Left demographics: what is left of the left?

[Radical Atom]

I think I've been meaning to discuss this question for some time, but I didn't quite know how to articulate it. First of all, let's please try to keep this civil, since there are next to no tankies in revleft and that's why I'm starting this discussion now that the climate might deem it more appropriate, otherwise it'd have turned into a senseless tendency war. While I'll use hoxhaism as an example, please do not take it personally or as a cheap attack towards your tendency, I'm using as an example of your perspective compared to tankies.
Recently I've visited a couple of fb self-proclaimed leftist pages (Yeah, I know, my mistake. Although to my defense I'm always more interested in the bickering and sometimes actual discussion of the comment sections than the memes themselves, which are starting to become increasingly disturbing (seriously the Romanovs might have had it coming but joking about their execution is an insult to those who had to do the "executioning", I don't think they'd be proud about what they did, no matter how necessary it could've been).
While the discussion about the vacuity and reactionary nature of memes can be a discussion on its own, there's another thing that shows in these comment sections that worries me, it's that always in one side there's postmodernist liberal wannabe socialist scumbags who believe things like "porn/prostitution can be empowering" (ironically enough, they are the ones more happy to use the word "brocialist") and the other is hardline tankies who think that criticizing the DPRK or Stalin is worse than shooting at striking workers. I mean, say what you want about hoxhaists, I'd be the first to criticize them, but at least they have some sort of line they will not cross, some kind of "principle", these people... these people would defend anything that calls itself remotely socialist (bootlicking Assad's been the latest fad, some are even friends with the ultra-reactionary Syrian memes).
While the internet isn't usually a good example of anything in the real world, these pages aren't short on followers and the way they express their opinions, the language they use, their dismissiveness, it clearly shows they feel like they don't need to explain themselves (this is my main point here)in any way shape or form to anyone (even other leftists), that it should be taken as a given that "Stalin didn't do nuffin wrong, that the cultural revolution was a the most just thing to ever happen to China, that Czechoslovakia and Hungary were saved from the CIA so they could go back to glorious "commodity" socialism and that the DPRK might be flawed but it's okay because imperialism". What's weird is that they can offer something of a good analysis one moment, and behave like complete reactionaries the next. And worst of all, the only opposition they have is chauvinist individualist idealist identitarian liberals who defend the sexual exploitation of women as "empowering", they offer nothing other than typical liberal sentimentality lacking any kind of meaningful analysis and turn any kind of profound discussion into an oppression olympics.
What is your impression of the demographics of the left? Have I been through a bad streak and this is just the bottom of the barrel?
Is it just me or tankieism still is the hegemonic "tendency" within the global left? How can the left finally transcend the XXth century? What keeps them going despite their enormous contradictions and inconsistencies? Why aren't they stagnating at this point? Is it just because "it's easy to identify with and cling to what they feel are the few great successes of the left"? I feel like there's more to it than that.
And
Is the left being "contaminated" by liberal ideology? Or is just it that recent events have brought back the word "socialism" to the spotlight and progressive people who are starting as liberals are now converging to the left, but still with all their ideological baggage? How much harm has postmodernism done?
I'm not trying to be an alarmist here!! I am sincerely worried about the rightist anti-intellectual turns the left in general is going through.
I know it's a touchy subject and I'm still not entirely happy about my wording, but I want to know what you think about it. Please remember that at no point I'm trying to personally attack any of you, and I believe we can all agree on my main criticism of the two tendencies exposed here.

[The Idler]

If you want psycho-analysis of the left, then yes, it is more than just 'clinging to successes'. Noam Chomsky said in 1984 'A lot of the people who call themselves Left I would regard as proto-fascists.' Erich Fromm is worth reading on the psycho-analysis of the left such as The Authoritarian Personality (https://www.marxists.org/archive/fromm/works/1957/authoritarian.htm) and Dennis Tourish wrote Ideological Intransigence partly about Militant Tendency (http://www.whatnextjournal.org.uk/Pages/Back/Wnext27/Cults.html). You don't even have to go full LaRouche if you think about CPGB-ML in the UK and RCP in the US.

