– N. Ribar –
Love is something evasive, although it feels whole when one has it. Try to understand, surmount, the peaks that love can make one feel and it is difficult to compare it to anything else. The highs are high, but the lows are lower. What is it when one does not have love but so desires it? It can have an effect that is debilitating. This so many take for granted, as accepted fact, especially when one is young and discovers love for the first time.
We are speaking here about love expressed via partnerships. But what about love expressed through family? The offspring is borne from the bosom of the mother and the father provides the necessary component to procreate. The baby is born, smothered and fed by the mother, is dependent on it for everything. The toddler is socialized into language for the first time and takes first steps towards independence, for example learning to walk. The child is then imbued with more advanced values which the parents consciously or unconsciously instil. The teenager explores all sorts of new realities and new sensuous feelings which come to them, and explore further the dictum of “finding out what one wants to be in life,” by which is meant type of employment. Yet through all these stages, the child is dependent on the parent, who provides them with food, water, shelter, recreational activities and other things — in a sense, everything concerned with the economic side of life. This is a stage of family, or more specifically nuclear family, love which sees the relations through dependency but weakens as the child gains more independence. Think of every mother smothering her newborn and then imagine doing the same to a teenager! Yet it happens to be this type of love which is being buried more and more every second, despite the attempts of some who have vested interests in keeping it alive.
The young mind is impressionable, can be bent and moulded in all sorts of ways to facilitate certain outcomes. But the human person gains a relative independence early on in life, and this exists by virtue of abstracting absence. The human subject will know if they do not have love and so desire it, they know very quickly what the consequences of the absence of, say, motherly love is. These were matters of the earliest psychological studies, but the fact is that those with lived experience knew better and more precise than the psychologists by comparing what was like two worlds — those with a nuclear family versus, say, an orphanage. The latter leaves one at a severe disadvantage.
But as has been said, we are not interesting in what is dying off, but seeing things as what they are increasingly giving lend to, and what is obscuring the path to progress. That type of love is giving way to a social love which has not yet materialized qualitatively, though it is bubbling up quantitatively just as when hot water has not yet turned to steam. It is the individual love mentioned in the opening paragraph that is increasingly put into the category of human necessity, a desire rarely surpassed by anything in this world.
This individual love is pervasive. What does one gain from love? They gain a feeling of warmth, comfort that they have someone to confide with every day, a companion through which every trial and struggle will have to conflict with. In a sense, it is a safety net, a mechanism for falling back on. It is the method through which people cope — at the end of the day, at least they have their loved one who they are destined to spend a lifetime with. And it is this comfort which they carry with them every day, a emboldening factor which gives them the impetus to act with strength and take a chance. And what about when one does not have this? In a society where it is seen as necessary, a feeling of emptiness brews up in the depths of the individual’s gut, a nagging and persistent feeling that has a tendency to worsen over time. If one does not get a handle on it quickly, it can lead to depression and other lows.
It was Hardial Bains who stressed that the individual reaches a moment-of-decision in adolescence, that one can very easily go into despair when the emphasis on social necessities is not grasped and the individual focusses on themself, the individual, as the problem for their lack of fulfilment. The lack of love or the loss of it is particularly negative at this stage of development. The individual has ventured outside of the crib of motherly love, looking for it elsewhere, only to get spat on and their dreams crushed. The choice is presented — look for another opportunity, try to hang on to the old relationship in vain, look for friends who are not caught up in the insatiable race for individual love, or go back to the love of the family. The last option which ensues is the most ensured and safe, but it is also especially humiliating for the individual, for it is seen as a type of regression, a loss of independence and a reversal of age, which cannot last long before both the parent and child are tired of it. But the fact is that one cannot go on with business as usual, they have to find a new source of love to sustain themselves — it is not granted to them by virtue of being human and a member of the society.
The break-up at any age, which is seen as one of the worst human experiences, is such a gigantic rupture with the past of love and the new situation of a lack thereof that it comes as a shock to the very internal working of the individual. And if one does not like this situation? The popular claim is that, especially as one gets older, the onus is on the individual for not making a better life for themself, that they “messed up” somewhere. There are some who are even declared unlovable and so on, creating further ghettoization with a new dreg of society. We are not interested in such simplistic and near-sighted explanations for the feelings which so many millions are grappling with. The claim that humans are irredeemable by virtue of their lonely feelings is ignorant at best and misanthropic at worst.
The fact is that there a need to fulfil a whole, to feel as though one is a complete being. The whole-love at present is defined as that feeling of fulfilment which one receives when they are in a relationship which they believe to be for the betterment of themselves. It is a heart within a heartless world. Such a whole-love, one sustained by individual love, is not equivalent to the whole-love sustained by social love. The former survives off lust, jealousy and want — the individual has to go out and find a new whole-love when theirs collapses. If they do not, they will have a half-love or a bare-love, which few can stand. Like someone who has assembled a jigsaw puzzle after losing half the pieces, they will keep looking for the rest until, one day, they wonder whether the effort is worth it anymore. That point can be highly dangerous in the life of the individual.
