies these to contemporary political and philosophical debates. He is a Fellow of the UK’s Association of Higher Education, and a qualified archivist.
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Bertold Scharf – ‘Disabled performance? Problematizations of work and disability in the GDR’
Abstract: Throughout the 20th century in Germany, work was seen as the most important factor for the “integration” of people with disabilities into society. Social policy was strongly oriented towards this field and if success had to be measured by contemporary parameters, then by the criterion of integration into work. This was not only the case in West German society, but also in the GDR. The latter is even regarded as a pronounced labour society, albeit not a meritocracy. An inclusive and nuanced historical analysis of the working conditions of people with disabilities can reveal new perspectives and, in particular, question the framing of the GDR in terms of performance orientation. I want to show that performance and ability to work played a role in the GDR that should not be underestimated and had concrete effects on the lives and wages of people with disabilities. Despite the Marxist tradition, performance held a very important position, as I can show by means of the “socialist performance principle”. The upheavals in disability policy also seem to have been more related to an international rehabilitation discourse and the concepts of disability prevalent there and less to the change of power from Ulbricht to Honecker, which dominates the usual periodisation of the GDR.
Bio: I am a researcher at Institut für digitale Teilhabe, Hochschule Bremen, Germany. I have studied social and economic history, Gender and Queer Studies and sociology in Hamburg and Munich. My Dissertation was about work and disability in the GDR. My new research areas are digital accessibility and participatory research.
| Period | 4 Jun 2025 |
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| Event title | Marxism And Disability Network: June 2025 Seminar - Disablement in the Socialist World |
| Event type | Seminar |