Episode 161: The Reserve Army of Labour

“Today’s episode critiques capitalism’s exploitation and exclusion of autistic individuals within the labor market. It argues that capitalism utilises the “reserve army of labor”—a pool of readily available, underemployed workers—to suppress wages and control the workforce and that autistic people are strategically positioned within this reserve army, often facing unstable employment and systemic barriers. In the source article, Dr. Jaime Hoerricks exposes how misleading unemployment statistics obscure the true scale of precarity and how learned helplessness is used to condition marginalised workers to accept their economic disposability. Dr. Hoerricks advocates for autistic-led employment solutions like worker cooperatives and a Universal Basic Income (UBI), emphasising the need to dismantle capitalist structures that perpetuate scarcity and exclusion and instead argues that systems must be built that center human well-being. Finally, they consider algorithmic censorship that keeps these truths from being widely known.”

Here’s the link to the source article: https://open.substack.com/pub/autside/p/the-reserve-army-of-labour-autistic

Let me know what you think.