Read Kollontai you nerds. Standardized expressions of love and sexuality are a superstructural product of the economic mode of production, but they are not constructed out of whole cloth. Yes romantic attraction is heavily commodified and alienating in our late capitalist hell, but no it is not a fiction designed to sell valentines cards. Like all things capital exploits, there’s a natural resource there being stolen and sold back to you
Edit: in re-reading this comment I’d like to make an addendum because I feel like it could be misconstrued that I’m not being supportive of aromantic comrades. The normalization of romance as a need is an outcropping of the capitalist mode of production, it justifies the nuclear family as a vehicle of property inheritance and it punishes those who try to exist outside of it. There very well are people who do not experience the need of romantic relationships just as there are people who never experience the need of sexual relationships, etc. I can see the argument that because modern conceptualizations of romance are a construct of the capitalist material reality they’re therefore invalid and should be abolished, but abolition rarely means destruction rather than liberation. A liberated ‘sex love’ dynamic (to use Kollontai’s term) would be in the freedom to pursue the relationships that fulfill your needs without the coercion of economic factors like whether a given partner could help you afford a mortgage (because god forbid any given partner isn’t your business partner, I mean soulmate). This means freedom to pursue partners who fulfill the needs you do have whether they’re sexual, romantic, or just in terms of emotional support, possibly even from multiple partners. So no I wouldn’t say romantic feelings are a fabrication of whoever makes those chalk hearts that say “luv u” on them, but aromantic comrades are completely valid in feeling that bourgeois notions of sexual and romantic relationships are completely fucking alienating and even outright hostile. Support your comrades folks :flag-aromantic-pride:
Read Kollontai you nerds. Standardized expressions of love and sexuality are a superstructural product of the economic mode of production, but they are not constructed out of whole cloth. Yes romantic attraction is heavily commodified and alienating in our late capitalist hell, but no it is not a fiction designed to sell valentines cards. Like all things capital exploits, there’s a natural resource there being stolen and sold back to you
Edit: in re-reading this comment I’d like to make an addendum because I feel like it could be misconstrued that I’m not being supportive of aromantic comrades. The normalization of romance as a need is an outcropping of the capitalist mode of production, it justifies the nuclear family as a vehicle of property inheritance and it punishes those who try to exist outside of it. There very well are people who do not experience the need of romantic relationships just as there are people who never experience the need of sexual relationships, etc. I can see the argument that because modern conceptualizations of romance are a construct of the capitalist material reality they’re therefore invalid and should be abolished, but abolition rarely means destruction rather than liberation. A liberated ‘sex love’ dynamic (to use Kollontai’s term) would be in the freedom to pursue the relationships that fulfill your needs without the coercion of economic factors like whether a given partner could help you afford a mortgage (because god forbid any given partner isn’t your business partner, I mean soulmate). This means freedom to pursue partners who fulfill the needs you do have whether they’re sexual, romantic, or just in terms of emotional support, possibly even from multiple partners. So no I wouldn’t say romantic feelings are a fabrication of whoever makes those chalk hearts that say “luv u” on them, but aromantic comrades are completely valid in feeling that bourgeois notions of sexual and romantic relationships are completely fucking alienating and even outright hostile. Support your comrades folks :flag-aromantic-pride: