G'day Penners,
William Lear asks:
>Why should it be deprecated any more than any other work done under
>conditions of legal exploitation? If the working conditions are safe,
>if the work is as "freely" chosen as any other within our society, why
>should we care?
It occurs to me that the 'self-employed' prostitute (and I recognise the
range of possible experiences for such people is enormous) is essentially
escaping the dominant mode of exploitation of our time. There is no
surplus value produced is there? No capitalist and no proletarian! Sure,
most alienations emanating from the commodity form (and, typically but not
necessarily, most effects of differential wealth-determined power
relations) prevail, but can we argue that we have in this prostitute a
model for least-possible-alienated-worker under capitalism? An
Adam-Smithian ideal type, perhaps?
Theoretically at least, we have here the possibility of prostitution
presenting some with a career choice that is tenable/optimal from both
economically rationalist and politically socialist points of view.
Cheers,
Rob.
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Rob Schaap, Lecturer in Communication, University of Canberra, Australia.
Phone: 02-6201 2194 (BH)
Fax: 02-6201 5119
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'It is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have
lightened the day's toil of any human being.' (John Stuart Mill)
"The separation of public works from the state, and their migration
into the domain of the works undertaken by capital itself, indicates
the degree to which the real community has constituted itself in
the form of capital." (Karl Marx)
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