Maybe Marxism didn’t work out in the long run–maybe it just never had the right clientele to sustain its tenets. But perhaps the real problem behind its ineffectual nature pertains to the fact that it was a philosophy developed around economics, not relationships.

In love, the equitableness of fervor is often divided more disproportionately than the dispersion of wealth in capitalism. This can lead to far more despondency than the absence of money in one’s life. One can always scrounge enough money, but scrounging enough love is an entirely different animal. What if Marx had been able to explain how to divide love between two people equally, so that one party never felt like a total and complete asshole for being more into it?

According to Marx (who, yes, worked with Engels–but this isn’t about him), the cause of all society’s woes is having a government that controls it through a capitalist lens, which breeds a dominant class that ends up having more than the people who offered their bodies and souls to the cause of the former. Clearly, the plight of the proletariat strongly mirrors that of the lesser loved person in a romantic rapport.

And yet, Marx didn’t apprehend that his doctrine would have better served the more yearning, passionate sect in love. He might have used Romeo and Juliet as the basis for a starting point in his reasoning, noting that the backbone of proportional love involves unattainability, impetuous youth and unexpected death that will prompt the other person to kill himself too. Or maybe Sid and Nancy could have been incorporated into the Marxist theory of love. If both people share a common obsession–like drugs–they will always be inextricably linked. Again, however, death seems to be the common denominator in a balanced distribution of love.

Or, perchance, a better, “healthier” example for key ingredients to an egalitarian romance might be Jane Eyre and Mr. Rochester, brought together by their loneliness and utter alienation from society. Indeed, this seems to be the most logical precept for two people to succeed in loving one another equally–for without any outsiders (i.e. friends) impinging upon them, all they have is each other to relate to.

For all the times Marxism has failed (China, Cuba, East Germany, etc.) in its application to economic structure, it could have prospered with an assignation to l’amour. Then again, it’s possible Marxism was doomed to break down on all fronts. After all, love is a losing game.