Ideology represents workers as individual consumers bound by invisible contracts.

Evidence

One way of thinking the general function of ideology, in relation to these two spheres, is in terms of what Poulantzas calls separation and uniting . In the sphere of market relations and of “egoistic private interest” (the sphere, preeminently, of “civil society”) the productive classes appear or are represented as (a) individual economic units driven by private and egoistic interests alone, which are (b) bound by the multitude of invisible contracts—the “hidden hand” of capitalist exchange relations. As we have remarked, this re-presentation has the effect, first, of shifting emphasis and visibility from production to exchange, second of fragmenting classes into individuals, third of binding individuals into that “passive community” of consumers. — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 911

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘passive community of consumers’ resonates with my reading on how market ideology fragments class solidarity across modern media and advertising. — connects to: Under monopoly capitalism classes persist objectively while becoming socially invisible. — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 680
• SEED: Angle: how platform capitalism extends this ‘shifting visibility from production to exchange’ — gig apps show the transaction, hide the labor process.