Sex and the free market (1985)

From the September 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

What glorious offers the market presents us with: if you can afford to pay the price there is little that is not on sale. Food, clothing, shelter, theatre, books . . . and sex. The market knows no limit to what it can tempt the buyer with. You want sex? Then hand over the cash, sign the cheque. American Express will do nicely. In a buying and selling society sex is a commodity an item to be purchased — and money is the key to access.

The supplier of the sexual commodity is called a prostitute. There are some male prostitutes who sell to women and many males who sell their services to other men. but the overwhelming majority of prostitutes are women. As members of the working class, who have nothing to sell but their labour power, prostitutes sell sexual satisfaction — or, at least, the crude pretence of it — to male buyers.

What is the state of the market? It is difficult to assess how many prostitutes there are in Britain. Certainly, there are thousands of full-time prostitutes, thousands more who earn part of their income by selling sex, and — as will be explained further on — many thousands more who are effectively prostitutes, even if that is not in their job description. The number of prostitutes working in the cities is growing, with more women workers each month entering the supply end of the sex market. This recent increase can be explained: firstly, the recession which has led to mass unemployment has hit female workers hardest and therefore women and girls who would once have earned a wage through more conventional employment are now forced to make a living "on the game"; secondly, the low wages and unacceptably tedious jobs usually offered to young girls who are on the dole leave many of them deciding that any way of making a living is better than the indignity of the dole queue or extra-exploitative employment; thirdly, the growing rejection among female workers of the traditionally idealised image of being a wife within a happy family has led many to seek freedom from the stereotypical role of womanhood, only to discover that freedom under capitalism amounts to no more than the opportunity to become an independent item of sale on the market.

Romanticised images of prostitutes who are only in the job because they choose such work are mythical and insulting to the women who end up doing a job that no human being should have to do. Such images are akin to the popular depiction of tramps as "eccentrics" who sleep in the gutters by inclination rather than compulsion. We can dismiss the bogus picture of the high-class whore who lives in an apartment in Mayfair, dresses in Paris fashions, wears the best perfume and sends her children to public schools. In reality, most prostitutes are miserable, frightened and ashamed women who have been trapped into the job in the illusory hope that it will offer an escape route from poverty. Every day a stream of young girls travel to the big cities, their numbers increasing as small town poverty becomes more wretched believing that they will find relief from their impoverished existences in what proves to be a bewildering environment in which money is the sole passport to survival. It is no coincidence that red-light districts are usually in the close vicinity of main-line coach and train stations. In order to survive — to eat. to pay rent, to buy some clothes which might help them obtain a "decent" job — it is tempting to accept the offer of the pimp who tells them that they will be provided with security as his employees. Drug addicts, usually driven to their addiction by their frustration with a world of buying and selling, find themselves further frustrated by lack of money to buy drugs. These are ready recruits for the pimps. And the worn-out old women who are lonely and miserable and often sick, they too are driven onto the streets as discount commodities — “you can have her for half-price as she’s past her prime".

While seduction is erotic, the efforts of the sex-sellers are cold and loveless and hollow; if the pleasures of sex are exciting, the hurried moments of purchased sex are dull and dehumanising. The market not only turns practical existence into a struggle in which those without money lose, but also generates a sickly emotional poverty — a bankruptcy of human feelings.

Getting back to market values

In those glorious years of "Victorian Values”, so beloved by she who presides today over the screwing of the British working class, the rich grew prosperous thanks to unfettered exploitation while tens of thousands of women workers were turned into prostitutes. There were 80,000 prostitute women in Victorian London (Prostitution in London, Mayhew and Bracebridge. 1862). a figure supported by the most reliable academic source of the time, the medical journal, The Lancet, which declared in 1857 that one in every sixty houses in London was a brothel and one in every sixteen women a prostitute. Three years later The Saturday Review stated that there were 360,000 full-time prostitutes in Britain. Contrary to the conventional belief that Victorian sexual practices conformed to a strictly "decent" code of moral values, it is clear from an examination of historical facts that poverty, then as now, forced workers to throw decency and values to the wind. Indeed, with one in every sixteen London women forced to sell sex in order to earn a living, one can understand why our present Prime Minister, motivated by a desire to push workers off the dole queue, is so anxious to revive Victorian values. It was not only women "on the game" who were considered to be sexually purchasable in Victorian Britain: most servant and factory girls were considered open to offer by those with the money to take their pick. Victorian autobiographical tales abound with rich young capitalists who desired a female employee of theirs. How could women workers afford to refuse these offers, knowing that their future employment was at stake? (Still today, many a female employee has to make the undignified choice between accepting her boss’s advances or getting the sack). And how could women, slaving for hours for a pittance of a wage, find it easy to resist the temptation to sell their sexual favours for a sum greater than they might earn in a week? So it was that those who owned and controlled the means of wealth production and distribution demanded and obtained power over every aspect of those they exploited. (Incidentally, this was but a subtle continuation of feudal morality which gave the landlord the right, and the female serf the duty, to engage in property-determined sexual relationships.)

