A Security‑State Lens on Social Breakdown: The EU’s Femcel Study and the Long History of Pathologising Capitalist Crisis

August 13, 2026 ~ freerein61 ~ Leave a comment

A recent study conducted under the EU’s CounteR program—titled “Femcels’ Speeches Between Extreme Solitude and Radical Break with the ‘Alpha World’”—illustrates how contemporary academic research can serve ideological purposes aligned with security interests. Its authors, Séraphin Alava and Rasha Nagem, frame their work as a neutral analysis of online discussions among young women who feel isolated and romantically excluded. However, the study is actually a politically motivated document, part of a state-funded initiative to pathologise the social effects of capitalist failures. Two critical sentences highlight its core message: “Loneliness is treated as a discursive and psychological phenomenon to be typologized, not as a social product of a specific economic order.” “The Femcel, like the incel before her, is thereby transformed from a symptom of social crisis into a potential security risk to be monitored.”

These lines emphasise the main ideological stance: turning social distress into a security concern. The research is carried out within an institution dedicated to “Violent Terrorism and Crime Prediction,” which interprets the analysis exclusively through risk management ideas. Consequently, important questions — such as why now? Why specifically this form? and what socio-economic conditions contribute to this isolation? — are initially overlooked.

The Security Apparatus as Arbiter of Academic Inquiry

The CounteR project is part of a broad EU security research network that has expanded significantly over the past decade. Its primary aim is not to study social phenomena but to classify and predict them. Funding for this research cannot address the social roots of issues like alienation, declining living standards, or the commercialisation of intimate life. Instead, it concentrates on monitoring, categorising, and intercepting online expressions of distress. This restriction is political rather than academic. The EU, along with Britain and the US, has established a surveillance system that treats political dissent, psychological distress, and social isolation as interchangeable indicators of “radicalisation.” The Femcel is merely viewed as a data point within a risk-scoring framework.

The study’s categories — “Alpha world rejection,” “feminist consciousness,” “radicalisation trajectory” — are not neutral labels. They are part of a security framework aimed at classifying populations by risk level. In essence, the typology created by the authors acts as a taxonomy for a database.

A Long Lineage: Cold War Social‑Pathology Research

The main idea behind the Femcel study’s ideology is not new. It carries on a Cold War-era social science tradition that regarded the societal effects of capitalist crises as primarily psychological problems. Oscar Lewis’s “culture of poverty” concept redefined structural difficulties as a self-perpetuating psychological condition. Poverty was interpreted not as a result of exploitation but as stemming from “maladaptive behaviours.” This view aligned with Cold War liberalism by distancing inequality from political causes and instead blaming it on the mindset of those in poverty.

The Frankfurt School’s concept of the Authoritarian Personality, adapted by US Cold War agencies, framed political tendencies as psychological disorders. This shift diverted attention from social causes of fascism, instead emphasising individual personality traits. As a result, political threats were seen as personal psychological issues rather than linked to class struggles. Postwar research on “juvenile delinquency” often interpreted the decline of urban working-class areas as behavioural problems needing supervision, rather than recognising it as a result of deindustrialisation and racial segregation. The Alava–Nagem paper reflects this Cold War perspective: social crises are simplified into psychological types; alienation is regarded as a risk factor; resentment is viewed as a pathology, and structural conditions are not considered. The EU’s counter-radicalisation initiatives are significantly shaped by the UK’s Prevent program, which is among Europe’s most extensive surveillance systems.

Prevent has identified tens of thousands of individuals for deradicalisation efforts, including children as young as four. According to the WSWS, Prevent combines political dissent, mental health issues, and social isolation into a single category called “extremism.’ Its primary strategy is pre-emptive intervention—acting before political consciousness develops. This includes monitoring online speech, conducting risk assessments, and viewing social alienation as a security threat. Furthermore, women’s online spaces are increasingly targeted, under the assumption that “vulnerable individuals” could be more susceptible to extremism.

The Femcel study follows this trend, using Prevent’s risk-tiering approach. It views online discussion as a threat and frames feminist awareness as a potential pathway to radicalisation, ignoring material conditions. To fully understand it, one must consider the incel discourse that sparked it, which itself arose from the broader crisis of social reproduction. After the 2018 Toronto van attack, incels were quickly labelled as terrorists. Media and academic discussions concentrated on misogynistic beliefs, online radicalisation, and psychological issues, while overlooking material factors such as declining living standards, social atomisation, commodified intimacy, and algorithm-driven dating markets.

