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In their Spring 2004 issue of "Women and Revolution" in The Spartacist,
the Spartacist League features an article entitled: "Anti-Immigrant,
Anti-Woman, Anti-Sex: U.S./UN Crusade Against 'Sex Trafficking.'" The
Sparts correct criticism of the Bush administration's anti-immigrant
motivation for fighting sex-trafficking can't make up for its
pro-patriarchy line on sex. Their analysis can be summarized with a quote
from the article: "Kidnapping, debt bondage, sexual assault, beatings --
for any purpose -- are horrible crimes. But there is a qualitative
distinction between this kind of coercion and the fundamentally consensual
act between a prostitute and her client to exchange money for sex." This
position by the Sparts is so laughable it is almost not worth reviewing,
except that they pose as Marxists and so are confusing well-intentioned
people into a bastardization of true revolutionary politics. By contrasting
"good sex" with "bad sex" and "crimes" with "crimes without victims,"
Sparts hope to spin their libertarianism wildly enough to recruit some beer-drinking,
pot-smoking teenage boys without the brains to see the coercion underlying all sex
today.
The Sparts' idealist position on sex is no surprise, coming from a Trotskyist organization that bases itself in some image of the perfect revolution that has never achieved the liberation of any people anywhere in the world (a Trotskyist revolution), and which runs scared from the idea of real world compromises to advance the revolutionary struggle. In light of all their historical idealism, we shouldn't be surprised that the Sparts think prostitution is some form of ideal consensual sex. From the start the Sparts are caught in their own illogical argument: they don't even bother to try to define the difference between "consensual" sex acts and "sexual assault." This leaves the only possible conclusion that sexual assault is in the eye of the assaulted, or maybe in the eye of the assaulter. And so if a womyn gets married to a man twice her age because she has no money and she and her family are starving, this must be consensual because she agreed to do it. The Sparts do criticize "coerced prostitution" in this contradictory article, but although they don't bother to define what this might be, from the context it appears to include kidnapping and bondage. As evidence that prostitution is something wimmin are happy to do, the Sparts note that in "a massive nationwide swoop in the Czech Republic, which the United Nations calls the hub of the sex trade. . . of the 1,391 non-Czechs interrogated during these raids, the police found only three foreign prostitutes who asked to be repatriated." Yet the Sparts already pointed out, in this same article, that these raids are attacks on immigrants and an attempt to deport them to situations of poverty and suffering. So why should prostitutes ask to be repatriated to countries where their conditions would only be worse? This is a red herring, or non-issue. A more scientific question would have been: how many of these wimmin asked to be given a different job with the same or better pay? But even that question would deny the reality of the patriarchy as a pervasive part of our culture. Patriarchy can not be escaped Suggesting that prostitution is about "consensual sex" in contrast with something like kidnapping is like saying that workers in sweat shops are "consensual employees." People in both jobs might say that they are consenting to their jobs, and even enjoy what they are doing (although this is certainly not going to be the common answer). But just because a sweatshop job in Amerika is better than starvation in Mexico, or a prostitution job in France is better than starvation in Africa, does not make these consensual relationships. In both cases, the worker is taking a job because of a position of powerlessness--lack of dictatorship of the proletariat. In the case of the sweat shop worker, this is a question of exploitation: those who own the means of production are extracting surplus labor and profiting from her work. In the case of the prostitute there is an element of the worker/employer relationship with the John, but since there is nothing productive being produced, we are dealing with strictly leisure time activities, and the dominant issue is one of gender oppression. Under imperialism there are more types of power differentials than we can count. There is the power differential of money: those who have more money have power over those who have less. There is the power of nationality: white skin gives people power. There is the power of being male: men gain advantages strictly for being men. And there are other more subtle forms of power, like the power of a teacher over a student, or the power of someone with beauty as defined by the patriarchy, or the power of a manager over a subordinate, or the power of someone physically stronger, more well educated, or more athletic. Our society gives people power based on many different attributes. And it is impossible to escape these power differences in persynal relationships. The Sparts also make a point of attacking feminists who have drawn connections between pornography and violence against wimmin. Living in their ideal Spart-world where the patriarchy has no impact on people's actions, the Sparts find this idea ridiculous. But for those of us materialists living in the real world, we can see clearly that pornography of all forms promotes violence against wimmin. From sexualizing children (in advertising aimed at adults) to the popular themes of dominance over wimmin, pornography helps shape the way our society thinks about wimmin and sex. When people see pictures of wimmin being subjugated it is impossible for this to have no effect on the way they think. Culture affects people. And so we can say that in a culture of pornography that promotes male dominance and female subjugation, porn contributes to violence against wimmin. MIM considers Catharine MacKinnon courageous for her work in this area, but we do not agree with her approach of trying to outlaw pornography under Capitalism, because we