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by mim3@mim.org, January 2006 "The drive to remove Bill Clinton from the presidency for his consensual sexual affair with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky poses a threat to every one of us. At issue is one of the most fundamental democratic rights, the right to privacy—-which in practice comes down to the right to a private sex life without meddling or snooping by state and church authorities."--Spartacist League on privacy rights Why work with pornographers if the Euro-Amerikan proletariat is supposedly coming to power tomorrow? There is a certain consistency to the Spartacist League's pro-pornography position, Liberal in every way. As MIM has pointed out, Sparts regularly feature porn stars in their paper and recruiters using sex. On the surface, the reason the Sparts give for their sexual Liberalism is that fascist crackdowns aim at gays, communists and pornographers first. This much MIM and anyone who has read fascist history agrees with and for this reason we blame imperialist country reformists taking up an anti-pornography strategy for opening a Pandora's Box. Those who do not have a powerful force really able to repress pornography are only going to end up the figleaf for one bourgeois interest or another, with no gain against pornography. The anti-pornography crowd, MIM included, must be on-guard against being used by fascists. What is missing and inconsistent in the Spartacist view is why a proletariat that supposedly exists and according to them is most advanced in the West, why the Sparts and others cannot mobilize the proletariat better without pornography to stop fascism. The Sparts take the classically Trotskyist view that there is a greatly advanced Western proletariat about to rise up and bring down global capitalism. The Sparts deny Lenin's and MIM's thesis on the parasitism of imperialism. Obviously the Sparts must be doing heavy drugs to be seeing a vibrant Western proletariat, but if there is a vibrant proletariat and pornography is not the future, then there should not be a reason to mobilize with pornography. So the people in that Liberal-Trotskyist milieu go in two directions from there: 1) they say pornography is part of the proletarian-liberated future. 2) they deny the power of the vehicle they claim to represent. The first answer is what MIM calls the male chauvinist outlook and the second answer is hopeless self- contradiction. We believe that the Sparts' Liberal line on sex shows that even the Sparts do not believe their own tall tales about the white workers. Here we do not accuse the Sparts of varying from Trotsky on the labor aristocracy and sexual Liberalism. By contrast, MIM takes a two-fold position: 1) the abolition of pornography is a goal of socialism but the imperialist countries will fall last. 2) we are stuck using pornographic media at this time and we should do so regardless of our own embarassment. In particular, those in the West who do not use pornographic media are guilty of purism and putting their own lives ahead of others'. It's not right to be raising the anti-pornography struggle for why Larry Flynt should not publish an anti-war article. That is just the sexual privilege of the pornified West, particularly that portion that wants its porn served in a particular Larry-Flynt-less way, while putting the Iraqi people in the backseat of the bus. The attack on "Not in Our Name" (NION) for going to Larry Flynt to oppose the war comes from a group of people that do not engage in armed struggle to end the war against Iraq. Not only won't they engage in armed struggle, but the privileged imperialist country people won't allow pornography media outlets to spread the anti-war message where it needs to go--among the type of guys who read Larry Flynt's publications. In other words, the purism is an excuse for inaction and ineptitude. After the Amerikan anti-war movement has come within a few hours of smashing the Pentagon, it can have the right to say it does not need Larry Flynt anymore and ban his ass. Till then, the purists should keep quiet. Numerous porn servers are using MIM articles as figleafs. That is fine by us, partly because we have no vehicle to come to power with in the imperialist countries in the immediate future. Unlike Sparts we see no vibrant white proletariat; thus, we see no reason not to use the imperialist countries flexibly instead of acting as if we were going to convince some revolutionary feminist force into action in the united $tates by ganging up on Larry Flynt for trying to publish a NION anti-war article. Once MIM achieves sufficient power, it will be able to take on more enemies at once and with a greater degree of intensity. The deluded Amerikan so-called Left is still stuck in too much underachievement to be fantasizing that it can take down the Iraq War, Afghan war and pornography simultaneously. Privacy What is perhaps even more interesting than the pornography question is the above position of Sparts on "privacy." Here it is not just privacy to read some porno magazine or have oral sex when it used to be illegal. To be sure, privacy against the state and church need defense under capitalism. These organizations themselves are just agglomerations expressing private interests. Yet, for an allegedly Marxist party to leave the question at the level of Liberal privacy rights is obviously wrong and particularly male chauvinist. Again, in the first place, the Sparts supposedly believe in "general strikes" and white worker uprisings about to happen. So when they leave questions at the Liberal level, they only impugn the social vehicle they claim to represent if that supposedly great vehicle needs pornography and privacy, when Lenin said no artificial accelerants were necessary. Secondly, the Sparts are making a play for the immature who believe something like they have a right to privacy from their boyfriends or girlfriends. The Sparts point out that adultery is not a crime, but they leave out that ordinary people use privacy as a concept for decadent ends among themselves--decadence being an underused concept by the Sparts. The existence of the concept of privacy in general in the air is not an advance worth defending. Privacy against the capitalist state, churches and media--yes. Privacy against people we have sexual interactions with is not compatible with the idea of consent. That kind of privacy is just another example of why all sex is rape in the current system. Supporting privacy across-the-board without pointing out its decadent aspects is bourgeois. Believing that one has the privacy right not to tell one's sexual partner about HIV, drug status or other lovers is purely decadence and tantamount to rape and possibly attempted murder where anti-viral medications are unobtainable as in much of the world. The privacy right only goes as far as anything before sex becomes involved. People have the privacy right to walk away from others and end relationships before they start. Both sides of the interaction have that right. We do not know anything on the details between Hillary and Bill Clinton, but we know the masses took the issue symbolically. In most but not all cases, something like Monicagate will happen in the context of an adulterous lie which makes consent to sexual interaction impossible. These adulterous lies now affect the majority of people in the united $tates. Adultery and lying should not be illegal especially under capitalism, because too many people would be in prison, but we can still say it is decadence. It is often no better than what men in prison for rape have done.
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