Dirt_Possum [any, undecided]

@xiaohongshu@hexbear.net Thoughts?

Edit: I see that a good portion of what this article says are things that you have discussed (and let all the air out of) here: https://hexbear.net/post/3920843/5657051
But it also seems like there are a number of things that this Bertrand article is saying that counters some of what you were saying in that thread. The cycle that this Bertrand article is talking about seems fairly air-tight which is why I was wondering what you would have to say about it in addition to what you were saying in that other thread.

At the risk of annoying everyone with users tags, I'm also curious what @BynarsAreOk@hexbear.net, @geikei@hexbear.net, and @AssortedBiscuits@hexbear.net think. Sorry if you don't want to be tagged like this, let me know and I'll edit this comment and make sure not to do it again.

Oh there's plenty of room for someone who is informed to get angry and rightly ridicule people who deserve it.

the opinion on the topic you are not informed about displays your values and having it might be beneficial to you.

And it might be detrimental to you just as easily. There's no way to know which without being informed, but an ignorant opinion based on "values" (aka vibes and what you want to be true rather than what is true) is more likely to hurt you or others in the long run. Just as being a racist bigot who has a wrong opinion about people of color might find that holding their racist opinion is immediately beneficial to themselves if they're in a similarly bigoted community, being a bigot is ultimately harmful for reasons I would hope wouldn't need to be explained.

An example would be a parent who doesn't want any gender-related issue to be discussed in the school.

Yet their uninformed opinion is harmful. Gender issues are inevitably part of our world and learning about them will not only prepare children to have an understanding of them that their ignorant parent lacks and help make the world safer and more livable for everyone as a result, but if that child themselves turns out to be gender stereotype non-conforming, then learning about those issues will help them better understand themselves and potentially save them from much of the misery inflicted on them by an ignorant populous.

Most of the people I've known who were into anime were women, some of them are even anime artists. In the 00s, I only knew about anime because a girlfriend of mine (platonic) was into it and tried to get me into it and I thought it was mostly something that only interested other girls. I was aware of Sailor Moon and knew girls who had posters of it in their rooms, but never knew any males who admitted to liking it so hearing that anime is thought of as a guy thing is still strange to me.

Hexbear is mostly white. So maybe don't use it.

I'm shocked that drug dealing is coming up here as an example of criminality in so many comments. It's very literally only criminal behavior because the us made it criminal behavior to crush poor people, radicals, and minorities, and most people know that

I'm hoping that most people here understand that and are using it as an example of criminality only as a way to talk about lumpen as a class that relates to the means of production differently than most of the rest of the proletariat (but I don't know, I also wouldn't have thought there would be so many leftists who seem to think that sex work isn't work or that no forms of it could possibly exist under communism). But either way, what I do find shocking about it is how many people here think that they have less revolutionary potential than the rest of the US proletariat which is extremely right wing. Like the comment "drug runners aren't gonna help us do communism dude." Well, they're hell of a lot more likely to than all the reactionary regular proletarians who are Trump and Biden law and order supporters.

You highlight the work aspect of sex work as if I’m saying it’s not work, or to say that it‘s work only quantitatively different from manufacturing goods, delivering goods, etc. I’m not saying sex work is immoral or impure or condemning it based on moral judgement.

Ok, maybe I was wrong about what you were saying. Do you think sex work is work, then?

Someone may sleep with many members of society and be supported in their needs by the community through the immense wealth of the people under communism, but the support of their needs would not be predicated on their sleeping with members of the community.

Would the needs of any other members of that society be predicated on the work they do?

And their activity would necessarily not contribute to the welfare of the whole community but only persons selected.

I'm not sure what you mean by this. Surely making sure the members of a community are able to lead happy and fulfilling lives is contributing to the welfare of the whole community. Human sexuality is undeniably an important aspect (for the majority of people) of a person's over all sense of happiness and fulfillment. There being members of the community that help ensure everyone else in the community has that sense of fulfillment, members of the community who are explicitly willing and happy to provide it as a service (labor), is a positive, even necessary contribution to community wellbeing.

