
The Communism of Love
An Inquiry into the Poverty of Exchange Value
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
$0.99/mo for the first 3 months

Buy for $19.49
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Bea Flowers
About this listen
Exploring the meanings and powers of love from ancient Greece to the present day, Richard Gilman-Opalsky argues that what is called “love” by the best thinkers who have approached the subject is in fact the beating heart of communism - understood as a way of living, not as a form of government. Along the way, he reveals with clarity that the capitalist way of assigning value to things is incapable of appreciating what humans value most. Capitalism cannot value the experiences and relationships that make our lives worth living and can only destroy love by turning it into a commodity. The Communism of Love follows the struggles of love in different contexts of race, class, gender, and sexuality and shows how the aspiration for love is as close as we may get to a universal communist aspiration.
©2021 AK Press (P)2021 AK PressListeners also enjoyed...
-
The Operating System
- An Anarchist Theory of the Modern State
- By: Eric Laursen, Maia Ramnath - foreword
- Narrated by: Bea Flowers
- Length: 9 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
One of the most unique aspects of anarchism as a political philosophy is that it seeks to abolish the state. But what exactly is “the state”? The State is like a vast operating system for ordering and controlling relations among human society, the economy, and the natural world, analogous to a digital operating system. Anyone concerned with entrenched power, income inequality, lack of digital privacy, climate change, the response to COVID-19, or military-style policing will find eye-opening insights into how states operate and build more power for themselves—at our expense.
By: Eric Laursen, and others
-
Trust Kids!
- Stories on Youth Autonomy and Confronting Adult Supremacy
- By: Carla Bergman - editor, Matt Hern - foreword
- Narrated by: Zach Bergman
- Length: 7 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The contributors of Trust Kids! write from different backgrounds, genders, ages, and sexualities and combine past lineages with more recent child-rearing ideas to offer a fresh, inspiring perspective. Many works on parenting and families wind up re-inscribing hierarchies by declaring how kids should be liberated. Trust Kids! insists on youth autonomy, listening to youth, and questioning adult supremacy.
-
-
This is purely about woke ideology
- By santos lima on 11-17-24
By: Carla Bergman - editor, and others
-
Healing Justice Lineages
- Dreaming at the Crossroads of Liberation, Collective Care, and Safety
- By: Cara Page, Erica Woodland, Aurora Levins Morales - foreword
- Narrated by: Sanya Simmons
- Length: 9 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this anthology, Black Queer Feminist editors Cara Page and Erica Woodland guide listeners through the history, legacies, and liberatory practices of healing justice—a political strategy of collective care and safety that intervenes on generational trauma from systemic violence and oppression. They call forth the ancestral medicines and healing practices that have sustained communities who have survived genocide and oppression, while radically imagining what comes next.
-
-
Rich, deeply woven and critical at this moment of reckoning!
- By Rae Leiner on 03-14-23
By: Cara Page, and others
-
Let This Radicalize You
- Organizing and the Revolution of Reciprocal Care
- By: Kelly Hayes, Mariame Kaba
- Narrated by: Diana Blue
- Length: 10 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
What fuels and sustains activism and organizing when it feels like our worlds are collapsing? Let This Radicalize You is a practical and imaginative resource for activists and organizers building power in an era of destabilization and catastrophe. Longtime organizers and movement educators Mariame Kaba and Kelly Hayes examine some of the political lessons of the COVID-19 pandemic and consider what this confluence of power can teach us about a future that will require mass acts of care, rescue, and defense, in the face of both state violence and environmental disaster.
-
-
together, we fight back
- By Anonymous User on 05-10-24
By: Kelly Hayes, and others
-
Doppelganger
- A Trip into the Mirror World
- By: Naomi Klein
- Narrated by: Naomi Klein
- Length: 14 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
What if you woke up one morning and found you’d acquired another self—a double who was almost you and yet not you at all? What if that double shared many of your preoccupations but, in a twisted, upside-down way, furthered the very causes you’d devoted your life to fighting against? Not long ago, the celebrated activist and public intellectual Naomi Klein had just such an experience—she was confronted with a doppelganger whose views she found abhorrent but whose name and public persona were sufficiently similar to her own that many people got confused about who was who.
