The Limits of Bourgeois Reformism in the Debate on Sex Work and the Commodification of Intimacy
Benjamin Weil’s article, despite its focus on inequality, precarity, and platform economy hierarchies, remains firmly within the realm of bourgeois reformism. Its goal is the ongoing survival of capitalism, presented more benignly with an “inclusive” regulatory approach. Using the language of solidarity and rights, Weil’s suggestions essentially amount to requesting that the capitalist state better oversee the exploitation it already oversees.[1]
To grasp why this framework remains politically sterile, it is essential to start from the Marxist view that the commodification of human intimacy is not an anomaly but a fundamental aspect of capitalist social relations.
The Commodification of Intimacy: A Product of Capitalist Social Relations
The article’s core slogan—“sex work is work”—is viewed as a political goal, meant to be recognised through legislation and state support. However, while this view helps defend against criminalisation, it hides a deeper truth: under capitalism, all things are transformed into work because they become commodities. The real question isn’t whether selling sexual services counts as "work," but rather the social system that forces people to sell their bodies, time, emotions, and innermost abilities to get by.
Marx and Engels vividly outlined this dynamic. In The Communist Manifesto, the authors argue that the bourgeoisie has reduced human relationships to self-interest and monetary exchange, converting all human worth into “exchange value.” The rise of OnlyFans does not signal a democratisation of pornography. Still, it continues this logic into the most personal areas of life, driven by algorithms, payment systems, and the global economy. The platform economy doesn't free people; it monetises their activities. It doesn't give power; it extracts it. It doesn't promote democracy; it creates stratification.
The Pseudo‑Left’s Framework: Reform Without Revolution
Benjamin Weil accurately points out the incoherence of the “sex worker” label and the absurd spectacle of celebrities using the slogan for their own branding. However, his proposed solution — “solidarity from top to bottom” and “permanent protections” provided by the capitalist state — leads to a political dead end.
The capitalist state does not serve as a neutral protector of rights; instead, it functions as a tool for class domination. Its laws—such as FOSTA-SESTA and the Earn It Act—have repeatedly increased efforts to criminalise, monitor, and marginalise sex workers. Asking this state for protection is like requesting the arsonist to control the fire.
This represents the typical approach of identity-based reformism: recognising a genuine social harm and attempting to fix it within the existing system that causes it. It struggles to conceive of a world beyond capitalism and advocates only for kinder management of capitalist exploitation.
What the Article Cannot Theorise: Inequality as a Structural Feature, Not a Distortion
The article criticises how earnings are concentrated among the top 1 per cent of creators, highlights the racial biases embedded in platform algorithms, and discusses the gap between celebrity “sex workers” and those pushed into online sexual labour out of economic necessity. However, it views these issues as distortions within an otherwise legitimate industry.
This is a significant misconception. These inequalities are not exceptions but rather the usual operation of capitalism. The gig economy—exemplified by OnlyFans—is capitalism in its most current and pure form: removing employer responsibilities, fragmenting workers, and transferring all risks to individuals.
David Walsh’s analysis of singer Kate Nash’s shift to OnlyFans highlights a broader social issue: a society that marginalises its artists, pushing them into pornography out of shame and neglect. This also reflects the millions who, during the pandemic, turned to online sexual work—not because they felt empowered, but because capitalism provided no alternative for their survival.
The pseudo-left uses terms like “agency,” “choice,” and “bodily autonomy” to mask underlying coercion. It presents economic pressure as a form of self-expression.
The “Sex‑Positive” Industry: A Pseudo‑Left Apologia for Capitalist Degradation
Today, few ideological groups are as reactionary yet as skillfully marketed as the NGO and academic “sex-positive" industry labelled as "progressive." Operating under the guise of empowerment, autonomy, and liberation, this scene acts as a political cleanser: it disguises capitalist exploitation as a colourful array of “choices." This sector serves as the ideological extension of a large commercial system that gains from turning intimacy into a commodity, fragmenting social life, and capitalising on the desperation of millions.
Rather than contesting the social pressures that force people to commodify their bodies, the sex-positive industry instead celebrates this tendency as a form of self-expression. It serves as an ideal ideological partner to a system that has turned every aspect of human capability—physical, emotional, and sexual—into a marketable good.
The Ideological Function of “Sex Positivity”
The sex-positive framework didn't arise as a bold critique of capitalist morality. Instead, it functions as a market-friendly rebrand of sexual commodification. Its main principles — “agency,” “choice,” and "empowerment” — are directly borrowed from neoliberal ideology. These same ideas are applied to defend zero-hour contracts, gig-economy insecurity, and the reduction of social protections.
When NGOs, academics, and media personalities promote "sex positivity," it often comes across as a moral obligation: people are expected to embrace the commodification of intimacy, or else be labelled prudish, conservative, or "anti-sex," which is a severe criticism in this context. This does not represent true liberation. Instead, it acts as a form of censorship against dissent, all in the interest of capitalism.
The NGO‑Academic Complex: A New Clerisy of Capitalist Morality
The sex-positive industry depends on a complex network of NGOs, foundations, university departments, and media outlets. Their funding comes from sources like corporate philanthropy, tech companies, and state-aligned foundations, underscoring their class affiliation. Instead of opposing capitalism, they act as its ideological subcontractors.
