Atop the Pyramid of the American Dream: The Politics Multi-Level Marketing
Bibi Imre-Millei, Online Assistant Editor
November 30, 2020
If you’ve never received a message from an estranged high school acquaintance full of compliments, asking you to buy into the business opportunity of a lifetime, you might not be familiar with the world of multi-level marketing (MLM).
MLM, network marketing, or direct sales companies are often called a pyramid scheme with a product. They tempt you by telling you it’s easy money, that the product is a miracle and sells itself, that you can do business from your phone, that this can be your side hustle or your full time job. Once you’re in, it soon becomes obvious that this was never about selling a product. Your upline, the person who recruited you and the people who recruited them, make money off your sales and off your recruitment of others. You are their downline and they want you to create a downline of your own because they want you to help people with the amazing opportunity you’ve been given to spread the secret of success. But if you find the financial disclosure statements buried in company websites, you will see that for most MLMs, a very small percentage of distributors (usually under five percent) make money. In fact, distributors often lose money or go into debt.
MLMs build a toxic culture of constant work which hinges on the belief that someday if you work hard enough, you will have the life you always dreamed. Uplines force you to recruit those closest to you, cut off those who don’t understand or are opposed to what you do, and blame it all on your lack of work ethic when you plunge into debt. They ask you to use personal tragedy, like the death of your dog or grandmother or the COVID19 pandemic to gain a downline; MLMs make the distributor both victim and perpetrator. Wrapped in their veneer of toxic positivity, the culture of MLMs begs the question: is this a cult, or the twisted late-capitalist end point of the American Dream?
Of course, MLMs are not new. Though I am not old enough to remember the Tupperware parties of 1960s (Tupperware no longer has a large direct selling presence in the US, but it does still peddle entrepreneurial dreams to women in the Global South) or Avon ladies, I do remember that multiple friends’ parents suddenly became Young Living reps in the early 2010s. But you can’t talk about MLMs, let alone discuss their sway on politics, without talking about Amway.
While the first MLM company was Avon, which started in the 1880s, Nutrilite is considered one of the first MLM’s with the structure we recognize today. In 1959, two Nutrilite distributors, Richard DeVos and Jay Van Andel, who had built a considerable downline between them, started Amway. They wanted to sell not just nutrition products, but all household items, and built their MLM into a billion dollar company. Amway paved the way for how modern MLMs operate and has engaged in consistent lobbying of the Republican Party to keep MLMs from being classified as (illegal) pyramid schemes. Herbalife and Avon, along with the broader Direct Selling Association (which represents MLMs as an industry) also have a history of lobbying against MLM legislation and regulations. Apart from millions of dollars in donations to the Republican party and various Republican campaigns, Amway’s founding families have also been very politically active. The most famous is Betsy DeVoss, president Trump’s minister for education, who not only continues to make money from Amway but who was also involved in the rallies against COVID19 lockdowns in April.
Extensive lobbying has led Republican presidents to endorse Amway and MLMs in general. Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush have all publicly endorsed Amway. In 2004, the New York Times ran an article where Bush’s campaign strategists discussed managing the campaign like an MLM and specifically referenced Amway. Vox accused the Trump 2016 presidential campaign’s fundraisers of operating like a pyramid scheme, with 80-90% of proceeds going into the pockets of fundraising strategists; Ben Carson was involved in one of these fundraising efforts. Donald Trump himself has endorsed Amway and was a paid promoter of the MLM video phone company ACN for many years in the 2010s. Trump even had a lawsuit brought against him by those who lost money to ACN in 2014, but Trump now denies his ties to the company. Though it was a swift failure, Trump also attempted to start his own MLM, the Trump network. James Miles, who was appointed by Trump this year to the Open Technology Fund also has historic ties to two MLMs, one of which his wife was a top seller for; both of which have been in legal trouble.