[Radical Atom]

Erich Fromm is worth reading on the psycho-analysis of the left such as The Authoritarian Personality and Dennis Tourish wrote Ideological Intransigence partly about Militant Tendency. You don't even have to go full LaRouche if you think about CPGB-ML in the UK and RCP in the US.
Oh, Frankfurt School? Interesting, didn't know about that Erich Fromm article. Thanks, I'll check 'em out.

The RCP? Isn't that Bob Avakian's extremely cultish maoist party? I mean, the things one hears and reads about, mostly coming directly from themselves, would make even Mao and Kim Il Sung blush.

[Radical Atom]

No one's gonna take a stab at it? I mean this is a serious problem: a great part of what constitutes "the left" today (if not a vast majority) possess disgusting irredeemably reactionary politics: from the liberal brocialists that champion the choice fallacy regarding sex work or objectification along with the tankies who insist on defending capitalist monstrosities like China or Vietnam to the phillistines who don't even deserve the title of vulgar Marxists that when confronted to the grave immediate problems of today shamelessly declare "it's capitalism brah, fighting immediate threats to the life and well being of workers, women, blacks, etc. is center reformism".
In other words "the left" is by and large not leftist, "the Left" is not the Left. As some other users said before me, it's a serious and deep "identity crisis".
This community could be accused of being "to harsh" to new members, of being "to demanding" of them, but at least as a norm fucking reactionary scum who identify as communist are not let to get away with it most of the time: be it evo-psych essentialist filth, eco-fetishists, etc

Let's face it, we are much more alone than we think we are. Because most self-proclaimed "communists" are not only not communists, but closet reactionaries and when push comes to shove, most of these people are going to be on the side of reaction; not because I say so, but because that's what their politics really are.

[GLF]

"The left", sadly enough, does not represent actual political leftism - or at least as the term pertains to the US. It's just representative of a left side of a completely right-wing establishment. It's sort of like the left-wing of the Nazi party pre-night of long knives. They weren't left-wing, per se. They were just to the left of their peers (but still situated firmly on the right). The same principle applies to American politics, and to a slightly lesser extent, the west in general.

In reality, what we have in America is centre, centre-right and far-right.

[John Nada]

IMO much of the "left", at least in much of the anglosphere(I can only speak from a very limited US perspective, though I gather it's true elsewhere), is not part of a greater mass anti-capitalist movement, but is an individual hobby. The different theories and organizations are not workable paths to revolution, but brands. I have no fear that such hobbyists described by the op will come to power and implement a state-capitalist autocracy, because they have no chance of ever coming to power in the first place. The workers, leading and main force of revolution, won't touch them with a ten-foot pole.

I think there's two parts to the problems of left sects, external and internal. Externally, you've had an anti-communist offensive since forever. In the US you had things like the Red Scares, COINTELPRO (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO) and the Congress for Cultural Freedom (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congress_for_Cultural_Freedom) which attacked the Left both psychologically and physically. This was damaging across the Left, splitting worker movements away from socialism and ideologically disarming them in the process. And with no worker movements as a base of support, the left too became disarmed.

Internally, the response was opportunism, of both "left" and right variety. "Left" opportunism is all struggle, no unity, such as various adventurist groups or insular sects. Right opportunism is unprincipled unity with no struggle, such as various reformists who tailed or liquidated themselves into things like the Democrats, bourgeois NGOs and the labor bureaucracy. And the right opportunism of tailing "actually existing socialism" lead many to some ridiculous position. The often undemocratic organization(which can be "structureless" too (http://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm)) reinforces this opportunism.

"What is to be done"? IMO just start from scratch, but learn as much as possible from the successes and failures of the past, and formulate theories and praxis based on one's local circumstances. Not internet shit over Facebook or whatever, but face to face, locally.

