hydrarchist writes:

Here is the last of a set of three articles on Sex from the anarchist journal Organize. The previous two were "Interview with An Anarchist Dominatrix" and "Interview with the International Union of Sex Workers".

Anarchism and Sex

Safe, Free, Diverse and Consensual

Within the broader anarchist movement,
attitudes to sex and sexuality tend to be pretty varied.

Anarchist views on sex can range from the
idea that `anything goes' between
consenting adults, to the more traditional
approaches of what constitutes free
love between individuals. One thing these
diverse opinions do have in common,
however, is the idea of sexual freedom and
the opposition to sexual exploitation.
Nevertheless, being pro sexual freedom
and anti sexual exploitation is open to
wide interpretation and can encompass
diverse, and sometimes conflicting,
analyses from one anarchist to the next.

Anonymous Comrade writes:

"Marx's Intellectual Legacy

Marx After Communism

From The Economist print edition, Dec 19th 2002

As a system of government, communism is dead or dying. As a system of ideas, its future looks secure

When Soviet communism fell apart towards the end of the 20th century, nobody could say that it had failed on a technicality. A more comprehensive or ignominious collapse -- moral, material and intellectual -- would be difficult to imagine. Communism had tyrannised and impoverished its subjects, and slaughtered them in the tens of millions. For decades past, in the Soviet Union and its satellite countries, any allusion to the avowed aims of communist doctrine -- equality, freedom from exploitation, true justice -- had provoked only bitter laughter. Finally, when the monuments were torn down, statues of Karl Marx were defaced as contemptuously as those of Lenin and Stalin. Communism was repudiated as theory and as practice; its champions were cast aside, intellectual founders and sociopathic rulers alike.

hydrarchist writes "Here's another interesting piece on organising in the sex industry, once again its from Issue 59 of Organise pubnlished by the Anarchist Federation.

Not in my backyard

This article sets out some of the main problems faced by sex workers in their
relationship with the State, and concludes with a brief interview with Jenn
Clamen of the International Union of Sex Workers.

You’re self-employed, running a legal
small business on a tight budget and
want to advertise your services. For
most, a card in the local shop window
or phone box might be just the ticket.
But not if you’re a sex worker, it
seems.

Clamp down

Though prostitution is legal, soliciting
on the streets isn’t. Until the Criminal
Justice & Police Act came into force in
2001, the prostitute’s tactic of
advertising sex by putting cards in
phone boxes was legal too - not
anymore. It’s estimated that 13m
cards are distributed across Britain
each year and in 2001 BT removed
150,000 from phone boxes in central
London alone - though it didn’t stop
schoolboys swapping cards in
playgrounds when the Pokemon craze
died down! Apart from the waste of
money, carding is now attracting
severe penalties as the police and local
councils clamp down.The police pose
as clients and get the addresses of
people selling sex. They are visited,
warned, often the landlord is informed.
With most landlords afraid of being
charged with abetting prostitution,
such a warning usually ends in
eviction. The woman (and it usually is
a woman, sometimes with children) is
moved on again and again. Their
livelihoods are lost as it takes time to
re-build your client base. Immigration
officials often accompany police, and
women working illegally are issued a
deportation order and dumped at the
nearest airport. Sometimes the only
way they can raise the airfare is to
head back into town and go back on
the streets. If they have been
trafficked (smuggled into the country)
they may still owe the traffickers their
fare and be in immediate danger here
and in their home countries. Cards at
flats are confiscated and the card boys,
if caught, face heavy fines, up to
£1,000, or 28 days in jail.

hydrarchist writes: This article was found on the excellent Class Against Class site.

The Working-Class Struggle
Against the Crisis:

Self-Reduction
Of Prices in Italy

Bruno Ramirez

(BRUNO RAMIREZ, was an editor of Zerowork, in which this article, written in February 1975, first appeared. This version is from Radical America Vol. 10 no. 4)

With an inflation rate of over 25%, widespread unemployment, and increasing repression, Italy's current economic crisis shows how far capital is willing to push its attack against the living conditions of the working class.