On Polyamory and Capitalism
March 6, 2021
From the romantic to the political, from the individual to the communal, what can we learn? “All polyamory participants talk as if they are living in a social vacuum, unaffected by the wider social order”, writes Sydney Peiris in the Guardian. With this article, I will not explore polyamory as a social structure in itself. Instead, I will analyze its existence as an eccentric movement within an overall system that does not engulf it. I am fascinated by structures that are unfamiliar yet still find their ways of developing within limiting environments. Since I agree it is naive to think that we could exist outside of social, political, and therefore economic orders, these structures could highlight tools and approaches to evaluate and maybe, suggest alterations to the status quo: capitalism.
As a start, what is polyamory? Polyamory can be simply and commonly defined as the practice of engaging in multiple romantic relationships, with the consent of all the people involved.
Over the ages, marriage — the “happy ending” of monogamy — has been established as one of the most prominent forms of intimate relationships. Marriage, therefore, constituted over the ages a socio-economic institution, like a little firm, that is now combined with concepts and values like intimacy, loyalty, and transparency. This institution by its original conception and its current nature has the objective of protecting offspring and wealth. Therefore, let us try to bring into focus the aspect of exclusivity; what if we were to apply practices from polyamory into our current lives? What does exclusivity entail within the established status quo, also known as capitalism?
From an anthropological standpoint, the normative understanding of relationships requires exclusivity of attention and affection. If we were to observe the sharing of care and love in polyamory — which does not hold exclusivity at its core — and mirror it to the community, we could learn to promote environments that are non-hierarchical, or ‘horizontal’. How? The role distribution and the positions of the partners in polyamorous relationships are decentralized and diverse. The partners’ involvements in multiple love relationships give them the opportunity to share and receive care with many people in parallel who, in their turn, also exchange it in other circles, thus making the process of intimacy more inclusive. Therefore, environments that are in capitalistic culture more admissive to the marginalization of certain classes, genders, or races could become more welcoming of diverse people from conflicting ‘backgrounds.’
From an economic standpoint, polyamory could entail the diversification of wealth and property, which fundamentally criticizes the accumulation and privatization of wealth of capitalism. On the one hand, the transformation of the concept of a normative household could help accompany the notion of a more horizontal community; since the resources like money, property, citizenship, and class are not restricted within the minority of families. On a larger scale, it could be fun to compare the diversification of attention between the partners in many polyamorous relationships with increased liquidity of circulating cash amongst a vaster number of people.
From a structural standpoint, capitalism creates opportunities for a small minority to make decisions for the vast majority, with no consent. Yet in polyamorous relationships, this cannot be the case. The partners are autonomous yet not individualistic, which gives the chance to develop creative frameworks of collaborative decision-making processes that are not as vertical or hierarchical.
From a cultural standpoint, capitalism enforces a particular view on romance as a powerful tool for survival. This is evident through the manipulation in our social circles and the media that calls for the extreme significance of finding ‘the one’ that should satisfy your whole emotional and sexual needs. This could therefore turn into increased opportunities for capitalistic companies to create events like Valentine’s day, or to inflict low self-esteem on single people, and many other repercussions.
Polyamory still remains an overwhelming concept and practice within the context of reserved countries like Lebanon, yet it is interesting to approach other forms of intimate entanglements and connect them to the community. I believe the practices we employ in love, our ideology around romance, and our understanding of values in relationships, are directly connected to our ideologies and positions in vaster systems. Therefore, studying romantic engagements could lead to findings on practices on a community scale, maybe even a structural one.