Abstract:
This paper investigates how the digitalisation of work reconfigures the understanding of workers, their labour, and their value. Drawing on technoableism theory, which foregrounds how technologies establish new normative, disabling standards of capability, we analyse the shifting ontology of the worker in digitally intensive workplaces. We base our study on extensive qualitative data collected with managers, workers, trade union representatives, technology providers, labour market intermediaries, and local authorities across 12 warehouses in three European logistic hubs. Our analysis shows how warehouse workers are problematized as fallible, defective productive resources through systematic comparison with digital technologies, and how these latter are conversely constructed as necessary to enhance, fix and “save” them. In this way, a negative ontology of the human as disabled, generic labour power, holding at best residual “soft” skills, is established, within which any claim to the value generated is pre-emptively undermined. Our study shows that technoableism offers a powerful theoretical lens to interrogate and demystify the worker empowerment trope at the core of Industry 5.0.
24th March 2026, 6:30pm UK time – Annelies Scheers & Patrizia Zanoni: The machinistic production of the ‘defective worker’: A technoableist analysis of labour in digitalized warehousing
marxismdisability.wordpress.com/2026/02/16/m...
05.03.2026 12:07
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Hope and refusal in an era of criminalized care: Responses to Pirate Care
YouTube video by Max Haiven
The video recording of 'Hope and refusal in an era of criminalized care: Responses to Pirate Care' is now available online: www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSyF...
#Anticapitalism #PirateCare #Resistance #CollectiveAction @plutopress.bsky.social
05.03.2026 10:35
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Thanks to everyone who joined us today! Once the recording becomes available, we'll share it here
Our next event will take place on 24 March from 6:30pm GMT with Annelies Scheers & Patrizia Zanoni – The machinistic production of the ‘defective worker’
marxismdisability.wordpress.com/2026/02/16/m...
03.03.2026 21:04
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3 days left (including today) to submit an abstract for the Notes from Below issue on Disability & Work!
25.02.2026 01:11
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Many thanks to everyone who submitted abstracts for our 2026 series of monthly online events! We will get back in touch with everyone in early March & looking forward to what's to come!
22.02.2026 13:26
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Pirate Care - Pluto Press
Inspiring stories of real life and often risky activism resisting the global criminalisation of care
Pirate Care was publishd by @plutopress.bsky.social as part of the Vagabonds Series in early 2025. You can find out more about it here: www.plutobooks.com/product/pira...
And make sure you join the reviewers & authors for a discussion on 3rd March, 7pm GMT: vagabonds.xyz/hope-and-ref...
19.02.2026 12:18
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Printscreen of the video recording's cover page with the title of the presentation on a yellow background, alongside HM's logo
Our CfA for 2026 MDN events is open until 20 Feb!
marxismdisability.wordpress.com/2025/11/17/m...
From our archives - Georgia van Toorn and Karen Soldatić: Disability, Racism, and the Spectre of Eugenics in Digital Welfare
marxismdisability.wordpress.com/2023/10/18/n...
#Disability #Marxism
19.02.2026 11:50
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Printscreen of the video recording's cover page with the title of the presentation on a yellow background, alongside HM's logo
Our CfA for 2026 MDN events is open until 20 Feb!
marxismdisability.wordpress.com/2025/11/17/m...
From our archives - Sabine Fernandes & Rachel da Silveira Gorman - Care as white property: A Marxist intervention into disability care work
marxismdisability.wordpress.com/2023/09/20/o...
#Disability
18.02.2026 19:43
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Poster for the event featuring a tarot card with pieate carers, the invitation to join the event and the logos of the collectivee supporting the event - bsa, mdn, cas, rival, alternatives to capitalism research network, and the vagabonds book series of pluto books
Join us on March 3, 7pm GMT for an online discussion of Pirate Care by Valeria Graziano, Marcell Mars, Tomislav Medak
This event is supported by various collectives & will launch a book review forum published in the Postdigital Science & Education Journal link.springer.com/article/10.1...
18.02.2026 14:15
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Printscreen of the video recording's cover page with the title of the presentation on a yellow background, alongside HM's logo
Our Call for Abstracts for 2026 MDN events is open until 20 Feb!
marxismdisability.wordpress.com/2025/11/17/m...
From our archives - Scott Ritchie: Holding mad kids in community: Resisting Capitalism’s Disabling Processes in a Primary Grades Classroom
marxismdisability.wordpress.com/2023/09/16/s...
17.02.2026 13:07
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Printscreen of the video recording's cover page with the title of the presentation on a yellow background, alongside HM's logo
Our current Call for Abstracts for 2026 MDN events is open until 20 Feb!
marxismdisability.wordpress.com/2025/11/17/m...
From our archive - Ioana Cerasella Chis: Disablement Subjectivation and the Reproduction of Capitalist Social Relations
marxismdisability.wordpress.com/2023/08/30/h...
#Marxism
16.02.2026 10:33
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Printscreen of the video recording's cover page with the title of the presentation on a yellow background, alongside HM's logo
Our current Call for Abstracts for 2026 MDN events is open until 20 Feb!
marxismdisability.wordpress.com/2025/11/17/m...
From our archive: Aaron Jaffe: Social Reproduction Theory, ‘Disability’, and the Reification of Labor Power
marxismdisability.wordpress.com/2023/07/04/j...
