Money and Love
In fairy tales, money and love often exist at opposite poles. Love is imagined as sacred, celestial, and pure, whereas money is earthly, dirty, and sometimes destructive. The protagonist usually must choose between wealth without love and love without wealth. But when the cinema curtain falls and the books are closed, real life begins. In the real world, love and money are not mortal enemies—they are inevitable companions whose destinies are intertwined.
Richard Rorty, the great American philosopher, wrote an essay titled Love and Money that jolts the reader gently awake from romantic slumber. Drawing inspiration from Edward Morgan Forster’s novel Howards End, Rorty reminds us of a harsh truth: love and kindness do not flourish in the wastelands of poverty. To be capable of love, one must first have security—and security, for better or worse, is tied to money.
Forster held a grand hope. He dreamed of a day when wealth would be abundant enough for everyone to have their share—not so that everyone could drive luxury cars, but simply so that kindness could be widespread. Rorty emphasizes that “kindness only emerges when there is enough money to provide some leisure and time for loving.”
At first glance, this might seem materialistic, but at its core, it is profoundly human. The famous Christian command, “Love one another” or “The only law is the law of love,” is only possible when people are not constantly worried about paying electricity bills or next month’s rent. When the anxiety of survival constricts us, there is no room for the subtlety of the human spirit.
Rorty’s main point is simple: love, leisure, friendship, joy, and kindness do not arise from moral or cultural revolutions. We do not fail to love each other because we lack knowledge or moral guidance; we fail because we lack time and security. In short, we lack money.
The issue is straightforward: some liberals—the old-school ones who still talk about “the powerful and wealthy”—want to address money and practical ways to improve people’s lives, aiming to increase social security and welfare.
Other liberals prefer to discuss love, ethics, and cultural change. They pin their hopes on a moral revolution—such as the acceptance of homosexuality—and imagine that emotional and cultural transformations alone will suffice.
Rorty draws a subtle and elegant line: the boundary between the public and the private. In private life, each of us has the right to be a poet, to build our identity, to love whoever we wish, and to write our own stories. Life’s goal is to nurture thousands of private flowers. This is where literature and philosophy come into play.
In public life and politics, however, our responsibility is different. Politics is not poetry; its task is to alleviate pain. Rorty writes that pain is the most real thing that connects us. Politics must reduce the “pain of humanity” (hunger, disease, homelessness).
The problem with contemporary intellectuals is that they conflate these two realities, erasing the clear boundary between them. They try to solve cultural and identity issues through politics, forgetting that a government’s primary duty is to ensure bread and security—only then can people privately pursue love, culture, and identity.
Rorty believed the main difference between socialism and liberalism was not a dispute over goals—both aim to increase welfare—but in method. Socialists believed nationalizing everything would produce more wealth (it didn’t). Yet they were right in one respect: the spirit of history is economic. One cannot expect morality and love without addressing economic realities.
Many progressive forces today no longer have patience to discuss money, labor unions, or wealth distribution. Instead of fighting economic structures, they fight mindsets. They assume that changing people’s attitudes toward women, minorities, or sexual orientation will create paradise, even if those same people go to bed hungry.
Rorty’s ultimate message is a call for a “return”: a return from cultural heaven to the hard, solid ground of economics. He tells us that liberals and reformers must relearn how to talk about money—how to prevent the catastrophic accumulation of wealth in the hands of a few, how to have a government that is neither a bureaucratic monster nor a servant of capitalists.
Love, friendship, and respect for differences are fruits of a tree whose roots lie in economic security. If we ignore the roots and worry only about the leaves, the tree will wither. Perhaps it is time to acknowledge that to love, to be kind, and to be human, we must first be freed from the unnecessary pains of poverty. Love has a cost, and that cost is nothing less than building a just society where money serves life, rather than ruling it.