Memes of Production

BTW that's not my downvote

Re: the poster of this lemmy post - fair, I haven't looked into them and I agree that the application of sex-work positive liberatory language can be applied to anti-worker reaction.

Re: divisions of labor - a few quotes from Principles of communism

Labor was more and more divided among the individual workers so that the worker who previously had done a complete piece of work now did only a part of that piece. This division of labor made it possible to produce things faster and cheaper. It reduced the activity of the individual worker to simple, endlessly repeated mechanical motions which could be performed not only as well but much better by a machine. In this way, all these industries fell, one after another, under the dominance of steam, machinery, and the factory system, just as spinning and weaving had already done.

But at the same time, they also fell into the hands of big capitalists, and their workers were deprived of whatever independence remained to them. Gradually, not only genuine manufacture but also handicrafts came within the province of the factory system as big capitalists increasingly displaced the small master craftsmen by setting up huge workshops, which saved many expenses and permitted an elaborate division of labor.

This is what you are talking about. However, later:

The existence of classes originated in the division of labor...

The form of the division of labor which makes one a peasant, another a cobbler, a third a factory worker, a fourth a stock-market operator, has already been undermined by machinery and will completely disappear.

So this doesn't contradict your point, but it does add some depth to it. If divisions of labor are the basis of class, and class is a social relation defined and differentiated by material conditions, then it is more than just "people split into specialized roles during labor process," it isn't anywhere near that neutral. It absolutely defines our social reality, differences based on these divisions generate different lived experiences.

What the fuck I'm talking about

Theses on Feuerbach, I:

The chief defect of all hitherto existing materialism – that of Feuerbach included – is that the thing, reality, sensuousness, is conceived only in the form of the object or of contemplation, but not as sensuous human activity, practice, not subjectively. Hence, in contradistinction to materialism, the active side was developed abstractly by idealism – which, of course, does not know real, sensuous activity as such.

Feuerbach wants sensuous objects, really distinct from the thought objects, but he does not conceive human activity itself as objective activity.

So Marx is saying that the old materialist view considered everything in the abstract, separated and distinct, views as the thing in itself. The part that I've become really conscious of is his constant use of the concept of "sensuousness" which I take to mean something like experience, where an individual senses something in their environment.

Theses III:

The coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human activity or self-changing can be conceived and rationally understood only as revolutionary practice.

This lands on a particular conclusion. Marxist materialism conceptualizes "the thing, reality" as a process that begins with individual sensing/experiencing, contemplation of experience, and activity that changes something in the world. These changes are experienced by the subject, so that this is a cycle of social development that is concretely centered in human experience and activity. This is affirmed in Marx by his adaptation of the labor theory of value, which centers human labor power in capitalist production. He took Ricardo's more abstract "old materialist" formulation and expanded it to include the actual time and energy of.people, unlocking its revolutionary potential. Lenin described how class consciousness is structural, rather than purely individual.

This process is the fundamental insight of Marx, this insight represents the actual turning of Hegel on his head.

unique worker struggles

There is one unified worker's struggle, the working class against the capitalists, but divisions in labor create totally different experiences between workers. For example, Marxists have tried, and failed miserably, to convince the broad majority of black workers that there is one worker struggle, because frankly, it's too abstract. But what black people understand is that white people literally can not understand racism. We don't experience it directly, so we can only understand it in the abstract. What white people can do, is involve ourselves in the actual work of black liberation. We gain real experience in struggle, centering black experience in order to identify the actual causes and effects of racial discrimination. Like we all know racism comes from capitalism, but that's too abstract and doesn't actually connect the experience of the individual to the material consequence. Lots of people deny it out of hand because it doesnt match their experience. Because of alienation, workers don't experience every aspect of our material conditions, but we do have direct experience of bad or dangerous conditions, certain kinds of exploitation, etc. These fundamental experiences are commonly used by union organizers to develop class consciousness and solidarity. It isn't hard for people to see how our struggles connect us, but it does take a little help connecting our lived experiences to class struggle. And that connection does not occur without direct experience, combined with direct involvement in the struggle to improve material conditions.

Every worker has these conditions working on them but every worker experiences them differently due to divisions caused by capitalism. Divisions in labor not only occur between different types of jobs, but fundamentally, between genders, races, ethnicities, levels of education, etc. The economic opportunities afforded to an educated white cis straight man are objectively different than opportunities afforded a black trans woman with a "criminal" record. This is a social division that is fundamental part of divisions of labor. The jobs you can get vs the jobs I can get. And if I'm working as a software engineer and someone else is working as a prostitute the differences between our experiences are compound and chasmic. I will not understand that person's experiences, at best i can sympathise, which only gets me so far.

However my liberation is dependent on theirs because it is fundamentally one struggle. This is why I would rely on a sex worker to define the concrete conditions of their oppression, working together to discover the actual nature of their oppression and how that connects to my own, rather than only understanding these things at the most abstract level in the most general way. Only by reckoning with the actual conditions people experience can we see how other people's experiences are connected to pur own. Understanding the worker struggle as one struggle, if only considered in abstract theory, can never generate real solidarity, and therefore is not by itself a road to socialism. We have to prove it to ourselves and to others every day and in every way possible.

Conditions vary widely from place to place, time to time, occupation to occupation. The existence of broad material generalities does not invalidate concrete specificities. And those concretions are based exclusively in the experiences and practical activity of people. Broad generalities misapplied to the whole of society only compound contradictions, into which the bourgeois will sow corruption and reaction. Compromises will have to be made, socialism is fundamentally a transitional process, and there are certain broad changes to society that have to be made. Like, if we really want to abolish sex work, we could put a huge dent in it by, for example, universalizing free high quality childcare and education, healthcare, housing, jobs guarantee, welfare programs, and in the process, develop a drastically different social reality for all workers. But if we want sex workers to join the struggle, we have to prove that we understand and are making real accommodations for their experiences. And if we don't want sex workers to join the struggle, well then who else are we leaving out?