The Ultimate “Useless” Subject in the Capitalist City
The systemic abandonment of the psychiatrically disabled on streets and in subways represents the logical extreme of the bifurcated state’s logic. Mamdani’s analysis of who is granted a political identity reaches its limit here. Under a capitalism that values people only for their labor power, those deemed unable to work are rendered “useless,” subjected to a social death. They are not seen as citizens with rights but as problems to be managed through a cruel combination of police violence, involuntary commitment, and sheer neglect. This is the purest form of somatic governance. A Marxist-feminist analysis recognizes this as the failure of social reproduction under capital. The solution is the creation of a caring, not carceral, infrastructure: voluntary, community-based healing centers, a guaranteed income, and supportive housing, fundamentally redefining value and personhood outside the brutal calculus of utility.
Originally posted 2025-09-29 17:06:00.