We would be wrong to imagine that Victorian conditions no longer exist in the modem capitalist world. In Bangkok, for example, it has been estimated that one in every three females is a prostitute. And even those employed as wage slaves in the hideous sweatshops of that city are vulnerable to the sexual demands of those who can afford to buy what is not officially for sale.

Where capitalism forces workers into undignified acts there are always moralists ready and waiting to blame the wage slaves for their sins. The vicars, never far from the scene when hookers are in town, are there to sample the wares and then tell the wretched women to repent. Repent for what for being too poor to afford to live in idleness. like the rich ladies of the capitalist class whose parasitism the vicars are there to defend? The venereologist. William Acton, writing in 1857. listed as the main causes of prostitution "natural sinfulness", "the preferment of indolent ease to labour" and "fall from virtue" (Prostitution. Considered In Its Moral, Social And Sanitary Aspects). According to William Bracebridge, prostitutes were not real women: "there is a great abandonment of everything that one may strictly speaking denominate womanly". And if prostitution was caused by sin. as was the common view, then the task of moralists had to be to offer the poor sinners severe correction an activity which many a vicar has indulged in with less than lofty motives. Gladstone, the Liberal Prime Minister, earned the popular nickname "Gladeye". in recognition of his strenuous efforts to redeem "fallen"" women — usually back at his place. Special refuges for so-called fallen women were set up in the mid-nineteenth century — places designed to deny their occupants any kind of sensual comfort in the hope that abstinence would make them forget their sinful impulses.

Prostitutes have always been expected to feel guilty for being the victims of poverty. Not all have complied: on 24 February. 1858 The Times published a letter from an unashamed prostitute — signing herself "Another Unfortunate'" — in which an extremely clear explanation of the cause of her misfortune was given. The letter led to widespread shock among the miserable moralists, causing the editor of The Times to respond, disgustedly:

They have no remorse or misgivings about the nature of their pursuit; on the contrary, they consider the calling an advantageous one, and they look upon their success in it with satisfaction (25 February. 1858)

One might apply the same words to the editor of The Times, being a man paid a fat salary to publish lies.

The letter from "Another Unfortunate” is a unique insight into why a working-class woman became a prostitute, which would apply today as then. She describes her colleagues as "we, who are not fallen, but were always down" and asks

Now, what if I am a prostitute, what business has society to abuse me? Have 1 received any favours at the hands of society? If I am a hideous cancer in society, are not the causes of the disease to be sought in the rottenness of the carcass? Am I not its legitimate child; no bastard. Sir?

She was correct: capitalism creates the walking symptoms of the market disease and it ill-becomes apologists for the market to condemn them.

In The Times of 3 July, 1985 Peter Kellner commented on an article which had appeared a week earlier in the Sun. The latter rag, in its usual effort to search the sewers for news unworthy of adult reading, ran a story under the headline PROSTITUTE CHRISTINE IS A TORY COUNCILLOR It seems that Christine Pearson, a councillor in Thanet, had been revealed by the Sun to be a practising prostitute. The validity of the report is of no concern here. Kellner's comment on the story is worth quoting, however:

I can see no coherent argument for terminating a Conservative councillor's political career on the grounds that she has been accused of selling sex . . . I defy anyone to name an occupation that applies Thatcherite principles more completely than prostitution. It is. surely, the ultimate form of flexible, non-unionised. labour-intensive small business.

