Re: Marx & Engels on Prostitution (was Re: Women & Industrialization)

[Michael Hoover <hoov@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> Mine quotes Marx:
> >'The SLAVERY in which the bourgeoisie holds the proletariat chained is
> >nowhere more conspicuous than in the factory system.
> <snip>
> >SINCE YOU HAVE FREELY ENTERED INTO THIS CONTRACT, YOU
> >MUST BE BOUND TO IT.. These operatives are condemned from the ninth year to
> >their death to live under the sword, physically and mentally".
>
> Nowhere more conspicuous than in the factory system -- hence it is no
> wonder that some of our contemporary women may feel working as
> prostitutes & other kinds of sex workers beats working as factory
> workers, especially if they are so socially positioned as to be able
> to work as petty producers.  And it certainly beats being penniless.
> And Marx commented on the nature of wage labor in general in
> _Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844_:
> *****   Prostitution is only a particular expression of the universal
> prostitution of the worker,
> Yoshie

Various dangers that sex work poses for women - disease, physical &
psychological abuse & injury, death, emotional trauma, personal indignity -
are found in other forms of women's work.  Are such dangers more essential
to sex work than other forms of women's work?

Selling labor power involves coercion since women workers must work for
capitalists as matter of economic necessity.  The development of free wage-
labor whereby worker exercises some degree of agency - "choosing" a job -
involves daily subjection.  According to Emma Goldman ("The Traffic in
Women," _Anarchism and Other Essays_): "Nowhere is woman treated according
to the merit of her work. but rather as a sex...it is merely a question of
degree whether she sells herself to one man, in or out of marriage, or to
many men.  Does this attitude preclude someone from being able to recognize
when conditions of slavery or involuntary servitude exist?

Selling of intimacy involving paid work - massage, therapy - is common today.
Such activities often involve inequalities and are non-reciprocal but that
they can be based upon fairness, kindness, and respect.  Does sex work
inherently preclude latter values?      Michael Hoover