don't want to give the imperialists any more laws which they can use to attack only those who they consider enemies. Under Socialism MIM will make it illegal to profit from pornography. By doing this, while at the same time undertaking a thorough cultural revolution to eliminate patriarchal culture, we will succeed in eliminating pornography. Furthering their ridiculous idealist view that we can somehow escape the patriarchy under capitalism and live in a coercion free world, the Sparts go on to say: "Because it is generally illegal or heavily regulated under capitalist law, Marxists consider prostitution to be a 'crime without a victim,' like drug use, gambling, pornography, homosexual sex and 'statutory rape.'" The Sparts oppose laws against "crimes without victims" and clearly they think it is possible for a young child to freely consent to sex with an adult. They pretend there is no patriarchy and just advocate "the concept of effective consent, that is, mutual understanding and agreement is what matters in all sexual acts" as if this is possible to achieve just by wishing for it, and moreover, possible under capitalism when we don't even have state power. (This is not to say that we uphold society's definition of adulthood. We believe it highly desirable to give the legal right of consent to 13 year-olds and instruct children on control of their own bodies, but we know this will not be achieved under the patriarchy.) MIM is a materialist organization, we don't base our line on an idealist vision of what we wish we could have. The idea of "effective consent" is beautiful, but in practice we have a patriarchy and power differences that make this consent impossible. Instead MIM fights to overthrow the patriarchy. What is consent? When we talk about consent we need to talk about the conditions under which consent can really be given. If the Puerto Rican people vote to continue their status as a neo-colony of amerikan imperialism should we accept that as a statement of their consent? MIM says resoundingly no! The Puerto Rican people can not give their free consent until imperialist Amerika stops its military and economic occupation of Puerto Rico. Only then will the people be free to express their will. In taking the stand that prostitutes can consent freely to sex the Sparts now have to support for Puerto Rico colonialism and the exploitation and oppression of all peoples around the world who say they consent to their conditions. Unlike the Sparts, MIM is willing to go further and talk about the nature of consent under a patriarchal system. We recognize that a student can't freely consent to sex with his teacher. No matter how much he says it is consensual, there is always that power difference hanging over the relationship--and it does not matter if the difference is direct for those individuals or just something in social norms broadly. Before the abolition of money, as Engels pointed out, there is no way to be sure of the nature of sexual interactions in general, never mind prostitution. The contradictory Sparts go into even further contortions condemning the desperate situation where "young women give slimy bosses blowjobs to stay employed in wretched sweatshops." This is confusing since it is virtually the same thing as prostitution: the women are engaging in sex in exchange for money. In this case, because the bosses are slimy, apparently there is no consent on the part of the prostituted wimmin. Clearly the Sparts can't make up their mind what constitutes consent and so they resort to giving a few examples that are more palatable and then hold up as an example one white Amerikan sex worker who is a member of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and preaches free love under capitalism. Separating class and gender It is the gender component in prostitution that confuses the Sparts. They focus exclusively on class as the source of oppression and can't get past the economic relationship between the prostitute and the John. If we could just get the money out of the sex relationship they think it would all be good. In one example of this confusion, the Sparts take up an attack on monogamous relationships in the name of attacking marriages that wimmin enter into for economic sustenance. First they quote Engels on the history of marriage: "This marriage of convenience turns often enough into the crassest prostitution -- sometimes of both partners, but far more commonly of the woman, who only differs from the ordinary courtesan in that she does not let her body on piecework as wage worker, but sells it once and for all into slavery." And then they go on to conclude "It is the institution of the family that brings money into sexual relations. Whether it's renting a prostitute by the hour or a wife by the lifetime, the family and the oppression of women are founded on private property, and the religious codes of morality and capitalist law are all that distinguish the wife from the prostitute in this fundamental sense." So here we have the Sparts saying the wife is a prostitute (presumably a bad thing) but yet defending prostitution as consensual sex and further as helping society because "On the sexual level, [the prostitute] compensates for the hang-ups and fears that can keep especially women from enjoying sex." In this example it is clear they are only upset about the economic element of gender relations. They see no element of gender oppression that exists outside of class. And so if we get rid of private property it is not possible to have any patriarchy. This ignores the leisure time basis for the pornography industry, prostitution, and birth control (which is tested on Third World wimmin to provide safely to First World wimmin). The Sparts do call for the end to prostitution which they see "as a component of the oppression of women," which, for the Sparts, is just another component of class since prostitution is merely an economic and consensual relationship between Prostitute and John. This is important because without taking on gender oppression head on, and instead just focusing on class, the Sparts are not fighting the whole battle. MIM can envision a world where