People in glass houses

Under capitalism, if you are a member of the working class you need to sell what you possess — your mental and physical energies to whomever will make a purchase. All workers are prostitutes for wages. How many women are employed as barmaids, hostesses in clubs or waitresses in restaurants and are told, either explicitly or implicitly. that part of their function is to give a few thrills to the customers? How many secretaries and others employed in traditionally female jobs have little option but to accept that they are partly employed for their ornamental value? How many young girls are conditioned to want to be glamour models, even if that means being paid money to be humiliated? How many wives would soon lose their source of income from husbands if they refused to provide sex and who dictates the terms of its provision, the one with the money or the one who is dependent? How many parents condition their daughters to behave in ways which will make them desirable to men with money looking for wives? Did not Marx refer to marriage as "legalised prostitution" and, for millions of women, is it not their role in life to be the property of a keeper? Of course, there are important distinctions between these ways of earning an income and prostitution, but the distinctions are not half as great as some would like to pretend. A letter under the headline "Life In The Pool" in The London Standard of 2 July, 1985 makes the point:

I cynically regarded my former job as a secretary as mental prostitution. This was crystallised by a spell or two in Civil Service typing pools. A nice lady sits at a desk with a register in which she enters men who want their letters typed and selects from a mass of available girls somebody to minister to one of these men . . . When the girl returns from being dictated to her name and the time she spent with him is entered. Then how long she takes to do the work (A kind of madam, the supervisor7)

Capitalism conditions workers to deceive themselves into thinking they are not quite as downtrodden and humiliated as the next person: whites are thankful not to be black, men think they are better than women and women who are not "on the game" are glad to be living in more civilised conditions than those who walk the streets. But, in one way or another, all of the virtually propertyless class are walking the streets, selling what they have to whoever will pay to take it from them. Who is the wage slave to condemn the prostitute?

The right to sell your body

In recent years movements have emerged, not seeking to abolish the cause of prostitution but to make it easier to suffer as a prostitute. Without doubt the laws on soliciting, like most laws under capitalism, are designed to punish the victim. In Britain the law does not punish the consumer who buys sex, but the women who sell it meet with several legal impediments. Opposition to these laws has come from two sources. Firstly, there are those grotesque libertarians of the so-called Right groups like the Federation of Conservative Students and the Libertarian Alliance who argue that no laws should exist to fetter any commercial transaction, be it the sale of heroin or the selling of sex through regular market channels.

Secondly, there are those feminists who have demonstrated the limitation of their social understanding by demanding the right of prostitutes to carry on their business undisturbed. Being reformists — whose aim is to mend and not end this rotten system the feminist campaigners do not have as their objective the eradication of the poverty which forces women to sell their bodies to men surely, not the action of liberated women — but the entitlement of women to pursue their undignified and oppressed employment in legal safety. While there is nothing wrong with prostitute women forming a trade union to defend themselves against market pressure (as they have done in some countries with state brothels), it is utter stupidity to equate such action with the quest for “women's liberation".

The legal right to be a prostitute gives the opportunity to be abused, exploited and wasted as a human being. Those who identify with such a right are the enemies of all workers, both women and men, and should be treated with the hostility reserved for those who obstruct the path to genuine human liberation.

Steve Coleman

Between the Lines: After Warrington (1993)

The Between the Lines Column from the November 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

After Warrington

Colin and Wendy Parry lost their son, Tim, aged twelve, to an IRA bomb. Their response was to try to find out why he was killed. Panorama (BBC 1, 9.30 pm, 6 September) followed them as they visited the rival factions in search of their tribal motives. It was moving and compelling viewing, but, above all, it was frustrating. The Parrys are the kind of reasonable people socialists like to meet; their minds were genuinely exercised by the question "Why?". But the responses of those they met on their quest for knowledge ranged from the entrenchedly bigoted to the enthusiastically stupid.

