When you think about it, it’s strange how “love” was the very thing that once fortified such enthusiasm for the “ideals” of capitalism. At its peak in the post-war boom of the United States economy, love as a bourgeois concoction was a highly effective selling point for encouraging the necessary-to-capitalism institution of marriage and having children. For it was oh so important for the masses to keep producing a next generation of consumers (also allowing for more niche-oriented products geared toward the so-called “youth market”). If not, who else would be there to absorb such 1950s-style ads as the one suggesting to start your baby on cola earlier or the one about how asbestos is a “magic mineral” to “protect” your building? So many products and chemicals to sell, yet never enough capitalistic soldiers to consume them. And why not? Because it can never be enough to feed the machine. To give the desired number of returns on an “investment.” That investment, of course, never actually putting anything into humanity. Only taking from it by taking from the Earth.
Unfortunately, humanity itself is a willing accomplice, so enmeshed with capitalism in even the most mundane of everyday acts that, as it’s been said, the end of the world is easier to imagine than the end of this system. Which, yes, ironically, will bring about the end of the world. At least with us in it. Rich people, however, might be able to survive, though it’s difficult to imagine them being capable of functioning sans their various servants. In any event, one of the ways the population—which, if it could truly come together to battle this life-endangering entity, might actually be able to topple it—is complicit in allowing capitalism to thrive is by still buying into the old creed: “find love,” get married and spawn.
It’s hard to blame the collective for continuing to fall for the yarn. After all, it’s been indoctrinated into us all for so long, well-seeded into our progenitors and passed down through the ages in the blood: Buy! Buy! Buy! Consume! Consume! Consume! The caveat, as most should know by now, is that it’s only truly “socially acceptable” (as much as the decimation of the planet can be) to do these things in a couple—soon, hopefully, to become, at the bare minimum, a quartet. That’s part of the reason “love” has been one of the greatest—if not the greatest—propagandist tools of the capitalist machine to date. Well, it was…up until around the late 00s when the façade of our monetarily-driven existence crumbled in a way it never had before (yes, this refers to the 2008 financial crisis). And it marked the first time that no one was moved by the media’s desperate cries of “socialism” when referring to certain aspects of Barack Obama’s campaign platform. In fact, that sounded positively divine to a lot of people who got extremely fucked by the capitalism-spurred crisis, particularly millennials adrift in the post-2008 job climate. Cutting to thirteen years later, with a key Obama administration member now in office, that climate is still here. And sure, it’s nice to blame it on the pandemic and all, but the truth is, the problem at the root of fueling and fanning every world crisis to make it so much worse is—ding! ding! ding! ding!—capitalism. So yeah, millennials helped vote in Obama. Who turned out to be, quelle surprise, another corporate pawn anyway.
And yes, the system prevailed, one that still sold “love” as the ultimate life goal (apart from getting a job that has little to do with what one is passionate about)—complete with Obama era movies like The Proposal, Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, Leap Year, Crazy Stupid Love and Friends With Benefits. Yet the trend beginning to emerge revealed a more palpable hesitancy toward getting married and popping out some progeny (evidenced by filmic cracks in the veneer like Diablo Cody’s Young Adult). What’s more, an upswing in the practice of polyamory. Which remains “taboo” in the mainstream even now precisely because it directly contradicts what capitalism requires: the family of four model (though the system won’t balk at a family of three either—just not ten, because that infers “trashy welfare” types or religious zealots). The steadiness of homeowners who will forever need to replace old appliances with new ones, to trust in the legitimacy of every object in their household’s sudden obsolescence in order to require the purchasing of more things.
This, inopportunely for the suits, is harder to sell to the present generation. Boomers, in contrast, were all too ready to imbibe the propaganda like addictive alcohol. Perhaps because it was easier “back in the day” to play the slightly less rigged game. Primarily because of two factors: 1) there were more natural resources that hadn’t yet been so mercilessly pillaged and 2) it was easier to keep people from pulling back the curtain and seeing just how egregiously most are forced to live. Namely, those who can’t “win” at the only system we’ve been told is an option (otherwise—gasp!—we’ll somehow be subjected to communism instead).
There was a time when the U.S. was very secured in its special form of corporate socialism, meaning a person could work their entire life at a company and stay on the tit without worrying—especially with the promise of a cush pension at the end of the dark, boring tunnel. They made “a good living,” regardless of that living sucking away any real life they might have had if they opted to preserve their brain cells for something other than carrying out the day-to-day tasks of the average profession’s monotony. Alas, when that corporate loyalty to the employee gave way to living and dying by profit margins (ergo, outsourcing), it signaled a distinct augmentation in the level of callousness involved with capitalism, and who really benefits from it.
The sea change that came about in post-Gen X generations caused a diminished eagerness to get married and have kids because it coincided with the arrival of an increasingly unstable job market—better known as the “gig” economy. This, too, gave rise to the “hustle” economy (manifest in endeavors like people relying on renting out their property through Airbnb), creating the twenty-first century version of the American dream known as “passive income.” That “passivity” certainly not guaranteeing anything like a robust wage.
This is where the great shift in focusing on “love” occurs in the timeline of modern existence. Because floating from one low-paying “occupation” to another, hoping, at best, only to make ends meet doesn’t exactly give much time or wherewithal to so readily drink the Kool-Aid of “love.” And so, while capitalism was once the great catalyst for “love”—a.k.a. lifelong monogamy (with affairs peppered in, of course)—it is now the single strongest hindrance preventing it. Or at least the version of it so nostalgically peddled to us in a twentieth century fashion even to this day (see: Jay-Z and Beyoncé’s ad campaign for Tiffany’s, which requires its own separate treatise on why “love” is so intrinsically linked to capitalism). For no one wants to be with somebody who can’t “pull their own weight,” pay their half of the rent… in other words, love does not conquer all (bank account limitations). Making it more apparent that a song like Sonny and Cher’s boomer-era anthem, “I Got You Babe,” was based on the notion of always dating within your own station in life. That is the key unspoken condition of capitalism. Evidencing here, too, that love is a bourgeois invention created to make both parties fill the void where “love” is supposed to be with a bunch of shit they can pile into their mortgaged to the hilt abode.
