[lbo-talk] Marriage and Prostitution

Charles Brown cbrown at michiganlegal.org
Tue May 10 08:28:52 PDT 2005


Your choice of words here suggests that you're viewing the prostitute as the prototype for all workers, not seeing the prostitute as an instance of the whole class of exploited workers.

Doug

^^^^^

CB: Prostitutes are a specific category of "exploited" worker ( different type of exploitation , unless there is a pimp), but I couldn't help looking up the famous quote in which prostitution is used as the prototype for all workers>

"Prostitution is only a specific expression of the general prostitution of the labourer, and since it is a relationship in which falls not the prostitute alone, but also the one who prostitutes - and the latter's abomination is still greater - the capitalist, etc., also comes under this head." - Note by Marx [31]]

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/comm.htm

^^^^^

CB:I guess wage-laborers are like prostitutes in that they have no choice but to alienate their labor in order to live just as prostitutes have no choice but to alienate their affections order to live. I'm not sure.



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