This TV viewer has grown bored of watching ghetto catholics and protestants pleading a defence for their blinkered outlooks. The self-pitying nationalists who want us to imagine that the Great Famine is still going on and that it constitutes some kind of an excuse for blowing up children should dry their eyes and stop whining; nobody beyond the drunken barroom rebels of Boston cares less about their persistent self-indulging in a patriotism which puts kids in graves. And as for the protestant bigots, always shown to us on our screens from their siege headquarters in the Shankhill Road, they should be informed in no uncertain terms that their vociferous paranoia in defence of a Union which confines them to slums and slogans is a form of nationalist arrogance, made worse by the fact that they too are wage-slaves and have nothing but their illusion of ascendancy to defend. Who cares about these people with their shallow, offensive ethical defences for the prejudices which keep the undertakers busy.

But worse than these home-grown fools, whose only hope now lies in the recognition that instead of fighting to protect their poverty they have a world and not a nation to win, there were the fellow-travelling republicans in Boston — the Noraid brigade who want to see bodybags for their bucks. Who could but admire the patience of Colin Parry, a man whose son was murdered with the support of these remote-control warriors, when one of them (no doubt the son of a nephew of a man who claimed once to spend his boyhood in Kerry) told him that his position of opposing all violence was too easy? No doubt they would prefer it it he came to the war in Ireland by their lofty route: by sitting in a bar in Boston drinking imported stout, singing rebel songs which they do not understand and which decent people have long ago forgotten the words of, and putting dollars in collections so that more Tim Parrys can leave home one morning and arrive at the mortuary before it is dark.

Pretty Woman meets Reality

Not being much of a cinema-goer, ITV’s showing of Pretty Woman (9 m, 5 September), starring Julia Roberts and Richard Gere, was this writer’s first opportunity to see this tale of Cinderella encountering the delights of the free market. The romance is quite simple: Gere, a millionaire whose description of his uselessness as a property speculator was good stuff, picks up Roberts, a hooker who looks like a Hollywood movie star. He pays her huge amounts of money; she gives him sex and then falls in love with him. According to the Beatles, money can’t buy you love, but times have changed and if you want to spend the rest of your life with Julia Roberts, open a deposit account now. Then on Wednesday, 8 September BBC 1’s Inside Story ran the sequel to the film. It was not intended to be a follow-up; it was a documentary about prostitutes and their lives. None of them looked much like Julia Roberts did, but a few of them might have done had they not suffered years of being beaten up by ruthless pimps who wanted their money’s worth out of their investments. It was a story of the daily struggle which our opponents celebrate as the free marker. It’s a strange medium, TV: you watch a romance about buying sex and smile at the happy ending; if the documentary would have been shown immediately before the film its offensive message might just have been a little clearer.

Steve Coleman

Liberating Women's Lib (1979)

From the December 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

The fact of women's oppression in many eras and in many places is undeniable; the determination of the ‘women’s movement’ to end this oppression is understandable; but their specific aims are much more dubious. They make their views known in many spheres with various demands: 24-hour nurseries, abortion on demand, wages for housework, freedom for women to work in manual trades, to name a few. None of these reforms is worth fighting for within the framework of capitalism, for even if they are achieved they could not radically alter the position of women as members of the working class, any more than reformist action will genuinely improve the position of any other oppressed group. Black people, children, the disabled, the old, for example, all have pressure groups devoting their energies to reforms which will supposedly alleviate their particular problems.

The futility of such reformist aims can be demonstrated by taking a look at some recent examples of women’s liberation campaigns taken to their logical conclusions. One such is the question of prostitution. Recently, at a well-attended meeting at Central Hall, Westminster, baronesses, MPs, and leading figures in the women’s movement shared a platform with prostitutes fighting for recognition of their right to sell their bodies freely without harassment from the police. This was followed by the first national meeting of PROS, which is campaigning to end the imprisonment of prostitutes, to abolish the offences of loitering and soliciting for the purpose of prostitution and to stop the use of the term ‘common prostitute’ in legal proceedings. They also want to “get more street women involved on a regular basis so that they are taking the initiatives and finding a voice for themselves. That is where real change will come from" (our italics) (Guardian, October 9, 1979). Just how such reforms could make any appreciable difference to the life of a prostitute is hard to imagine. Nearly all prostitutes are driven into their trade by poverty and no matter how many reforms are enacted this will not change. Yet we have the spectacle of ‘liberated’ women seriously suggesting that removing a few restrictions and harassments will enable prostitutes to ply their trade with dignity and honour.

