Marta Russell

Marta Russell approached disability not as a medical condition, but as a political and economic one. A journalist who used a wheelchair due to post-polio syndrome, she wielded her pen with a Marxist-informed intensity. Her seminal 1998 book, 'Beyond Ramps,' was a polemic and a revelation, arguing that capitalism inherently produces and exploits disability through its social Darwinist logic. She pulled no punches, critiquing liberal policy victories like the Americans with Disabilities Act as insufficient without a fundamental economic overhaul. Her writing connected dots others missed: how healthcare privatization, prison expansion, and poverty were all engines of disablement. Russell was a staunch opponent of physician-assisted suicide, viewing it through the lens of economic coercion rather than pure autonomy. While her views placed her on the left flank of the disability rights movement, her uncompromising analysis forced a deeper conversation about inequality, insisting that true access required dismantling the profit motive itself.