Apart from these direct ties to politicians and lobbying, which hinder Federal Trade Commission investigations, MLMs also have a specific place in American culture when it comes to religion, cults, and conspiracy theories. The US state of Utah is home base for over 100 MLMs, and is known as the MLM capital of the world. Utah is also the home of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints (LDS) better known as the Mormon church. Both current Mormons profiled in a BBC Documentary “Secrets of the Multilevel Millionaires” and ex-Mormons like Samantha Shelley from the YouTube channel Zelf on the Shelf point out the similarities between the structure of MLMs and Mormonism. The Missions that LDS members must go on equip them with direct selling skills and normalize reaching out to strangers; many Mormons go into sales after their Missions. Mormon women are also encouraged to stay at home and care for the house and the family, but this often leaves them feeling isolated, in need of community, and wanting to contribute to the household income: MLMs pitch friends and financial gain. Both MLMs and LDS operate like a close family and normalize cutting critics out of your life. Shelley notes that MLMs and LDS sell a form of salvation which requires blind faith in the product and conversion through false claims. For MLMs, salvation is financial freedom, purpose and community. Salvation can only come with persistent loyalty and personal sacrifice.
MLMs take many cues from cult-like organizations for their operations, including having venerated founders and giant conventions. The conventions, which distributors often have to pay for, have very little product training or coaching in sales, and instead focus on celebrity legitimation of the company and re-indoctrination through motivational speeches and parties. In a recent article in The Atlantic, Kaitlyn Tiffany discusses the rise of the QAnon conspiracy theory in MLM groups, propagated by the most successful Young Living and Arbonne distributors.
Tiffany also notes how the culture of some MLMs legitimizes pseudoscience and distrust of medical professionals and government authorities. Accordingly, many MLM reps have also been promoting false claims about COVID19. Some of these claims are tied to QAnon or other conspiracy theories, while others claim their products will protect against or cure COVID19. Almost all MLMs have used the pandemic as a recruiting tool, discussing the benefits of working from home and flexibility on Instagram stories and in Facebook posts.
Most content on MLMs focusses on companies in the US, the UK, and Canada, but MLMs have been expanding into the Global South. On anti-MLM Reddit forums, users have been complaining about how development companies they work for have been forced to do anti-MLM outreach. Of course, it is hard to back up these very ambiguous claims, but they have some precedent. The Body Shop for example (which surprisingly has an MLM branch), has a convoluted history with false claims about sustainable partnership with various countries. Though this phenomena is still understudied, Amway has a large presence in India, and health-focussed MLMs have been successful in some countries where healthcare is difficult to access. This is true in the West as well, where wellness trends towards alternative medicine, distrust of the pharmaceutical industry, anti-vaxxer influence, and the high cost of healthcare, have pushed many toward the outrageous claims of some MLMs. Essential oils based companies such as DoTerra and Young Living are often the worst offenders. But Beach Body and Arbonne, along with others, also make claims about weight loss and fitness which are steeped in fatphobia
The MLM distributors at the top of their companies, that elusive under one percent, are smart. And they have been evolving. Over the last ten years, personal networks of friends were slowly de-emphasized and social media reach became the key to recruitment. Celebrity and influencer endorsements have also become vital. The clean pastel aesthetics used by influencers are employed by MLM distributors who know they must make their selling palatable. Top distributors rarely mention their actual company, instead focussing on entrepreneurship and empowering women to be their own boss. As discussed above, these aesthetics sanitize the extreme claims and conspiracy theories they pedal, but they are also tied to the neoliberal vision of the American Dream. With different companies focussed on masculinized or feminized versions of empowerment, MLMs are no longer selling the concept of selling. Instead, they sell a materialistic vision of a life in which hard work leads to independence and wealth, reaching goals is dependent on mindset, and success is measured in material objects.
It is telling that MLM are often overwhelmingly made up of white, Christian women. In the wake of a new wave of Black Lives Matter protests this summer, many MLMs put out statements promoting their own companies as inclusive spaces. This is despite the fact that make-up MLMs often only have one shade which suits darker skin, and that Black ex-reps in the US and the UK have complained about cultures of whiteness and exclusion within these companies. MLMs target vulnerable people at the lowest points in their lives and bleed them dry, breaking them from their outside relationships and pushing them into debt. As companies tied to US party politics, with tactics and structures tied to religion and cults, a tendency to promote conspiracies, and predatory power dynamics, it is clear that the conversation on MLMs must be political and the normalization of MLMs must be questioned. As MLMs expand globally, as COVID19’s second wave continues, and as the US election aftermath remains unstable, we must remember to ask: who benefits? Unfortunately, one answer is the shareholders of MLMs.