Both incel and Femcel discussions originate from the decline of community institutions, the commercialisation of romance, the hierarchy of desirability, and the collapse of stable social paths to partnership. However, incels are viewed as a violent danger, whereas Femcels are considered psychologically fragile. Despite this difference, the core issue is identical. The Alava–Nagem study observes that Femcel discourse “diverges from the misogynistic violence associated with segments of the incel milieu,” but still regards Femcels as potential security risks. The fundamental reasoning is consistent: social crises trigger risk assessments.

Dating Apps and the Commodification of Intimacy

The increase in dating app usage over the last decade is often seen as a cultural or technological development. However, it also exposes a deeper social crisis. These platforms, which impact the private lives of hundreds of millions, are not just neutral tools but commercial systems that transform human relationships via market forces. Their growth is also linked to worsening material conditions that once supported stable relationships.

The political economy behind dating apps is straightforward. These platforms prioritise profit, which depends on maintaining user dissatisfaction. Their business model involves encouraging frequent user turnover, artificially restricting attention, ranking desirability with algorithms, and segmenting users into paid tiers. In this setup, intimacy and visibility are treated as commodities. Loneliness is also commodified—controlled through subscriptions, profile boosts, and algorithm adjustments. Rather than solving loneliness, these platforms exploit it for financial gain.

This commodification of intimate life is not an accidental result of technology but a direct outcome of decades of neoliberal reforms. The decline of stable jobs, rising housing prices, the breakdown of public spaces, and the fragmentation of social life have weakened the communal and workplace institutions where relationships traditionally developed. Dating apps serve to fill the void left by capitalist disintegration, yet they also intensify it.

Platforms tend to replicate and amplify existing social inequalities. Their algorithms prioritise users based on aesthetic, cultural, and class indicators that closely align with income, education, and consumption habits. This creates a stratified marketplace where a small minority garners most attention, while others struggle for visibility amid harsher competition. The concept of the “Alpha world,” often discussed in Femcel and incel communities, is not just a cultural fantasy; it reflects the ideological foundation of this market-driven mindset.

The mental health issues linked to using dating apps — including anxiety, loneliness, and resentment — are not personal flaws. They are the expected results of structuring intimate relationships around competition, self-promotion, and algorithm-driven choices. Despite this, academic and media narratives often view these problems as personal ailments instead of signs of a society in upheaval. The EU’s counter-radicalisation efforts take this further by framing the negative effects of commodified intimacy as possible security risks.

The truth is simpler and more politically explosive. The crisis of intimacy is a crisis of capitalism. The commodification of romantic life is inseparable from the commodification of everything else. A society that cannot provide stable employment, affordable housing, or meaningful community cannot provide the conditions for stable relationships. Dating apps do not repair this devastation; they monetise it.

The Gendered Crisis of Social Reproduction

To grasp the rise of Femcel discourse, it’s essential to look beyond platform speech and focus on the social reproductive crisis. Since the 1980s, young people in Europe and North America have experienced declining wages, rising housing costs, shrinking public spaces, the breakdown of stable workplaces and communities, and fragmented social and temporal lives. For young women, these issues have led to postponed or unfeasible household formation, increased competition in dating scenes, greater reliance on algorithm-driven platforms, and social isolation from stable networks.

Dating apps have transformed courtship from a personal pursuit into a market-driven activity. Visibility is now a product, algorithms rank desirability, and romantic opportunities are part of a competitive marketplace. The concept of the “Alpha world” in Femcel discussions is not just a cultural myth but a reflection of this market logic’s ideology. Femcel language isn’t a sign of pathology but a rational reaction to being excluded from a commodified form of intimacy. It acts as a social critique—though it may be nascent and contradictory—rooted in actual experiences. However, the counter-radicalisation perspective cannot see this because acknowledging it would mean admitting capitalism’s failure to foster stable social life.

Feminist Consciousness and the Limits of Security‑Compatible Critique

The study hints at a “transition… to feminist consciousness,” but only in a depoliticised, NGO-friendly way. The feminism accepted within a security framework is the safe type: focusing on individual empowerment, platform governance, and representation. The feminism that is excluded highlights women’s isolation in social reproduction crises, critiques the commodification of intimacy, and acknowledges that stable relationships depend on steady material conditions.

A truly materialist feminist outlook would critique the very structure of capitalist society. It would see the dating-app marketplace as a capitalist institution rather than just a cultural artefact. This perspective would acknowledge that the crisis of intimacy is tied to broader issues like work, housing, and community. If fully developed, it could lead to socialist reforms of social life. This is exactly the kind of awareness that counter-radicalisation efforts aim to suppress.