It is the individual whole-love that is one of man’s prime wants in this society, they desire it so dearly that they cannot see to the end of their nose without thinking about how deeply it is effecting them, without the desire to feel completed by a partner, the need for whole-love and the grave loneliness of half-love. This is typically expressed in the mother-father-child relation, commonly referred to as the nuclear family.
This relation is so desired by humanity that, as much as we may like to stress it in words, it cannot ever be accurately captured by what is written about this topic. Words are not enough to arouse that sensuous feeling. We have covered that in sufficient length. Now we ask — what about those who have sustained love? Those who feel as though they have obtained what they want? Some are happy with just that if they get a relationship secure enough. But no matter what, there persists some key flaws in even the most secure individual love. It was Alexandra Kollontai who analysed the flaws that were revealed through exposing the bourgeois feminists — who never went further than the security of individual love. The issue lies in mutual dependency, she discovered. Turn on the radio, listen to what cultural expressions reveal in a society that is becoming more and more decadent along bourgeois lines. You will hear the most simplistic, most banal and revealing expressions of love — something along the lines of “I love you, I am yours” or, rather, keeping the first line but ending in “you are mine.”
This is to mean a strong love, a bound which cannot be broken. But it is the precise terminology that is revealing. It is the am and the are that set us apart from that surface-level conclusion. It is not that one belongs to another in so much as they have a mutual bond which they will share for life, though that may be the intention in entering into relations. It is the act of possession — one possesses the other, and the other possesses the one. As our love makes a whole-love, we never want to return to the life of the half-love. And this act of possession officializes one’s position in whole-love and is what guards from them from the life of half-love, of living in society without such a love, which is seen as dark and with contempt. Sometimes, this leads to the proptizing of the other, treating them as a literal possession which has to be surveilled to protect their whole-love. This is seen as a manic anomaly, “anomie,” or an act which disturbs the social collective, as the bourgeois sociologist Durkheim declared in claiming that order is the natural state of things. But he was wrong, this “anomaly” is actually baked into the social structures of love, of individual love, of the fear of half-love, this society which we live in and are subject to. One can see, just upon looking at it clearly, that this society breeds jealously, anti-social inclinations, a sense they everyone needs to find that whole-love which will protect them from the wrath of the social collective and its half-love. This is merely a matter of ideology that has been imbued from birth, from the nuclear family and the emphasis placed on finding a partner in every sphere of culture.
It was stressed earlier that the family love is dying, but the individual love is continually stressed. This may be seen to be a logical contradiction, and in a sense this is true. It is the individual love which ends up creating the family love after all, so, the opponents of social love would argue, neither is dying — it is a circle of reproduction. But individual love, too, is on the decline; it is, however, still prevalent in desire and the social emphasis that is placed on it. As man enters into relations indispensable of their will and if they become a conscious worker, they begin to see what it is that is going on.
The bourgeoisie has placed strict limitations on what love is. If one is not complete with what society gives them, then they are not to chase a new society which will produce a social love (a whole-love through society), but live a life of trying to find “the one” who will give them the satisfaction of whole-love. And what if one thinks they have “the one” but then they become abusive or incompatible? They are thrown onto the streets, of half-love, and are forced to start all over again. But the working class knows very well that individual “fixes” never solve social problems, which are bred daily by a system of relations that survive on their exploitation. It is not a surprise that such mystifications would be used by the enemies of the proletariat as one way out of a million and one to distract them from their historic mission.
The truth is that the individual worker, the proletarian, may see one of their main goals in finding a complete whole-love, which will always be elusive. But as a class, they see that the human productive powers are out of control, that the social character of production has reached such a point of maximum crisis. They can only conclude from that their goal to end exploitation and build a new society, a society where whole-love is social. Such relations will need no hoodwinking, no jealousy and lust — it will be a society of pure, social love. A whole-love based on love for the collective, for the people, while never giving up the special love towards those closest to them. Love between two people can only be full and complete under social love, where love is reinforced by the collective and not actively undermined by the threat of loss. It is in this sense that whole-love is only complete in a system of social love, that the whole-love of individual love is a love under siege by a social order that doesn’t want even want that basic companionship to exist, that attempts to turn things sour constantly.
The bourgeois opponents of such a future will no doubt remark that what we are proposing is a utopia. The stuff of utopian socialists, the kind of Robert Owen and the petty-bourgeois revolutionists, has nothing in common with the proletariat. On the contrary, we are grounded in reality and the bourgeoisie is grounded in a type of idealist dreaming which is enforced across the whole society, damaging social relations and the psychology of the individual. It is the basis of the scientific method that systematic experimentation and observation reveal the truth, and in the court of life social love has shown itself to be not only possible but the inevitable next step of relations between humans and humans.
