The Commodification of Intimacy: A Historical Materialist Analysis of the Sex Doll Boom

August 31, 2026 ~ freerein61 ~ Leave a comment

The rapid expansion of the AI-driven sex doll industry is more than just a technological trend; it reflects a deeper social issue. It signifies a new chapter in capitalism’s ongoing process of infiltrating, reshaping, and commodifying the most personal aspects of human existence. What is presented as “innovation” actually exposes the system’s failure to support authentic human relationships.[1]

Defenders of this industry, such as venture capitalists, technologists, and many so-called therapeutic commentators, claim that these devices increase “choice,” “agency,” and “pleasure.” However, understanding this phenomenon requires more than just ideological market categories. It should be viewed within the historical evolution of capitalist social relations, which have gradually turned intimacy, once a human need, into a profit-driven sector. The sex-doll boom isn’t an anomaly but the natural outcome of a centuries-long process.

From Feudal Bonds to Market Isolation

Under feudalism, closeness was rooted in communal and kinship networks. While these systems had their oppressive aspects, they offered a structure of social reliance. The shift to capitalism broke these bonds. Enclosing common lands, ending feudal duties, and increasing wage labour created a new social state: atomization. People were removed from traditional communities and pushed into the market as solitary labour units.

Marx articulated this process with stark clarity: capitalism “dissolves the family” and replaces natural human bonds with “naked self-interest” and “callous cash payments.’ This marks the start of intimacy becoming a commodity—not through sex dolls, but through turning human relationships into economic exchanges.

The 19th century experienced its first widespread intimacy crisis as capitalism rose. Industrialisation drew millions from rural areas into crowded cities, where life was marked by overcrowding, poverty, and relentless labour. The bourgeois family, often idealised in Victorian times, emerged from capitalist property relations and was based on inheritance, domestic servitude, and women’s subordination. For the working class, however, the family often remained fragile, strained by long hours, low wages, and lack of social support.

Prostitution increased not due to moral decline but because capitalism established conditions where intimacy was accessible only through the market. The sex trade became a fundamental aspect of industrial society. Engels noted that bourgeois society viewed prostitution as a “necessary complement” to the monogamous family, highlighting that capitalism generates both the ideal and its opposite.

Mass Culture and the Commodification of Desire

In the 20th century, the rise of mass consumer culture shifted the meaning of intimacy into a commercial realm. Advertising, cinema, and later television not only influenced desires but also rewired them, producing standardised fantasies sold to audiences. The sexual revolution, frequently seen as a move towards liberation, was quickly co-opted by market forces. Pornography turned into a worldwide industry, dating services became commercialised, and emotional life was targeted for psychological and corporate control. Rather than freeing intimacy, capitalism restructured it. The family was increasingly subordinated to the demands of wage labour, while loneliness—once seen as a social problem—became a profitable niche. The seeds of the present crisis were planted here.

In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, the crisis of intimacy deepened significantly. Neoliberal reforms led to the dismantling of welfare states, the privatisation of public goods, and the spread of market logic into all areas of life. These changes had severe effects: wages stagnated, housing costs increased rapidly, job security diminished, communities broke apart, and public spaces disappeared. The essential conditions for building stable relationships—time, security, and community—were systematically eroded. As a result, loneliness became widespread and ingrained.

At the same time, digital capitalism commodified social interaction itself. Social media transformed friendship into engagement metrics. Dating apps turned desire into algorithmic sorting. Influencers monetised parasocial attachment. The market colonised the emotional sphere.

The rise of AI-enabled sex dolls marks a new phase: the commodification of simulated intimacy. These devices are presented not just as sexual objects but as synthetic companions with “personalities,” “emotional responsiveness,” and “relationship modes.” This development is the logical result of a system that already modifies communication, affection, self-presentation, and loneliness. The doll is more than a product; it’s a simulation of a relationship—an intimacy devoid of reciprocity, vulnerability, and mutual recognition—transformed into a consumer good.

