THE public debate on the legalisation of sex work (ie, prostitution) has once again gained focus after the chairperson of the National Women’s Commission expressed her support for the move. This move, which represents a policy shift, needs to be seen in the context of the development of a growing lucrative commercial sex work industry within the capitalist system. The polarised positions within the legalisation debate need to be assessed in this context.

CONTEMPORARY

LEGALISATION DEBATE

There have been three possible responses to the debate for the legalisation of sex work. The first argument is from the point of view of conservative right wing politics which sees prostitution as a moral evil and therefore is opposed to its legalisation. This simplistic argument is opposed by more complex interpretations of the relationship between sex work and capitalism. Hence the second argument concerns support for legalisation as it considers sex as any other form of labour. For example, in a recent article Sujata Gothoskar and Apoorva Kaiwar argue that the stigma attached with this work can be removed if it is provided legal recognition and its conditions of work are regulated. The support for this view is sought from Marx and Engels who writing in the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts (1844) state that “Prostitution is only a particular expression of the universal prostitution of the worker”. (“Who Says We Do Not Work”: Looking at Sex Work, EPW November 15, 2014). While the proponents of legalisation use this statement liberally to project sex work as just another form of wage-work, they do not address the complex issues involved in analysing forms of sexual labour.

These issues are raised by the a third set of people who see sex work as embedded in exploitative capitalist relations and therefore not ‘voluntary’ work but forced labour. The statement of the Joint Women’s Organisations of November 20, 2014 explains this in the following way: “the legalisation argument fails to address the multiple exploitation that women and girls in prostitution are subjected to. Their situation can hardly be ameliorated by licensing the root cause of their oppression. In a legalisation framework, it is not the prostituted, who are protected, but the traffickers, pimps, procurers, and the buyers of sex. Legalisation is wrongly assumed to be a potential tool to increase prostituted women’s social protection, reduce prostitution-related crimes, and curb sex trafficking”. According to this argument, the main problem with the legalisation of the industry rests in the fact that the for-profit commercial sex work industry will benefit more than the worker who is selling her body. Hence it is better to decriminalise the worker rather than legalising an exploitative industry. This complex understanding is based on the relationship between sex work and capitalism.

SEX WORK AND ITS

LABOUR RELATIONS

Deprivation and dispossession are amongst the biggest reasons for women to undertake sex work. This sex work is closely linked to a human trafficking network and a lucrative business. There are about 30 million commercial sex workers in India who work in an industry that is linked to the sex tourism and entertainment. This industry is valued at an annual turnover of US $ 2 billion to $ 21 billion. It is structured through a multi layered system of forced labour and exploitation. As the recent Report on the Economics of Global Labour Trafficking (2014) shows the conservative estimate of cost and profits of commercial sex work is the following:

Conservative Annual Estimate of Commercial Sex Work (Based on Survey of GB Road Brothels)

(Source: Adapted from Global March against Child Labour, Economics Behind Forced Labour Trafficking: Comprehensive Case Studies of Child Domestic Labour and Commercial Sexual Exploitation, 2014, pp.30-34)

The table above indicates the complex network of corporate houses (linked to entertainment industry and sex tourism), local pimps/madams and officials at different levels who gain in terms of illegal income. Conservative estimates suggest that the annual illegal black money generated out of commercial sex work is INR 150 to 1440 lakhs. Despite this, the industry generates a net profit of INR 0.6 to 2 lakh crores. The wages of sex workers form only 40 per cent of the total cost of running a commercial sex work racket.  In reality the sex worker receives only 40-60 percent of this salary. Hence there is a high amount of unpaid forced work involved in sex work. This shows that the commercial sex worker is at the most exploited and bottom most layer of a multi-layered process of capitalist accumulation.

SEX WORKERS AS

A LABOUR RESERVE

Karl Marx’s comment that the prostitutes are part of the “the lowest sediment of the relative surplus population” that forms a basis of the “reserve army of industrial labour” needs to be seen in the above context (Karl Marx Capital Volume III Chapter 25, p.444).   But economic exploitation and industrial labour relations are not the only reason for treating sex workers as a ‘labour reserve’. The sex workers also form a labour reserve for reproductive labour which reproduces patriarchal capitalist relations. The basic unit of patriarchal accumulation is the family within the capitalist system. The family itself is based on a traditional sexual division of labour in which the woman performs both a reproductive function that is both biological and social. It is biological because the wife produces the heir to the private property which keeps the processes of patriarchal capitalist accumulation intact. It is also a labour process that perpetuates existing patriarchal social and power relations which are essential to maintaining the larger capitalist system. 

In this context a woman, who sells her body and provides sexual services, is a participant in reproducing the social structures that affirm male domination. She does this by increasing the power of the man vis-à-vis his own wife.  Thus if a wife exercises her choice of refusing to perform her sexual duties, her husband can buy the same sexual services from the sex worker. By the same measure the man has a choice to buy sexual services from a sex worker in lieu of valuing the sexual labour of his own wife even if the wife is agreeable to perform her sexual labour. The situation may be compared with the existence of a reserve army of wage labourers who depress wages of workers in the economy. In the same way the sexual labour of the wife is devalued considerably through this commoditization of function of social reproduction, hence adversely affecting the status of the wife in the bourgeois family. In this sense the presence of the sex worker and her integration into the labour market depresses the value of the wife’s reproductive labour. In this sense sex workers or ‘prostitutes’ can be treated as a ‘labour reserve’ as far as reproductive labour of women is concerned.

Hence we see that sex work performs an important function in the maintenance and reproduction of the capitalist system. This function is both social and economic, and is based on the integration of the sex worker into larger processes of capitalist accumulation and adverse labour market integration. Given this situation it is necessary to ensure that the exploiters are punished and penalised whereas the sex worker is given her basic rights. Therefore the argument should be for the decriminalisation of the sex worker without legalisation of the industry. This means that the livelihood and security of the sex worker should be protected and her rehabilitation is ensured. This requires that alternative avenues of employment are created and that their skills are upgraded so that they can make an informed choice about their career options. Further infrastructure and programme to rehabilitate rescued women and minors should be formulated on an urgent basis. At the same time a stringent application of the law should be advocated for brothel owners and those who facilitate human trafficking. Such an understanding will decriminalise the sex worker and target the illegal commercial sex work industry.