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"Advocating Economic & Personal Change"


Pornography

Pornography is enjoying an ever-increasing ubiquity and general legitimacy in America, and elsewhere, driven in large part by its easy and anonymous availability over the Internet. The stigma of pornography is fading while its accessibility grows; thus do increasing numbers of people, mostly men, consume it, oftentimes expending significant amounts of time, and compromising real relationships, in the process.

Pornography consumption is easy to deconstruct from the "Cooperative" standpoint--ultimately it is just one more potential addiction; indeed, a powerful one. Addictions based on primal human urges like sex, hunger, or fear are the most powerful. Thus do we see the rise of such phenomena as porn and sex addictions, and obesity.

Moreover, pornography is a $2 billion a year industry, a tantalizing economic reality that sustains the industry, if not drives its growth. Big capitalists anticipating a large slice of that pie enter the industry; for smaller economic operators, as well as financially-troubled individuals, entry into the industry is appealing because startup costs are virtually nothing. Further, the industry is also appealing to certain individuals because web sites selling erotic material can be operated from home, a fact important for women with small children, the disabled, persons caregiving spouses or older parents, or others for whom working a job outside the home would be problematic or impossible.

As life under capitalism becomes ever-more stressful, tedious, alienating, and enmiserating, while the ruling class continues to churn out wave upon wave of purchasable products and services to provide us distraction, false hope, and inadequate relief, we increasingly find ourselves turning to compulsive and pathological activities, lifestyles, and patterns of behavior.

Moreover, the basic poverty of men in the working class makes it difficult to attract women, especially given that, ironically driven in large part by this same reality of poverty, women under capitalism are focused on finding men who are "good providers," which is to say, who can give them money. Also, because of the superficial consumer-oriented character of capitalism, in addition to money a principal requirement for women in selecting men is "good looks," that is, typically men are sought who are considered "buff," "handsome," or in the current vernacular, "hot."

The reality of our species, however, is that some men manifest such a prized physicality, while many do not. And while the general female population overwhelmingly seeks these physical attributes in the male, they in general concomitantly devalue qualities such as intellect, insight, wisdom, spirituality, broad education, sensitivity, or genuine capacity to love. At least this is the pattern in countries like the United States--the nation that largely sets cultural and economic standards across large swathes of the globe.

Thus do these social realities drive an increasing male turn to pornography for sexual activity and release. This is a trend that profit-hungry pornographers are pleased to exploit. Indeed, as Erich Fromm writes: "...with the growth of a consumer society sex itself has become an article of consumption..." (Fromm, Erich. The Crisis of Psychoanalysis, 1970. New York: Henry Holt. P. 37)

The growth of the pornography industry and the larger sex industry, in terms of its supply of workers, is equally obvious:  the industry finds itself with an expanding army of willing workers, mostly female, because of the intersection of the following social elements or realities:

  1. The great difficulty in finding employment under capitalism, especially employment that provides reasonable pay, for workers but especially those with little education or few marketable skills. We have a huge throng of ill-educated workers, who must find employment doing something.

  2. The pay scale for pornography workers, relatively high for work that is relatively easy.

  3. The perceived need by the sex industry for a steady flow of new faces to satisfy customer demand.

  4. The de facto lack of any real moral proscription against libertine or promiscuous behavior.

This analysis does not assert that erotica, pornography, or libertine or promiscuous behavior are innately bad or undesirable. Decisions on some of these matters are for each individual to make for themselves, and for the larger society to democratically decide, in the case of others. What this analysis does seek to point out, and does decry, is the forced engagement in these activities that our present profit-based system requires, out of economic necessity.

This is a form of economic slavery that is undesirable regardless of circumstance or industry.

The solution to the pornography problem, then, is just as easy to identify as the problem, itself:  we must establish a genuinely human society, ordered and organized in such a way that the natural beauty, wonder, and satisfactions of life can come through without obstruction. When this happens, we will find ourselves so in love with the simple and beautiful act of living, that impulses toward distracting activity will simply never enter our mind. From the employment standpoint, the new Cooperative society will no longer so firmly link compensation with contribution:  every human being will have access to the social store of goods and services, regardless of their specific contribution to society (though in this genuinely human environment we anticipate contributions as never before).

In this new, ultra-modern, and rather amazing social environment, the economically-rooted impulse to prostitute oneself, whether in the pornography industry--or any other--will be unnecessary, and will likewise never even occur to us.

In short, then, to solve the problem of the unthinking social rise of pornography, especially as a new, modern form of addiction for its consumers, and a form of economic slavery for its workers, we must work together to establish a love-centered Cooperative Society.

The answer is not to be found in capitalism; indeed, it is the normal operation of 21st century capitalism that creates and drives the problem in the first place.


Suggested Links

The Porn Myth

Not Tonight, Honey. I'm Logging on.



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