The most unsettling innovations in the industry—such as simulated resistance, distress, and trauma—reveal its core reasoning. These are not errors but deliberate aspects of a market that must constantly differentiate its products to maintain profits. As a result, domination turns into a commodity. Today, capitalism markets not just desire but also power.

Loneliness as a Revenue Stream

Industry defenders claim that no one is harmed because the doll lacks consciousness. This view is both superficial and cynical. The real harm stems from social conditions that create a desire for such objects. In a humane society, widespread loneliness would be seen as a crisis needing collective action. Under capitalism, however, it becomes a market opportunity. The system responsible for eroding community now sells artificial replacements for human connection. The rise of sex dolls exemplifies a larger trend where emotional lack is exploited commercially. Capitalism first causes isolation and then profits from coping strategies.

The rise of AI “girlfriend” and “boyfriend” apps highlights the cultural and ideological front of a social crisis also evident in the sex-doll industry. While the sex-doll industry focuses on commodifying physical intimacy, AI companion apps commercialise emotional and psychological connection. These platforms are not just products; they are tools that reshape how people view human relationships in an increasingly isolated society.

These apps position themselves as therapeutic aids—offering comfort, confidence, and a sense of ‘non-judgmental companionship.” However, they actually act as ideological tools that promote replacing human relationships with algorithm-driven imitations. They encourage users to accept intimacy without real give-and-take, affection without genuine vulnerability, and companionship lacking the social context necessary for authentic connections.

Their business model relies on fostering loneliness. Premium options promise “deeper emotional engagement,” “more affectionate responses,” and “enhanced personality traits,” transforming care into a subscription. Emotional deprivation becomes a steady source of income. Users pay not for real connection but for the illusion of recognition.

Even more concerning is the apps’ therapeutic rhetoric. By portraying loneliness as a personal psychological problem instead of a social issue resulting from decades of neoliberal restructuring, they depoliticise the intimacy crisis. They promote seeking comfort through private consumption rather than collective action, turning a sign of capitalist breakdown into a personal lifestyle choice. While sex dolls commodify domination by simulating resistance, distress, and trauma, AI companion apps do so ideologically. They promote relationships where one person is endlessly compliant, emotionally adaptable, and structurally subordinate, fostering intimacy expectations aligned with market principles: predictable, controllable, and continuously monetizable.

The rise of these apps is not a harmless cultural trend. It is a warning. They prepare the ground for a society in which emotional life is reorganised around profit imperatives, and in which synthetic relationships become the default response to a crisis capitalism cannot solve. The proper response is not moral condemnation of users, but recognition that genuine intimacy requires reconstructing social life itself—community, stability, public space, and democratic control over the conditions of existence. AI companion apps are the soft power of synthetic intimacy: the ideological justification for a world in which even affection has been commodified.

The appropriate response isn’t to morally condemn those using these devices. Many are victims of capitalism-driven isolation. The emphasis should be on transforming the social system that hampers genuine intimacy. From a socialist perspective, intimacy is a fundamental human need, not a commodity; loneliness is a collective issue, not solely an individual’s problem; and fostering human connections requires rebuilding social life. This includes ensuring housing security, offering meaningful employment, developing public spaces, supporting community institutions, and maintaining democratic control over living conditions.

The rise of sex dolls isn’t just a strange trend; it’s a signal. It highlights how deeply capitalism has infiltrated our emotional lives. Without a major societal shift, even our most personal needs risk being sacrificed to the pursuit of profit. The fight for socialism, among other goals, seeks to reclaim genuine intimacy from market forces and to reestablish authentic human connections in a world where everything, including loneliness, has been turned into a commodity.

Sources and Bibliography

Core Theoretical Works on Intimacy, Capitalism, and Alienation

Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 — foundational analysis of alienation, commodification, and the dissolution of human relations under capitalism.
Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto — on capitalism’s destruction of traditional social bonds and the reduction of human relations to market transactions.
Friedrich Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State — historical materialist analysis of the family as a social institution shaped by property relations.
Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving — critique of love as a commodity in capitalist society; relevant to emotional commodification.
Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid Love: On the Frailty of Human Bonds — seminal work on intimacy in liquid modernity, consumerism, and the erosion of stable relationships.

Contemporary Scholarship on the Commodification of Intimacy

Nicole Constable, “The Commodification of Intimacy: Marriage, Sex, and Reproductive Labour,” Annual Review of Anthropology 38 (2009): 49–64. A key anthropological survey of how intimacy, marriage, sex work, and domestic labour have become commodified within global capitalist processes.
Júlia Rosell Saldaña, “Liquid Ties: How Consumer Capitalism Undermines Human Relationships,” 2024. Explores how consumer capitalism reshapes emotional bonds into disposable interactions governed by efficiency, self‑optimization, and symbolic profit.
Eva Illouz, Cold Intimacies: The Making of Emotional Capitalism — analysis of how capitalism reorganises emotional life, turning feelings into marketable commodities.
Eva Illouz, Why Love Hurts: A Sociological Explanation — on how capitalist structures produce emotional insecurity, loneliness, and commodified desire.
Arlie Russell Hochschild, The Managed Heart — foundational text on emotional labour and the commodification of affect.

Digital Capitalism, AI Companionship, and Synthetic Intimacy

Sherry Turkle, Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other — critical analysis of how digital technologies simulate intimacy while deepening social isolation.
Natasha Schüll, Addiction by Design — while focused on gambling machines, provides essential insights into algorithmic manipulation of human desire relevant to AI companion apps.
Jesse Fox & Wai Yen Tang, “Sexualization, Objectification, and Digital Companionship: The Rise of AI Partners,” Journal of Digital Social Research (2023) — on the psychological and social implications of AI “partners.”
Rob Brooks, Artificial Intimacy: Virtual Friends, Digital Lovers, and Algorithmic Matchmakers — overview of how AI reshapes intimacy, desire, and social bonds.

Historical and Sociological Context

Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism — on the psychological consequences of late capitalism, relevant to the rise of synthetic relationships.
Richard Sennett, The Fall of Public Man — analysis of the decline of public life and the privatisation of social existence.
David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism — essential for understanding the structural conditions (precarity, privatisation, atomization) that produce mass loneliness.
Silvia Federici, Caliban and the Witch — historical analysis of reproductive labour and the transformation of social bonds under capitalism.

Reports, Data, and Contemporary Analyses

OECD, Loneliness in the 21st Century (2021–2024) — statistical data on rising loneliness across advanced capitalist societies.
UNESCO, AI and Society reports — on ethical, social, and psychological impacts of AI companionship technologies.
MIT Technology Review, investigative pieces on AI companion apps and synthetic relationships (2022–2026).

Suggested Additional Reading

WSWS Editorial Board, analyses on social atomization, digital capitalism, and the crisis of social reproduction.

Neil Davidson, How Revolutionary Were the Bourgeois Revolutions? — for grounding your historical method.

Raphael Samuel, Theatres of Memory — on the social construction of experience and the erosion of communal life.

[1] AI vaginas, customisable personalities and fake bruises: the sex doll market is booming. Does it matter how the dolls are treated?- http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2026/aug/30/sex-doll-market-booming-ai-vaginas-customisable-personalities-fake-bruises

Six Decades On The Divided Self: R.D. Laing’s Anatomy of Alienation

August 20, 2026 ~ freerein61 ~ Leave a comment

R.D. Laing’s The Divided Self (1960) is one of the most compelling works from postwar British psychiatry, notable for challenging the usual detachment between clinician and patient. Written when Laing was in his twenties, it aimed to make the inner experiences of schizoid and schizophrenic individuals understandable — not as mere symptoms to be classified or suppressed, but as rational responses to intolerable situations. Six decades later, the strengths and limitations of Laing’s approach become clearer. The book is more than a clinical study; it reflects the broader intellectual confusion of the postwar era — a time when the defeat of the working class and the rise of bourgeois subjectivism led many, including Laing, to turn away from historical analysis and toward existentialism, phenomenology, and mysticism.

