this post was submitted on 17 Oct 2024
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Please don't advertise Paul Cockshott, he hates sex workers (CW):
spoiler
Why should we ‘listen to the sex workers’? Why are we to be so solicitous of the commercial interests of brothel keepers and wh**es?
Source: https://paulcockshott.wordpress.com/2017/12/01/socialists-can-never-support-prostitution/
He's a TERF and believes there's simply no such thing as gender, only biological sex:
https://paulcockshott.wordpress.com/2017/12/12/genders-or-sex-stereotypes-part-1/
https://paulcockshott.wordpress.com/2017/12/13/genders-or-sex-stereotypes-part-2/
https://paulcockshott.wordpress.com/2017/12/23/genders-or-sex-stereotypes-part-3/
He doesn't agree with unequal exchange theory, which in turn leads him to conclude that Western workers are subjected to a higher rate of exploitation than workers in the Global South (which is a necessary conclusion without accounting for unequal exchange):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNIUK7d8bRM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uT5C_8QZG9I
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Frk2s_ggzt8
I dont hate the arguement here, 'eleminating' essentially means removing the material reasons why people are coerced into the sex trade. There are strong femminist arguements against this that boil down to the reason it even has value to begin with is the male gaze/patriarchy and liberal conceptions of the 'pornography industry'.
Some of his later arguements are a bit nonsensical regarding productive/non-productive labour though.
However yeah its disapointing to see him fall for the TERF idpolitics or abandon the ideas around primative accumlation and unequal exchange.
Cockshott uses the W word completely unironically there, he just openly hates victimised women, which is truly appalling behaviour that should get him booted from any communist party.
Disclaimer: I don't support prostitution although for different reasons, pasting below my comment about it from another thread:
I used to think this is simply, "sex workers are the ones carrying all the risk and harm, so only their opinion matters. sex worker organisations call for full decriminalisation. /thread"
Until I learned decriminalisation of sex work in the first world leads to increased human trafficking from the Global South: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X12001453#s0045
To put it bluntly, brown women who would otherwise lead their normal lives, are kindapped and smuggled to be raped by white men, in large numbers, whenever a first world country decriminalises prostitution.
This works both ways - criminalising prostitution reduces human trafficking, as shown above in the case study.
People trafficked from the Global South are completely marginalised and poweless, they don't have a voice. The voices we hear, calling for decriminalisation, are mostly from self employed Westerners. And while I genuinely do care about their right to safer work conditions, for me it doesn't trump the right of brown women to not be kidnapped and raped by white men.
I feel the exact same way as you regarding sex work.
Yeah I agree the way he frames it and talks about betrays his actual reactionary feelings of disgust at sex workers (as well as trans people) which is why hes clearly a right-devionanist
He might have made some good contributions to breaking myths related to the USSR, but sometimes assholes make one good point, its important to be critical of everyone and not fall victim to cults of personality.
No one is worshipping cockshott. “Cults of personality” are a liberal concept. What matters is ruthless criticism of all that exists, ie evaluating all claims of any individual or organization critically. I’m not even a cockshott fan, I just heard he was decent and saw a couple decent videos. I have yet to do my own critical evaluation.
Not to start this struggle session again, but his prostitution take isn’t that bad. Under capitalism prostitution is a sorry means of survival or petty bourgeois lifestyle. “Sex work” under socialism is an absurdity. People can fuck whomever and still get the minimums for life, but it doesn’t make sense to pour money into an unproductive industry. If anything - as cockshott implies - stay at home parents are worthy of monetary compensation for their contribution to society.
I was aware of the terf stuff and unequal exchange stuff, but didn’t have much exposure to it. I will look into those links.
He literally calls sex workers "wh*r*s" in the piece I linked which is supposed to be serious Marxist economic theory.
I don't support prostitution (I also never use the term swerf because it draws completely incorrect parallels between sex work legalisation and trans liberation) but this is deplorable.
Obviously I'm not the first person to notice it and he kept it like that on his blog for years so it's exactly what he meant to say, too.
Fair enough
I found YouTube links in your comment. Here are links to the same videos on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Link 1:
Link 2:
Link 3: