A KARL CARLILE POSTING: KARL: Hi Rakesh! You reply was appreciated. RAKESH: That is, how women who sold sexual favours came to be seen, in Carole Pateman's words, as a special class of women, isolated from other workers or working class communities, how there came to be a specialized profession of prostitution, how prostitutes came to be seen as different from women who were similar in most respects--young, poor, and powerless, how prostitutes came to be seen less in medical terms (as carriers of vd) and more in social scientific terms (as deviant types). Moreover, there is the question of what role the law and social scientific observation played in the creation of this type about which Karl writes. KARL: In making my statement my point, Rakesh, was to indicate that prostitutes do not necessarily form part of the working class since they do not sell labour power as a commodity. They are not wage workers. By contrast the prostitute sells his/her body, as opposed to labour power, as a commodity on the exchange market. This means that s/he sells her/his body piece meal over a sustained period. Her/his body is the commodity. The purchaser of her/his body relates to it as a commodity. In this sense s/he is a simple commodity producer: an independent commodity producer. This means that the class character of the prostitute is petty bourgeois rather than working class. Clearly this situation is modified if there is a pimp involved in the business of the prostitute. Under these conditions the prostitute sells her/his body as commodity in exchange for money. Now the prostitute through the medium of the market exchanges value in the form of a simple commodity for value in the form of money. There obtains equal exchange. There is no unequal exchange and consequently no exploitation either direct or indirect by the purchaser of the body commodity. However there is a form of oppression and exploitation when the pimp forcibly extracts a portion of this value from the prostitute. S/he extracts value in the form of money from the prostitute outside of the exchange process. Nothing is exchanged by the pimp for this value in its money form. It is simply appropriated by the pimp. In this sense this relationship of appropriation takes place outside the limits of value relations. Consequently not only does the pimp/prostitute relationship transcend capitalist relations but it also transcends simple value relations. The pimp acquires value gratis by virtue of the fact that the prostitute sells her/his body as commodity. The prostitute turns her/his body into a commodity. This is the chief distinction between worker and prostitute. The worker turns her/his labour power into a commodity while the prostitute turns her/his body into a commodity. In this regard their exists a commonality between slavery and prostitution. The body of both are exchanged as commodities. However in the case of the slave his body as commodity is not her/his. In the case of the prostitute the body is hers/his. This is a significant distinction. Another distinction is that in the case of the slave the body is sold all at once while in the case of the prostitute it is sold piece meal. It is sold on a continuous basis. This means that even though s/he sells her body it is not sold in toto. Consequently even though s/he is engaged in the business of selling it, because of the peculiar way in which it is done, s/he still maintains overall ownership over it outside business hours. It is this peculiarly limited form in which her body is sold that prevents the prostitute from being reduced to the status of a slave. The prostitute reproduces his/her body so that s/he can sell it on the market. By selling his/her body as commodity s/he is exchanging the form of value in the form of commodity for the form of value in the form of money. The latter is the value form by which she can continue to reproduce her body in order to sell it again. Now the prostitute who tends to produce a "better quality body" by putting more labour into the reproduction of her body increases the value of her body and thereby the price she gets for it. The prostitute contributes to the creation of value as a simple commodity producer by selling her body as a commodity. S/he then makes a contribution to the economic system by creating value. As a petty commodity producer s/he is petty bourgeois and not a member of the working class. Her/his petty bourgeois position will tend to reflect itself in her politics and culture. Her/his economic condition, as prostitute, tends to be a function of the specific character of the capitalist economy at any given time, the quality of her/his body as commodity, the degree to which her/his body as commodity enters the exchange process, whether or not s/he has a pimp or employer and the character of her/his relationship to either. To sum up: As far as the circulation process goes there takes place equal exchange between the prostitute and her customers. In that sense there is no exploitation of the prostitute. People who are quick to frown on prostitution because the body is sold as a use value tend to be reluctant to frown on the selling of labour power by workers. Why should selling one's body be qualitatively any worse than selling one's labour power to an industrial capitalist. Both can be considered alienating and oppressive as forms of human conduct. Yet the selling of labour power is experienced as an acceptable social norm beyond moral reprobation. Indeed the latter ipso facto entails exploitation whereas the former does not. Workers who are the customers of prostitutes are not ipso facto exploiting them. PS: I have just been removed from pen-l mailing list again. It is this kind of mail that the moderator, Michale Perleman and his friends fear. This is why I have been removed. Greetings Karl