[ComradeAllende]

Generally speaking, "the Left" in a practical sense doesn't really exist, at least not to the extent it once did. In the early 20th century (and well up until the 1970s-80s), the Left existed as a gigantic super-system of organizations, ideological currents (anarchism, Marxism, syndicalism, etc), and mass movements dedicated to the abolition of capitalism and the triumph of the working class. The Left played a large and active role in the lives of millions of ordinary working-class people in the form of unions, leftist pamphlets and newspapers, and the various leftist parties and political groups that formed (the IWW, the Independent Labour Party, the SPD, etc). Nowadays, the Left is an idea, an abstract mash of ideological jargon and counter-culture norms with no major mass movement to give it real purpose. Most modern leftists can talk a good talk about Marx, the labor theory of value, and the pros and cons of revolutionary tyranny, but few have actually interacted with working-class folks on a regular basis. Most of the political and social icons of the "Old Left" were workers or familiar with the working-class on an individual level, from Rosa Luxembourg and Eugene Debs to Vladimir Lenin and Ernst Thalmann; while many did engage in the complicated and noticeably abstract work of theorizing and lampooning the capitalist status quo, they never forgot the need to ground their polemics in a style and language that workers could appreciate and synthesize. A modern academic ranting about "neoliberalism" and "intersectionality" makes for good theater, but does nothing to help the poor or the oppressed.

Also, I'm beginning to think that the "identitarian" nature of the modern Left is a byproduct of the vast changes in the capitalist system that have occurred since the early 1960s. Because mass consumption now revolves around identity (think of the different advertisements and products parroted to working-class whites, educated suburbanites, and poor minorities in the developed world), cultural identity (as opposed to class) becomes the only practical basis for political action. After the End of History, class politics falls apart due to its intrinsically historical and conflict-based nature; after all, the working-class won't stand idly by as the capitalists demand greater demands, wage cuts, etc. Plain-vanilla identity politics replaces it, offering no revolutionary or philosophical programme but a litany of "pragmatic" and "evidence-based" policies designed to move things around at the margin but preserve the essence of the "Last Man": urbane, upwardly-mobile, tech-savvy, and disinterested in the ideological conflicts of previous centuries. Modern "leftists" don't want to change the world; they (as John Nada alluded to) only want to advertise their "identity", which is nothing more than a radical chic bereft of its revolutionary origins or purpose.

[Radical Atom]

Also, I'm beginning to think that the "identitarian" nature of the modern Left is a byproduct of the vast changes in the capitalist system that have occurred since the early 1960s. Because mass consumption now revolves around identity (think of the different advertisements and products parroted to working-class whites, educated suburbanites, and poor minorities in the developed world), cultural identity (as opposed to class) becomes the only practical basis for political action.

I've been thinking about it lately, and with the help of your comments I am seeing it clearer and clearer. Isn't identity, rather than a secondary factor, the main vessel of individualist degeneration and to a point the Left's major cause of irrelevance? In other words, identity and petit bourgeois individualism are the biggest enemy of the left right now.
Look at much much older threads when this board was more prone to sectarian shitposting and one liners: aren't the tankies who rage whenever the DPRK is criticized by actual leftists or the maoists looking uncritically at the GLF or the GPCR, in a deeper sense, actually defending themselves, or rather, defending what constitutes the identity they've built around themselves? They are unable to see themselves as universal subjects.
Let's be fair, though, and omit for a moment the worst examples for a moment: what are the amazingly convoluted mental gymnastics of some leftists regarding say... Kronstadt, the purges and Moscow trials, the ethnic cleansing of tatars, etc. if not a desperate psychological mechanism of "self-preservation" (not in the sense of evo-psych bullshit, just a play on words), as in, a literal attempt of preservation of the "self", the ego, from a perceived threat? For the "tankie maoist" admitting, say, that the GPCR was a disaster and a cynical manipulation of the Chinese youth to purge the opposition, is the annihilation of Mao, the image of Mao and partly an image himself that he has built in his mind. For the tankie, attacking the cold war capitalist imperialist Soviet Union is an attack on Communism itself AND on himself.

Admitting one being wrong, even admitting the mistakes OF OTHERS that pertain to one's identity (Mao to Maoism, country to nationalists, gaming to , ugh, "gamers"...), in the minds of an identity consumer, is akin to destroying oneself. We all know to well the superstitious irrational fear of the big guv that outlaws the individual yadda yadda yadda as well. But the trap is there is no real individuality, we all relate to a universality that is irreducible to us.

