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Green_Mountain_Makhno wrote

I think I get what you're saying, and I totally agree that taking on someone's emotional burdens and helping people work through intimacy, and sex itself is performing emotional labor. I support that idea.

When I think of abolishing the value form altogether, and maybe this is outside the scope of this discussion, but I think we must also abolish trade. If I trade you this for that, we are both establishing a value for those things and commodifying them, whatever they may be. If that trade is a fixed sink for sex, now we are both commodifying our labor and putting a value on it. For that reason, I am of the opinion that we need to think of all of our labor as basically mutual aid and solidarity. Maybe I purposely grow more food than I need and share it openly with any who need. When I have a need I put a call out to the community, and someone with those skills helps me. You do the same.

This can still mean that you and I have different jobs/roles in the commune, but that we realize that what we are all contributing is important - I will grow a bunch of food, and Steve will fix peoples plumbing and Diane will build tools, and you will help people cope with emotions/intimacy/sexual needs. And maybe that looks very similar to what you said, but I think the idea of trading this for that needs to go in order for us to really abolish capitalism. We share in the burdens and joys of life freely, not trading or commodifying our labor, but giving it as solidarity and mutual aid, and receiving the labor of others freely.

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GaldraChevaliere wrote

Where I feel sketch about that in relation to some idealized commune is that if we treat my body and my mental health as something to be given freely, it creates a sort of entitlement to those services. Like, yes, I can refuse and I have more protections than I do under capital, but while I don't see sex as something particularly sacred, I'd be very creeped out by a guy approaching me asking that I fuck him as mutual aid because of the power dynamics that existed before the commune and will continue to exist into its birth. Beyond that I'm sketch about utopian views of communism in general, because I feel like a lot of harm could come to me and my sisters if less well intentioned folk tried to frame it the way you're framing it right now. Like, I can't see it as an Eden where we'd be suddenly free from patriarchy and trans/misogyny just because of the Revolution or whatever.

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Green_Mountain_Makhno wrote

Those are all excellent points. I completely agree that just because capitalism is gone doesn't mean that all of the historical power dynamics and general bigotry/sexism/misogyny disappears, and feeling entitled to sex would be something that a "utopian" commune would have to address. I guess I don't know the best solution, and I definitely don't want to put people in dangerous or coercive or exploitative situations. I think that to expect the situation to exist where that danger is gone immediately is naive, and a comrade's safety is more important than theoretical purity.

Thanks for the excellent and thought provoking responses.

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