A truly social-rooted study of Femcel discourse would start by examining material conditions such as employment insecurity, housing instability, debt, the decline of public spaces, and the weakening of communal institutions. It would explore how algorithmic sorting worsens inequality, commodifies visibility, and stratifies desirability. The analysis would include how women cope with exclusion, how resentment stems from structural issues, and how online conversations reflect material realities. It would question whether alienation can transform into class consciousness, whether feminist criticism can evolve into anti-capitalism, and whether new solidarities can form. The Alava–Nagem paper cannot undertake this because its institutional role is to prevent such analysis.

Conclusion: The Ideological Function of Counter‑Radicalisation Research

The Femcel phenomenon illustrates a facet of capitalist social disintegration. The counter-radicalisation system reinterprets it as a security threat. This shift isn’t mere academic oversight but a deliberate ideological stance. The ruling elite, unable to confront the social ruin they caused, reframe these issues as individual mental health problems, crimes, or extremism. The Alava–Nagem study thus highlights not just its findings but what it exposes: the clash between a security-focused knowledge system and a social reality it struggles to comprehend. It’s a record of an apparatus compelled to classify and prevent, while avoiding questions about the root causes of the crisis.

The Anglosphere’s Mental Health Crisis and the Social Catastrophe of Capitalism

July 12, 2026 ~ freerein61 ~ Leave a comment

Recently, a new wave of commentary has surfaced trying to account for the rapidly worsening mental health crisis among young people in advanced capitalist nations. One notable analysis is by Financial Times columnist John Burn-Murdoch, who uses various data sources to show that the crisis is primarily concentrated in the Anglosphere—comprising the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia, Ireland, and New Zealand. His charts and graphs are presented as a calm, fact-based contribution to a debate often viewed as inflated by exaggeration and moral panic.

However, like many mainstream analyses, Burn-Murdoch’s discussion ends right where the deeper explanation starts. He highlights symptoms but avoids diagnosing the underlying problem. His perspective is limited by the ideological beliefs of the capitalist system, preventing him from confronting the social reality that millions of young people are being mentally overwhelmed by a system that makes a decent and secure life impossible.

The Limits of Bourgeois Explanation

Burn-Murdoch’s main argument — that the crisis originates from “shattered homeownership expectations” — exemplifies bourgeois reductionism. This narrative suggests that young people were brought up to expect to own property, and the housing market’s failure to meet these expectations has led to widespread despair.

This argument diminishes a serious social crisis by framing the suffering of a whole generation as simply unmet consumer expectations. It suggests that lowering mortgage rates or fixing the housing ladder would eliminate the crisis. This perspective is not only insufficient but also ideological, as it assumes capitalism is inherently stable and that the issue stems solely from unequal distribution of rewards.

The truth is quite different. The housing crisis is not a separate failure but a sign of the ongoing impoverishment of the working class. As an analysis from WSWS pointed out years ago, the dream of owning a home in America has become out of reach for many young families due to declining wages, increasing expenses, and exploitative lending practices — not because capitalism has failed, but because it is operating precisely as intended.

Mental Illness as a Social Disease

Mainstream commentators’ refusal to acknowledge social causes is deliberate, not accidental—it’s ideological. Over 25 years ago, the WSWS noted that the US Surgeon General’s report on mental illness acknowledged that “the precise causes of most mental disorders are not known,” yet it emphasised brain chemistry and genetics as the main causes. The WSWS pointed out that this choice was obvious: “Can anyone imagine the Surgeon-General of the United States issuing a major report declaring that the epidemic of mental illness in America is due to … American society?”

Acknowledging mental illness as a social disease implicates the capitalist system itself, raising controversial political issues about societal organisation, the dismantling of social protections, and the isolation of human life driven by profit motives. Burn-Murdoch, like others supporting the current system, is unable to go beyond describing the crisis; he cannot explain its underlying causes.

The Historical Evolution of Psychiatric Ideology Under Capitalism

The current mental-health crisis, affecting millions in advanced capitalist nations, is not just an outbreak of individual issues. Instead, it results from a long history where psychiatry has been influenced and manipulated by capitalism’s demands. Psychiatry is not a purely scientific field; it has developed alongside capitalism’s social relations, mirroring its contradictions, fears, and its primary goal to maintain the status quo. To fully understand today’s crisis, one must trace this development from the Industrial Revolution to its present-day neoliberal state.