Well I say kill your "selves"! When I first started lurking this forums I was a different person than what I am now, and I am a better person for it. In order to change, to progress, one must be ready to annihilate oneself.
How are we, then, to combat and abolish identity altogether?


Coincidentally, I went back to the "Code for Radical Groupings thread" (/vb/threads/195378-Code-of-Conduct-for-Radical-Groupings) and something similar is grasped within the discussion, I can't believe it hasn't been expanded upon more (anyone know how to put spoiler tags? I've tried many times it wouldn't work for me):


Down with Drama and Pettiness!

You are worthless. You don't matter as an individaul. Your individuality is fake. Before you can be a Socialist, you need to get over yourself and become a universal subject. What does that mean? It means your socialism doesn't come from any particular individual interest, but how you as a particular person express a universal tradition.

It's a shame that we live in a time - our filthy consumerist epoch - where this must be clarified. But socialism must be for you more than just an identify you tie with your sense of individual self worth as an individual consumer, bourgeois-egoist. That means, that if you agree to meet with others, you must drop all pretense to being immune to criticism, and take nothing 'personally', that is, don't play with these ideas as a smokescreen for your worthless, particular sense of individuality and your consumerist ego.

If people can form fight clubs and literally beat the shit out of each other without any drama, you can do the same thing in a socialist organization. The first prerequisite is that no one matters. Everyone is equally worthless and equally entitled to participating in a common space of reason. That means: Debates and arguments must go as far as they need to, must be endured, without there being any pettiness or drama, you must ruthlessly attack each other and expose the philistinism, etc. that is among you. This ruthlessness cannot be limited for the sake of polite conventions. You don't need to all be friends and hold hands.

You must be willing to take criticism, you must be willing to be broken by another persons argument without interpreting this as this person asserting their particular individuality over you. You must understand that these debates are with regard to a universal tradition, THIS tradition must be in common.


A universal subject is expressed through particular persons, yet all this tells us is that individual human bodies - occupy different spaces and can be physically differentiated. As far as the sphere of consciousness goes this 'difference' si the only kind of difference that which any pretension to particularities can be made. Each individual constitutes themselves as individuals by expressing something beyond themselves. In fact this is the key problem with the left today - the inability to understand universality proper, and the insistence on reducing it to some kind of other particular interests. In other words, the cliche of today is that any pretense to universality is just the assertion of some kind of particular interest over others. I claim this is a superstition, which emanates deep ideological immersion in the conception of the 'particular' within the context of the present social order. The example I used, for example, was anti-semitism: Reducing Communism to the particular interests of Jews, a 'racial' group, only works when particular interest is conceived and differentiated along 'racial' lines. The problem is that this is already relating to the universality of the social order in an ideological way (i.e. racism). This is the point.

'Particular subjectivity', is not constituted by 'particular' factors, but by how the subject relates to the universality of the social relations they find themselves in. True to our tradition, we must recognize that this is a social controversy, that is to say, the way in which one does this is SOCIAL in a society with the social antagonism, it is where they stand in this social antagonism - this is what differentiates how they relate to the universality. Only through Communism, social consciousness, can one consciously express the universality of the proletarian class struggle. That's what is meant by a 'universal subjects': ALL subjects, constitute their subjectivity by relating to a universality, but a universal subject is conscious of the universality they express through their particular existence. This is the key point: A universal subject, which all the greatest revolutionaries in history were able to become, is one who recognizes the universality of their particular, individual identity, ego, and so on - how this relates itself to a universality. This is no more a particularity than is the 'particular' interests of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie - yes the proletariat is a particular class fighting another particular class, but this particular class is embodying the universality of the social relations that which proletarians find themselves in - and therefore the universality of human society.

Universality is not the sum-total of various particular existences, but particularities only relate themselves toward the universality that constitutes them in the first place. Every story we tell ourselves is told in the same language.


What crass immaturity: "Bro, so u saying YOUR ego more important THAN MIEN? Yur basically saying u BETTER than me? ME? Who r U? What right do U have?".