Another example of the absurdity of certain women’s campaigns relates to the ‘inferior’ position of women in the armed forces. Here we are expected to struggle for equal “rights” of women to fight and kill alongside men, and unfavourable comparison is made between the British armed forces, where women may only perform auxiliary duties, and the armed forces of Israel and the USA, where they are entitled to undertake full combat duty. In other words “liberated” women should be calling for the right to kill their fellow workers (men and women alike) in other countries an example of emancipation at which the mind can only reel.

Similarly, the fact that only one per cent of bank managers and two per cent of chartered accountants are women (Observer, 23 September 1979) must reflect the subordinate position of women. But are we to demand that these professions, which exist merely to service capitalism, should henceforth employ equal numbers of men and women? If, overnight, 50 per cent of bank managers and accountants were women, capitalism would be exactly the same and socialism no nearer. Even with total equality in the labour market women will remain wage-slaves, like men.

It is mistaken to assume that men, because their pay is generally higher, and because hitherto they have done some jobs to the exclusion of women, and because they usually go out to work for most of their adult lives, therefore have something that is worth striving for. The serried rows of clerks, factory hands, salesmen, plumbers no more have jobs which are intrinsically satisfying than housework and childcare are intrinsically stultifying. This is not to say that women are better off staying at home but it is a warning that exchanging one situation for another is not an act of liberation. The main, if not only reason most members of the working class—male and female—go out to work is for the small brown envelope they receive on Fridays; and it confers not dignity but humiliation that their worth as human beings should be so narrowly defined. The fact that many men have misconceptions about their role in society and their relationship with women does not warrant either wholesale hostility to them nor the belief that equality with men within capitalism will lead to emancipation.

Another example of women tying themselves in knots in furtherance of their cause is the support given by some sections of the women's movement to Margaret Thatcher: simply by virtue of her sex we were encouraged to vote for her, what she might or might not do in power being apparently of secondary importance. Although some of those who took up this position before the election have now repented, there are those even now who cling to this absurd notion; the writer of a letter to Spare Rib (July 1979), although abhorring the Tory Party, writes, “But when I read or hear the words ‘the Prime Minister was present. She said . . . ’ I am filled with a deep, half-incredulous satisfaction”. Another example of equal irrelevance to women’s real interests, is the decision by the Swedish Parliament to make “the monarch’s first-born child rather than the first male child heir to the throne” (Guardian, 8 November 1979), thus disinheriting the young prince in favour of his elder sister. Big deal.

There are many other areas where women seek to remove petty restrictions and barriers which make no real difference at all, and yet they are hailed as some kind of achievement. We learn, for example, that American Catholics may remove ‘sexist language’ from prayers; apparently sexist “language in liturgy has been a target of feminist groups”, so now a revised prayer instead of reading Christ’s blood is “shed for you and for all men” would read “shed for you and for all” (Guardian. 25 October 1979). Now there's something to make us feel better.

Women are rightly disgusted by blatantly sexual advertisements which display their bodies to sell products, but although putting stickers on these posters to express their outrage will make some women feel better, it will have little effect. The capitalists must sell their products in order to realise their profits, and they will use whatever means they find most effective to do so. Furthermore, men are just as degraded by the macho, he-men advertisements also used to sell products, or the “It’s a Man’s Life in the Army” type of approach used to incite workers to kill other workers on behalf of their masters. But what about the television advertisements which, in the pre-Christmas period, aim to inspire in children a crazy lust for worthless toys? Even if an organisation such as Affirm—"a feminist alliance against ads, articles and images that exploit women” were to succeed in its aims “to abolish all sexism in the media” (Spare Rib. July 1978), where would that leave us? Advertising would still be there, capitalism would be intact. Protesting about any of these advertisements is useless without tackling the underlying cause.

The most positive thing to emerge from the women’s movement will be the active involvement of large numbers women in questioning their role in society. Let us hope it is not too long before they turn their attention to a more constructive approach to the problems which face us all, men and women.

J.

