Marxism and Love

Am currently reading a book intiled Essays in Love, by Alain De Botton, he is a contemporary writer, British, and this book is a great read. It is philosophy bas written in the style of a novel, kind of like Sophia's World, and its grreat!


What I have gotten from this book is the idea of a Marxist love. Now I am sure that quite a few of you know a lot about Marxism, but the aspect that this book uses, is an old joke made by Marx who laughed about not deigning to belong to a club that would accept someone like him as a member-a truth as appropriate in love as it is in club membership. This Marxist position, is funny because it is absurd:
"How is it possible that I should both wish to join a club, and yet lose that wish as soon as it comes true?"
De Botton takes this idea and states: "If in order to love, we must believe that the beloved surpasses us in some way, does not a cruel paradox emerge when they return the love? We are led to ask, 'if s/he really is so wonderful, how is it possible that s/he could love someone like me?'" I for one completely understand this, there have been so many cases where I have fancied a guy, and become completely obsessed with him, only to find that I completely-and I mean COMPLETELY-loose interest when he starts to like me. I have on a number of occasions, not only put the guy on a pedestal, but did that consciously, and with great effort, thinking that he is so good looking, so smart, so funny, so popular, and I fell for them utterly. Only to ask myself when they liked me, "What have I done to deserve this?"
In Essays of Love, De Botton takes this idea a step further stating that, "few things can be at once so exhilarating and so terrifying as to recognize that one is the object of another's love, for if one is not wholly convinced of one's own loveablity, then receiving affection may feel like being given a great honour without quite knowing what one has done to earn it." I for one fall right in the centre of this, don't' get me wrong, I don't lack confidence in my abilities or in myself, as much as I am completely surprised when other people show or confirm this confidence. Perhaps because the origins of a certain kind of love lie in an impulse to escape ourselves and our weaknesses by an amorous alliance with the beautiful and powerful-God, the club, Her/Him. But if the beloved loves us back (God answers our prayer, if membership is extended), we are forced to return to ourselves and are hence reminded of the things that had driven us into love in the first place. "Perhaps it is not love we wanted after all, perhaps it was simply someone in whom to believe, but how can we continue to believe in the beloved now that they believe in us?"
I have on a number of occasions meet a guy, liked him, he liked me, and I thought to myself, yeah he likes me now but what will happen after having gone out a number of times, spoken about everything from politics to Sienfeld sort of issues, will he start to lose interest?
This 'fear' is imbeded in classic Marxist thought, where love is desired, but impossible to accept, for fear of the disappointment that will ensue when the true self is revealed, a disappointment that has normally already occurred but is now projected on to the future. Marxists feel that their core self to be so deeply unacceptable that intimacy will only reveal them to be charlatans! So they ask themselves why accept the gift of love, when it is sure to be taken away imminently? "If you love me now, that is only because you are not seeing the whole of me, thinks the Marxist, and if you're not seeing the whole of me, it would be crazy to grow used to your love until such as time as you do." In other words for a Marxist, love is a Catch 22 senario!
What was interesting also in De Botton's theory, was when he talked about unrequited love, he says that it might be painful, but it is safely painful, because it does not involve inflicting damage on anyone but oneself, "a private pain that is as bitter-sweet as it is self-induced." But when love is returned, one has to take on the responsibility of not only being hurt, but the possibility of perpetuating hurt oneself.
To be loved by someone is to realise how much they share in the same dependent needs the resolution of which had attracted us to them in the frist place. We would not love if there was no lack within us, but paradoxically, we are offended by a smiliar lack in the other. "Expecting to find the answer, we find only the duplicate of our own problem." We realise how much they too need to find an idol, we see that the beloved does not escape the sense of helplessness, and are foced to give up on our passivity of hiding behind admiraion and worship, in order to take on the responsibility of both carrying and being carried!