Love as a second-hand emotion: what does Marx have to do with pre-loved?

From a Marxist perspective, transforming ownership is key to revolutionising production. We propose it potentially revolutionises capitalist relations of consumption too – as possessive and exclusive – as key to a more circular economy. Specifically, we explore second-hand clothes donations to charities as pre-loved, to be re-loved, and desired again, positioning love as a ‘second-hand’ emotion. We conceptualise that, by not letting everything that is disposed of translate into waste, the labour of love and desire performed by consumers and charity workers, respectively, produces reuse value across various ownership cycles during clothing’s lifetime. These cycles comprise the (ex)change of ownership between consumers via charity shops constituting communal ownership hubs, our proposed ‘consumption commons’. ‘To return to where things were’ describes a circle and a revolution. This, from our Marxist perspective, means clothes being owned, desired, and loved anew as the value-creating engine of critical circularity that transforms ownership and consumption through reuse.