The Cynicism of Capitalism: 2: Partners Wanted (1972)

From the October 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard

The company’s prospectus is a colourful document of orange, red, yellow and gold paper. Pages are perforated by cut-outs of hearts. If all this seems a bit unusual, the prospectus offering is more so, as The Guardian (17th January) revealed. It is an invitation to the West German public by Kohle Liengeschaften to purchase limited partnership in an operation currently consisting of brothels in Konstanz, a town on Germany’s Swiss border, and Kaiserslautern which is near Mannheim and a NATO base.

“The oldest profession in the world is also the solidest,” the Company says on the cover of the prospectus. And an accompanying letter to potential investors suggests that purchasing a partnership in the enterprise “is an investment worth while because Irma La Douce never has a recession.”

The profession may have been around for a long time but it is believed that the Kohle venture is the first time capital has been publicly — and legally — raised in West Germany for an enterprise of this kind. And the financial enticements are substantial since the company is guaranteeing a minimum annual return of 9 per cent. “This is a better investment than stock,” asserts Herr Kohle, founder and managing director.

In Germany prostitution is considered a social necessity. The administration generally approves the existence of bordellos on the ground that they keep prostitutes off the streets (brothel bedrooms are officially referred to as places of work). So accepted is the profession in fact that there is even a slickly-written travel guide to West German brothels and red-light districts that lists each house and its location on a city-by-city basis and rates the house according to parking facilities, prices, service and amenities.

Prostitution is not a new venture for Kohle Liengeschaften. The real estate operation currently derives its income from renting small apartments to prostitutes and from concessionaires such as the night-club operators at the Kaiserslautern facility. The company, Herr Kohle emphasises, receives no direct part of any prostitutes earnings. Herr Kohle says that there are currently forty-seven “lady tenants” at Kaiserslautern and thirty-five at Konstanz. Generally, he says, a girl stays for three or four years. How long she stays usually depends upon whether she is making money and whether she feels secure.

The brothels are advantageously situated. The Kaiserslautern operation is the only one of its kind near the NATO base, while the Konstanz operation is near a casino and just across the border from Switzerland, where prostitution is illegal. The brothels’ “lady tenants” are checked by the management for police records, among other things. "We don’t take all the girls who apply,” Herr Kohle says. “For example, we don’t want wild women.” The girls, he adds, come from all over Europe. In return, the girls sign rental contracts for an indefinite period. In addition to protection, Herr Kohle says the company also provides apartments at Kaiserslautern where the girls’ relatives can stay when they visit. He adds that the company is also considering construction of a separate facility next year at Kaiserslautern for children of the prostitutes. These features, Herr Kohle says, offer the girls some security and "take some of the harshness out of the profession”.

Herr Kohle’s “new style” operations have borne financial fruit. So far nearly £600,000 in limited partnerships has been purchased by 120 to 130 investors. The limited partnerships are sold in £5,500 units. However, to attract the small investor and to provide anonymity, several investors may each put up £550 and pool their investments to make the minimum for a partnership unit. According to its prospectus, Kohle Liengeschaften is currently offering equity capital equivalent to £1 million or about £150,000 less than the estimated market value of the two properties. By the end of 1973 the company hopes to have eight brothels in Germany and Austria. To reach this goal he says about £4.5 million will have to be raised.

The company is advertising in newspapers and is selling partnerships through investment consultants and through its own sales office, which includes some former IOS Mutual Fund salesmen. Herr Kohle is a 43-year- old entrepreneur who is also in the construction and investment business and says that he put together Kohle Liengeschaften because "there was still room for adventure” in his life. He says he is optimistic about the future of the venture. “Prostitution has weathered all the storms over the past 2,000 years without a crisis and I don’t see one now unless the human race changes,” he says.

Here we have an example of the mentality that views all things as commodities, including the female sexual capacity. The brothel in this case is the market place, the buyers desirous males. Herr Kohle need fear no change in the human race, but he has left out of his calculation the fact that a section of the human race — the working-class section — will change conditions and, as a consequence, will change the behaviour of the human race. This is a change that will remove the commodity status from society and thus eliminate all forms of prostitution — and prevent the likes of him from exploiting women.

