Robert Chapman’s new book Empire of Normality has sparked fascinating and important discussions about the meaning of neurodiversity and its relationship to liberal capitalism.¹ Chapman’s basic argument – in the book and these discussions – is that the current economic system in the West is unlikely to be fully inclusive for neurodivergent people.² Fundamentally, I can’t disagree with Chapman here, but I think there’s still a lot of tweaking we can do to improve the system, and I am concerned that overly radical rhetoric or agendas could compromise our ability to achieve realistic change in the near future.

Even so, Chapman does make a compelling case for their view, and I agree with much of it.  Neurodivergent people are extremely diverse, and while some of us do have great abilities, numerous autistic and neurodivergent people have quite significant support needs.  Although it is easy to underestimate people – I have often been surprised at the strengths of people with high support needs and how skillfully they can capitalize on their strengths to earn money – it seems ableist to me to deny the realities of the challenges, barriers, and functional limitations faced by numerous neurodivergent people.  The simple and undeniable reality is that many autistic and neurodivergent people don’t have the “right” kinds of strengths and abilities: abilities that can be used to obtain wages for labour.

Moreover, even those who do have marketable strengths and abilities can still end up being excluded from the labour market.  To avoid issues like inflation from emerging within the present economic system, a certain level of unemployment is economically necessary,³ and this fact is freely admitted as a sort of necessary evil by managers of the present system, like central bankers.  In our present economic system, if there aren’t enough unemployed workers, then employers would have trouble hiring anyone without offering them higher wages, which in turn could destabilize prices.  Unfortunately, because autistic people are discriminated against even when we are highly qualified for jobs, many autistic people end up being chronically unemployed, or in patterns of insecure employment for low wages.  It often seems disabled people are the ones who must suffer in order to prevent the problem of inflation.

Today, companies are increasingly developing hiring programmes to counter the discrimination faced by autistic and neurodivergent people, and to create jobs for us.  I’m definitely not (and Chapman is not) saying that’s irrelevant or valueless.  Perhaps these initiatives will allow for more equitable sharing of the burden of unemployment made necessary by our economic system.  But in a way, this could just change our ideas of what constitutes a socioculturally normative mind/brain⁴: moving more people with marketable abilities into the socioculturally normative group doesn’t change the basic fact that other people will fall outside it.  So even if these programs expanded out of the limited range of occupations (like tech jobs and low-skilled jobs) that have been prioritized to date, even if they offered a range of opportunities across a variety of fields, then there would still be problems.  Ultimately, these neurodiversity hiring programs are based on tapping neurodivergent people’s abilities to create profit for employers – but not every neurodivergent person has skills and abilities that an employer can turn into profit.⁵

This suggests, to Chapman, that a neurodiversity approach rooted in liberalism and endorsement of the present economic system is vulnerable to capture by powerful elites, and that it is not enough to achieve our goals.

The Value of Liberalism

However, as highlighted by Sam Fellowes, and as I’ve commented before, there is much about neurodiversity that is deeply rooted in liberal individualism.  The neurodiversity movement is fundamentally about recognizing and valuing individuality.  I have previously quoted this lovely passage from a 19^th Century liberal thinker, John Stuart Mill, which has always struck me as being a beautiful anticipation of key neurodiversity principles:

“It is not by wearing down into uniformity all that is individual in themselves, but by cultivating it and calling it forth, within the limits imposed by the rights and interests of others, that human beings become a noble and beautiful object of contemplation; and as the works partake the character of those who do them, by the same process human life also becomes rich, diversified, and animating, furnishing more abundant aliment to high thoughts and elevating feelings, and strengthening the tie which binds every individual to the race, by making the race infinitely better worth belonging to.”

One particularly important point: as Fellowes says, the neurodiversity movement believes that individuals can have self-insight and should be empowered to make choices.  While neurodiversity advocates have been careful to acknowledge the reality that all humans are interdependent, and the illusory nature of the ideal of human independence, neurodiversity advocates do highly value self-determination and autonomy, and rightly so.  I see two particularly important reasons why this sort of autonomy is especially important to us:

1. First, neurodivergent people all have unusual minds and brains, and thus it stands to reason that we can prefer or need different niches, environments, and lifestyles than neurotypical people.  In order to organize our lives to suit our individual needs and preferences, we need a certain level of autonomy.
2. Second, we are a marginalized and minoritized group, and the track record of dominant groups in society making choices on behalf of the marginalized and minoritized is, well, not great.

Neurodivergent Power

Now, Chapman doesn’t deny that there are liberal aspects to neurodiversity, nor do they deny that these liberal aspects can be valuable and important.  But they do suggest that liberalism is insufficient, and calls for a more radical approach.  Inspired by the “Black Power” movement that emerged in the United States, which aimed to promote Black collective power, self-sufficiency, and self-determination, Chapman calls this “Neurodivergent Power.”