class oppression is eliminated but gender oppression continues. This is because gender is fundamentally a separate strand of oppression, not just a part of class. And so we have to take on the patriarchy even after the revolution, and fight until it is eliminated. MIM does not like to speculate about individual motivations, instead we choose to talk about political line. But we can see group motivation in Amerika behind this kind of political line. Old white guys will enjoy this line from the Sparts based on their culturally trained desire to have free access to pornography, prostitutes and even children. After all, the Sparts proclaim that under socialism "Sex will be free from the snooping of preachy busybodies and corrupt cops," no doubt a rallying cry that inspires many a Spart to get out on the streets and organize for revolution. Perhaps the Sparts think that the barefoot doctors who went into the countryside in China to teach families about birth control so that they could limit the size of their family and plan their resources more reasonably were "preachy busybodies." Many men in particular resisted using birth control, but people in the villages would spend patient hours explaining to them the importance of this for their well being and for their wives liberation. These "preachy busybodies" helped advance conditions in the Chinese countryside, improved medical care, and raised the standard of living, while also making it possible for wimmin to enter the workforce and revolutionary activity. MIM line on gender MIM attempted to clarify our position on gender oppression in our 1998 congress. There is much relevant material in the MIM Theory journal on Gender (MT2/3) but the congress resolution expands on it. (see: http://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/wim/cong/gender98b.html). Below we quote some relevant point from this resolution to illustrate our line on gender and prostitution. MIM actually agrees with the Sparts that laws against sex-workers under capitalism are bad. But our reason for saying this has to do with the power the Capitalists have to enforce these laws to achieve their own goals of social control, not because these laws are "anti-sex." "[P]rostitution is fundamentally about the cash-sex nexus, while MacKinnon says rape is not just the cash-sex nexus, because rape is set up by the institution of pornography which determines what is socially pleasurable. Whether or not MacKinnon is precisely correct about the superstructure element known as pornography is less relevant to us right now than the fact that calling all sex rape may get us out of the cash-sex nexus for analysis. One reason getting out of that nexus is important is that it raises the question of what would happen if cash were eliminated and sex for profit were impossible: would there still be gender oppression? MIM believes there would be."... "Both in the Third World and in the imperialist countries we have permanent full-time prostitution called marriage and we have contract prostitution called crime." ... "Capitalism could function without rape and sexual harassment. These oppressions are separate and essentially they are by-products of leisure-time activity that should not be located in the mode of production. "Whether it be modeling, prostitution or divorce court, clearly men are willing to pay for something in connection to their leisure-time desires. White rich men even have to endure being charged with rape by Black wimmin and they cannot charge Black wimmin with rape within our culture. The ability of Black wimmin to charge white men in court and not vice-versa for rape shows that the dynamics of such oppressions can only be found in leisure-time. "Stupid reductionist pseudo-Marxists and pseudo-feminists have proclaimed that merely being paid for sex -- the existence of "sex objects" -- is oppression, never mind the amounts of money involved in the imperialist society. We at MIM do not agree. "In the first place, wimmin who can use their looks or sex not to work, they obviously have some kind of sexual privilege that can be translated into class status. Even some young wimmin who would attract rich men may be stuck in grinding poverty because of national oppression, closed borders. They may have nothing else going for them, but well-paid models are gender aristocrats or higher on the patriarchal totem-pole. Health status and pornography standards (perhaps not in the sense MacKinnon means) ordain which wimmin are most gender privileged, which wimmin will make $100 an hour or $100,000 a night for past services in some divorces and which wimmin will be available to the poorest men. "The high-paid prostitutes, models, actresses and housewives such as Marla Trump are not themselves oppressed. They form the anchor for gender oppression of others. Just as in capitalism there must be sweepstakes winners and capitalists who make it "on their own" to show that the system works. There must be winners in the patriarchy to ensure compliance up and down the line. If all the winners were of one biology, revolution would develop much more easily. Yet just as there is a split in the working-class internationally between proletarians and labor aristocrats, there is a split in biological wimmin internationally between wimmin and gender aristocrats."... "We do not deny that imperialism conditions gender in very important ways or that patriarchal ideas in the superstructure must be actively swept away or they will not fall of their own accord. Yet if all we can do is talk about how external conditions influence gender then we should admit that gender is not an object of materialist analysis in its own right and we should reduce our analysis to two strands. MIM holds that instead, historically reproductive status was very important to gender and today, the dynamics of leisure-time and humyn sexual development are the material basis of gender. As such the discussion of gender apart from the organization of work known as the mode of production is necessary as part of any elaboration of the fundamental contradiction of oppression that Mao spoke of."
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