#Marxism #Disability
15.02.2026 20:40
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Printscreen of the video recording's cover page with the title of the presentation on a yellow background, alongside HM's logo
Our current Call for Abstracts for 2026 MDN events is open until 20 Feb!
marxismdisability.wordpress.com/2025/11/17/m...
From our archive: Blue Maignien: Researching Time at the Intersection of Marxism, Disability and Technology
marxismdisability.wordpress.com/2023/03/10/j...
#Marxism #Disability
15.02.2026 13:50
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Printscreen of the video recording
Our current Call for Abstracts for 2026 MDN events is open until 20 Feb!
marxismdisability.wordpress.com/2025/11/17/m...
From our archive: Ravi Malhotra and Jacqueline Moizer: Crip Time, Castoriadis and #Disability Rights in the Workplace
marxismdisability.wordpress.com/2023/03/10/m...
#Marxism
13.02.2026 12:25
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Printscreen of the video recording
Our current Call for Abstracts for 2026 MDN events is open until 20 Feb!
marxismdisability.wordpress.com/2025/11/17/m...
From our archive: Luke Beesley: Extract and abandon? Surplus populations & surplus value in Health Communism
marxismdisability.wordpress.com/2023/03/10/a...
#Marxism #Disability
12.02.2026 13:08
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printscreen of the video recording
Our current Call for Abstracts for 2026 MDN events is open until 20th Feb 2026!
marxismdisability.wordpress.com/2025/11/17/m...
From our archive: Leonard Grant – Marxism and the Medical Curriculum
marxismdisability.wordpress.com/2023/03/10/m...
#Marxism #Disability
12.02.2026 12:54
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Poster for the event. On the left half, a tarot-like imagery is featured, in black and white, of pirate carers by the sea. On the right side, it reads 'please join us on March 3rd, 2026 at 7pm (UTC+0) online for a discussion of the book Pirate Care: Acts Against the Criminalisation of Solidarity with the authors and with contributors to a new critical forum on the book that appears in the Postdigital Science and Education Journal. To register, visit vagabonds.xyz
Hope and Refusal in an Era of Criminalised Care: Responses to Pirate Care
7–8pm GMT, Tuesday 3 March 2026, online
Event supported by MDN & co-hosted with other collectives
Register here: lakeheadu.zoom.us/meeting/regi...
Book Review Symposium link: link.springer.com/article/10.1...
09.02.2026 14:39
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February 2023 – Katharine Terrell: The fat* disabled Walmart shopper; or, how not to be a good consumer under capitalism
This paper considers an everyday occurrence: going grocery shopping. The normative expectation is that everybody will enter a shop, reach the shelf with the item they need, pick it up and put it in a basket. Du Gay (2004, 157) describes this “autonomous” shopper being encouraged to spend in “the proper exercise of individual shopping liberty” – they are not free, ut they are sold the idea that they are. For disabled people, this becomes more complex. Jennifer Knapp Wilkinson, a disabled American, discovered that strangers were mocking a photograph of her (which had been taken without her permission and published on the Internet) in which she falls from her mobility scooter as she reaches for groceries from a shelf.
Our current Call for Abstracts for 2026 MDN events is open until 20th Feb 2026! marxismdisability.wordpress.com/2025/11/17/m...
From our archive: Katharine Terrell
"The fat* disabled Walmart shopper; or, how not to be a good consumer under capitalism"
marxismdisability.wordpress.com/2023/03/10/f...
08.02.2026 17:50
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Printscreen of the video recording's cover page with the title of the presentation on a yellow background, alongside HM's logo
Our current Call for Abstracts for 2026 MDN events is open until 20th Feb 2026! marxismdisability.wordpress.com/2025/11/17/m...
From our archive - Arianna Introna
"On Crip Compositionisms: Recognising Disability in Our Midst"
www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPhy...
#Marxism #Disability #Anticapitalism
07.02.2026 14:49
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New deadline - 20th February 2026
04.02.2026 15:02
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Just a few hours left to submit your abstract!!
31.01.2026 14:20
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3 weeks left to submit your abstract for a 2026 MDN presentation at an MDN event!
10.01.2026 18:12
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Poster for the workshop that reads 'worker witing workshop online, 6pm January 21st 2026
Marxism and Disability Network // Notes From Below"
Have you registered to attend the Worker Writing Workshop due to be delivered by the MDN Steering Committee & Notes From Below on 21st Jan from 6pm GMT?
If you're interested in contributing to the upcoming NfB issue on Disability and Work, join us!
luma.com/spnoc68z #Disability #Work
15.12.2025 13:20
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Want to join our mailing list? Tag us below & we'll send you the link!
#Marxism #Disability #DisabilityStudies #Anticapitalism
11.12.2025 18:57
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Worker Writing Workshop (Marxism & Disability Network + Notes From Below) · Luma
Join us for an online worker writing workshop!
An open space to share your ideas for writing about work, we will draw on previous workers' inquiries to…
Very excited to collaborate with Notes from Below on a Disability & Work Issue
On 21st January we'll be hosting an online workshop - an open space for sharing ideas on work, it'll draw on previous workers' inquiries to introduce methods/frameworks for writing about your experiences luma.com/spnoc68z
11.12.2025 16:43
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