[dragonwriter]

> And it's baffling to me how people who tend to be "against capitalism" somehow rally to the free market when it comes to selling sex.

People that are against capitalism on the left tend not to be against volintary exchange of labor for money but the power relations between capitalist and laborer in capitalist industry. That's not an issue with individual sales of labor on the marketplace direct to end consumers of a service, which seems to be the issue here. The fact that the kind of service involved is sexual is beside the point.

[leftyted]

Maybe that's true for Marxists but it's not true for "the left" more generally. What bothers people on the left about capitalism is, from the article:

> The environment it creates is ruthlessly competitive. Winners win big, losers starve.

[cambalache]

And ironically, same its happening with sex and intimacy. Let's listen to Houellebecq one moment:

“It's a fact...that in societies like ours sex truly represents a second system of differentiation, completely independent of money; and as a system of differentiation it functions just as mercilessly. The effects of these two systems are, furthermore, strictly equivalent. Just like unrestrained economic liberalism, and for similar reasons, sexual liberalism produces phenomena of absolute pauperization . Some men make love every day; others five or six times in their life, or never. Some make love with dozens of women; others with none. It's what's known as 'the law of the market'...Economic liberalism is an extension of the domain of the struggle, its extension to all ages and all classes of society. Sexual liberalism is likewise an extension of the domain of the struggle, its extension to all ages and all classes of society.”

[chii]

> Economic liberalism is an extension of the domain of the struggle, its extension to all ages and all classes of society.

It's a trait of a natural darwinian systems imho. Look at how it works in nature - a pride of lions would have 1 alpha male who dominates most, if not all females.

I have no reason to believe that humans don't have the same innate behaviour as lions.

[orwin]

In fact i've read on some forum focused on prehistoric events (Neandertalis and sapiens "cohabitation") that the theory of humans having wolf/lion pack type of behavior (Alpha male with multiple females, beta couples leaving the pack during hard time, stuff like this).

[dragonwriter]

> Maybe that's true for Marxists but it's not true for "the left" more generally.

It's true of a lot of the non-Marxist Left, too.

> The environment it creates is ruthlessly competitive. Winners win big, losers starve.

Im struggling to see how you imagine a crackdown on voluntary sex work would make that better, except as a way of draining more resources from everyone (itself making more people starve) to guarantee that fewer people could make a living in voluntary exchange (making even more people starve.)

Sure, I think with genuinely left policies, there's be less people who felt that sex work that lots of people not doing it find unacceptably degrading was a net win, and so fewer people choosing to voluntarily engage in that; capitalism naturally is economically coercive that way. But there's nothing particular about sex work here, fewer people would accept agricultural field work at current wages, absent economic coercion, too. The fix for the problems capitalism creates index work has everything to do with capitalism and very little to do with sex work.

[leftyted]

> Im struggling to see how you imagine a crackdown on voluntary sex work would make that better, except as a way of draining more resources from everyone (itself making more people starve) to guarantee that fewer people could make a living in voluntary exchange (making even more people starve.)

I'm "struggling to see" how you interpreted my post this way.

As long as we're both struggling here, please explain how sex work doesn't entail massively imbalanced power relations. I wasn't just talking about OnlyFans: the post I responded to says "sex work is stigmatized way more than it should be". But even if we're only talking about the internet, I think you're extremely naive if you think physical separation means there's no coercive power involved. The money comes from somewhere. And don't forget, there's a middleman between the performers and the audience.

> Sure, I think with genuinely left policies, there's be less people who felt that sex work that lots of people not doing it find unacceptably degrading was a net win, and so fewer people choosing to voluntarily engage in that; capitalism naturally is economically coercive that way. But there's nothing particular about sex work here, fewer people would accept agricultural field work at current wages, absent economic coercion, too. The fix for the problems capitalism creates index work has everything to do with capitalism and very little to do with sex work.

I can't parse this. I don't claim to know how to solve this problem or "the problems of capitalism".

I think that general revulsion toward capitalism has very little to do with Marx and much more to do with unfairness (perceived and real), cutthroat competition that seems to reward dishonesty, the dispossession of the losers in that competition, and crass materialism. To me, all of those things clearly apply here.