-
-
Elite Psychobabble
- By A Reviewer on 09-30-23
By: Naomi Klein
-
Emergent Strategy
- By: adrienne maree brown
- Narrated by: adrienne maree brown
- Length: 8 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the tradition of Octavia Butler, here is radical self-help, society-help, and planet-help to shape the futures we want. Change is constant. The world, our bodies, and our minds are in a constant state of flux. They are a stream of ever-mutating, emergent patterns. Rather than steel ourselves against such change, Emergent Strategy teaches us to map and assess the swirling structures and to read them as they happen, all the better to shape that which ultimately shapes us, personally and politically.
-
-
Great book. Too many footnotes.
- By Moon 🌙 on 09-09-23
-
The Operating System
- An Anarchist Theory of the Modern State
- By: Eric Laursen, Maia Ramnath - foreword
- Narrated by: Bea Flowers
- Length: 9 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
One of the most unique aspects of anarchism as a political philosophy is that it seeks to abolish the state. But what exactly is “the state”? The State is like a vast operating system for ordering and controlling relations among human society, the economy, and the natural world, analogous to a digital operating system. Anyone concerned with entrenched power, income inequality, lack of digital privacy, climate change, the response to COVID-19, or military-style policing will find eye-opening insights into how states operate and build more power for themselves—at our expense.
By: Eric Laursen, and others
-
Trust Kids!
- Stories on Youth Autonomy and Confronting Adult Supremacy
- By: Carla Bergman - editor, Matt Hern - foreword
- Narrated by: Zach Bergman
- Length: 7 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The contributors of Trust Kids! write from different backgrounds, genders, ages, and sexualities and combine past lineages with more recent child-rearing ideas to offer a fresh, inspiring perspective. Many works on parenting and families wind up re-inscribing hierarchies by declaring how kids should be liberated. Trust Kids! insists on youth autonomy, listening to youth, and questioning adult supremacy.
-
-
This is purely about woke ideology
- By santos lima on 11-17-24
By: Carla Bergman - editor, and others
-
Healing Justice Lineages
- Dreaming at the Crossroads of Liberation, Collective Care, and Safety
- By: Cara Page, Erica Woodland, Aurora Levins Morales - foreword
- Narrated by: Sanya Simmons
- Length: 9 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this anthology, Black Queer Feminist editors Cara Page and Erica Woodland guide listeners through the history, legacies, and liberatory practices of healing justice—a political strategy of collective care and safety that intervenes on generational trauma from systemic violence and oppression. They call forth the ancestral medicines and healing practices that have sustained communities who have survived genocide and oppression, while radically imagining what comes next.
-
-
Rich, deeply woven and critical at this moment of reckoning!
- By Rae Leiner on 03-14-23
By: Cara Page, and others
-
Let This Radicalize You
- Organizing and the Revolution of Reciprocal Care
- By: Kelly Hayes, Mariame Kaba
- Narrated by: Diana Blue
- Length: 10 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
What fuels and sustains activism and organizing when it feels like our worlds are collapsing? Let This Radicalize You is a practical and imaginative resource for activists and organizers building power in an era of destabilization and catastrophe. Longtime organizers and movement educators Mariame Kaba and Kelly Hayes examine some of the political lessons of the COVID-19 pandemic and consider what this confluence of power can teach us about a future that will require mass acts of care, rescue, and defense, in the face of both state violence and environmental disaster.
-
-
together, we fight back
- By Anonymous User on 05-10-24
By: Kelly Hayes, and others
-
Doppelganger
- A Trip into the Mirror World
- By: Naomi Klein
- Narrated by: Naomi Klein
- Length: 14 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
What if you woke up one morning and found you’d acquired another self—a double who was almost you and yet not you at all? What if that double shared many of your preoccupations but, in a twisted, upside-down way, furthered the very causes you’d devoted your life to fighting against? Not long ago, the celebrated activist and public intellectual Naomi Klein had just such an experience—she was confronted with a doppelganger whose views she found abhorrent but whose name and public persona were sufficiently similar to her own that many people got confused about who was who.
