#and as always it’s deeply tied to patriarchy and capitalism. who could’ve guessed

[mossy-aro]

"Essentially love is a profoundly social emotion. At all stages of human development love has in different forms, it is true, been an integral part of culture. Even the bourgeoisie, who saw love as a “private matter,” was able to channel the expression of love in its class interests. The ideology of the working class must pay even greater attention to the significance of love as a factor which can, like any other psychological or social phenomenon, be channeled to the advantage of the collective. Love is not in the least a “private” matter concerning only the two loving persons: love possesses a uniting element which is valuable to the collective. This is clear from the fact that at all stages of historical development society has established norms defining when and under what conditions love is “legal” (i.e. corresponds to the interests of the given social collective), and when and under what conditions love is sinful and criminal (i.e. contradicts the tasks of the given society).

From the very early stages of its social being, humanity has sought to regulate not only sexual relations but love itself. 

In the kinship community, love for one’s blood relations was considered the highest virtue. The kinship group would not have approved of a woman sacrificing herself for the sake of a beloved husband: fraternal or sisterly attachment were the most highly regarded feelings. Antigone, who according to the Greek legend risked her life to bury the body of her dead brother, was a heroine in the eyes of her contemporaries. Modern bourgeois society would consider such an action on the part of a sister as highly curious. In the times of tribal rule, when the state was still in its embryonic stage, the love held in greatest respect was the love between two members of the same tribe. In an era when the social collective had only just evolved from the stage of kinship community and was still not firmly established in its new form, it was vitally important that its members were linked by mental and emotional ties. Love-friendship was the most suitable type of tie, since at that time the interests of the collective required the growth and accumulation of contacts not between the marriage pair but between fellow-members of the tribe, between the organizers and defenders of the tribe and state that is to say, between the men of the tribe, of course; women at that time had no role to play in social life, and there was no talk of friendship among women). “Friendship” was praised and considered far more important than love between man and wife. Castor and Pollux were famous for their loyalty to each other and their unshakable friendship, rather than for the feats they performed for their country. For the sake of friendship or its semblance a man might offer his wife to an acquaintance or a guest.

The ancient world considered friendship and “loyalty until the grave” to be civic virtues. Love in the modern sense of the word had no place, and hardly attracted the attention either of poets or of writers. The dominant ideology of that time relegated love to the sphere of narrow, personal experiences with which society was not concerned; marriage was based on convenience, not on love. Love was just one among other amusements; it was a luxury which only the citizen who had fulfilled all his obligations to the state could afford. While bourgeois ideology values the “ability to love” provided it confines itself to the limits set down by bourgeois morality, the ancient world did not consider such emotions in its categories of virtues and positive human qualities. The person who accomplished great deeds and risked his life for his friend was considered a hero and his action “most virtuous” while a man risking himself for the sake of a woman he loved would have been reproached or even despised.

The morality of the ancient world, then, did not even recognize the love that inspired men to great deeds – the love so highly regarded in the feudal period – as worthy of consideration. The ancient world recognized only those emotions which drew its fellow-members close together and rendered the emerging social organism more stable. In subsequent stages of cultural development, however, friendship ceases to be considered a moral virtue. Bourgeois society was built on the principles of individualism and competition, and has no place for friendship as a moral factor. Friendship does not help in any way, and may hinder the achievement of class aims; it is viewed as an unnecessary manifestation of “sentimentality” and weakness. Friendship becomes an object of derision. Castor and Pollux in the New York of London of today would only evoke a condescending smile. This was not so in feudal society, where love-friendship was seen as a quality to be taught and encouraged."

From ‘Make Way For Winged Eros: A Letter to Working Youth’, by Alexandra Kollontai (1923) x