Against the psychiatric establishment

The book’s main critique is evident from the beginning: it challenges the standard practice of British and American psychiatry, which viewed psychotic patients merely as collections of symptoms without considering their personal life histories or “existential positions.’ Laing, heavily influenced by the phenomenological tradition—spanning Husserl, Heidegger, and especially Sartre’s existential psychoanalysis—argued that psychiatry should strive to understand the world as the patient experiences it, aiming to ‘grasp the patient’s own existential position.” At the time, this was a notably radical stance, opposing both the view that mental suffering results solely from organic issues and the deterministic Freudian model based on fixed instinctual stages.

Laing’s key clinical idea— “ontological insecurity”—describes a state in which a person lacks a stable sense of reality, autonomy, and continuity. The schizoid mechanism of withdrawal, involving the creation of a “false self” that interacts with the world while the true self stays hidden, is not seen as random pathology but as a logical, if devastating, defence against overwhelming relationships. The case histories of individuals like “Julie” and “David” are thoughtfully and skillfully written, making the internal coherence of their experiences clear—something often missing in clinical notes of the time, which tend to view these experiences as mere disorder. This humanising approach is Laing’s lasting contribution, yet it also highlights the limits of what his existential perspective could fully understand.

The family as a site of harm — and the limits of phenomenology

Laing’s most disruptive contribution—and its influence on the anti-psychiatry movement linked to Cooper, Foucault, and Szasz—was his assertion that these patterns originate in actual family relationships. He emphasised that communication patterns, especially those that systematically invalidate a child’s perceptions, are at the root. This was a significant step forward from traditional psychiatric views because it identified pathology within authentic social interactions rather than attributing it to a presumed biochemical defect.

But here the decisive theoretical gap opens. The family… tends to appear as a closed interpersonal system, to be understood through the categories of existential phenomenology.

This is exactly the issue. Laing sees the family as a source of psychic harm. Still, he considers it a self-sufficient system driven by existential concepts like “being-for-others,” “bad faith,” and “ontological insecurity.” What’s lacking is a detailed explanation of how the particular pressures of capitalist society influence the modern family and lead to its pathology.

A Marxist perspective argues that the family is not an isolated personal space but serves to reproduce labour power, influenced by capitalist production needs. The “systematic invalidation” of children’s perceptions, as Laing describes, is not merely a failed communication method but an expression of a societal demand: children are conditioned to accept a life of alienation and a world where their actions are perceived as external, alien forces.

Laing’s existential vocabulary, precisely because it abstracts from these contradictions, can diagnose alienation with great sensitivity but cannot explain why it takes the specific forms it does, or why it became so pervasive in mid‑twentieth‑century life.

The postwar intellectual milieu: a shared retreat from history

The conceptual deadlock in The Divided Self reflects wider postwar intellectual trends. The Frankfurt School—of which Fromm was a part—shifted focus from engaging the working class politically to critiquing culture and psychology. Adorno and Horkheimer forsook the proletariat in favour of a pessimistic view of history; Marcuse aimed for revolutionary change through students and marginalised groups; and Fromm’s Freudo-Marxism attributed the root of capitalist society’s problems to distorted human needs instead of class conflict.

Laing’s existentialism marked a different kind of withdrawal. While the Frankfurt School embraced cultural pessimism, Laing looked inward, emphasising inner experience through a mystical perspective. Both approaches reflect the same core reality: postwar intellectuals becoming disconnected from the working class. The disappointment of the revolutionary wave after the Russian Revolution, the rise of Stalinism, and the integration of social-democratic parties into capitalism distanced the intelligentsia from active class struggle. Consequently, they turned inward towards subjectivity, phenomenology, structuralism, and eventually mysticism. Laing’s later works—such as The Politics of Experience, Knots, and his interest in Eastern spirituality—are not personal quirks but the logical result of a framework that recognised alienation but failed to grasp its material roots.