Replacing cash with goods doesn’t make prostitution not sex work or change the relations at play.

I never implied otherwise. I wasn't the person who said "some people will always be willing to exchange goods or labour for sex regardless of economic or political system." But they are correct, and you are not when you call that "bourgeois philosophy" and "utter nonsense." Even in a system where that kind of tit-for-tat exchange is unnecessary, it is absurd to say that it will never happen.

People misunderstand communism, due to a misunderstanding of its relation to early communal society, as some sort of return to the end stage of historical communities where everyone lives in common low development and individual exchange happens under the table.

That may be, but that is not an error I'm making. As I briefly mentioned in a response to another comment, there will always be people who are unable or unwilling to form the kind of relationships usually required for sexual activity and thus sexual fulfillment. There will also always be people who choose to develop skills that help provide people with that kind of fulfillment sans any other form of relationship. You may say that such a thing is so different from the kind of purely transactional relationship we traditionally characterize as prostitution that it may as well not be called prostitution. Fine. But the same thing can be said for countless other forms of labor that people do under capitalism to survive, but that under communism would just be "something I enjoy doing," that is still labor and provides a service to society. Like an actor who enjoys giving performances that provide other people with entertainment (as one of countless other possible examples).

What percentage of prostitutes across history do you believe fit into a definition that isn't characterized by exploitation?

What percentage of plumbers across history do you believe fit into a definition that isn't characterized by exploitation? Sex work is work. Period. Just like other work, it can be done because a person enjoys it, but under capitalism (or other modes of production that exploit workers) it will always involve exploitation. If you want to define prostitution as something that always involves exploitation, ok fine, but then you also have to separate that out from sex work, which absolutely does not inherently require exploitation and most certainly would still exist even if all economic coercion were eradicated (that is, under communism rather than capitalism).

Under communism (a classless, stateless, moneyless society), the economic and class relations that force people to perform sexual labor as a means of subsistence won't be present.

(Emphasis above is mine). Under communism, the economic and class relations that force people to perform any labor as a means of subsistence won't be present.

People will still have sex, but nobody will be coerced into having sex in exchange for food, shelter, or medical care.

No shit. There will still be plumbers too, but they won't be coerced into it in exchange for food, shelter, or medical care. Almost all of your arguments so far can be applied exactly the same to any number of other forms of labor.

Prostitution won't be an occupational category under communism because the purpose of labor under communism is about fulfilling social need.

So finally we get to some reasoning (flawed though it is) for why sex work would be different than any other work. You think that sex work doesn't fulfill a social need. Sexual fulfillment is a social need. There will always be people who find it difficult to find partners due to all kinds of possible scenarios (including having no time to build a relationship due to dedicating all of it to other interests or necessary labor). And there will similarly always be people willing to provide that, people who have dedicated their time to become skilled at providing that. Refusing to recognize them as fulfilling a social need is simply being sex-negative and it's always shocking to me that there are still leftists who don't understand this.

Even the so called criminal element isn't properly considered in the traditional view of lumpen. At least from what I've seen, there is almost always a failure to understand that large swathes of the lumpenproletariat are simply parts of the proletariat that had no economic recourse, lacking even the ability to survive by legally selling their labor, and became lumpen by necessity. Consider redlined ethnic minorities who are denied even bare minimum legal employment and resort to drug dealing as the only means of survival. Many of them put the money they make directly back into their destitute communities. They absolutely have revolutionary potential and some of them have class consciousness on a level far beyond that of the vast majority of legal working proletariat.

You act like it's blatantly obvious that commodities would exist under communism and mock the person who pointed it out to you, yet you vehemently deny that something else just as obvious as the existence of commodities will also still very much exist and have a place under communism, calling it utter nonsense and requiring "bourgeois philosophy" without any explanation. That something else involves sex, though. Hmm. Funny how work that involves sex always brings out a specific type with an angry and reactionary axe to grind.

At least u/porcupine can make a reasonable case by redefining prostitution as something other than and separate from sex work rather than denying the legitimacy and validity of sex work.

