this post was submitted on 21 Sep 2026
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Yes, everyone's individual experience might have some differences, not everyone might be experiencing the same things. However, these differences more often that not are results of superstructures (law, institutions, etc), the form of which entirely depends on the base (mode of production).
As preface to A contribution to the Critique of Political Economy says:
Trans people get discriminated against by law and institutions, ruling class spreads propaganda against them because they attack the holy nuclear family, which serves the base in providing new workers for capital to exploit and grow with. Minorities get discriminated against due to them being a convenient target to increase capitalist rate of profit (with profit being what current production is based on) and to divide the proletariat via the spread of ruling class ideas that help preserve them. Sex workers, both 'successful' and desperate are where they are both due to capitalism's tendency to commodify everything, even intimate human experience and due to necessity to keep an impoverished reserve army of labor to allow the decrease of wages.
It all has the same exact root, and no matter how many idpolers cry about it, there can't be any long-term emancipation unless material conditions undergo a shift in a way where these concessions would actually positively serve the base. Slavery was abolished given how it was a pre-capitalist institution that was no longer efficient to keep, result being (not quite) equality under capital. Women were put to work in the factories rather than being traditional stay-at-home wives in the form of legal guardianship due to the growth of capital and need for more workers or labor shortages (especially during wartime). Various forms of welfare were introduced as a response to growing worker discontent as a way for bourgeois to preserve their class rule and pacify them, but more importantly it was done during the times when bourgeois states were prospering thanks to the superprofits WW2 provided and they could more than easily afford them, stimulating profit rates for private owners in the process. All of these things were changes to the superstructure that historically made sense to implement, but none emancipated from capitalism, only at best providing equality under it or an equality in exploitation.
And it is precisely why the idea of "unique struggle for every identity" is nonsense and turns into, at best, demands for equality in exploitation and at worst, a tool of division like with feminism, link to a short-ish article about it. There is no alternative or substitution to class struggle.
And even without all that, and maybe I'm severely misinformed about this, but there doesn't even seem to be a sex worker struggle taking place, with it either being some highly localized union activity demanding for more legalities (hardly a movement where international support on underused social media platform matters) or straight up an imaginary product of sex pest leftists aiming to legitimize their porn addictions by claiming that "sex work is necessary!!" or some demented shit like that.
Which is why this is just pure reformist idealism. Look at the real world, most bourgeois countries are arming for a third imperialist war but can hardly reach the sums mandated by NATO or are straight up getting close to defaulting on debts (like US). Welfare back in the day was possible because of WW2 super profits that came up thanks to the untold amount of destruction and death destroying capital and creating more investment opportunities for financial capital, raising the rate of profit. Today, even the most starry eyed social democrat that gets voted in can't defy laws of physics and generate enough money for the budget to afford anything above small scale social programs that likely has millions of asterisks attached, especially as time goes on and crisis deepens, making austerity necessary.
You also do touch up on "we must do this" "we must support this" as if proletarian movement comes from random lemmy users or voluntarists/individuals/great men rather than proletariat themselves. Don't fall into such delusions of grandeur, proletariat as a class has to emancipate themselves and not some ahistorical outside organization, with class organs such as the party developing out of this struggle. Until then, there is nothing an individual can do, change can only be accomplished through unified mass action.
If there is some "unique workers struggle" but no proletarian movement, all it can hope to do is beg the ruling class for... something. If there is a proletarian movement, then complete emancipation is possible, rendering the former isolated struggle pointless and to be clear, there's nothing stopping them from joining it and doing their part on the barricades or even becoming part of class organs, talking about specific demands of theirs if it hasn't been addressed yet. It's one struggle.
Honestly I wrote all this just because I would feel bad to ignore a wall of text someone put effort into writing, but even though we don't see eye to eye at least you can see where I'm coming from.
Thank you for the thoughtful reply. I would like to clarify a few things on my end, but we've both made our cases so I'll try to be brief.
So this is what passes for a short response from me lol. Thanks for the discussion!