> Why not simply say that human relationships are bound by love. After all, > contracts are always conditional, whereas love is not.
Let's have a think. This idea would possibly help to explain why many people disparage "free love" so much, as a dreamy hippy phenomenon, applying only to marginalised people, who just weren't brought up sexually in a correct way, and suffered from a post-war Dr Spock syndrome. But this liberal notion of course abstracts from the social relation within which that development occurs, concentrating on the isolated, possessive individual. If love is free, you cannot make money out of it, or obtain money from it; in addition, "free love" might indeed subvert moral-emotional principles, which depend on ideas of ownership, exclusivity and reciprocal obligation which are indispensable for: (1) private property boundaries (owning), (2) market transactions (distributing, through ownership transfer in exchanges) (3) capital accumulation (appropriation based on appropriation, i.e. cumulative appropriation) and (4) consumption (appropriation conditional on exchange). Certainly, love would seem to be best characterised as a life process, or practice, involving the interactions and relationships of giving, receiving, obtaining and taking, in which emotions, awareness and morality are necessarily implicated. This definition (often reflected in pop music, as young people try to work out what these relations are, how they really operate, and how you cope with them) would explain why love is so difficult to define, even if we can recognise, experience or feel love (incidentally, the indefatigable Marxist Ernest Mandel dedicated one of his books to his deceased wife, the journalist Gisela Scholtz (alias Martine Knoeller), for whom he said "generosity was like breathing"). It also means you could give too much or too little, take too much or to little, receive too much or too little, and so on. In fact, the equilibium equation for love might be difficult to reach, if indeed it could exist at all, rather than be a hypothetical state, or hypostasis. If love is unconditional or has no conditions, this implies (at least in some christian-type or Islamic-type cultures) an act of giving without any (immediate) reciprocation or expectation of reward. But if love is interpreted as a relation, process or practice, rather than simply a state of being or awareness, love may not be unconditional, because such an act of giving presupposes the non-existence of a scarcity, which would permit the giving to occur. Yet, there may be scarcity, and it might be not just a subjectively perceived, marginal utility-type scarcity or an anal-retentive type of scarcity perception, but an objective, materially imposed scarcity. Fact is, you cannot give something, if you don't have something to give, in the first instance. Conversely, the more you have, the more you are in a position to give. Hence, there may be an objective material basis for love; that is to say, to distribute love, it has to be created, and so long as human beings are not simply souls, but physical beings, living in a material world, that creation itself has material prequisites and sublimates. Furthermore, while unconditionally giving something might not in fact express love at all (as it might help somebody into hell, as when a mother smothers an infant), being able to unconditionally give something, might also mean a dissociation from any feelings involved. In Paris in 1844, Marx scribbled: "Assume people to be human, and their relationship to the world to be a human one: then you can exchange love only for love, trust for trust, etc. If you want to enjoy art, you must be an artistically cultivated person; if you want to exercise influence over other people, you must be a person with a stimulating and encouraging effect on other people. Every one of your relations to people and to nature must be a specific expression, corresponding to the object of your will, of your real individual life. If you love without evoking love in return - that is, if your loving as loving does not produce reciprocal love; if through a living expression of yourself as a loving person you do not make yourself a beloved one, then your love is impotent - a misfortune." (MECW, Vol.3, p. 326, translation revised). In what Michael Perelman calls "the perverse economy", the possibility for the permutations of exchange have become seemingly boundless, such that "anything can trade against anything" in an unlimited, relativistic postmodernist culture, which has its consequences for human development, because the trading process might in fact destroy more love than it creates, resulting in war. Specifically, the act of trading itself becomes viewed as a creative process, and creation becomes viewed as an act of trading, with the consequence that the "production of love" can no longer be distinguished from the "appropriation or exchange of love". In that case, it may no longer be clear, who is giving or taking what, to whom, nor may it be clear anymore how we would find out. In the last instance, as Marx would insist, the boundless love trade is nevertheless based on the creation or appropriation of something in the first instance which can be distributed, exchanged or transferred in the boundless "love trade". What could it be ? Where does it come from ? Perhaps those much-maligned "hippies" do have something to tell us about love, after all. How about: Call out the instigator Because there's something in the air We've got to get together sooner or later Because the revolution's here Or: All across the nation Such a strong vibration People in motion There's a whole generation With a new explanation People in motion, people in motion Or failing that: The Vengabus is coming And everybody's jumping New York to San Fransisco An intercity disco The wheels of steel are turning And traffic lights are burning So if you like to party Get on, and move your body We like to party We like, we like to party We like to party We like, we like to party or, failing that: The loveliness of Paris, seems somehow sadly gay The glory that was Rome, is of another day I've been terribly alone and forgotten in Manhattan I'm going home to my city by the bay. I left my heart in San Francisco High on a hill, it calls to me. To be where little cable cars climb halfway to the stars! The morning fog may chill the air I don't care! Or, if all fails, how about this one: "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth... And on the 7th day God ended his work, which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made." (Genesis, 1:1 and 2:2, King James version). That's my little homily for today. Jurriaan