In fact, what you don't understand is that. The only context that which the phrase "You are worthless" was used was that it applies to Rafiq too - Rafiq is just as worthless as you are. The point is that ALL individuals are worthless, they don't have any special qualities to them outside what they bring to a discussion or a group. This is what you fail to understand - everyone is worthless, the point is that the 'individuality' and the 'opinions' of everyone are equally worthless. What if you were told, in fact, that every single individual has the right to be as "self-important" as Rafiq? That you CAN in fact be confident enough to have access to universality (which many people, intellectuals, already do, who in fact are not Rafiq, etc.)?

This is the problem. You are simply offended by the fact that Rafiq would have the audacity to even speak in these terms - to even make a pretension to something that is so far beyond rafiq's purported place in the hierarchy of special access to collective reason. Surely for Rafiq to even speak this way, he would have to think he is self important. But nothing is further than the truth - on the contrary, it is precisely recognizing the contingency of ones individuality, JUST HOW worthless and disposable they are, that one truly attains intellectual freedom. You are incapable of thinking past this hierarchy of special access to truth - if Rafiq speaks toward universal reason, he must think he is an expert, must think he has special access where others do not. But out of your own lack of confidence in your own abilities, as a subject, you are wrong - it is precisely DISREGARDING and stomping upon this 'hierarchy' of special access to truth (where you have to be a 'somebody' to gain access) that one can have the confidence to recognize one doesn't need any special qualities outside of their very conscious existence to engage the space of universal reason.

But still, you cannot see past this, because you are a petty bourgeois ideologue, you will see everything ultimately in terms of one individual asserting their consumerist identity over other individuals. Ultimately, for all the talk of 'universals', you simply close your ears - ultimately, no matter what Rafiq sais, Rafiq is simpy an individual who at the end of the day - we might cynically assume - wants to use HIS individuality over YOUR individuality, wants to assert HIS own particular interests over YOUR particular interests.

And the way ideology works is that this is not up for debate. For you it is simply something that cannot be contested - you uncritically accept this as a given, and anything otherwise is again a cynical attempt at deceiving you. It is no different from paranoid conspiracy theories - fighting against them doesn't work directly, because then one is just a pawn of the illuminati, etc. This is where the conscious use of reason is dispensed with in favor of a big other.

There is nothing particular about Rafiq. Rafiq is what he posts on the internet. That's it. Rafiq, in other words, is composed of words. So if you say that Rafiq has a sense of elevated 'self-importance', you have to identify this self, this 'particular' self that is being elevated that somehow no one else has access to themselves.

And speaking of identity and go on a tangent for a second.
That's the reason I oppose identity politics (and by extension, political correctness), not only because they are liberal in nature, reductionist, essentialist, paternalistic, tokenist and completely ineffective but also because at their very core they are reactionary, reproduce and reinforce the mechanisms and structures of discrimination they pretend to be opposing (such as male aggressiveness / female timidness) have nothing to do with leftist politics and those who espouse them have shown again and again their utter contempt for the groups they claim to protect and their emancipation: the rich liberal who makes countless videos about white privilege and intersectionality that crosses the street when a black guy with a hoodie walks down his gated community, supports the neoliberal warmonger Hillary Clinton as a "feminist" icon and complains that BLM "has gone to far". They are liberal anti-radical politics at "best", and fascism at worst: look up Identitarian movement, or the abjectly stupid notion of "preservation of white race / european culture" and "white genocide". These too are by practice and definition, identity politics after all.
That's not to say, however, that there aren't ideologues within the leftist movement who opportunistically attack identity politics to justify their racist, chauvinist and sexist views. There are to many actually, the problem of Identity politics and Political Correctness is that they are rarely challenged properly.