I obviously don’t think there’s any harm in engaging in academic critiques of the existing socioeconomic systems of the liberal West.⁶ However, I do have concerns about the idea of “Neurodivergent Power.”  A key one is simply the fact that I don’t think we are realistically likely to develop much power in the foreseeable future.

Part of the Black Power movement’s goal was to set up a sort of self-sufficient Black economy for Black people, for example by developing more Black-run enterprises and cooperatives.  Like Chapman, I agree neurodivergent people’s similar efforts are important.  For example, we could create more neurodivergent-led organizations hiring neurodivergent people, establish more neurodivergent communities, and promote representation of neurodivergent therapists and support workers.  However, we are already striving to do much of this, and there are limits on what is feasible in this direction.  I think Steven Kapp expresses the fundamental issue here well:

“Chapman’s conception of Neurodivergent Power risks placing inordinate responsibility on marginalized neurodivergent people to transform forces much greater than ourselves, even if in solidarity with other oppressed groups.”

The socioeconomic and disability-related barriers and challenges facing neurodivergent communities quite are enormous.  Members of our community often have limited “spoons” – not to mention money – and may be struggling to simply exist and survive.  We can’t expect our own efforts to fundamentally transform this situation.

But what else is possible?  Unfortunately, the same problem – a current lack of power – that limits our ability to pursue self-sufficiency also limits our leverage.  Neurodivergent people are scattered across the world in small numbers – we aren’t a majority anywhere – and the diversity of our communities already makes it very hard to unite us behind a common banner or campaign.  Even if we could be united, many or most of us are in extremely marginalized and disempowered positions.  Such power as we have is mostly “soft” power – persuasion, not leverage or coercion⁷ – and it’s much easier to persuade people to endorse general aspirations and principles than to persuade them to fork over money and resources.

And a key problem with the Black Power movement was that many white people were deeply skeptical of its strident and militant rhetoric, and whether or not that wariness was justified, it seems clear that such skepticism hurt the movement’s soft power.  Given that neurodivergent people have so little hard power, and that we thus depend so much on soft power in our advocacy, it seems very risky to take a militant approach.  In particular, we should be wary of rhetoric that could be exploited to divide people based on identity group membership.

Lobbying and Special Interests

Of course, having so little power makes the problem of how to advocate for neurodivergent people’s interests a very difficult one, and pretty much any path could be criticized.  So the real question is – is there a better alternative?

Presumably, our goal here is something along these lines: to develop a socioeconomic system where all neurodivergent people – including those neurodivergent people whose abilities can’t be (or presently aren’t being) converted into wages – are able to exercise the maximum level of autonomy that is safe and appropriate given their capacity to make decisions.  We want neurodivergent people’s rights to be protected, and we want people’s identities and dignity to be respected, but we also want neurodivergent people to have the sort of meaningful freedom that comes with having resources, access to any needed supports, and options.⁸

Given that we have limited hard power, and a highly diverse community with widely varied specific interests, how can we accomplish this goal?

Well, at present, the main way that people obtain a little “extra” in the system is by lobbying for it.  If you’ll forgive me a bit of a digression, I’m actually not convinced that the current economic system is capitalism.  Adam Smith, who is generally credited with inventing the idea of capitalism, was primarily developing his ideas in opposition to the mercantilists: people who thought the state should intervene in the economy by protecting industries and creating monopolies.⁹ Basically, Smith didn’t like it when powerful, rich men became even more powerful and even more rich by lobbying their rich friends to tilt the system in their favour.¹⁰ He wanted a level playing field.

The funny thing is, although we call our system capitalist, it not only includes elements of socialism – public services, utilities, education, etc. – but also elements of mercantilism.  It’s fairly common nowadays for governments to offer subsidies or “pork barrel” contracts to big companies.  Such subsidies and contracts are generally justified based on the need for national development¹¹ – the same goal sought by mercantilists – but they do have the side-effect of providing profits for the companies’ shareholders.

It’s not only big companies who benefit from this, but also specific groups of stakeholders with common interests and extensive lobbying power.  For example, farmers¹² are geographically concentrated and politically powerful.  They have been highly successful in lobbying different governments to try different ways of protecting farmers’ bottom lines, such as through subsidies or supply management.

You can even see this sort of “neo-mercantilist” economics in the autism field specifically.  Plenty of writers have highlighted how many countries – especially wealthy democracies – tend to have profitable industries dedicated towards providing supports for autistic people.  This is often called the “autism industrial complex,” and like the military industrial complex, the autism industrial complex depends heavily on government.  Depending on the specific country, these companies often could be either directly supported through extensive government spending, or (especially in the United States) indirectly supported through government policies requiring private insurers to pay.