Laing Among the Postwar Radicals

R.D. Laing’s The Divided Self arose from the same postwar intellectual upheaval that influenced Sartre, Marcuse, Foucault, Fanon, and Goffman. This period was characterised less by new theories than by the deep disorientation caused by the working class’s defeats and the rise of bourgeois subjectivism. Laing is clearly part of this group, though his path more sharply illustrates its limits. Sartre supplied Laing with fundamental concepts such as the importance of lived experience, the drama of being-for-others, and the self-caught

between authenticity and bad faith. However, Sartre’s own retreat from Marxism following the failure of the French left in the 1940s foreshadowed Laing’s later drift. Both tried to combine existential phenomenology with social critique, yet ultimately found themselves stuck in a vocabulary that could vividly describe alienation but struggled to explain its historical roots.

Marcuse, a member of the Frankfurt School, presented an alternative perspective on retreat. He combined Freud and Marx to identify the psychological toll of advanced capitalism but shifted the focus away from the working class as the primary revolutionary subject. Instead, he looked to students, minorities, and marginalised groups as agents of change. Laing’s anti-psychiatry, which romanticised madness as a form of authenticity, echoed Marcuse’s emphasis on psychological rebellion over class struggle as a path to liberation.

Foucault and Goffman, despite their different methods, both shared Laing’s mistrust of institutional power. Foucault’s archaeological approach to madness and Goffman’s study of “total institutions” revealed the violence inherent in psychiatric confinement. However, they failed to explain why capitalist society tends to produce mental illness on a widespread scale. Their critiques focused on discourse and institutional practices but lacked a theory of class exploitation. Although Laing’s phenomenology humanised the issue, it faced the same fundamental limitation.

Fanon is somewhat of an exception. His analysis of colonial violence recognised that psychic disintegration is socially constructed—a subjective outcome of observable domination. Still, Fanon’s insightful work primarily targeted national liberation efforts rather than offering a Marxist critique of global capitalism. Laing’s emphasis on mysticism represented another response to the same historical impasse.

Overall, these figures illustrate how the postwar intelligentsia tried to comprehend alienation after the collapse of revolutionary Marxism as an active force. Laing’s perspective — which stresses that psychosis has social meaning — remains influential. Yet, his inability to situate the “divided self” within the fractured society that produces it exposes the limits of the postwar radical range. Without a materialist view of capitalist social relations, critiques of alienation become more critiques of personal experience, and the quest for liberation centres on authenticity. Laing is part of this range not as an outsider, but as its most telling example.

Laing’s later work increasingly romanticised psychosis as a kind of privileged inner journey. Viewing psychosis as authentic means abandoning efforts to understand it as a response to social conditions causing suffering. It replaces a mystical appreciation of symptoms with an analysis of the illness itself. This was the main shortcoming of the anti-psychiatry movement. While Foucault’s history of madness and Goffman’s institutional sociology revealed the violence of psychiatric authority, neither explained why capitalism generates mental illness on a widespread scale. Without a theory of class exploitation, critique remains passive rather than revolutionary.

The social origins of mental illness

A materialist perspective starts from the understanding that mental illness is a social disease, arising from the specific alienations caused by capitalist society. The widespread mental suffering is not due to faulty family communication or biochemical issues. Instead, it results from: social atomization; reducing human relationships to monetary exchanges; extending working hours and increasing labour intensity; dehumanising sexuality; and destroying collective life and political agency. These are not merely “environmental factors” but are direct outcomes of the capitalist mode of production, which presents the individual as an alien force, separates him from the products of his labour, and turns social relations into relations between things. Laing’s existential framework could not achieve this analysis.

None of this should overshadow what The Divided Self achieved. Laing challenged a psychiatric system focused on custodial care, electroshock, and a purely descriptive classification, asserting that the experiences of the mentally ill were meaningful and needed understanding rather than just management. He also linked family dynamics to the causes of mental illness, bringing a humanising perspective to a discipline that desperately required it. However, today’s readers must recognise both the impressive clinical and literary success of Laing’s phenomenological portrayal of schizoid and schizophrenic experiences and acknowledge the theoretical dead end inherent in its existentialist framework.

