Capitalism depends on labor to create value, and the source of this labor is the individual. By privileging marriage and the family, capital is essentially purchasing the production of its most valuable raw material: workers… One innate aspect of capitalism is that it reduces organic social relationships to relationships based on economics, based on the creation and exchange of goods and resources.

— Pink and Black Attack #2 - FUCK THEIR MARRIAGE or, some thoughts on the counter-revolutionary nature of assimilationist politics and practice.

I think it is a mistake to presume that the social/economic ‘usefulness’ of marriage is something which is only (or even predominately) true under capitalism. while the idea of relationships built entirely on love/comradery/sexual attraction is attractive, i think it ignores the fact that human associations generally always have some sort of economic or social function. Can you even have an ‘organic social relationship’ unaffected by the larger society around you? I don’t think so, and kinship/relationships never exist in a vacuum.

Not to, you know, sound like a functionalist. also not to make it appear that I don’t think this critique is legitimate, because I do.

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