[lbo-talk] Decriminalisation (was something else)

Mike Ballard swillsqueal at yahoo.com.au
Fri Feb 8 19:28:57 PST 2008


shag wrote:

It still doesn't get at what _some_ people are asking for: the possibility that, even after the revo, people will _enjoy_ casual sex. That they will _want_, as part of their contribution to society and social needs (from each his according to his abilities....), to be a sex worker, like people will want to be attorneys or programmers or nurses or home health aides or urinal cake changers.*) ***************

Sex as necessary labour in a classless society? "Hmmm.....interesting proposition", says he, dawning his proletarian pipe-dreaming hat.

Look, the way I see it is kind of along the lines of that quip by Marx, something to the effect that the diff between the lower and higher stage of communism is that with the lower, you have distribution of wealth (goods and services) on the basis of work/time and the higher, you have distribution on the basis of need, 'cause work will be the highest want. In other words, work becomes more pleasure than drudge as you get closer to the higher stage of socialism. So, in the lower stage of communism, you get the situation where there are some things which have to be compensated in terms of labour-time vouchers, as suggested by Marx in various places. On the other hand, the wealth of socialist society is more and more realised through the expansion of free-time and the contraction of what is socially recognised as *necessary labour time*. You can think of these areas of contracting, socially necessary labour time right off: e.b. urinal cake changers, iron ore mining and environmentally responsible ways of disposing of the dead. Maybe, in the lower stages of socialism, you also have sex being socially recognised as necessary work, so some will want to 'spend' so to speak, their labour time vouchers enjoying this service from the social store of goods and services produced by people doing their necessary work time. Still, the urge for freedom and free-time will probably see the phasing out of these ways of doing one's socially necessary labour time in the lower stages of communism, as people engage in sexual pleasure with each other more and more in their free-time for the hell of it. Of course, as that kind of voluntary association expands, the ability to obtain the labour time vouchers necessary by doing sex-work, to get goods and services from the social store to enjoy oneself, would dry-up, so to speak.

Mike B)

http://www.iww.org.au/node/10 "Would you have freedom from wage-slavery.." Joe Hill http://www.iww.org/en/join

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