[wehbolno]

I read that thread you mentioned with great interest. It was an eye-opener for me. I absolutely was identifying with leftism for years with this kind of childishness, like I wanted to distinguish myself as better than others, as unique, like i care so much I'm ready to kill, all you cowards with your boogie morality etc. What better way for me to do that than by claiming that weird and dusty self-proclaimed title 'communist'. And then, when people don't understand what the fuck I'm talking about, I can say oh dude I'm too profound for you, and i can rage, but that rage is my own enjoyment, I WANT not to be understood because then I can abdicate and say well it's not my fault people are so stupid etc. But fact is that I myself had a fucking hazy notion on communism, I hadn't engaged with Western philosophy, it was all a dick-waving identity to parade in front of others.
Absolutely I passed also through this 'ultra-leftist' phase, where EVERYTHING is bourgeois, in a decadent capitalism there can be no reformism and so on. I think there is a great enjoyment at work in those ideas, you can keep raging on against capital and get a perverse kick from the fact that, within that thinking, you are prohibited from acting, because ohhh the proletariat is not ready and so on.

[t0pg4dg3t]

I think a lot of people are the same as me. I don't know how to think properly for myself, something I have only realised quite recently. Instead I find myself reading one thing and thinking "oh that makes sense" then reading something completely different and thinking "that makes sense too". I'm not sure where to begin with actually evaluating issues by myself. I feel like I'm unable to think properly! I went to school, I take an interest, but I don't know how to think!

[Kamaradas]

The idea of the abstract individual that 'Rafiq' is drawing on is a product of the very same 'atomisation' that he rails against. Obviously, capitalism can also take issue with 'atomisation,' or with people who aren't happy to participate in its system and support it.

Anyway, types of identity politics can have their problems, but 'identity' in this sense is merely a type of person or is generic - it's not a matter of personal identity. This seems to just be a lot of fuss over words. In general, Marxism - regardless of what political form people are claiming - expects politics to be a realisation of people's interests and claims them to be a result of interests, not of idealistic clinging to a tradition open to change.

Identity politics is about constructing facets of a capitalistic economy, and hence is a part of the workings of this. We generally should not get too caught up in it to the extent of ignoring fundamental economic aspects. It often functions to integrate certain demographics into capitalism or avoid their particular problems and cultural responses to the economy, and hence can also be a problem for them.


I WANT not to be understood because then I can abdicate and say well it's not my fault people are so stupid etc.
People are often stupid. Witness the 20th Century.

Anyway, that's surely a matter of whom you discuss with. You don't want people to be against you in such a manner, unless you're in some BDSM club.

But then, I suppose that some things could be done in a bizarre manner. After all, usually a general rebuke of the society around you would actually mean that you enjoy it less.

You probably shouldn't extrapolate your own, brief experience to that of entire traditions, if you like.

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

The Internet--especially social media--is a horrible place to get a good sense of anything. Ancaps are seemingly everywhere on the Internet in large numbers, but not so much offline, for example. On Facebook, Marxist-Leninis-Maoists are also seemingly numerous, but I can't recall meeting any offline in 25 years of political activity. So making meaningful conclusions based on that is difficult at best.

As for the issues you raise, sex work is work, and it doesn't mark one as a liberal to say that. Most people do it for survival, which is why workers do any job, including very dangerous ones. Some small number even find some satisfaction in it. Calling it exploitative misses that all work under capitalism is exploitative. Singling out sex work, and supporting the state in combating it, strikes me more as liberalism.

[Radical Atom]

The Internet--especially social media--is a horrible place to get a good sense of anything. Ancaps are seemingly everywhere on the Internet in large numbers, but not so much offline, for example. On Facebook, Marxist-Leninis-Maoists are also seemingly numerous, but I can't recall meeting any offline in 25 years of political activity.

Of course, that is a given, it was implicit in my first post, could've made it clearer.
However they are not small in numbers either and they do show in their language and attitude that what they think is to be taken for granted, that there is little to argue in their positions; which is a trend not online exclusive.


So making meaningful conclusions based on that is difficult at best.

We can try at least, no? So far discussion has been pretty good even if a little slow paced. :lol:



As for the issues you raise, sex work is work, and it doesn't mark one as a liberal to say that. Most people do it for survival, which is why workers do any job, including very dangerous ones. Some small number even find some satisfaction in it. Calling it exploitative misses that all work under capitalism is exploitative. Singling out sex work, and supporting the state in combating it, strikes me more as liberalism.

