This is an preview of the Patreon episode "The Political Economy of Love in Capitalism w/ Kristen Ghodsee." You can listen to the full episode by subscribing to our Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/upstreampodcast

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In this episode we're joined by Kristen Ghodsee to discuss the political economy of love in capitalism. Kristen Ghodsee is Professor of Russian and East European Studies and a member of the Graduate Group in Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the critically acclaimed author of Everyday Utopia: What 2,000 Years of Wild Experiments Can Teach Us About the Good Life, Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism and Red Valkyries: Feminist Lessons From Five Revolutionary Women.

The conversation opens with an exploration of the three components of love and how capitalism co-opts, commodifies, and ultimately destroys them. We explore how different components of love, like attention and affection, are transformed from a use-value to an exchange-value in capitalism and how capitalism transforms and transactionalizes friendship and love. We also talk about the concept of "reciprocal flow" and how this is another component of relationality that is being distorted and corrupted by market relations and the commodification of everything.

Finally, we end the conversation exploring what we can do to fight against the commodification of friendship and love and how we can incorporate activities that facilitate trust, social bonds, and relationality that is not dominated and dictated by capitalist relations of production.

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