Psychiatry’s Birth in the Age of Industrial Discipline

Modern psychiatry developed in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, coinciding with the consolidation of capitalism’s dominance over society. The growth of factories, wage labour, and urbanisation led to new forms of social dislocation and human suffering. However, the ruling class did not see these issues as signs of the harshness of early industrial capitalism. Instead, they were viewed as individual disorders.

The asylum, a core institution of early psychiatry, had two main roles. It separated those deemed “unproductive,” “irrational,” or “dangerous” and upheld norms of bourgeois discipline. The so-called ‘moral treatment’ introduced by Philippe Pinel and William Tuke was not truly moral in an emancipatory sense; rather, it was a system of surveillance, obedience, and labour aimed at shaping individuals into compliant members of the growing capitalist society. The ideological premise was clear: if individuals could not function within capitalist society, the fault lay within the individual, not the society.

Pathologising Deviance, Protecting Property

As capitalism developed in the 19th century, psychiatry broadened its scope. During the Victorian era, issues like poverty, alcoholism, “hysteria,” and political dissent became medical concerns. Women challenging patriarchal norms were diagnosed with “nervous disorders,” while workers protesting poor conditions were deemed unstable or criminally inclined.

The bourgeois family, regarded as the ideal core of capitalist society, was seen as the normal and healthy family unit, with any deviations viewed as abnormal. Psychiatry emerged as a tool for enforcing social conformity and upholding property relations. During this era, biological determinism and early eugenics gained prominence, offering pseudo-scientific backing for class structures and imperial rule. Mental illness was often depicted as hereditary, serving as a convenient justification for maintaining social inequality.

The Age of Social Crisis and Biological Reductionism

The early 20th century was marked by world war, economic depression, and revolutionary change. Millions of soldiers returning from the First World War exhibited “shell shock,” a condition that challenged the idea that mental suffering is solely individual. However, instead of addressing social causes of trauma, the ruling class reinforced biological reductionism. During the interwar years, treatments like lobotomies and insulin shock therapy emerged, reflecting a system eager to hide the social roots of widespread psychological crises, rather than genuinely improve patient care.

The Great Depression produced widespread despair, unemployment, and social disintegration. But psychiatry did not interpret these phenomena as consequences of capitalism’s crisis. Instead, it doubled down on individual pathology, reinforcing the ideological firewall between social conditions and mental suffering.

The Welfare State and the Pharmaceutical Revolution

After 1945, a period of temporary stability emerged. The welfare state, increased wages, and expanded social services helped reduce many of capitalism’s worst abuses. Psychiatry evolved accordingly, gradually phasing out asylums and introducing new psychotropic medications like chlorpromazine, antidepressants, and benzodiazepines, which offered chemical remedies for psychological issues. However, the ideological basis remained unchanged: mental illness was still seen as an individual malfunction. Systematic neglect of the social origins of suffering—such as alienation, exploitation, racial oppression, and gender inequality—continued to be a defining feature of psychiatric theory.

The pharmaceutical industry, embedded within the capitalist profit system, grew into a powerful force. Treatment was turned into a commodity, transforming the patient into a consumer. The role of the psychiatrist shifted to simply prescribing. These social conflicts were hidden behind the promise of quick chemical relief.

The Atomization of Society and the Explosion of Diagnosis

The late 20th century marked the rise of neoliberalism, characterised by deregulation, privatisation, union-busting, and the erosion of social protections. This led to increased societal atomization, causing unprecedented stress, insecurity, and despair. Psychiatric ideology adapted to this new environment, with the DSM expanding significantly to include more diagnostic categories and medicalising common distress. Conditions like ADHD, mild ASD, generalised anxiety disorder, and major depressive disorder emerged as widespread phenomena.

This surge in diagnoses was deliberate, fulfilling three political roles: it personalises social suffering, thus avoiding scrutiny of capitalism’s influence; it opens new markets for pharmaceutical companies; and it disciplines workers by framing distress as an individual flaw instead of a consequence of exploitation. During the neoliberal era, cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT) also gained prominence. Designed to help individuals adapt to difficult conditions rather than change them, its main message—”change your thoughts, not your circumstances”—aligns closely with capitalist values.

Capitalism’s Social Breakdown and the Ideological Dead End

Today’s mental health crisis stems from forty years of social counter-revolution. Young people are burdened with unstable jobs, skyrocketing housing costs, declining public services, and broken community networks. The rise of the gig economy has undermined job stability. Market forces have dismantled social connections. The obsession with personal “success” and “failure” has become dangerously extreme.

Psychiatric ideology remains stuck in a framework from two centuries ago. It fails to recognise that capitalism itself fuels widespread psychological suffering and that mental illness is a social issue. Instead, it attributes distress to neurotransmitters, genetics, and personal problems, expanding diagnostic categories and prescribing more medication. It promotes “resilience training” and “mindfulness” as solutions for enduring conditions that should be eliminated. The ruling class relies on this ideology; without it, the social consequences of the crisis could be explosive.

Why the Anglosphere?

The crisis is concentrated in the Anglosphere for obvious reasons. These countries have seen the most extensive dismantling of the postwar welfare state, the most aggressive erosion of job security through the gig economy, and the most ruthless subordination of social bonds to market forces. Additionally, the ideology of individual “success” and “failure” is deeply rooted here.

Young workers in these nations face conditions not seen since the Great Depression. They face job insecurity, unaffordable housing, failing public services, and an inability to reach fundamental life milestones such as starting families or securing stable homes. A WSWS analysis of youth suicide pointed out: “The youngest generation of workers is entering adulthood in the wake of 40 years of social counter-revolution against the working class.” This issue isn’t just about unfulfilled dreams of property ownership; it involves the breakdown of the material and social bases necessary for a humane life.

The Medicalisation of Social Misery

Burn-Murdoch warns against the dangers of medicalising everyday distress, but he views this mainly as a technical issue of diagnostic accuracy. In truth, medicalising social suffering serves as a political tactic. It is a cost-effective and ideologically easy method for the ruling class to control an increasingly distressed population. When millions of children have trouble focusing, the cause isn’t blamed on overcrowded classrooms, exhausted parents, or economic insecurity. Instead, they are branded as neurologically disordered and treated with medication. Similarly, young adults overwhelmed by unstable jobs and high living costs are told their suffering results from chemical imbalances.

Decades ago, the WSWS cautioned that governments were increasingly using psychoactive drugs to control children’s behaviour, pointing out that British laws were so extensive that doctors could prescribe medication simply because children struggled with math or spelling. This was not a diagnostic error; it was intentional social policy.

The CDC Data and the Class Question

The CDC’s 2021 Youth Risk Behaviour Survey revealed that 42% of US high school students felt persistent sadness or hopelessness, 22% seriously considered suicide, and 10% attempted it. However, the CDC primarily interpreted these statistics through race and sexual identity, avoiding discussions of class. This omission is revealing: identity categories are politically safe, whereas class is not. Analysing the crisis through class would mean acknowledging that capitalism causes widespread psychological suffering, even for those who are housed, fed, and employed. As the WSWS pointed out, “When we finally reach a point where half the population can’t, at one time or another, function — who, then, is really sick: the individual or society?”

The Political Conclusion

Burn-Murdoch’s technocratic ideas—improving data, diagnostics, and policy targeting—are like rearranging furniture in a house on fire. They don’t address the root cause of the crisis. Under capitalism, mental health treatment is only emergency care: it patches psychic wounds so individuals can keep functioning in a system that caused their sickness. The mental health epidemic won’t be resolved through more therapy, medication, or affordable housing—though these may help reduce suffering. A true solution requires the working class to gain political power and rebuild society on socialist principles, prioritising human needs over private profits. As the WSWS concluded long ago: “Happiness can become a reality only if its human content is restored to it, and that means that the happiness of one is inseparable from the happiness of all.” This is not just idealism; it’s a political necessity.

Sources and Bibliography

I. Marxist Foundations: Alienation, Social Pathology, and Ideology

Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 (1844).
Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels, The German Ideology (1846).
Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. I–III (1867–1894).
Friedrich Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England (1845).
Georg Lukács, History and Class Consciousness (1923).
Wilhelm Reich, The Mass Psychology of Fascism (1933).
Erich Fromm, The Sane Society (1955).
Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks (1952); The Wretched of the Earth (1961).
István Mészáros, Marx’s Theory of Alienation (1970).
David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (2005).
Moishe Postone, Time, Labour, and Social Domination (1993).

