Miles Jackson wrote:
>
>
> I think this is the core of the debate: in my (and I think Doug's)
> socialist utopia, sex work would be one of many possible forms of work
> that people could participate in. To update Marx, I could be a porn star
> in the morning, a fisherman in the afternoon, a critic in the evening.
> For J., there's no place for sex work in an egalitarian, socialist
> society.
I have not the slightest idea myself what will be the status (or existence or meaning) of sex work in an egalitarian society. Nevertheless, what Miles says here contributes to class solidarity, while the efforts to moralize sex work (or abortion) contribute to class disunity _now_!
Incidentally, I agree with Kelley (if I understand correctly her somewhat voluminous post) that work in capitalist society is not necessarily "alienated," in the psychological or sociological senses of "alienation" which seem to be at issue here, namely, some separation from one's "true" humanity. Alienation in that sense is purely subjective, and there are many Walmart workers as well as streetwalkers who are by no means thus alienated.
Marx only uses the term in his early unpublished writings, though Fredy Perlman (introduction to Rubin) argues vigorously that "alienation" in those mss. is equivalent to "commodity fetishism" Marx's later work. A worker alienates (in a technical sense) his/her labor power when he/she sells it to a capitalist. But that doesn't indicate anything about his/her subjective responses to that work. It can be truly fulfilling for him/her (again, whether the labor is at a Walmart or in a brothel). The claim made in this thread by some that labor in a capitalist society is _always_ alienating is (a) false and (b) a transparent effort to sneak in the back door a moralizing response to sex work.
Carrol
>
> I guess Jordan should put one of those "Check prediction" flags on this
> thread: come the revolution, there will be a proliferation of sex work,
> not the elimination of it.
>
> Miles
>
> ps. Please, please, please spare me the "teenage daughter" hyperboles;
> that's a rhetoric device people use if they don't have a coherent,
> logical argument. We're better than that.
>
> M.
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