To be a socialist is to love
Rory Hamilton
“She never recognised him if he was with friends. These insults filled reservoirs of rage which evaporated whenever she smiled at him. And when their bodies accidentally touched a current of stillness and silence flowed in from her and he felt that before touching Marjory he had never known rest.”
— Alasdair Gray, Lanark: A Life in Four Books
It is Valentine’s Day on the day of publication, and I thought it an appropriate moment to reflect on what that means. Of course, I can hear the eyeballs rolling in the backs of some readers’ heads but I think the message is an important one. To be a socialist is to love.
Many people have religion or ideology as their faith - communities are structured around them, and give shape to people’s sense of belonging. Perhaps the reason we feel so much alienation today is because there are fewer of those communities today than there were before and we are forced into an individualist world which supposedly puts ourselves first, but really puts us last.
I’m not religious, and don't really wish religion to have any bearing on my life - I don't very much like the thought of God being mentioned at any significant event surrounding my life, whether that’s marriage, death or children (the classics). However, I do understand why people find solace in their faith. Indeed, I’ve always found it somewhat curious the stranglehold that conservative politics the world over has on Christianity in particular, for if the central message is to ‘love thy neighbour’, then I don’t know what sounds more socialist than that.
This is something I think Bishop Mariann Budde drew from when she addressed President Trump at his inauguration,
“Have mercy, Mr President, on those in our communities whose children fear that their parents will be taken away. Help those who are fleeing war zones and persecution in their own lands to find compassion and welcome here. Our God teaches us that we are to be merciful to the stranger, for we were once strangers in this land.”
As Budde puts it, we are guided by compassion and empathy. This compassion and empathy is why we experience outrage at exploitation. When we see P&O Ferries sacking hundreds of employees over video message; when we see tenants forced to live in terrible cold, damp and mouldy conditions, while their landlords live it up on the rent; when we see the suffering of ordinary people in Gaza for no other reason than their ethnicity. That is to love thy neighbour.
I quoted Alasdair Gray’s Lanark at the start of this article: for those of you who haven’t read it, Lanark is a coming of age story about Duncan Thaw, set in post-war Glasgow. As the reader journeys through his adolescence, Gray’s wonderful prose unfolds an emotional journey of maturation as Thaw learns what it means to exist in the world.
I find Gray’s writing compelling because I think it reflects the joy of pain that comes with loving others. In our venture to build a Scotland that puts all of us first, that redistributes ownership over the means of production, and puts the collective good, the common weal before self-interest, we inevitably give ourselves to others.
But Gray’s Lanark does more than simply reflect this compassion. He describes how it flows through our bodies - love is a visceral experience. Just as his infatuation with Marjory Laidlaw totally consumes Duncan Thaw, so too does his heartbreak reach deep into his body and makes him feel it all over. Gray deploys a wonderful metaphor for this through Thaw’s affliction with acne and indeed Lanark’s affliction with dragonhide, something Gray himself suffered from dreadfully (the acne not dragonhide). Not only does it flare up and leave him bedbound on occasion, but it affects him mentally, from confidence to obsession to confusion. The acne conveys the pain of love.
There is something in this pain that emphasises the importance of love. When we lose love - either a friend or a partner - it reminds us that we are lucky to have experienced it. Many will experience the same highs and lows following a sports team - lord knows the Scotland rugby team knows how to wrench your heart out from you sometimes. In Lanark, Gray, drawing perhaps on his own socialism, very effectively conveys the intense difficulty that comes with being a socialist and believing in a better world. Yes, the love in our socialism is intense and fierce, and yes the pain is difficult, but where would we be without an intense desire for something better.
Indeed, in an almost Žižekian manner, our desire to fill the world with something better, to complete its lack in identity, caused by the exploitative practices of capitalism, gives us a sense of purpose, a fullness, a sense of belonging. It is from this desire, this love, that we gain solidarity and we overcome pain.
Love is a wonderful thing, and it takes innumerous forms, be it romantic, platonic, narcissistic. I do believe that even Elon Musk is capable of love, perhaps only for himself and for profit, but even then Marx has an answer for us, “The bourgeois sees his wife a mere instrument of production. He hears that the instruments of production are to be exploited in common, and, naturally, can come to no other conclusion that the lot of being common to all will likewise fall to the women.”
I have to say that even I am impressed with myself that it took a good 700 words before my hopeful optimism was overcome by my Marxist cynicism. But even Marxists can conceive of love in hopeful terms. As Simone De Beauvoir once said, "One's life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others, by means of love, friendship, indignation, compassion."
So, I wish all my comrades a very loving Valentine’s Day. May you love and empathise with the intensity of Duncan Thaw, but also with the steady determination of de Beauvoir.
Header image: "Detail from the title page for Alasdair Gray's Lanark" by olav.rokne is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/?ref=openverse.