II. Histories of Psychiatry and Social Control

Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilisation (1961).
Andrew Scull, The Most Solitary of Afflictions: Madness and Society in Britain, 1700–1900 (1993).
Andrew Scull, Desperate Remedies: Psychiatry’s Turbulent Quest to Cure Mental Illness (2022).
Roy Porter, Madness: A Brief History (2002).
Elaine Showalter, The Female Malady: Women, Madness, and English Culture, 1830–1980 (1985).
Thomas Szasz, The Myth of Mental Illness (1961).
Nikolas Rose, Governing the Soul: The Shaping of the Private Self (1989).
Nikolas Rose, The Politics of Life Itself (2007).
Joanna Moncrieff, The Myth of the Chemical Cure (2008).
Irving Kirsch, The Emperor’s New Drugs (2009).
Anne Harrington, Mind Fixers: Psychiatry’s Troubled Search for the Biology of Mental Illness (2019).

III. The DSM, Medicalisation, and the Pharmaceutical Industry

American Psychiatric Association, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, DSM‑I (1952) through DSM‑5‑TR (2022).
Christopher Lane, Shyness: How Normal Behaviour Became a Sickness (2007).
Allan V. Horwitz & Jerome Wakefield, The Loss of Sadness: How Psychiatry Transformed Normal Sorrow into Depressive Disorder (2007).
Peter Conrad, The Medicalisation of Society (2007).
David Healy, Pharmageddon (2012).
Robert Whitaker, Anatomy of an Epidemic (2010).
Carl Elliott, White Coat, Black Hat: Adventures on the Dark Side of Medicine (2010).

IV. Social Determinants of Mental Health

Richard Wilkinson & Kate Pickett, The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better (2009).
Michael Marmot, The Health Gap: The Challenge of an Unequal World (2015).
Bruce Alexander, The Globalisation of Addiction (2008).
Johan Galtung, Violence, Peace, and Peace Research (1969).
WHO, Social Determinants of Mental Health (2014).
CDC, Youth Risk Behaviour Surveillance System (various years, esp. 2021).

V. Gig Economy, Neoliberalism, and Social Breakdown

Guy Standing, The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class (2011).
Arne L. Kalleberg, Precarious Lives: Job Insecurity and Well‑Being in Rich Democracies (2018).
Philip Alston, UN Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty (2017–2020).
OECD, How’s Life? Measuring Well‑Being (annual).
IMF & ILO reports on labour precarity (various years).

VI. WSWS and ICFI Analyses (Primary Marxist Sources)

(These are not reproduced; only titles and dates are listed.)

“Mental Illness and the American Dream,” WSWS, two‑part series (1999).
“Youth Suicide and the Social Crisis,” WSWS (various analyses, 2015–2024).
“The Gig Economy and the Assault on the Working Class,” WSWS (2017).
“The Social Crisis in the United States,” WSWS (multiple reports, 2008–2024).
“The Breakdown of Public Health under Capitalism,” WSWS (2020–2023).
“The Anglosphere Crisis: A Social Catastrophe,” WSWS (2023–2024).
ICFI Statements on Social Conditions and Mental Health (1999–2024).

VII. Additional Critical Works on Capitalism and Social Suffering

Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? (2009).
Jonathan Crary, 24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep (2013).
Byung‑Chul Han, The Burnout Society (2010).
Richard Sennett, The Corrosion of Character (1998).
Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid Modernity (2000).
Franco “Bifo” Berardi, The Soul at Work (2009); Heroes: Mass Murder and Suicide (2015).
Silvia Federici, Caliban and the Witch (2004) — for the historical roots of social discipline.
Cedric Robinson, Black Marxism (1983) — for racialised dimensions of social control.

VIII. Archival and Government Sources

UK Parliamentary Papers on Lunacy Acts (1845–1890).
US Surgeon General, Mental Health: A Report of the Surgeon General (1999).
WHO Mental Health Atlas (various years).
UN Human Development Reports (annual).
Office for National Statistics (ONS), UK — mental health, labour precarity, youth well‑being datasets.
US Bureau of Labour Statistics — gig economy and contingent work surveys.

IX. Suggested Further Reading for a Marxist History of Psychiatry

R.D. Laing, The Divided Self (1960).
Franco Basaglia, Psychiatry Inside Out (1980).
Thomas Lemke, Biopolitics: An Advanced Introduction (2011).
Mark Rapley, The Social Construction of Mental Illness (2004).
Richard Bentall, Doctoring the Mind (2009).
Nikolas Rose & Joelle Abi‑Rached, Neuro: The New Brain Sciences and the Management of the Mind (2013).

Podcast Episode: BBC investigation into OnlyFans exposes the brutal reality of platform capitalis

June 22, 2026 ~ freerein61 ~ Leave a comment

Pip: A BBC documentary tears the veil off OnlyFans and somehow manages to indict everyone except the economic system running the whole operation. Impressive restraint.

