Work · Socialism, Anarchism, Marxism & Critical Theory
Make Way for Winged Eros
An open letter to young workers calling for a love based on equality, comradeship and freedom instead of possession.
Introduction
“Make Way for Winged Eros!” appeared in 1923 in the journal Molodaia gvardiia as a letter to working-class youth. Kollontai distinguishes the “wingless Eros” of mere physical attraction, widespread in the hard years of the civil war, from a “winged Eros” in which love includes friendship, solidarity and responsibility. Under capitalism, she argues, love was bound up with property and the dependence of women; in the new society it should rest on equality, respect the freedom of each partner and serve the collective rather than the isolated couple. The text was attacked in the party press as a distraction from the tasks of construction and was often misread as a call for promiscuity. The women’s movement of the 1970s rediscovered it, and it is read as an early attempt to connect socialism with a theory of love.
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