We like to think we’re free in the free market; that we’re beyond the forces of advertising and social manipulation by market forces. But there is a new social trend – the rise of ‘the single person’ as model consumer – that presents us with a paradox. What we one though of as radical – staying single – may now be reactionary.
The long-term relationship, like the job-for-life, is fast being deregulated into short term, temporary arrangements with no promise of commitment, as sociologist Zygmunt Bauman has been warning us for over a decade. It’s hard for two people to be self-employed, with no promise of a stable future, together. Capitalism now wants us to be single. Continue reading “Why capitalism wants us to stay single”