Mara: freerein61 takes that contradiction apart in a piece that connects platform capitalism, the pseudo-left's defence of commodification, and what the collapse of sustainable cultural work actually looks like on the ground. Let's start with the BBC investigation itself and what it reveals — and conceals.

BBC Investigation, Platform Capitalism, and the Pseudo-Left's Alibi

Pip: The BBC went inside OnlyFans expecting to find bad actors. What the post argues is that they found the system working exactly as designed — and then flinched from saying so.

Mara: The piece sets the frame directly: "he is following a business model that is discussed openly in these forums." The agent who threatened a woman and her daughter, who sent masked men to strangle her in her own home, is not a rogue element. He is the informal enforcement arm of a platform taking a twenty percent cut and disclaiming responsibility for everything downstream.

Pip: Which is the rentier logic in its purest form. OnlyFans generated $684 million in pre-tax profits last year by extracting value from labour it does not employ, policing exploitation it does not acknowledge, and parasitising creators it does not protect.

Mara: And the BBC's response to all of this is to invoke the Online Safety Act and interview the UK's anti-slavery commissioner. The post argues that framing matters enormously here: calling it "modern slavery" portrays extreme exploitation as a rare crime rather than a structural feature. It "individualises exploitation, prosecutes the worst offenders, and leaves the economic structure that produces the desperation intact."

Pip: So the documentary functions less as exposure and more as pressure-release — enough outrage to satisfy viewers, not enough analysis to threaten the system producing the outrage.

Mara: The post makes the same argument about the pseudo-left. The "sex work is work" position, it contends, is not progressive but capitalist realist — it accepts that all human relations must become commodities and frames resistance as prudishness. The post puts it plainly: "No amount of regulation can make the commodification of the human body humane."

Pip: The comparison to justifying nineteenth-century child labour lands harder than it should.

Mara: There is also a sharp economic dimension. The piece points to Kate Nash losing money on every tour and turning to OnlyFans to cover costs — streaming paying $0.00173 per play, touring costs up forty percent since the pandemic, eighty percent of music revenue captured by one percent of artists. The post's argument is that sexual commodification is not a choice but a forced response to the collapse of culturally supported work.

Pip: The language of agency, the post notes, belongs to a class for whom OnlyFans might be a lucrative side hustle. "For Rebecca from South Wales, it was a trap."

Mara: The Marxist position the post advances is abolition of the conditions, not sanitisation of the market: expropriating tech monopolies, socialising digital platforms, treating cultural labour as a public good. Regulation, it argues, cannot humanise a market whose violence is not accidental but structural.

Pip: The violence, as the post puts it, is capitalism without its ideological mask — which is perhaps the one thing the BBC documentary accidentally got right by showing it.

Mara: The thread running through all of this is what happens when a system has no use for most of its people and no language for saying so honestly.

Pip: Next time, presumably, the BBC will commission a follow-up about Uber drivers and call it a labour story. We'll be here.

Mia Levitin’s The Future of Seduction — A Marxist Assessment

May 27, 2026 ~ freerein61 ~ Leave a comment

Sex without love is a meaningless experience, but as far as meaningless experiences go, it is pretty damn good”. W. Allen

“The single woman… is a real, living phenomenon… who ceaselessly wages the grim struggle for existence” and fights in the ranks of the proletariat for the right to work. The “younger sister” paves the way for the truly independent “free” and “equal” woman of the future. “ Alexandra Kollontai

“Everything in the world is about sex except sex. Sex is about power.” Oscar Wilde

: “sex is the consolation you have when you can’t have love”

― Gabriel García Márquez

Mia Levitin’s book belongs to a genre that has proliferated in recent years: cultural criticism of romance, desire, and courtship in the digital age. These works, such as Eva Illouz’s Cold Intimacies and Sherry Turkle’s work on technology and relationships, often offer genuinely interesting observations about how capitalist modernity has transformed intimate life. But they consistently stop short of the one conclusion that would make their analysis truly radical: that the pathologies they describe are not accidents of culture or technology but are rooted in the very structure of capitalist social relations.

Much of the book focuses on Mia’s early life. She explains, “When my marriage ended, I thought I had chosen the wrong partner, but I never doubted that a relationship was essential for happiness. Determined to find Mr Right 2.0, I started dating with an Excel spreadsheet and advice from a celebrity love coach. Despite my positive attitude, success has yet to come. If someone had told me then that I would still be single after 111 first dates over about five years, I would have found it hard to believe. But honestly, I am grateful for the time spent alone.” The sooner you stop seeing yourself as a victim—even in the face of a terrible ex’s behaviour—the better. Take responsibility for what went wrong, even if it’s just a small part. She deserves a medal for 111 dates, but perhaps it was more about research than a desire for love or sex.

