Communism and Prostitution

Published by

Clarissa

December 28, 2013

People from countries that have experienced (or still experience) Communism prostitute themselves with an eagerness that is unmatched in countries with no direct knowledge of Communism. When I speak of prostitution, I mean, or course, both male and female sale of sexual services, so please don’t annoy me by referring to prostitution as something that only women do.

In my opinion, there is an enormous difference between what I call “sex work” and “prostitution.” A sex worker is an honest professional who provides specified services for money. Far be it from me to judge sex workers for the way they make a living.

Prostitution, however, is a term I apply to a very different kind of activities. What shocked me most in Cuba, for instance, was that you could start talking to people – other students, people just like you – about literature, religion, life, anything, but before long, they would succumb to the temptation to offer sex for compensation. This kind of prostitution is dishonest, sneaky, and it bastardizes human relationships by blurring the line between a financial transaction and friendship, affection, love, etc.

I’ve been to Mexico and the Dominican Republic and, of course, there is prostitution there but it exists nowhere near on the level of Cuba. Or Eastern European countries.

The reason why Communism leads to massive prostitution is the following: work that doesn’t benefit and enrich an individual feels absolutely unnatural to human beings. You can dupe people into working for the benefit of the state, the society, the collective, the group, etc with a bunchy of attractive slogans, but that will only work for a very short time. The longest this will work is one generation and that is only if you slaughter people by the million to keep their enthusiasm alive.

Soon enough, people will begin to detest the very concept of work if work is divorced from personal, individual, competitive self-interest. They will conceive such a hatred of the very concept of work that even after their society abandons its Communist dreams, they will do absolutely anything whatsoever to avoid working.

Then, of course, prostitution becomes their answer to everything.

Rate this:

8 responses to “Communism and Prostitution”

cliff arroyo

December 29, 2013

I think Poland escaped most of the worst aspects of this (a fringe benefit of having a de facto functioning opposition even during commie times).

A really sucky think about Soviet bloc communism (once it passed the mass killing stage and settled down into a steady state of medium grade repression and corruption) was the sheer cynicism of ….. everything it bred into the people who had to live there.

The Soviet system taugt people that they’re worthless which eventually turns people into cynics who can’t value other people because they can’t value themselves (and it doesn’t take long to set up a feedback loop of perpetual cynical degeneration).

“you could start talking to people – other students, people just like you – about literature, religion, life, anything, but before long, they would succumb to the temptation to offer sex for compensation”

That’s called fleeing from value (in the sense used by Dorothy Lee). A cynic has to keep reminding themselves of other people’s (and by extension their own) lack of value so at the first sign of a positive emotion toward someone else they have to try to corrupt them in order to safeguard their own status as a cynic.

LikeLike

Reply
Phillip Reed

December 31, 2013

Prostitution in Cuba is just like here in Jamaica where I live….or in Dominican Republic etc. it’s a sign of no jobs + presence of tourists with dollars. Interesting you find many more men doing it here than in the Latin islands. The saddest are when university students or drop-outs engage in this sort of thing. Not sure the communism link you’re drawing is relevant though. Prostitution is extreme capitalism. In fact, when I travelled to Cuba in the old communist times, there were hardly any prostitutes. Surely there were some but it was not visible as since they legalized the u.s. Dollar

LikeLike

Reply
1. bloggerclarissa
  
  December 31, 2013
  
  In the USSR there was 0 unemployment but prostitution was rampant. My classmates – daughters of extremely wealthy party apparatchiks – were prostitutes. And not for the lack of money or jobs.
  
  There is absolutely no link between capitalism and prostitution. Are you aware that this phenomenon existed even among prehistoric tribes, let alone in the Middle Ages? It isn’t for nothing that prostitution is called “the oldest profession in the world.”
  
  LikeLike
  
  Reply
  1. cliff arroyo
    
    December 31, 2013
    
    It’s possible to argue that prostitution (the exchange of sex for resources) predates humanity
    
    LikeLike
    
    Reply
    1. bloggerclarissa
      
      December 31, 2013
      
      Penguins are people, too! 🙂
      
      LikeLike
      
      Reply
  2. Phillip Reed
    
    December 31, 2013
    
    If the extremely wealthy are prostitutes just as often as the poor –and I will take your word that there are cases– then we should legalize the practice because it is the product of free will and human physical expression? WWARD? (Ayn Rand) Of course we all know that this this is not the typical situation but exceptions that prove the rule. For many, many women (and some men) it is not a choice but a coercive practice due to their economic situation if not lack of personal freedom to some pimp. And yes, prostitution certainly predates capitalism, I remember once visiting the pre-modern brothel in the volcanically buried ancient Roman city of Pompeii and above each woman’s door was a fresco of her special positions in the bed or what-not… At the same time, banking, profits, mortgages, wage labor, insurance, markets, unemployment, etc. all predated capitalism too but that doesn’t stop them from aligning together into the contemporary system’s logic. A society where people have nothing in their bank accounts at the end of the month when bills come due is one in which you will find many prostitutes (or sex workers as the politically correcters want us to say) … *especially* if there’s a bunch of white people showing up and flashing their hard currency and bling bling.
    
    LikeLike
    
    Reply
    1. bloggerclarissa
      
      December 31, 2013
      
      “If the extremely wealthy are prostitutes just as often as the poor –and I will take your word that there are cases– then we should legalize the practice because it is the product of free will and human physical expression?”
      
      – Of course.
      
      “A society where people have nothing in their bank accounts at the end of the month when bills come due is one in which you will find many prostitutes (or sex workers as the politically correcters want us to say) … *especially* if there’s a bunch of white people showing up and flashing their hard currency and bling bling.”
      
      – I don’t subscribe to this Marxist approach.
      
      LikeLike
      
      Reply
  3. Ellen
    
    January 24, 2021
    
    Profession? As far as professions go, one would have to admit that pillaging, taxing, corruption, abuse of children, false hearsay ( gossip ) are indeed old if not older so called ‘professions’. I’ve seen lawyers, government workers, as well as ordinary citizens lie in court.
    We have one Communist prostitute in our city. She does very well and supports herself and her whole family, including her husband. He hates her, as do several others, but it beats doing actual work
    
    LikeLike
    
    Reply