R. Ambridge

Between the Lines: Death, hypocrisy and videotape (1992)

The Between the Lines column from the February 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

Death, hypocrisy and videotape

Has nobody told Stormin' Norman about East Timor? Were we not told by the trigger-happy hypocrites who gave us the Gulf War that the invasion of one country by another was intolerable and must be defeated by force? First Tuesday (BBC2, 7 January, 10.45pm) told the hitherto unexposed story of the ruthless butchery of the Timorese people which has gone on for sixteen years.

In 1975 East Timor became independent from Portuguese control and elected its own government. That year Indonesia took over East Timor, outlawed the elected government and began a process of imposing control by means of brutal coercion. It is estimated that one in three of the population have been killed since the Indonesian take-over. In sixteen years as many as 250,000 Timorese workers are said to have been done away with. This is legalised terrorism on a mass scale. It is virtual genocide.

So, where are "our boys" whose task is to defend "the good" against "the evil”? (Remember all that "Free Kuwait" rubbish? The Kuwaiti dictatorship now presides over torture and mass deportations of its subjects.) The answer is that the only American and British arms being sent into the area are being sold to Indonesia.

The governments which claimed to have fought a war in the Gulf against Iraq's invasion of Kuwait are selling to Indonesia the means to unlawfully colonise East Timor. The alleged atrocities committed by Iraqis against Kuwaitis are being committed by Indonesian state thugs against the Timorese workers as a matter of course, but, despite several detailed reports by Amnesty International, the governments of Britain, the USA or Australia (the latter being a major trading partner with Indonesia) just stand by. Of course, hypocrisy is as attached to capitalist politics as fleas are to a dirty dog. How else can the cynical, anti-human policies of defending profit and damning need be justified?

The well-made First Tuesday documentary contained shocking footage of the 12 December 1991 funeral demonstration where Timorese workers were burying a man killed by the Indonesian army. At the funeral Indonesian troops fired on the crowd, killing one hundred mourners, others died on their way to and in hospital.

Indonesian brutality has given rise to an ill-equipped campaign of military resistance by desperate Timorese workers. Such counter-violence is futile: semi-armed guerrilla fighters will be no match for American-backed Indonesian state thugs, and anyway, killing Indonesian workers in uniform will not make anyone free, just a few more graves full.

The tragedy of East Timor reflects vividly the crass hypocrisy of Western celebrations about the coming of "Freedom" and the decency of King Capital's New World Order. It shows just how much the Gulf War was fought for oil profits and just how true it is that if Kuwait would have been as relatively poor as East Timor and if Iraq had been Indonesia things would have been different.

Aah, Freedom

The government has deregulated the law relating to TV, so now we are "free" - if we pay for it (in short, capitalist freedom) - to watch two new pom channels: After Midnight and Adult Channel. Behind the Headlines (BBC2, 8 January. 10.55pm) had a discussion on what such "freedom" will mean. In future viewers will be sold little plastic cards which they can slot into their TVs in order to watch sleazy movies made for sleazy men.

The programme also discussed the new 0898 sex lines on which consumers with such desires can pay 45p a minute listening to out-of-work actresses pretending to be naughty schoolgirls or busty nurses. There is even an 0898 number on which a genuine rape victim has been paid £3,000 to give a recorded account of her rape ordeal. Sweet freedom, eh? The poor woman is "free" to sell her pathetic story and men who are excited by rape (the stealing of the sexual commodity) can listen to her for just over a quid an orgasm.

Meanwhile Decca has announced that in February it is to release a video of the most salacious bits of the William Kennedy Smith rape trial - yours to enjoy in complete "freedom" for £10.99 a copy.

If this is freedom, then it is a lunatic's conception of what it is to be free. It is the freedom to sell, to exploit, to degrade, to abuse, to drag humanity through the dirt. Perhaps someone could market an 0898 number with recordings of children being tortured in East Timor; there might be a few bob to be made out of the screwballs who will get off on that.

Steve Coleman

Material World: The Porn Business (2012)

The Material World Column from the February 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

Chatsworth is a leafy district of Los Angeles, home to various Hollywood film stars. Many famous movies and TV series were shot in the area. It is also the centre of the porn business, with 200 production companies employing some 1,400 performers (and a few thousand other workers). Here too is the office of the trade magazine Adult Video News, which sponsors an annual convention in Las Vegas.

