[lbo-talk] James McMurtry - "We can't make it here"??

[wrobert at uci.edu]

>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Miles Jackson" <cqmv at pdx.edu>
>
> Of course there's a difference; we've socially created and maintained
> the difference. There's nothing "natural" about it. Sex for "love" is
> just as much a product of social relations as sex for money; or, to put
> it the other way round, both types of sex have been made possible by
> "human nature". We get tangled up in discussions about "human nature"
> time and again on LBO, and as far as I can tell, the term is just about
> as useful as "luminiferous aether" or "phlogiston". I think it's much
> more helpful to leave it aside and analyze how social relations produce
> the society we live in (a Marxist point through and through, I want to
> stress to CB!).
>
> ---------
> What I'm hearing you say is that all our emotions are simply reactions to
> a socially constructed reality. Prostitution is held in low esteem,
> therefore our aversion to it, is simply something that we have learned to
> feel.

This is oversimplified.  To begin our emotions are not simply reactions,
but are in some sense produced and interpreted within any social context. 
More significantly, those structures are produced within a whole series of
formal and informal institutions tied into the social reproduction of a
society.  The disrepute that prostitution is held within is tied to those
complex structures.


> At the same time we say that the alienation of work, which is essential to
> capitalism, is not something learned but something genuinely felt by
> workers who have needs that this kind of work does not meet.

I'm skeptical of this division of the 'genuinely felt' and the 'learned.' 
Anne Fausto-Sterling does a good job showing the way that this assumed
division constructs gendered and sexed assumptions.  More significantly,
I'm not sure why you need reference to some sort of 'nature' in order to
challenge structures of exploitation and domination.

robert wood


> That seems to be a contradiction to me. But, leaving aside the
> prostitution issue, which always gets me in hot water on this list, what I
> hear you saying is that all values are relative to the social relations
> that produce them. If this is the case, why do people feel pain in certain
> situations that are socially normative? Why do people revolt? What do they
> appeal to that isn't relative in their revolt?
>
> Joanna
>
>
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