I want to acknowledge my friend Dan Catalano for letting me know about this series and recommending I write about it from a Marxist perspective.
As We See It is a new series from Amazon. It revolves around the lives of three lifelong friends - Harrison, Jack, and Violet - who are all on the autism spectrum. The three lead actors are all on the spectrum, which gives them more authenticity in their portrayals. The creator of the series, Jason Katims, also has a son on the spectrum.
Having a 23-year-old son on the spectrum, it is deeply personal for me to get to tell this unique story of what it’s like to come of age as someone with autism - Jason Katims
Writers, editors, and other crew members also identify as being autistic. It is great to have such neurodiversity represented on this series.
It is super exciting to be working on a show where I'm playing a character that has traits that I relate to, that I used to be ashamed of or not want but now I get to use as a tool to connect to a craft. - Rick Glassman
First off, I want to say I thoroughly enjoyed this series. It’s funny and sincere and the characters are endearing and relatable. But as an autistic Marxist, I want to address a few things that frustrated me as a viewer. Some minor spoilers might follow. If you want to go straight to watching the series first, you can find it on Amazon here:
As We See It
The series buys a little bit too much into the capitalist mindset that autistic people need to be changed to fit into society, rather than the revolutionary approach that the society should be changed so that autistic people are accepted. These are the struggles we face under capitalism, but we should be changing our mindset and working to change the system, not allowing the system to change us.
Capitalism has no solutions to Oppression
The capitalist system is based on oppression of the working class by the ownership class. Those who own the means of production profit off of the labor of the rest. Those who are the most oppressed under this class based society include women, the indigenous, people of color, and the “disabled” which includes those on the autism spectrum. Marxists fight to free all those from oppression which is why they believe in revolutionary struggle to end the capitalist system.
As We See It greatly ignores that the struggle for autistic survival is a part of the larger class struggle. Harrison, Violet, and Jack are all housed together in an apartment and have a caregiver, Mandy. All of this requires money - Harrison’s family is Beverly Hills rich, Violet’s brother takes care of her financially, and Jack’s father takes care of his bills. This puts our protagonists in a far better situation than many autistic people find themselves in. Unfortunately this reality is not addressed in depth. While social safety nets are meant to address this problem, they are often underfunded and the first thing to be cut when it comes to deficit fearmongering. According to a recent study from Denmark, people on the spectrum are three times more likely to commit suicide than neurotypicals. Depression is a common issue among those on the spectrum as their needs are so often not met by capitalist society as a whole.
A fundamental change in the system is needed if we are to address the needs of the oppressed. In the Critique of the Gotha System, Marx wrote:
In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life's prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly – only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!
This communist society is what we strive for. Capitalism only places a value on those who can be exploited for their surplus value - the wage laborer. This is where the inherently classist term “high functioning autism” comes from. This is not a clinical diagnosis, as Medical News Today explains:
While autism is a clinical diagnosis based on specific diagnostic criteria, the specification of high-functioning autism is not. Instead, it is a judgment of a person’s ability to function in society. Therefore, different medical professionals may disagree about who is high-functioning and who is not.
The ability to function in capitalist society is based entirely on the ability to “earn a living.” And earning a living means working for a wage while the owners of the means of production, the capitalist class, take their profits off of your labor. This is a society that cares little for those who are unable to be exploited for capitalist profit. The needs of those who cannot contribute to the accumulation of capital are not a concern of capitalists.
This is in contrast with a communist society, where each person’s needs matter. There are better ways to contribute to society than through wage labor. In As We See It, Violet works at Arby’s. Under capitalism, this is an acceptable way to spend your time and indeed considered necessary to pull oneself up by their bootstraps. However, her job does not truly contribute to society, rather it simply contributes to the profits of the owners of Arby’s.
In order to better understand a communist future, we need to look at the system of needs within a society. The entire concept of needs is based on the mode of production. As Agnes Heller describes:
The structure of needs in capitalist society belongs therefore exclusively to capitalist society. It cannot be used to judge any other society in general and least of all that of “the associated producers”, since the latter is the opposite not only of capitalist society but of every civilised society that has existed to date; it is the first non-alienated society, “the realm of freedom.” - Agnes Heller, The Theory of Need in Marx, pgs. 96-97.
When Marx speaks of “From each according to their ability to each according to their need” he is referring to different needs than those under capitalist society. The basic material needs such as food, healthcare, and housing will be taken care of, but so will the more radical non material needs. As We See It references some of these non material needs such as the need for isolation and rest, the need to avoid sensory over stimulation, the needs for comfort, and acceptance. Marx refers to this paradigm shift in the following passage:
In fact, the realm of freedom actually begins only where labour which is determined by necessity and mundane considerations ceases; thus in the very nature of things it lies beyond the sphere of actual material production. Just as the savage must wrestle with Nature to satisfy his wants, to maintain and reproduce life, so must civilised man, and he must do so in all social formations and under all possible modes of production. With his development this realm of physical necessity expands as a result of his wants; but, at the same time, the forces of production which satisfy these wants also increase. Freedom in this field can only consist in socialised man, the associated producers, rationally regulating their interchange with Nature, bringing it under their common control, instead of being ruled by it as by the blind forces of Nature; and achieving this with the least expenditure of energy and under conditions most favourable to, and worthy of, their human nature. But it nonetheless still remains a realm of necessity. Beyond it begins that development of human energy which is an end in itself, the true realm of freedom, which, however, can blossom forth only with this realm of necessity as its basis. The shortening of the working-day is its basic prerequisite.