-
-
Elite Psychobabble
- By A Reviewer on 09-30-23
By: Naomi Klein
-
Emergent Strategy
- By: adrienne maree brown
- Narrated by: adrienne maree brown
- Length: 8 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the tradition of Octavia Butler, here is radical self-help, society-help, and planet-help to shape the futures we want. Change is constant. The world, our bodies, and our minds are in a constant state of flux. They are a stream of ever-mutating, emergent patterns. Rather than steel ourselves against such change, Emergent Strategy teaches us to map and assess the swirling structures and to read them as they happen, all the better to shape that which ultimately shapes us, personally and politically.
-
-
Great book. Too many footnotes.
- By Moon 🌙 on 09-09-23
-
On Palestine
- By: Noam Chomsky, Ilan Pappe
- Narrated by: George Newbern
- Length: 5 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Operation Protective Edge, Israel's 2014 assault on Gaza, left thousands of Palestinians dead and cleared the way for another Israeli land grab. The need to stand in solidarity with Palestinians has never been greater. Ilan Pappe and Noam Chomsky, two leading voices in the struggle to liberate Palestine, discuss the road ahead for Palestinians and how the international community can pressure Israel to end its human rights abuses against the people of Palestine.
-
-
Excellent Introduction/101 Level Book
- By Anonymous User on 10-24-23
By: Noam Chomsky, and others
-
Rest Is Resistance
- A Manifesto
- By: Tricia Hersey
- Narrated by: Tricia Hersey
- Length: 5 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
What would it be like to live in a well-rested world? Far too many of us have claimed productivity as the cornerstone of success. Brainwashed by capitalism, we subject our bodies and minds to work at an unrealistic, damaging, and machine‑level pace—feeding into the same engine that enslaved millions into brutal labor for its own relentless benefit. In Rest Is Resistance, Tricia Hersey, aka the Nap Bishop, casts an illuminating light on our troubled relationship with rest and how to imagine and dream our way to a future where rest is exalted.
-
-
What an experience
- By makeba jones on 10-26-22
By: Tricia Hersey
-
Blackshirts and Reds
- Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism
- By: Michael Parenti
- Narrated by: Timothy Andrés Pabon
- Length: 5 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Blackshirts and Reds explores some of the big issues of our time: fascism, capitalism, communism, revolution, democracy, and ecology. These terms are often bandied about but seldom explored in the original and exciting way that has become Michael Parenti's trademark. Parenti shows how "rational fascism" renders service to capitalism, how corporate power undermines democracy, and how revolutions are a mass empowerment against the forces of exploitative privilege.
-
-
couldn't believe this was on audible
- By Amazon Customer on 02-24-22
By: Michael Parenti
-
Becoming Abolitionists
- Police, Protests, and the Pursuit of Freedom
- By: Derecka Purnell
- Narrated by: Karen Chilton
- Length: 14 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For more than a century, activists in the United States have tried to reform the police. From community policing initiatives to increasing diversity, none of it has stopped the police from killing about three people a day. Millions of people continue to protest police violence because these “solutions” do not match the problem: The police cannot be reformed. In Becoming Abolitionists, Purnell draws from her experiences as a lawyer, writer, and organizer initially skeptical about police abolition.
-
-
highly recommended
- By C.O. on 12-17-21
By: Derecka Purnell
-
My Grandmother's Hands
- Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies
- By: Resmaa Menakem MSW LICSW SEP
- Narrated by: Cary Hite
- Length: 10 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this groundbreaking book, therapist Resmaa Menakem examines the damage caused by racism in America from the perspective of trauma and body-centered psychology. My Grandmother's Hands is a call to action for all of us to recognize that racism is not only about the head but about the body, and introduces an alternative view of what we can do to grow beyond our entrenched racialized divide.
-
-
Think You Don't Need This? Think Again, Please!