Thus, within our system, it’s perfectly possible to obtain a little “extra” beyond one’s wages, one’s capital, and the public services offered to everyone.  One can get special treatment, if one lobbies for it.  The problem, once again, comes down to the fact we currently have limited power.  It’s a heck of a lot easier to lobby for stuff when you can do things like hiring lobbyists, or even when you can simply convince governments that you are from a powerful bloc of voters united by common interests and positioned strategically in election-tilting areas.  Neurodivergent people, and disabled people generally, tend to struggle in these areas.  As a result, right now, everybody else seems to get stuff before neurodivergent and disabled people do.

To name just a couple of examples:

• I previously mentioned that autism supports are often maintained by government funding, or at least by policies requiring other powerful actors to spend money.  Nevertheless, these supports are often denounced and opposed by numerous people within the neurodiversity movement – just think about ABA, or segregated housing.¹³ Now, governments (and private insurers) like to save money.¹⁴ The fact that neurodiversity advocates in numerous jurisdictions have been unable to abolish funding for nonpreferred supports, let alone to obtain funding for alternatives, certainly suggests neurodiversity advocates’ lobbying has been quite unsuccessful to date.
• During the COVID pandemic, the Canadian government offered laid-off workers a temporary COVID benefit.  However, this COVID benefit was much more generous than existing provincial disability benefits.¹⁵ Such disability benefits, in Canada and other countries, are notorious for often being below living wages and for the hoops that people have to go through to get them.¹⁶ The contrast between the miserly disability benefits and the generous COVID benefit highlighted the inhumanity of the previous system, and the Canadian federal government felt compelled to promise to act, but the resulting action was, to say the least, extremely modest.  Instead of topping up the disability benefit to the level of the COVID benefit – which was supposed to be a minimal living wage for a non-disabled person – the government offered a small pittance to a subset of recipients.  Then, to add insult to injury, disabled people were excluded from a recent government scheme to send cheques to Canadians.  This scheme was widely seen as a form of pandering to voters ahead of the upcoming election – so what could be clearer proof of our political irrelevance?

Ari Ne’eman, in his response to Chapman, also highlights how neurodiversity advocates in the United States have been relatively unsuccessful in achieving concrete policy changes.  Ne’eman therefore recommends spending less time on broad, abstract goals and focusing more on practical, incremental changes and policy reform efforts.  Indeed, there are clearly many incremental changes that could benefit neurodivergent people, and that are achievable within our current liberal semi-capitalist/semi-mercantilist/semi-socialist economy.  Some of these may depend on lobbying for policy change, while others may be achievable through grassroots community work by neurodivergent people and our allies.  But in order to pursue these objectives, we need to keep our soft power intact.  If we adopt too much radical and revolutionary rhetoric, or if we use slogans like “Neurodivergent Power” that may seem hostile or threatening to neurotypical people, we will compromise our soft power, and we will hinder our efforts to achieve these concrete and practical goals.

The Long-Term Future

Of course, just because this is our best path forward at present doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t strive for something better in the future.  If Adam Smith, writing in the 18^th Century, had proposed than human cities 250 years in the future would be dominated by glass towers instead of open sewage, or that humans would have computing engines for (mostly) reliably predicting the weather, who would have believed him?  If he had championed the equality of men and women, let alone the rights of those beyond the gender binary, who would have taken him seriously?  Clearly, the world of tomorrow can be better than the world of today.

But unless the incremental changes we achieve are a lot more transformative than Chapman believes possible, it seems likely that any lobbying we do will continue to be from a position of minimal leverage.

Still, there is a path forward: coalition-building.  Alone, we may not be able to achieve larger changes to the order of things, but together with allies, we may be able to achieve much more.  Now, to give Chapman proper credit, they do speak about the importance of coalition-building, but I continue to worry that the rhetoric of “Neurodivergent Power” would engender suspicion or hostility from other groups, undermining our ability to achieve change.¹⁷

If we seek other ways to express these points, we might consider how economists like Thomas Piketty are arguing that the current economic system exacerbates inequality, stifles demand and growth, and is generally not great.  These arguments speak to the common interests of everyone.¹⁸ From such common ground, one might be able to build up coalitions championing practical redistributive taxation and programmes that could, for example, endow everyone with a minimum income and perhaps even a lump sum of capital.