The basic material needs of everyone could easily be met with the current amount of production under capitalism. Roughly one third of the global food produced is wasted. This would be enough to feed 2 billion people. Globally around 690 million people go to bed hungry every night. It is only due to the profit driven capitalist system that world hunger exists. The same is true of homelessness, it only exists because housing has been made into a for profit industry rather than being provided as a basic necessity of life.
Universal basic material resources should be provided to all, but capitalists refuse to acknowledge this because it would cut into profit margins. This is why a Federal Jobs Guarantee is so important to transitioning away from capitalism. It redefines the concept of work. In As We See It, Harrison is unable to be employed because any regular job would be overstimulating due to his auditory sensitivities. Under a Federal Jobs Guarantee, Harrison could be paid to play ping pong with kids at a community center or school.
Alienation and autism
Autism has been referred to feeling as if you were born on the wrong planet. This meshes well with the Marxist theory of alienation.
First, the fact that labor is external to the worker, i.e., it does not belong to his intrinsic nature; that in his work, therefore, he does not affirm himself but denies himself, does not feel content but unhappy, does not develop freely his physical and mental energy but mortifies his body and ruins his mind. The worker therefore only feels himself outside his work, and in his work feels outside himself. He feels at home when he is not working, and when he is working he does not feel at home. His labor is therefore not voluntary, but coerced; it is forced labor. It is therefore not the satisfaction of a need; it is merely a means to satisfy needs external to it. Its alien character emerges clearly in the fact that as soon as no physical or other compulsion exists, labor is shunned like the plague. External labor, labor in which man alienates himself, is a labor of self-sacrifice, of mortification. Lastly, the external character of labor for the worker appears in the fact that it is not his own, but someone else’s, that it does not belong to him, that in it he belongs, not to himself, but to another. Just as in religion the spontaneous activity of the human imagination, of the human brain and the human heart, operates on the individual independently of him – that is, operates as an alien, divine or diabolical activity – so is the worker’s activity not his spontaneous activity. It belongs to another; it is the loss of his self. - Marx, Economic and Political Manuscripts of 1844
Jack and Violet both have jobs and suffer from Marxist alienation due to the nature labor under capitalism. In addition to this form of alienation, common to the entire working class, those on the spectrum also suffer from the alienation of not being neurotypical.
A theme of As We See It is the desire to fit in, to be considered “normal.” This is because of the way those who do not fit in are treated in society. Jack, Violet, and Harrison are friends because they are different. They have all been ostracized from neurotypical society because they are not normal. This is illustrated when no one shows up for Violet’s birthday party. The characters are fighting against alienation in a society that thrives on alienation.
Living with autism under capitalism is like being a square peg that is constantly being pounded into a round hole. No matter how hard you try, you will never fit. Current society has no place for the neurodivergent. They attempt to create solutions like the group home, which Violet rightly reacts violently to in As We See It.
Typically, the average cost to place and care for someone in a group home is approximately $90,000 to $140,000 per year.
Housing is just one of many challenges facing the autistic under capitalism. The median home price increased by 416% from 1980 to 2020. The minimum wage has only increased 234% in the same time. Only 58% of adults with autism worked between highschool and their early 20s. According to the same Drexel University study:
Young adults on the autism spectrum who worked after high school held an average of about three jobs total during their early 20s. Nearly 80% worked part-time and earned an average of $9.11 per hour. Full-time workers earned an average of $8.08 per hour.
And these numbers are even worse when income is taken into account:
Nearly 72% of those from upper income households (>$75K) ever worked after high school compared to 33% of those from the lowest income households (<$25K).
According to the CDC in 2018, 1 out of every 44 children is diagnosed to be on the autism spectrum. Many of these will be outright rejected by their peers and society. They will struggle to be accepted by a society that focuses on individualism and attaches self worth to income and ability to be exploited by capitalists. On average, those on the spectrum die 16 years earlier than the general population.
This is the emotional cost of being excluded from society - Steve Silberman, author of NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity.
We need more series like As We See It that give a voice to the autistic community. The autistic writers and actors deserve to be seen and heard. But the solutions offered by the series and society are not revolutionary in nature. The struggles depicted by As We See It are individual in nature. The revolutionary struggle to overthrow the capitalist system must be collective - we must fight for all those who are oppressed by a society based around private ownership of the means of production. Only once the capitalist system has been overthrown will our needs be met.