Most performers are poorly educated women aged 18 – 21. They are attracted by the pay, which seems good compared to other jobs open to them. Rates for a scene range from $200 for a blowjob up to $2,000 for a double anal or gang bang.

Much of the money goes to support drug habits. Ex-porn star Shelley Lubben, whose Pink Cross Foundation helps performers trying to get out of the business, explains why they need drugs: without them they would be unable to bear the abuse the work entails. “Guys are punching you in the face. You get ripped. Your insides can come out of you. It’s never ending.”

Besides drug addiction, another perk of the job is sexually transmitted diseases. Only some end up dying of AIDS, but few escape the discomfort of herpes, which is likewise incurable.

Explosive growth

Porn is very big business. Worldwide revenue in 2006 is estimated at $97 billion. Revenue in the US rose almost 2,000-fold between 1972 and 2006 – from $7 million to $13 billion. Market expansion through the internet has fuelled this explosive growth, though other media – videos, films, TV, magazines – have also done well.

With growth comes political clout. Like other capitalists, porn makers pay lobbyists to promote their interests. One is Bill Lyon, head of the so-called Free Speech Coalition, which represents 900 companies. Besides passing porn off as free speech, Lyon plugs its contribution to California’s economy: 12,000 jobs and $36 million annually in state tax revenue.

Porn versus religion?

Opponents of porn have different and often conflicting motives. Many condemn it in the name of religious morality. Yet the same people support conservative politicians who are totally beholden to corporate interests and hostile to any restrictions on business, including the porn industry.

Porn promoters use the religious anti-porn movement to portray all their opponents as puritanical and intolerant – a false stereotype designed to silence anyone who does not want to be regarded as a killjoy. It’s quite possible to be against porn while valuing erotica – the artistic celebration of sex as a source of joy and beauty.  

Besides the suffering of those used to produce it, porn can have a dehumanizing effect on its male consumers. It has been argued that it distorts their perceptions of women and undermines their ability to engage in satisfying real-life relationships. Especially serious is the impact on teenagers ­ the age group that views the most online porn. The average age at which American boys first download porn is now 11 years.

Opening up new markets

As many consumers become desensitized to milder kinds of porn, they seek out more extreme varieties in order to sustain the same level of stimulation. The remorseless drive of capital to expand also impels porn makers to break down taboos and open up new markets. So porn grows more extreme, violent and abusive.

One barrier to expansion is the illegality of using children’s bodies in porn. But it is a weak barrier. Even those porn makers who take care to remain within the letter of the law press hard against the barrier by using “childified women” – a concept introduced by sociologist Gail Dines (see her 2008 interview with Citizen magazine). Young women are made to look like children by wearing children’s clothes and braces on their teeth, holding lollipops and shaving their pubic hair. So while these porn makers don’t abuse children directly some would argue that they incite their customers to do so.

Porn goes mainstream

Despite its increasingly violent character, porn is becoming more acceptable socially and culturally. Characters in popular TV sitcoms joke about it.

This is because the porn industry is no longer a disreputable enterprise on the fringes of the business world. “Respectable” business has merged with the industry as major corporations, observing the high rates of return offered by porn, have invested in it in a big way. Porn has gone mainstream.

* Media and telecommunications companies rely heavily on profits from porn. They have acquired porn-making subsidiaries and offer cable subscribers hardcore porn channels.

* Over 95 percent of new Hollywood films are “adult movies”.

* Some big hotel chains now make up to 70 percent of their profits by feeding porn to TVs in guest rooms on a pay-per-view basis.

* The most profitable parts of General Motors are no longer its auto plants but the porn channels EchoStar and DirecTV, owned by GM subsidiary Hughes Technology.

Consumer goods manufacturers are also linked to the porn business through their use of “soft porn” in advertising cars, clothes, shoes, cosmetics, etc. Fashion modelling, in particular, has close links with the industry.

The political implications of this development are discussed by D.A. Clarke, a contributor to the volume Not for Sale: Feminists Resisting Prostitution and Pornography (Spinifex Press). Now that the industry has gone mainstream, she argues, opposition to porn challenges the interests of capital as a whole. So anti-porn protestors would be up against formidable odds. If we want to decommercialize and humanize sex, we need to take the next step and build a broad popular movement to overthrow capitalism itself.

Stefan