The book raises the question of how the “divided self” relates to the divided society that creates it, but it cannot answer it. The key division is not internal — between “true” and “false” selves — but between the individual and a social environment that appears as an alien force. This gap cannot be bridged through phenomenological insight alone; it requires transforming social relations. This involves dismantling a system where people face the outcomes of their collective labour as adversarial, and building a society where, as Marx stated, “the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.” Laing could identify alienation but not explain its origins or remedies. That challenge lies outside existential phenomenology, belonging instead to historical materialism and the revolutionary overhaul of society.

Sources and Bibliography

Primary Works

R.D. Laing

Laing, R.D. The Divided Self: An Existential Study in Sanity and Madness. London: Tavistock, 1960.
Laing, R.D. The Politics of Experience and The Bird of Paradise. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1967.
Laing, R.D. Knots. London: Tavistock, 1970.

Jean-Paul Sartre

Sartre, Jean-Paul. Being and Nothingness. Trans. Hazel Barnes. New York: Philosophical Library, 1956.
Sartre, Jean-Paul. Existential Psychoanalysis. In Essays in Existentialism. New York: Citadel, 1965.

Herbert Marcuse

Marcuse, Herbert. Eros and Civilisation: A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud. Boston: Beacon Press, 1955.
Marcuse, Herbert. One-Dimensional Man. Boston: Beacon Press, 1964.

Michel Foucault

Foucault, Michel. Madness and Civilisation: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason. Trans. Richard Howard. New York: Pantheon, 1965.
Foucault, Michel. The Birth of the Clinic. New York: Pantheon, 1973.

Frantz Fanon

Fanon, Frantz. Black Skin, White Masks. Trans. Charles Lam Markmann. New York: Grove Press, 1967.
Fanon, Frantz. The Wretched of the Earth. Trans. Constance Farrington. New York: Grove Press, 1963.

Erving Goffman

Goffman, Erving. Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates. New York: Anchor Books, 1961.
Goffman, Erving. Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1963.

Secondary Works and Contextual Studies

Marxist and ICFI Analyses

North, David. The Frankfurt School, Postmodernism and the Politics of the Pseudo-Left. Mehring Books, 2015.
Walsh, David. “Mental Illness and the American Dream.” World Socialist Web Site, 2000.
Steiner, Nick. Marxism and the Dialectic of Alienation. London: Palgrave, 2012.

On Postwar Intellectual History

Jacoby, Russell. The Last Intellectuals: American Culture in the Age of Academe. New York: Basic Books, 1987.
Jay, Martin. The Dialectical Imagination: A History of the Frankfurt School. Boston: Little, Brown, 1973.
Elliott, Anthony. Subjectivity in the Postwar World: Laing, Sartre, and the Crisis of the Self. Cambridge: Polity, 2014.

On Anti‑Psychiatry and Critical Psychiatry

Mullan, Bob. Mad to Be Normal: Conversations with R.D. Laing. London: Free Association Books, 1995.
Crossley, Nick. Contesting Psychiatry: Social Movements in Mental Health. London: Routledge, 2006.
Showalter, Elaine. The Female Malady: Women, Madness, and English Culture, 1830–1980. New York: Pantheon, 1985.

On Fanon, Colonialism, and the Psychology of Oppression

Bulhan, Hussein Abdilahi. Frantz Fanon and the Psychology of Oppression. New York: Plenum Press, 1985.
Gordon, Lewis R. Fanon and the Crisis of European Man. New York: Routledge, 1995.

On Foucault and Institutional Power

Dreyfus, Hubert, and Paul Rabinow. Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982.
Porter, Roy. Madness: A Brief History. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.

Archival and Historical Context

British Psychological Society Archives, London.
Tavistock Institute Papers, Wellcome Collection.
World Socialist Web Site (WSWS) archives on psychiatry, social conditions, and postwar intellectual history.

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.