Here is our sixth post in a series of seven examing some questions raised by sex work, revolutionary theory and practice, working-class politics, coal mining, and morality. We invite your responses.
Our Two Poles of Thought
Lenin and Kollontai had somewhat contradictory approaches
in these matters, and neither has the last word, but the two poles of thought
they established mark commonsensical guides for us even today, a point of
departure for understanding modern sex work. We return to the points made by
Marx, Engels, Beard, and Brown in order to restate our case.
Solid feminist scholarship has documented that the
creation of the nuclear family and monogamous marriage were linked to the rise
of private property as a social form, as a way of organizing production and
distribution and society at large. The historic emergence of the family as an
economic unit dominated by men has been tied from the earliest days to the
development of classes. The most hard-hearted side of capitalism
is now bringing us widespread environmental destruction and economic crises
which in turn create nihilism and chaos and undermine the very family
structures capitalism once created. No one is being liberated.
One peculiar contradiction which we live with grants that
most of us---those who are not imprisoned or enslaved or otherwise held in
bondage---are free to the extent that we own our bodies but must sell our labor
power in order to survive. We also experience a contradiction between ownership
and control. For instance, a woman who is not imprisoned or on parole or
probation and who is a citizen has a legal claim to autonomy. Still, the law
which grants her autonomy requires that she work to earn a living and is buttressed by a false morality and by customs
which do not allow her ready access to healthcare, abortions, housing, an
adequate wage, childcare, and social advancement. Her situation is more
desperate if she is a woman of color, LGBTQIA2S+, disabled, or without papers.
The slogan “Our bodies, ourselves!” drew its great strength from its explicit
challenge to capitalist law and morality.
Sexual gratification under these conditions may appear as
a commodity, or in a commodified form. Bourgeois marriage, living together, and
sex work may all be about reproducing labor power, or some kind of social
reproduction of labor power, or the commodification of desire or male domination---but sex work is
not labor power being sold or exchanged for the creation of another commodity,
and the commodification of desire does mean that desire has itself been
commodified. The sex worker and the coal miner are different here. Most sex
work is not waged labor, or at least not in the sense that coal mining is waged
labor. The obvious similarities between the two do not make them identical. We can also say that much sex work is unwaged.
Work and class relations in a capitalist society mean that there
are inevitable conflicts between workers and bosses. Capitalism also has incredible
regenerative powers which are evident in daily life. Consider the constant
effort to convince us that there is no alternative to capitalism as well as the
“economic recoveries” and the trade wars and “hot” wars. A necessary part of
modern capitalism’s regenerative powers involve reconstructing the individual
to be both the optimal worker and the optimal consumer, as well as a passive
citizen who either lacks a unique identity or who claims an identity which can
be easily managed and manipulated. Sex work may fill certain gaps as human
beings search for human contact, human warmth and understanding, and solace as
the capitalists accumulate profits and power at the expense of the workers, but
here two contradictory tendencies develop. Sex work may fulfill certain needs,
but it appears to clash with existing morality. The commodification of desire makes
capitalism somewhat vulnerable to the protests and demands of those who provide
sexual gratification.
Workers are, by definition, people engaged in producing
things, and we therefore draw the defining characteristics of our identities
from being in fields, factories, offices, and schools where exploitation
occurs. Service, administrative, and educational workers enter the
working-class by engaging in their work with others, by being vital to the
reproduction of labor power, by working under conditions which increasingly
look and feel like factory work, by serving what are essentially
apprenticeships (college and university), through their self-consciousness of
being workers, by being directly linked to social production and distribution,
and by being denied middle-class incomes and status. In a sense, workers become proletarians when we gain a sense of ourselves as a class and think and act for ourselves.
It is unimaginable that a movement for social change can take
place without middle-class democrats, small farmers, small businesspeople, and
professionals also taking part. And it is absolutely impossible that social
justice work can be launched without the leadership of women, people of color,
LGBTQIA2S+ people, and all who experience particular forms of oppression under
capitalism. But if exploitation is to end, it will be because people at the
points of exploitation make a revolution, a new system of economic and
political relations takes hold, and workers use our power to reconstruct
society. No other class or social category existing in capitalist society is
positioned to be able to accomplish this by itself. The capitalists can
appropriate or coopt most forms of rebellion, but they cannot fully appropriate
or coopt the working-class, and particularly those sections of the
working-class where class exploitation and other forms of oppression intersect.
As Kollontai and Lenin pointed out, the revolutionary alliance of the
working-class and the oppressed peoples will best be able to determine how
social relations are to be reconstructed on truly human terms and that a
revolution demands our total concentration and will. Our point is that there is
no revolution if there is no working-class revolutionary movement and party.
We repeat the point that it is the sale of labor as a
commodity in order to create other commodities---what is called wage labor and
exploitation--- which creates the surplus value (and desires, perhaps) needed
for modern sex work to exist. The surplus value created by industrial
production and administration, including mining, helps to create the surplus
value needed for sex work to exist in its modern terms. Destroying the
capitalist relations which create surplus value through exploitation will deal
a blow to the existence of sex work, but it will not make sex work disappear
entirely. We can say that sex work is one of the better examples of how the
capitalist free market works if we look at power relations present in the sex
work trades and how wages and payments are set there and at the consequent
degradation of human beings. We can also argue that no free market exists for
sex work precisely because of the power imbalance and degradation inherent in
the work.
A recent news item had it that there are now brothels in
Europe which use artificial intelligence mannequins programmed to have limited
conversations and tell male customers what they want to hear. It has been
alleged that this is becoming quite popular, to the point that in one urban
area double-parking near such a brothel is creating traffic problems. We hope
that it is self-evident to our readers that such phenomenon only demonstrates
advanced forms of alienation and despair present in the capitalist world, a
terrible misuse of technological development for profit, and the dissolution
present in the First World, and that such phenomena arise in part as an abusive
reaction to progress made by women. Our struggle forms in great measure around
building and supporting revolutionary womens’ movements and being in solidarity
with them as they carry out a revolutionary program. Our struggle also forms
around ensuring real technological development for society’s needs and putting
people before profits.
Providing sexual gratification to someone in exchange for
money may seem like selling one's labor power for the sexual gratification of
another person. The commodity being sold by a sex worker could perhaps be the
power that workers have to do the work that is required to sexually gratify
another person. A power exchange may take place, but that is not an exchange of
commodities or an exchange of labor power (which is itself a commodity) for
commodity production. We can also say that sex workers do not sell their
bodies, but instead sell the ability to please, gratify, or comfort. These
views are not without merit, but labor power, commodities, and the
commodification of desire and the search for companionship are not so abstract.
Commodities have a material existence by their nature, labor power being a
special exception. The imposed moralistic view of sex workers as only people
who sell their bodies misses the reality of patriarchal social relations and
how they are linked to modern capitalism. Sex and sex work have been
commodified, but they are not commodities. The difference is in their
identities and functions and in the markets in which transactions take place.
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