Macdonald Stainsby wrote:
>
> 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.
Mac, take a deep breath, step back, and approach this topic (whatever this topic is) independently of offering a defense of yourself against personal charges. Just ignore the charges. They are irrelevant to the subject matter.
Whether a given kind of labor produces "surplus value" or not should only be of interest from the viewpoint of the political economist, in arriving (or attempting to arrive) at the overall balance of class forces at a given time. You have allowed yourself to be pulled into what is essentially a moralistic (and hence non-marxist, non-historical) squabble over how you as an individual should or should not think about some particular activity.
Do the production workers at a weapons plant produce surplus value. There have been great debates over that -- and they make a difference to one's overall understanding of the capitalist system at a given time and place. If they don't produce surplus value, then their wages are paid out of the surplus value produced by other workers. Now it would be more than irrelevant -- it would be aggressively reactionary -- to introduce into that discussion the question of whether those workers were part of the workign class (of course they are) or whether it was nice of them to work there (that's divisive, and ignores completely the fact that workers must sell their labor power). Et cetera et cetera.
Let me come at another way. The question of whether or not activity Q produces surplus value would be more appropriately raised over on pen-l, where theere are some economists (I'm thinking especially of Jim Devine) who can put the question in its proper historical and political context. (It's related to the issue of productive and unproductive labor, and some good marxists deny the validity of that division, other equally good marxists have argued persuasively for its importance in understanding the rise and fall of profit in a capitalist economy.)
In the paragraph quoted above the clause, "I am so utterly repulsed by
the notion of
> commodifying," is really neither here nor there -- and in developing it you just go out on a limb that you don't have to go out on, because whether prostitution is or is not repulsive has not a damn thing to do with whether or not the prostitute produces surplus value. In the classical brothel she obviously did produce surplus value for the brothel owner. An independent prostitute obviously does not. Prostitutes managed by a pimp: I don't know enough about the structure there to say. But repulsion or attraction obviously does not enter into this.
Except for those workers involved in the repressive power of the state, it is simply not good marxist politics to fuss about whether a given worker's labor power is sold in nice or unnice ways.
Also: in this descussion a very false (and almost never explicitly stated) assumption is beginning to show itself: That marxism is a TOE (Theory of Everything). There are a huge list of questions which simply are not touched by marxism.
Near the end of your post you write:
"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."
You are getting yourself tied up in unnecessary knots again. Why do you have to have an opinion on this either way. If we were discussing issues of U.S. interference in the affairs of the rest of the world it would be clear to you that it was not relevant how not nice (say) Afghanistan is or how nice Cuba is. Yankees Keep Out. It isn't your business whether a particular worker's occupation is safe or not. And in making the particular judgment here, you will never succeed in convincing anyone (not even me) that illicit moral judgments are not being hidden under an apparently objective consideration of worker safety.
Think like a marxist, not like a liberal who has to have a moral judgment of everything everybody does.
Carrol