- By Carole T. on 03-27-21
-
The Body Is Not an Apology, Second Edition
- The Power of Radical Self-Love
- By: Sonya Renee Taylor
- Narrated by: Sonya Renee Taylor
- Length: 5 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Humans are a varied and divergent bunch with all manner of beliefs, morals, and bodies. Systems of oppression thrive off our inability to make peace with difference and injure the relationship we have with our own bodies. The Body Is Not an Apology offers radical self-love as the balm to heal the wounds inflicted by these violent systems. World-renowned activist and poet Sonya Renee Taylor invites us to reconnect with the radical origins of our minds and bodies and celebrate our collective, enduring strength.
-
-
YES YES YES
- By Sarah vdw on 02-16-21
-
Capitalism and Slavery
- Third Edition
- By: Eric Williams
- Narrated by: Bill Andrew Quinn
- Length: 9 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Slavery helped finance the Industrial Revolution in England. Plantation owners, shipbuilders, and merchants connected with the slave trade accumulated vast fortunes that established banks and heavy industry in Europe and expanded the reach of capitalism worldwide. Eric Williams advanced these powerful ideas in Capitalism and Slavery, published in 1944. Years ahead of its time, his profound critique became the foundation for studies of imperialism and economic development.
-
-
Excellent Historical Reading for the Caribbean
- By Trinirastawoman on 06-01-22
By: Eric Williams
-
Against the Grain
- A Deep History of the Earliest States
- By: James C. Scott
- Narrated by: Eric Jason Martin
- Length: 8 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Why did humans abandon hunting and gathering for sedentary communities dependent on livestock and cereal grains and governed by precursors of today's states? Most people believe that plant and animal domestication allowed humans, finally, to settle down and form agricultural villages, towns, and states, which made possible civilization, law, public order, and a presumably secure way of living. But archaeological and historical evidence challenges this narrative.
-
-
World without Women
- By Paul Richards on 04-28-18
By: James C. Scott
-
The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self
- Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution
- By: Carl R. Trueman
- Narrated by: Carl R. Trueman, Rod Dreher
- Length: 13 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Since the landmark Obergefell v. Hodges Supreme Court decision in 2015, sexual identity has dominated both public discourse and cultural trends — yet no historical phenomenon is its own cause. From Augustine to Marx, various views and perspectives have contributed to the modern understanding of the self.
-
-
Best book I read in 2021 by far
- By Jfree on 12-18-21
By: Carl R. Trueman
-
Abolish the Family
- A Manifesto for Care and Liberation
- By: Sophie Lewis
- Narrated by: Sophie Lewis
- Length: 3 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
What if family were not the only place you might hope to feel safe, loved, cared for, and accepted? What if we could do better than the family? We need to talk about the family. For those who are lucky, families can be filled with love and care, but for many they are sites of pain: from abandonment and neglect, to abuse and violence. Nobody is more likely to harm you than your family.
-
-
Mind-blowing ideas
- By Daniel Benedict on 11-04-22
By: Sophie Lewis
-
Making Sense of God
- An Invitation to the Skeptical
- By: Timothy Keller
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Length: 9 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Timothy Keller invites skeptics to consider that Christianity is more relevant now than ever. As human beings we cannot live without meaning, satisfaction, freedom, identity, justice, and hope. Christianity provides us with unsurpassed resources to meet these needs. Written for both the ardent believer and the skeptic, Making Sense of God shines a light on the profound value and importance of Christianity in our lives.
-
-
Good for confirming existing beliefs...
- By Mikkikon on 12-20-16
By: Timothy Keller
-
Black Marxism
- The Making of the Black Radical Tradition, Third Edition
- By: Cedric J. Robinson, Robin D.G. Kelley - foreword, Tiffany Willoughby-Herard - preface, and others
- Narrated by: David Sadzin
- Length: 20 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this ambitious work, Cedric Robinson demonstrates that efforts to understand Black people's history of resistance solely through the prism of Marxist theory are incomplete and inaccurate. Marxist analyses tend to presuppose European models of history and experience that downplay the significance of Black people and Black communities as agents of change and resistance. Black radicalism, Robinson argues, must be linked to the traditions of Africa and the unique experiences of Blacks on Western continents, and any analyses of African American history need to acknowledge this.
-
-
"Racial Capitalism"
- By Don Morris on 09-02-22
By: Cedric J. Robinson, and others