[Marxism] SEXploitation in a free market economy

[Chris Brady <cdbrady@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I sent in an article entitled:
> > Exploited Girls in U.S. Seek Same Protection Afforded Foreign Women

Jeff Rubard responded:
> Again: what does this have to do with Marxism,
> and can you understand the view that "morals for all"
> is not quite the right answer?

A few quick quotes from that article:

"Children forced to become prostitutes in the United States"
"domestic sex trafficking"
"sexually assaulted"

Such items spark the interest and concern of Marxists for a number of
reasons.  Marxism addresses the exploitation of the working
class-including women!-quite  explicitly.

In 1913, studying the forms of bourgeois democracy and exposing the
hypocrisy of the bourgeoisie, Lenin also dealt with the problem of
prostitution and showed how, while encouraging white slave traffic and
raping girls in the colonies, representatives of the bourgeoisie at the
same time hypocritically pretended to be campaigning against
prostitution.  Lenin returned to this question in December 1919, when he
wrote that "free, civilised" America was touting for women for bawdy
houses in the vanquished countries. (-V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol.
30, "Address to the Second All-Russia Congress of Communist
Organisations of the Peoples of the Peoples of the East" November 22,
1919)

A modern-day parallel can be found in Secretary of State Powell's
self-righteous attack on Cuba.  He accused teh Catro regime of making
hay by getting its citizens to roll in it with foreigners-for a price.
Powell thus accused Fidel of being a pimp.

Now, please forgive me for re-posting the following article-the subject
of an extended discussion on this list when it came out-but I think it
is an excellent foil for our investigation into capitalism and
exploitation.  For those who haven't read it, I'll discuss it after
you've looked it over:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Fidel's Sex Problem

Wall Street Journal EDITORIAL, June 27, 2003

Fidel Castro has a nasty sex problem. And he's livid at Colin Powell for
exposing it to the world. "Despicable," "rude," "cynical" and
"repugnant" are only a few of the words Fidel used during a recent
tirade.

So what's got Fidel so exercised? The answer lies in a just-released
State Department report scoring his government for the "state-controlled
tourism establishments and independent operators that facilitate the
sexual exploitation of minors by foreign tourists."

Cuba, the report goes on to say, turns a blind eye to this prostitution
because it provides a source of badly needed hard currency. And though
Cuba shares its dismal rating with 14 other nations, ranging from Greece
to North Korea, the charges carry a particular sting in Havana given
Fidel's indictment of the previous regime for making Cuba notorious as
"the whorehouse of the Americas."

The preferred State euphemism for this kind of activity is "trafficking
in persons," but the introduction to the report speaks much more boldly.
"As unimaginable as it seems," it begins, "slavery and bondage persist
in the early 21st century." Though trafficking also includes forced
labor, a good chunk of the 800,000 to 900,000 human beings trafficked
across borders are captives of the sex trade.

All too often they are women lured by the promise of work as nannies or
waitresses only to find themselves forced into selling their bodies.
With their passports or travel documents confiscated and with no means
of escape, often threatened with beatings, they have little recourse.
And the above figures do not include those trafficked internally, as in
Cuba.

The good news is that this is one report that has teeth. Starting this
year, countries that find themselves in the "Tier 3" category --
governments not making significant efforts to combat their human
trafficking problems -- are threatened with the loss of all
nonhumanitarian aid from America as well as the loss of access to
international financing from, say, the IMF or World Bank.

The mere listing has already had its salutary effects. Since last year's
report, the United Arab Emirates jumped from "Tier 3" to "Tier 1" with a
concerted anti-trafficking effort.

>From the vantage of history, the great human-rights causes that have
triumphed can look inevitable, whether it was the British Navy's role in
suppressing the African slave trade in the 19th century or Ronald
Reagan's call to tear down the Berlin Wall in the 20th. At the dawn the
21st, the deliverance of women and children from the bondage of what Mr.
Powell rightly calls a "modern-day slavery" is the great issue of our
own day. No one pretends that this report alone will force these
governments to change. But judging from the attention Fidel's already
giving it, it's plainly getting their attention.

>>>>END<<<<<

The foregoing article is blatant and provocative US propaganda against a
socialist government.  Not only does it vilify Cuba for a social problem
that is of a far greater magnitude in the United States, but it
completely and criminally neglects the causality for prostitution that
clearly emanates from the exchange value dynamic: "prostitution is based
on private property and falls with it."  (THE PRINCIPLES OF COMMUNISM by
Frederick Engels; translated by Paul Sweezy).

For more on the problem of sex exploitation and abuse of women and
children in the United States, see also:

Sex Slaves in the USA: The Girls Next Door
By Peter Landesman, New York Times Magazine, 25 January 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/25/magazine/25SEXTRAFFIC.html?th

Slaves of Chicago
by Charity Crouse
In These Times, January 8, 2001
[sorry, I don't have the URL for this one, but the periodical should be
available in a good local public or college library.  To suffice for the
nonce, here's a bit from the leading paragraphs]:
This city has become the focus of growing investigation into the sex
trafficking of foreign women and girls--what the CIA calls a "modern-day
form of slavery" that yields $7 billion a year in profits.
 [clip]
...officers learned the women had been brought to Chicago from rural
China, after being promised high-paying jobs in America. Upon arrival,
the women were forced into prostitution in order to pay off their
$60,000 "travel fee."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Of course the problem isn't limited to the USA.  However, in areas of
the world where prostitution as "sex tourism" escalates, the infusion of
bourgeois cash, a significant amount from the USA, provides its raison
d'être, for which, as an introduction only, please see:

UN: Prostitution Booming in Asia

By PHILIP WALLER, Associated Press Writer, AUGUST 20, 2000

GENEVA (AP) - Prostitution in Southeast Asia has burgeoned so rapidly
that it is now one of the region's major employers and money-earners
[clip]
 Commercial sex is crucial to the livelihoods of millions of workers
beyond prostitutes themselves and brings billions of dollars into each
nation
[clip]
 Child prostitution in particular could grow as poverty and unemployment
caused by the crisis strain family incomes and force children onto the
streets.
[clip]
 In all four countries studied, sex work provided significantly higher
earnings than other forms of unskilled labor.
[clip]

But basta with quote hunting, for you may select from dozens that mete
your own requirements from the works of Marx, Engels, Lenin, etc.  Try
looking through the Marxists Internet Archive, with its very helpful
search tools:
http://www.marxists.org/

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