David B. Shemano wrote: > I understand, but I am more interested in prostitution under socialism. How > will it work? <
Didn't Engels write a treatise called "The Prostitution Question"? (no) > In capitalism, sexual favors are allocated by price. Is your problem that > prostitutes in Russia are underpaid and the government should set a minimum > wage? ... < As raghu suggests, it's only under an ideal, imaginary, form of capitalism that the price "allocates" sexual favors -- just as actually-existing capitalism is much more than a "price system." Under real-world capitalism, the reserve army of the unemployed ensures that there is almost always a supply of prostitutes.[*] What was my "problem" with the snippet about prostitution in Russia? Though I didn't indicate this explicitly, the problem I was highlighting was the disaster created by the conversion of the old Soviet Union into capitalism. Such a low price for prostitute's services seems a symptom of the utter degradation of women under Russian capitalism. (I presume that most of the prostitutes there are women, as in most countries I know of.) There must be a large reserve army in Russia these days (though I have no data at hand). Men are degraded, too: their life expectancy is significantly lower now than under the old Soviet system. With socialism, there will be no reserve army while the serving of basic needs will be guaranteed (not including sex).[**] Thus, there wouldn't be the same kind of "economic draft" that conscripts people into the prostitution business under capitalism. Some might do it anyway, out of personal preference.[***] If so, the industry should be regulated to prevent the spread of STDs and the like. Consent by the regulated (the "sex workers' union") would be part of the package. Of course, real-world socialism must be created by a democratic process, so the actual result could differ. [*] The German social-democratic thinker August Bebel wrote that "Prostitution ... [is] a necessary social institution of bourgeois society, just as the police, the standing army, the church and the capitalist class" in his "Woman and Socialism." it's available at http://www.marxists.org/archive/bebel/1879/woman-socialism/index.htm. NB: I haven't read the book. [**] I define human "needs" not as intense wants but as requirements for the maintenance of human health over time. Sex with a partner does not seem to fill this bill. [***] In that case, it would correspond to simplistic free-market perspectives that see prostitution as a matter of personal choice. As is so common, the socialist ideal includes elements of what defenders of capitalism (wrongly) see as actually prevailing under that system. -- Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