I think we find ourselves again in a situation in which we are again arguing without really disagreeing: Nobody said the state should combat sex workers or criminalize them, or do anything for that matter, not me at least. Pimps can rot, though. On the exploitative thing, I used exploitative because in the case of sex work it could be seen as doubly exploitative, one has to sell one's own body as a commodity, or rather "rent" it; and while not exploited they are oppressed by their clients too. But this can be disputed. So fair enough, because I failed to make a distinction between sex work and the sex industry as well.

What I actually refer to is people (mostly "pop"- or "pomo-" feminists) who talk about it all as "empowering", "liberating"; isn't that like saying that wage-slaving away on 12 hour shifts in a mine pumping into your lungs full of all kinds of toxic fumes, dust and other compounds is "dignifying"? That's what is being questioned about that rhetoric. It ignores the power dynamics behind the "simple commercial exchange" curtain.
I'll admit myself that I dare not go much farther than the former paragraph because I'd be treading on unknown territory, it's not an issue in which I'm informed enough to make a clear stand (apart from supporting all sex workers).
I'm certainly not sex-negative unless this category includes a critical outlook of sex and sexuality under capitalism. I think the real conflict is of scope, and even then it shouldn't be, some people abstract themselves to much from present conditions (and on this particular issue, I'm surprised to find myself guilty as charged :unsure:, not going to repeat that mistake) and argue and struggle for what should be rather than what can be, others fight for what is feasible now, what little gains can be made. But in the end we want the same and we need both approaches, one for short term, the other in the long term. We need to fight for both.

For anyone interested, here's two articles that present rather reasonable views (both trots, oddly enough) which end up kind of agreeing but I feel like they have slightly conflicting approaches:

Marxism vs Moralism: http://www.workersliberty.org/story/2010/03/29/marxism-versus-moralism-marxist-analysis-prostitution

The sex work debate: http://isj.org.uk/the-sex-work-debate/

While it's hard not to be compelled by the second's following argument:

Men may turn to buying sex because they work long hours, are isolated from social networks or are part of a transient population. But they are also encouraged to think that they should be having sex and that women’s bodies are just another commodity that can be bought, like a car or a plasma TV. There is nothing inevitable about this situation.
(That's what rubs me the wrong way of today's "mainstream sex positive" bourgeois hedonism)

The first one resonates much better with me I find. It correctly exposes a certain moralist trend in people which themselves may not even be aware of and it's conclusion is spot on and I find thoroughly agreeable:

The life of sex workers is often hard and dangerous, not least because it is criminalised and repressed exposing sex workers to abuse from pimps and clients. Many sex workers are unhappy with their work and would like to leave if there were realistic alternatives. But is a form of alienated labour like others under capitalism.
Prostitution, in this form, would not exist in a socialist society, neither would the family nor work in their current form. There may well be specialist sexual entertainers and experts, but freed from the links with private property and state sanctified or enforced monogamy, sexual relations will evolve in ways that we can only speculate about. The key thing is that the distinction between public and private, in the sense of public social work and private reproduction, will have to dissolve and in that process women will be truly liberated.

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

I think we find ourselves again in a situation in which we are again arguing without really disagreeing: Nobody said the state should combat sex workers or criminalize them, or do anything for that matter, not me at least.
I should have made it clear I was talking about liberals, not anyone here.


Pimps can rot, though. On the exploitative thing, I used exploitative because in the case of sex work it could be seen as doubly exploitative, one has to sell one's own body as a commodity, or rather "rent" it; and while not exploited they are oppressed by their clients too. But this can be disputed. So fair enough, because I failed to make a distinction between sex work and the sex industry as well.
It's a complex issue. Sex workers who do it because they want to have a different experience than those who do it for economic survival, and both have different experiences from those who are victims of sex trafficking or who are forced into it by a pimp. There are different levels of exploitation, oppression, etc. involved.


I'll admit myself that I dare not go much farther than the former paragraph because I'd be treading on unknown territory, it's not an issue in which I'm informed enough to make a clear stand (apart from supporting all sex workers).
I have no direct experience, but I have friends (and some comrades) who are sex workers.