We could also consider the rise of artificial intelligence: AI has the potential to substantially reduce the amount of labour humans must perform, which on the one hand seems emancipatory, but on the other it could deny people access to wages and income.  Chapman talks about how the insecurity of work in the post-industrial economy already affects both neurodivergent and neurotypical people: AI could well make that problem worse.  Thus, AI is both a common opportunity and a common danger for (almost) everyone, and it presents another chance to build coalitions around ideas like guaranteed minimum incomes and stronger protections from overwork.  This way, instead of trying and failing to build the momentum to create a basic disability income equal to a living wage, we could instead have a basic living wage as our minimum, and on top of that, we could lobby to build and maintain the extra supports, services, and accommodations needed by neurodivergent and disabled people.  Moreover, we could do this without sacrificing the liberal roots and ideas of self-determination that are so fundamental to the neurodiversity movement.

Of course, such a vision seems far off today.  One needs a large consensus to achieve large change within a democratic system,¹⁹ and even if one can achieve such change in one country, that country would then face intense pressure from other countries with more traditional systems.  For that matter, any sudden or radical change a system as complex as a national economy, implemented all at once, would no doubt have some sort of destabilizing effect: if we caused a recession in the process of trying to fix the socioeconomic system, public support for our efforts would immediately evaporate.

Thus, perhaps our efforts to achieve incremental reforms could and should include promotion more progressive taxation and spending policies.  However, neurodiversity’s celebration of diversity and individuality is fundamentally liberal, so we should be careful not to undermine these liberal roots.  Because of our limited leverage, we should be wary of adopting any rhetoric that might undermine the appeal of our ideas with decision-makers and the broader public.  Instead of seeking revolutionary transformation, our focus should remain on harnessing our soft power and grassroots community activism in pursuit of pragmatic changes and incremental reforms.

Acknowledgement: I thank Robert Chapman for reading a draft of this post and offering valuable suggestions and clarifications that led me to make changes to this post. I also thank my original and longest-serving beta reader, my mother, whose long experience of marking student essays invariably leads to helpful insights.

1. Though, I’m not sure our current economic system should be called “capitalism” – more on that later.
2. I’m skipping here over much of Chapman’s book, a historical materialist analysis which concerns the origins of ideas like eugenics, the valorization of normality, and psychiatry; how they flourished in various economic and ideological systems (including leftist ones); and the insufficiency of pre-neurodiversity responses like anti-psychiatry.  These are important topics – I was particularly interested in Chapman’s discussion of how Szaszian antipsychiatry is related to neoliberalism – but out of scope for this blog post!
3. What Marx would have called the “surplus” or “reserve army of labour.”
4. Indeed, per Chapman’s historical analysis, these sociocultural norms in large part are constructed based on the economic system and who gets valued by it.
5. Especially not after any costs associated with accommodations are thrown into the picture.
6. That is, after all, what I’m doing now, so I’d be awfully hypocritical if I thought so!
7. For example, researchers can conduct studies and obtain evidence in favour of XYZ, which is a form of soft power.
8. Including access to accommodations and supports, if necessary.
9. OK, If we’re going to be technical, Smith also had problems with the physiocrats, a group of people who – like Smith – thought we should have free trade, but also thought that economic value is fundamentally agricultural and we shouldn’t waste too much time supporting frivolous things like commerce and industry.  It was easier to take their views seriously before the Industrial Revolution.
10. To be sure, there are economies of scale that inherently favour bigger players, without the government needing to intervene on their behalf, but that’s a separate issue.
11. Not that this is always a bad argument, to be clear.
12. Who admittedly do face a tricky situation, insofar as there are lots of farmers and relatively few people buying their produce.  For example, Australia has just a tiny handful of big grocery store companies.  This, as Galbraith highlights, tilts market power against farmers, and creating some sort of countervailing force is an entirely appropriate response.
13. My thoughts on these issues can be complex, but the point is that most neurodiversity advocates do seem to oppose them, and that this has so far led to very limited change.
14. Just look at all the concern over NDIS spending in Australia, or the Ontario government’s overhaul of its autism programming a few years ago.
15. Even though disabled people have higher needs and thus extra expenses!
16. For example: in the US, if I’m not mistaken, you can’t access disability benefits if you have more than $2000 in your bank account ($3000 for couples).  That’s referring to the system for people unable to work (the American system for former workers who acquired disabilities through accidents, etc., is a bit more humane – which itself is revealing).
17. You could also argue that any appeal to neurodivergent power is still a form of liberal identity-based politics, and thus an odd stance from which to criticize liberalism.
18. Well, except possibly people with oodles of money who profit from rent-seeking, I suppose.  But if Piketty’s right, and consumer spending power is stifled by inegalitarianism, then redistributive reforms could make for a more vibrant economy, arguably benefiting people with oodles of money too.
19. And the extent of consensus needed only increases, the more different legislative and executive (or judicial, in the case of liberal countries with politicized judiciaries) institutions one needs to have on side in order to enact change…