Polyamory, Marriage Rights, and Social Control II

So, part two.  Part two is about socialism, among other things.

But let’s start with capitalism.  What are capitalist values?  Well, capitalism encourages things like individual achievement and responsibility.  It also encourages competition and jealousy as byproducts of the achievement value–your goal should be to outperform your peer, and if your peer is doing better than you, you should want his stuff, because wanting his stuff means you’re going to strive to do better (ie, make more money) so that you can have more property.  For capitalists, this is good.

There’s a condition of this individual achievement thing, though, and that’s regulated relationships.  Marriage.  Our capitalist system says okay, we want you to go out and do well for yourself, but we only want you to do well for yourself.  We want to discourage people making big, messy group bonds because then maybe they’ll start caring more about group welfare than themselves, and then they won’t support the system of individual achievement–a system, incidentally, that strongly benefits most of the law-makers out there, who aren’t doing too badly for themselves under capitalism.

Capitalism discourages creativity when it comes to family structures, and that includes polyamory.

The irony, though, is that communal, socialist forms of relating actually give the individual more freedom to use his own talents by providing resources and choices to everyone in the community and by protecting creativity and safe spaces to develop one’s individual self.  I was struck by a mention in A People’s History of the United States of how American Indians, with the tribal system, don’t consider communal arrangements a form of individual self sacrifice, but actually give the individual the ultimate freedom.  Every individual in the tribe has the right to leave.  Capitalism, on the other hand, gives you very strong legal and financial incentives not to leave.  Alternate family structures to marriage and the nuclear family are not given many of the benefits of living in a capitalist society, because capitalism is very jealous of its members.

“No, don’t go!” benevolent Father Capitalist says.  ”I have mooooney for youuu…”

“No thanks.  I don’t want your money.  I’d actually rather be free to choose my own romantic relationships and family structure, and to live in an environment that nurtures my individual creativity.”

“But, but… here in Capitalist America, you can be all you can be.”

“Thanks… but no thanks.”

Polyamory, Marriage Rights, and Social Control I

So as same-sex marriage and same-sex partnership rights spread, there has been a lot of talk about benefits.  People in queer relationships, like those in heterosexual ones, now have the dubious privilege of being able to marry for health insurance.  And of course, there’s a big valid point here about equality.

But I’ve been thinking about polyamory and marriage equality.  First gut instinct reaction: hey guys, quit talking so much about how “don’t worry, the slippery slope of same-sex marriage won’t lead to polygamy or anything,” because that’s not very nice.  Second reaction: but wait… were I to buy into marriage in the first place, would I really want the government to confer benefits on me based on the status of my intimate relationships?

Of course, poly people aren’t completely excluded from the legal and employer-based benefits of marriage.  Many poly people are married, to somebody.  But the question is, should the law allow marriage to more than one person, and thus benefits?

From a legal perspective, it gets very sticky of course, because who “counts,” how many marriages can you actually have, etc.?  From a social perspective, people are going to throw Mormon polygamy and sexism in your face.  And then I have to ask, well, are government benefits really what I want in the first place?