It is the this-sidedness of life which is emerging, indeed one could say blossoming like a rose. Today, it is more like the dwarf fireweed, a beautiful flower which grows amidst the harsh, uninhabited Canadian tundra. Such beauty moves forward despite all the setbacks, despite all the attempts by reaction to wipe it out.
Let us take two case examples. We will first mention a country in which social love flowed as its 150 rivers along the side of its vast mountains and rocks. Socialist Albania beautifully demonstrated that pure human love which we will achieve, where nobody was left in poverty and want, where every piece of work was done with the well-being of the collective and one another in mind.
The culture of this great country beautifully demonstrated this. One can even limit this to the component of musical content. Take Parashqevi Simaku’s “What happiness this life gave us!”, which professes love towards the ancient homeland of the Albanians and their toil which brought them thus far. Or Liljana Kondakçi’s “To bring more joy to the people!”, which details the life of an artist taking inspiration from their work from the people and never detaching themselves from life — creating nothing that has a motive to depress, but rather appealing to the aesthetes of the people, guaranteeing a love for them. Or Kastriot Ago’s “The Victorious Song”, which reveals the role of music in the heroic partisan struggle and lauds the individual for revolting against all that was reactionary and ensuring a society where everyone is loved. Or Alida Hisku’s “Bearing two war wounds he joined the Party” which details the selfless act of an injured partisan being accepted into the party, fighting for the people’s interests deep in his heart.
Oh how this differs from our present day! Music is performed about all sorts of social ills such as drugs and alcohol, sexualizing anything and everything, depressing themes and existential crises, about an idyllic individual love which can never materialize. All this is meant to depress the people, while in a country where social love reined, there was no question of this kind of culture. It was a culture that uplifted the people, made them feel as though they mattered and gave them social assurance, love, that working for both oneself and for all ensured their free, happy life. In short, it was the anti-thesis to depression — inspiring people to great deeds.
The issue of social love also concerns well-meaning criticisms and not personal attacks of vengeance. Where the people ruled say, in Albania, there was no-one who would profess to hate the leader. Our opponents will say that was fear, others recognize it as a fact of the social order, a state of whole-love via social love, that existed. Such personal attacks are alien, and attacking the leader would be like attacking oneself, a paradoxical dead-end of ridiculousness. Social love means love for the society and all its constituent parts, and not love exclusively for a few individuals at the cost of a “heartless” society. This is why the outpouring of grief for leaders such as Enver Hoxha is seen so crudely by those living under bourgeois regimes. They cannot imagine that the human mind can function outside hate, outside fear and outside a mentality of protecting themselves from the harshness of the collective. In short, they cannot imagine that one would not hate their leaders, as well as not be indifferent towards the vast majority of people. It is a sad, misanthropic state of affairs which a lack of social love leads to. It can only be said to be a form of degeneration of the human mind into anti-social dogma.
Another, more recent case example is Cuba. In that country, working under the profuse strains of the brutal blockade by U.S. imperialism, the Cuban people are still, decades and decades later, seeing themselves through the prism of social love. They banded together in the special period of the 90s, boldly stated that they would stand by their principles no matter what, declaring that if they did not they would be reduced to abject slavery as it was in the days of Batista.
These days, Cuba is going further in guaranteeing the social love which exists. The new Family Code, approved last month, is more advanced than any legislation of its kind anywhere. It has many clauses which support equality of the polity regardless of gender, sex, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, etc., but what is most important is that it abolishes, for the first time, the legal framework of the nuclear family as the basis of a country’s families. Rather, it defines the family on the basis of two or more people who love each other. The feeling of social love can only be strengthened by such a correct definition. We have our family, those we love (and not just including two people and children, but any other combinations), and the society which we also love. No longer are people to subsist within cocoons, those “hearts within a heartless world” that make life tolerable. Social life itself becomes not only tolerable, but to indulge in it becomes man’s favourite activity.
These societies are inspirations to us, not dogmatic models but guides, societies which have realized our common aim in practice already. Here, the proletariat really is daily fighting its oppressing class, the bourgeoisie, in class struggle for a new society. In that rich struggle and only through it, individual love will give way to a social love where the problem of love, all its despairs and hopelessness, will no longer bear a burden on the individual. Through examining its past and present, it will look inside itself and see the wealth of experiences, the light towards a love fit for human beings. They will be free to create a happy life as they see fit, and even if a schism happens somewhere along the way, the road to picking up the pieces and finding one’s way will be simple in an atmosphere of love for every member of the society, in comparison to today’s society where one very well might lose everything from one erroneous move.
Let the love have a source
Let the social love spread its wings
Let the total human personality be born
Something is calling now, move on,
Move on
From “Something Is Calling Now, Move On”
Poem by Hardial Bains