Sexual Relations Under Capitalism

Levitin isn’t a radical thinker; she generally holds conservative views on sexual relations within the framework of capitalism. Understanding how capitalism influences intimate relationships is essential. Engels’ ‘The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State’ (1884) illustrates that sexual and family structures are shaped by specific historical relations of production, rather than being innate or unchanging. The nuclear, monogamous family emerged alongside private property to regulate inheritance practices. Consequently, women’s oppression isn’t solely rooted in male psychology or “patriarchal culture” isolated from material conditions; it is deeply linked to class society. To eliminate this oppression, dismantling capitalism is necessary.

Various forces shape intimate life in distinct ways. The commodification of human relationships, reducing everything to exchange value, penetrates sexuality just as deeply as other areas of life. Dating apps exemplify this clearly: they turn human beings into consumer products to be browsed, rated, and discarded, applying marketplace logic to the pursuit of love and companionship. This leads not to liberation, but to a new, especially disheartening form of alienation. Exhausted, financially insecure, time-starved, and atomised workers, victims of decades of capitalist social policies, do not see each other as complete human beings. Instead, they encounter each other as commodities amid artificially managed scarcity. The loneliness epidemic and the “crisis of intimacy” that authors like Levitin identify are genuine social issues. However, the key questions remain: what causes these problems, and how can we address them?

The Limits of the Liberal-Cultural Approach

Cultural criticism concerning sexuality and modern romance, from Eva Illouz’s Cold Intimacies to articles in the liberal press, often accurately identifies symptoms but misdiagnoses their causes and fails to propose effective solutions. Typically, it blames the crisis of intimate life on “neoliberalism” as a cultural mindset, on technology, changing “emotional styles,” or on patriarchy as a standalone system. However, this approach consistently neglects the class issue: who actually gains from the atomization and commodification of human relationships?

Capitalism depends on isolating individuals and discourages strong, lasting bonds of solidarity, which are vital for collective resistance. The loneliness, anxiety, and transactional nature of modern sexual relationships are not flaws but integral features of the system. The ruling class benefits not only from unstable jobs, unaffordable housing, and the decline of public life but also from industries that thrive on loneliness, like dating apps, therapy, and self-help sectors.

Capitalism not only shapes how people connect but also influences desire itself. Dating apps like Tinder, Hinge, and Bumble are not neutral; they promote the commodification of humans. User profiles become commodities, with individuals showcasing attractive features—photos, wit, credentials—for evaluation in a swiping marketplace. The logic of exchange value governs intimate life, where relationships are judged like consumer products for utility, status, and compatibility. This is not just metaphorical; it reflects the real subsumption of personal life under capitalism. Cultural critiques that see these issues as problems of “seduction,” “desire,” or “emotional culture” and suggest fixing them through better individual choices or enlightened attitudes remain trapped in the very framework they criticise.

Much of today’s discussion on seduction, gender, and desire is viewed through identity politics, often reducing these issues to gender power dynamics, male privilege, or heteronormativity. Although gender oppression is genuine and historically grounded in the material conditions Engels examined, the identity-politics approach causes political harm by disconnecting gender from class. It treats patriarchy as a standalone system instead of recognising how it is deeply influenced and interconnected with capitalist property relations.

The result is that the critique of alienated intimate life gets channelled into individual empowerment narratives on how to navigate the dating market as a woman, how to assert your boundaries, how to optimise your romantic self, which are perfectly compatible with capitalism and ultimately reinforce the commodified framework rather than challenge it. Genuine liberation from alienated relationships requires the overthrow of the system that produces that alienation, not better personal strategies within it.

What Genuine Liberation Requires

The Marxist position is straightforward: genuine human liberation, including the liberation of intimate life from commodification and alienation, requires the socialist transformation of society. This means abolishing the material conditions that force people into isolated competition with one another: the wage system, private property, the housing market, and all the economic pressures that deform human relationships from the outside in. Alexandra Kollontai, writing in the early Soviet period, understood this clearly. The “new woman” and “new man” she wrote about were not products of cultural attitude shifts; they were to be forged through collective struggle and the building of a new social order in which human beings could relate to one another freely, not as economic units.