----- Original Message ----- From: "lbo-talk-digest" <owner-lbo-talk-digest at lists.panix.com>
> did ya wanna tell us about how sex workers aren't read producers of surplus
> value while apple pie bakers are, now?
>
>
> kelley
Kelley, I'm not entirely sure where you are going on this. I remember being called Catherine Mackinnon in the process of a debate quite a long time ago- on Marxmail, and it was because I tried to state a position I'm frankly not sure of any longer (how's that for Leninist iconclasm?)- that of prostitution being something wholly different than standard labour. I didn't know who Catherine Mackinnon was then, frankly. Now I'm unimpressed.
You see, I believe in a world where we don't need slavery- wage, sexual, physical or any combination of all three- so I have a hard time talking about "surplus value" to something that I am so utterly repulsed by the notion of commodifying. With the commodification of labour processes, and I thank Marx for helping me grasp this, labour becomes viciously alienating. I cannot be anything other than a total opponent of a labour relation that alienates one from the whole process of sexual intercourse. That is one huge example of the inhuman nature of the way capitalism makes us interact with other people, as one another.
Also, as I mentioned, in my family the worker aspect of prostitiutional sex has led to death. I am not the slightest easy on the whole notion, nor do I blame women. Quite the opposite. I blame patriarchal structures and moral codes of ethics which stand to help reproduce the system in a way that makes such an industry tolerable and considered "just like that". Sex should no more nor less be sold like other workers labour, if are only dealing in terms of labour exploitation, bosses (pimps) and service (your "hummers") in the terms of dignity and the need to abolish capitalism. But the industry- as it is, I suppose- should be decriminalised. Then, in that context, if women form a union then that will be supported by me. I look at that in direct correlation to the people who want to fight for the decriminalisation of all drugs: What makes this practice- drug use/street sales or prostitution- dangerous is the bizarre prudish, finger pointing judgemental nonsense that is produced by an analysis which attempts to mollify what we are dealing with within the framework of capitalism- and therefore the alienation of something from which we can't be alienated- ourselves. It is something for which the impulse I can agree with so wholeheartedly- to save lives and achieve dignity for those involved- but the answer slows the death and leaves the inhuman connection; the total alienation. Roughly put, I suppose: Capitalist labour processes- and what could be more capitalist than sex worker for money?- are incompatible with a workable solution. I do not push the notion because it seems to me to be reconciling with a long term strategy- step by step- that is not a full enough answer for me, short or long term.
When I first did my blitz of activist work some five years ago, I worked in Vancouver's downtown East Side for awhile. Down there is the highest per capita drug overdose, most intense levels of poverty and several other indicators (drug needle infections) are among the most brutal in North America, and *the* highest by LARGE margins in Canada. So many travellers and friends from out of Vancouver I talk to always talk about this. There have been sex-slavery rings run for Native Children in the area. When this is what you work in every day for a period- and it is not where I'm working these days, but that isn't a value judgement at all (if anything, the opposite would be true)- the need to get a massive very direct, extremely militant *confrontation* with the values that allow this to happen shapes you somewhat. I am brutally intolerant of those who put down sex-workers, drug addicts and also am intolerant of half-assed solutions. That doesn't mean people aren't righteous to deal with things the way they do. They just aren't enough for me, is all.
Drugs users don't need needle exchange programs and long term planning for the decriminalisation of drugs within capitalism- they need immediate reforms to create safe fixing sites and real detox centres (not prisons you sign into for degradational, condescending mind control as what I saw downtown) and those who get out of there should work in their communities to build local initiatives to be a part of the larger society that comes to realise what the current system is doing is completely unsustainable. Now, given 9-11, the immediacy of that call may be dimmer, but the neccessity for it is even more urgent than ever before. As I say often on all subjects, we must keep that front and centre.
Sex workers don't need free condom programs and long term planning for the regulation of the industry into one that is "not more dangerous than working in a factory" by way of a unionization (despite the rapid increase in safety this would engender)- they need immediate red-light districts as a matter for simple survival, and to organise, if need be, something similar to an outlaw union made up of both the working women and not- to deal the most crushing blow to the pimps possible. The boss relation of a pimp is most readily akin to a mafioso sweatshop owner/operator that operates more freely than even the other outlaw capitalists (save for the drug barons). Pimps are among the most dangerous, even if in a classical sense they operate on the same basic relations as an average capitalist boss- pimps are far more prone to murder, violent intimidation, threats and emotional and psychological manipulation. We do not need to create corporations of such relationships. We need gravestones (hypothetically, but of course :-)). Even a safer corporate/union relationship still leaves women to be killed or beaten by vicious, lunatical men- who I postulate were also twisted in large part by the very commodification process of the patriarchal superstructural relation of capitalism- sex work.
The point is, for me, that the Apple pie baker won't still be in danger if the pie gets baked in a safe work environment under a `modified' capitalism. The same is not true of sex work- nor does pie baking commodify and alienate something that directly connected to the human experience. *Technically*- but little more- it is the same thing. We all deserve to have sex de-pruderised. The alienation of sex stemming from capitalism also feeds into the prudish busy body nonsense that makes people push people like Fred Phelps, and so on. It makes the Christian Church (and many others) seem like they have a solution to how we have litterally tortured sexual relations. This alienation also must, it would seem to me, feed into homophobia as *false consciousness* as well. I don't believe that have one person paid for apple pie baking makes the relation between the individual who bakes one for no fee become suspect in the larger society- the alienation from the first doesn't distort and cripple the relation for the second in the same way for "regular" labour as it does for sex work.
That's roughly my rant out loud, and I guess thanks for asking it of me is in order, since that cleared things up.
yours for the entire revolution,
Macdonald