Reading list

Books on the radical power of disability justice

Resources exploring how the disability justice movement gets to the heart of anticapitalist organising.

16 July 2025

Books on the radical power of disability justice

We will not succeed in defeating capitalism until we sever health from capital, until we break down the capitalist logic of determining who deserves to live and die, until we recognise diversity as part of natural variation, and until we end until we end the processes of colonialism and extraction which create global health and wealth inequities. 

Health & Illness Under Capitalism

Why are disabled people so often demonised as ‘lazy’ and ‘undeserving’? How does Big Pharma’s patent systems reshape relations between richer and poorer countries? And how can we build a fairer, more neuro-inclusive society?

[book-strip index="1" style="buy"]

The Care Crisis, and What We Do About It

The mantras of “self-care” pasted onto lotions and bath bombs do little to tackle exploitation and alienation. How can we develop structures that truly meet our collective need for care?

[book-strip index="2" style="buy"]

The Politics of Plagues & Immunity

What are the political roots of today’s viral apocalypse, and who profits from a pandemic?

[book-strip index="3" style="buy"]

Housing and Architecture

Many disabled people are excluded from public life and are simultaneously pushed into homelessness. This creates a vicious cycle where the lack of a stable residence causes or worsens illness.

[book-strip index="4" style="buy"]

Anti-Work and Post-Work Politics

Disability justice activism challenges the capitalist logic that your value should be predicated on your ability to work, and that those unable to work are a financial and social burden. What might life after capitalism look like?

[book-strip index="5" style="buy"]

Book strip #1

Book strip #2

  • The Care Manifesto
    The Care Manifesto puts care at the heart of the debates of our current crisis: from intimate care—childcare, healthcare, elder care—to care for the natural world. We live in a world where careless...
    Paperback
    Preorder Sale price $16.95
  • Mutual Aid
    Mutual Aid is a radical handbook for anyone who grasps the severity of the global poly-crisis and wants a community-based means to fight back. Dean Spade — lawyer, academic, writer, and activist — ...
  • Lean on Me
    Have you ever relied on the kindness of strangers? What brings people together to find hope and solidarity? What do we owe each other as citizens and comrades?Questions of care, intimacy, educatio...

Book strip #3

Book strip #4

  • Eviction
    Grounded in personal experience, Eviction uncovers a hidden history of housing injustice and working-class resistance in what has become a perennial battleground for social conflict in modern Brita...
  • In Defense of Housing
    In Defense of Housing is the definitive statement on this crisis from leading urban planner Peter Marcuse and sociologist David Madden. Today our homes are being transformed into commodities, makin...
    Paperback
  • Making Space
    Making Space is a pioneering work first published in 1984 which challenges us to look at how the built environment impacts on women’s lives. It exposes the sexist assumptions on gender and sexualit...

Book strip #5