DB QUESTION SIX SOCIOLOGY KELLEY CHRISTOPHER
In terms of economic equality/inequality and opportunities all over the world, what would Karl Marx say about why prostitution has ever existed? Do you agree or disagree with him?
They didn't like it. Karl Marx viewed prostitutes as victims of the capitalist system. In hisEconomic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, he described sex work as being “only a specificexpression of the general prostitution of the laborer,” and viewed the abolition of prostitution as a necessary part of ending capitalism. Similarly, in The Communist Manifesto, he called prostitution the "complement" of the bourgeois family, and predicted that both institutions would one day vanish. Still, some have used Marxist theory (especially as found in his later writing) to defend prostitution not as the buying and selling of bodies but rather asthe selling of a service.
Enforcement of prostitution laws is uneven at best especially when it comes to who is and is not likely to be arrested. Gender bias is evident here: Although two people is involved, the record shows that police are far more likely to arrest (less powerful) female prostitutes than (more powerful) male clients. Class inequality too, is involved: it is streetwalkers women with the least income and most likely to be minorities who face the highest risk of arrest. A feminist approach also leads us to ask whether so many women would be involved in prostitution in the first place if they had economic opportunities equal to those of