[Radical Atom]

I should have made it clear I was talking about liberals, not anyone here.

Hey, no harm done, in the internet's current passive-aggressiveness one always assumes the worst.


It's a complex issue. Sex workers who do it because they want to have a different experience than those who do it for economic survival, and both have different experiences from those who are victims of sex trafficking or who are forced into it by a pimp. There are different levels of exploitation, oppression, etc. involved.
Exactly, that's why I want to try to tread as carefully as I can regarding that issue. Again, I'll try not to go deeper than my knowledge allows me here but I think it begs to be discussed and understood. I'm still trying to get a clear understanding of such a complex and sensitive issue.

This actually helps fleshing out something that's only been glossed over before and that is part of the issue at hand (reactionary trends within the left) and encouraged me to do a little more digging (couldn't find an article that exemplified more opposed positions in my last post). Because funnily enough many of these same tankie sites usually hold usually hold certain radfem "abolitionist" views that in practice leads them to pro-criminalization and alienation of sex workers. Up until now I though SWERF was a liberal slur against those who critically examine the sex industry and their proponents but these guys... these guys make it a possibly legitimate term. Because for all their pretensions to their indignation at the suffering of sex workers and women in general the moment one comes by (usually woman and sex worker) to explain how they feel about the issue (usually by telling them that decriminalization will offer them a safer life, better working conditions, unionization...) they are quickly dismissed.

They mainly invoke the nordic model which afaik punishes buyers but not sex workers, don't really know how more useful or less stigmatizing of sex work it is compared to others. They don't seem to have any other immediate or short-term solution beyond that.
They seem to mystify sex into some sort of sacralized category, as if the main problem of sex work is that it is work that involves sex; as opposed to sex work being embedded in an unregulated, unsafe and abusive industry. As it was very well put before:

Turning sex into a commodity is regarded by many people as the fundamental “sin” of prostitution. Mhairi McAlpine from the SSP writes, “prostitution is the commodification of sexual relations, taking it out of the sphere of mutual pleasure and into the domain of the market.” I have had similar discussions with many comrades over the years – surely such an intimate behaviour should never be turned into an alienable thing to be bought and sold? This rather romantic view of sex as mutual pleasure is itself an abstraction from social relations. Under capitalism, and previous class societies, sex is highly regulated and has an economic dimension. The regulation is based on the need to defend private property through inheritance.


If anyone wants a preachy, eye-roll inducing, self-absorbed and moralist example to deconstruct: https://medium.com/@JonahMix/pro-prostitution-marxism-is-revisionist-woman-hating-nonsense-2bdd45633f75#.j10fytz64
And yes, it includes Cuba as an example social of progressiveness. It all reeks of social conservatism dressed up as radical politics, unsurprising coming from tankies.
I'm actually interested on everyone's thoughts about it.


I have no direct experience, but I have friends (and some comrades) who are sex workers.

What do your friends think about those positions? How do they regard the notion of consent when the need for money is involved? Is it safe to assume that most of them would prefer decriminalization? What do they think about the nordic model? In which ways do they think the left can help them in their predicament? Do they see sex work (obviously completely different from what it is today) as something existing in some form in post-capitalist society?

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

What do your friends think about those positions? How do they regard the notion of consent when the need for money is involved? Is it safe to assume that most of them would prefer decriminalization? What do they think about the nordic model? In which ways do they think the left can help them in their predicament? Do they see sex work (obviously completely different from what it is today) as something existing in some form in post-capitalist society?
They tend to support a model of decriminalization, they don't see consent in exchange for money any different than someone agreeing to work in, say, a sweatshop for money (i.e. workers have to survive under capitalism), and they're not particularly keen on the Nordic model. The ones who are radicalized believe only communism can end the exploitation of all workers, which includes sex workers. I haven't really asked them what they thought would happen under communism.

[willowtooth]

where are all these marxist Leninists everyone keeps talking about?

[Radical Atom]

I'd rather not give them the free publicity, so I PM'd you.