Multi-Level Marketing: A Neoliberal Institution

Capitalism has a productivity fetish. The goal of squeezing more and more out of workers while also cutting costs to the quick underscores all historical incarnations of the capitalist cycle of accumulation. The fixation on productivity spills over and infects the adjacent cultural institutions, and individuals are socialized to believe that working hard—a virtue in its own rite—is also a means to achieving economic security and the respective cultural signifiers therein. Under neoliberalism, this productivity fetish spawned the “side-hustle” and the explosive growth of the multi-level marketing (MLM) industry.The MLM is a logical outgrowth of the capitalist accumulation imperative as well as a neoliberal institution which relies on business and social practices distinct to this current historical period. MLMs are able to push typical retail overhead costs on to individual distributors, who are expected to act as buyers, inventory holders, retailers, self-managers, recruiters, job trainers, and exert disciplinary control over their distributor lines. All of the individual distributor’s relationships transform into potential transactional exchanges, thereby amplifying the alienation already endemic to capitalism. This research examines the MLM as an interactively reinforcing institution of neoliberalism, the ideological operant of this current phase of capitalism.