Latest editorial
by Nana Backland, Merseyside Morning Star Readers & Supporters Group
The Tories introduced the 50% strike ballot threshold to make industrial action harder. MATT WRACK argues that a Labour government has no justification for leaving it on the statute book
In the wake of Ann Widdecombe’s murder, JOHN GREEN wonders whether the government will really get to grips with the root cause of these attacks on our MPs
The new PM’s opening addresses offered hope, council homes and reform — but little detail on how any of it will be delivered, warns CLAUDIA WEBBE
Nature as well as society works dialectically, asserts the Marx Memorial Library and Workers’ School
PROSTITUTION is at the heart of women’s oppression. The commercial sex trade is both cause and consequence of men’s greater economic, political and legal status — although it is absurd to refer to “sex” in the case of the sex trade when desire is not mutual and only money is the facilitator.
At the junction of patriarchy and capitalism the forces sustaining the global prostitution industry interlock, preying, as Pala Molisa says: “On women already marginalised by class and race … [feeding] off the despair, poverty and hopelessness that global capitalism is producing and that afflicts the lives of young people, especially indigenous women and people of colour.”
Prostitution’s underlying assumption is of men’s entitlement to demand sexual access, but is this an unquestionable right?
ANNA FISHER explores what would it mean for women’s equality and public safety if Britain embraces full commercialisation of the sex trade
The legacy of socialist feminists such as Alexandra Kollontai challenges us today to confront an uncomfortable truth: framing prostitution as empowerment lets the abusers of the Epstein class off the hook, warns HELEN O’CONNOR
As Ash Regan’s Unbuyable Bill sparks debate in Scotland, the real issue remains unaddressed: a digitalised sex industry and a neoliberal economy that repackages exploitation as empowerment while leaving women’s material conditions unchanged, argues LAUREN HARPER
AMANDA J QUICK warns about the ever-expanding influence of the sex industry – and the harm it unleashes on both the women involved and society collectively, especially the young