This is interesting but I'm extremely skeptical.

Same here. I don't understand economics well enough to have an opinion I trust enough to criticize it, but all of this seems like it flies in the face of what I do understand of Marxist economics. There was another information dense comment about these things in this thread by u/Droplet but that one at least seemed to be in line with my poor understanding. @Droplet@hexbear.net could you respond to what u/ComradeRat is saying? Are you more or less in agreement? For that matter, do you know if Zak Cope is more or less in agreement with Michael Hudson?

To imply that abortion is the cure for poverty or that not having access to it is the cause is indeed false and a typical liberal refusal to look at the broader systems. But to deny how much unwanted pregnancy, along with the health risks and increased mortality rate that come with it, the burden on poor communities to provide adequate care for children when they are already overworked, etc, all contribute to and worsen poverty is absurd, and just as much a failure to recognize material reality.

Liberals and even well meaning progressives will sometimes fall into the trap of pitching abortion and birth control as a part of the solution to poverty.

But access to abortion and BC does help alleviate poverty. When women are unable to choose to not have unwanted pregnancies and children, it does create a serious strain on them and their community, exacerbating poverty and everything associated with it. That isn't some idealist liberal delusion, it's very well documented reality.

Edit, adding:

I honestly think if birth control was only available for colored people then conservatives wouldn't have a problem with it. Abortion too

It's just the opposite. One of the main reasons reactionaries tend to be so anti-abortion is because forcing women to have unwanted children helps to perpetuate poverty, locking communities into a cycle of impoverishment they can't escape. Meanwhile, those who are rich and white have access to abortions whether they're illegal or not, which is by design. If a rich old gammon-chud's daughter gets pregnant and she doesn't want to keep it, he's likely to help her quietly get an abortion even as he ensures people of color never have that kind of opportunity. Wealthy white people want (and generally have) the freedom to do whatever they want while they simultaneously limiting the freedoms of poor BIPOC people, all to maintain or strengthen the white supremacist system.

There are links to alternative front ends in a comment below. Also, old.reddit is working OK for me without needing to login. You're right, NSFW old.reddit is requiring login now.

There might be a few outside of here that know it, but they write essays about how George actually must have meant it to be the other way around to reassure themselves.

China has recently made positive strides on a number of issues like LGBTQ rights, so there's no reason not to hope they can also start moving in the correct direction when it comes to phasing out animal cruelty and meat consumption as well, as they continue to economically surpass the reactionary west. Their dedication to addressing climate change will also at some point demand the recognition that using animals as a major source of food is unsustainable.

Wait, what's worse? For who? I'm not totally sure what you're saying here but as someone who has survived by doing sex work, who has been repeatedly sexually exploited*, and who has also been more than what I think most would just call exploited, I would not say that any of that was worse for me than being murdered on a factory farm. Can we just agree that exploitation and the objectification or commodification of sentient life is very bad and needs to be abolished?

*(Side note to make clear that sex work is not inherently exploitational either but that's a different ball of wax.)

Part of what's funny about the video is that he was trying to showcase a software update Tesla released, the purpose of which was specifically for making it safe to close the trunk on your fingers. He tests it with a cucumber and banana and it actually looks reasonably safe but then he does the test with his finger. Not only does the test fail but the trunk won't open so he's stuck there shocked in obvious pain and can't get his finger back out.

It doesn't actually break but he shows it afterward and it's clearly smashed with bruises and a decent sized cut from the trunk's edge. He comes back and has some excuse from tesla about it being because he tested with veggies first and the software thought he was trying to shut it with something blocking it because of the previous repeated attempts. He actually starts to test it again with his finger saying "This time it should hurt way less..." but he can't do it, he keeps pulling back right before it closes in what I might have said was finally a tiny bit of sense, only it's an instinctive reaction and he can't help it. He concludes that we'll just have to trust it from the last banana test.

Here it is if anyone wants to watch: www.youtube.com/watch?v=rA55B1kobnw

Nah, contrary to the belief of some weirdos, poking fun at people for their supernatural woo idealism is providing a positive service.