These institutions primarily perform three roles: They depoliticise exploitation by presenting sexual commodification as just another form of 'work,' thereby concealing the underlying coercive structures that force millions into it. They individualise systemic issues by framing poverty, unemployment, and social neglect as personal “choices” that lead to entry into the industry. Additionally, they lend moral legitimacy to capitalist platforms, with companies like OnlyFans and Pornhub described as “empowering tools' instead of profit-driven entities that benefit from human desperation. This creates an ideological framework that turns capitalist exploitation into a lifestyle brand.
The Academic Wing: Postmodern Apologetics for Exploitation
Scholars supporting the sex-positive industry—mainly from gender studies and postmodern theory—have developed a language that obscures exploitation. Their terminology mixes Foucauldian micro-politics, intersectional terms, and neoliberal voluntarism. For example: coercion is called “choice,” economic desperation is labelled “agency,” alienation is described as “self-expression,” and platform exploitation is termed “entrepreneurship.” This is not genuine scholarship but ideological obscuration.
These scholars view the capitalist market as a neutral space where people negotiate meaning, identity, and pleasure. They are unable to imagine social relations beyond the commodity form because their entire theoretical framework rests on rejecting the concept of class.
NGOs and the Business of “Empowerment”
The NGO sector has realised that promoting "sex positivity” is a profitable brand. They offer numerous workshops, conferences, “empowerment” seminars, and consulting services. Although they claim to "support sex workers," their true role is to divert discontent from class struggle, focusing instead on seeking state recognition, regulatory changes, and philanthropic funding. Their political outlook is rooted in sustaining capitalism, masked with an inclusive, rainbow-colored image. Rather than fighting exploitation, they tend to manage it.
The Pseudo‑Left’s Role: Sanitising the Market
The pseudo-left, which includes the DSA-influenced scene in the US, the NGO-Labourist groups in Britain, and similar organisations worldwide, has fervently embraced sex-positive ideology. This change is deliberate. These groups have abandoned their socialist roots and now prioritise lifestyle, identity, and personal expression over the goal of dismantling capitalist property systems.
For these individuals, turning intimacy into a commodity isn’t seen as a social tragedy but as a form of “resistance.” They praise the entrepreneurial “creativity” of OnlyFans creators, ignoring broader problems like unemployment, declining wages, and weak social safety nets that push people toward these platforms. Their viewpoint promotes recognising, regulating, and even celebrating exploitation instead of eliminating it.
What the Sex‑Positive Industry Cannot Admit
The sex-positive movement often overlooks the essential fact that prostitution, pornography, and the commercialisation of intimacy are rooted in a class society. Engels showed that these issues emerge alongside private property and the oppression of women. They are not timeless, natural, or solely expressions of freedom; rather, they are manifestations of alienation.
Accepting this would mean recognising that true liberation depends on dismantling capitalism, which would immediately cut the sex-positive industry off from its sources of funding, institutional backing, and ideological roots. Therefore, they hold on to the illusion that the market can be made more humane, that exploitation can serve as a form of empowerment, and that commodification can lead to liberation.
The Marxist Position: Abolition, Not Celebration
Marxists oppose the core idea of the sex-positive industry: that turning intimacy into a commodity aligns with human freedom. Their goal isn’t to sanitise or destigmatise exploitation but to eliminate the social relations that enable it.
A socialist society, characterised by collective ownership and democratic control of the means of production, would remove the economic pressures that push people into commodified sexual labour. It would establish the material basis for truly free human relationships, free from monetary influence. The sex-positive industry struggles to envision such a society. Marxists are actively working to create it.
Conclusion: The Pseudo‑Left’s Moral Bankruptcy
The NGO-academic sex-positive industry does not truly promote liberation. Instead, it acts as a complex ideological tool that justifies capitalist exploitation by masquerading as empowerment. Its role is to persuade individuals to accept their own degradation, turning structural coercion into a matter of personal choice, and to frame the commodification of intimacy as a victory for autonomy.
Marxists oppose this reactionary politics by advocating for the struggle for socialism, which is the only way to create a society where people no longer have to sell their bodies, emotions, or intimacy to get by.
The Historical Materialist Perspective: Prostitution as a Product of Class Society
Engels, in The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, argued that prostitution and the sexual double standard are not innate aspects of human existence but are shaped by class society — particularly the monogamous family structure that emerged alongside private property. The commercialisation of sexuality is inherently linked to the broader commodification of labour.
Viewing sex work as a fixed, natural category means abandoning the perspective of historical materialism. Alternatively, seeing it as a legitimate industry in need of improved regulation implies accepting the enduring nature of capitalist social relations.
The Real Solution: Abolition, Not Sanitisation
The working class cannot attain liberation by simply regulating how their bodies are commodified. The fight is not just for a “safe home to sell” sexual services, but for a society where nobody is forced to sell intimate access to their body.
This calls for more than just legislative change; it necessitates dismantling the capitalist system that equates all human interactions with exchange value. A socialist overhaul — including ending private ownership of production means and empowering the working class with democratic control over the economy — is essential for ending prostitution and the commercialisation of intimacy. Only in such a society can human relationships be freed from the cash nexus and reconstituted based on equality, solidarity, and genuine freedom.
The article’s call to “instate the obvious” flips reality. What needs to be established is not just acknowledging that “sex work is work,” but realising that a society based on the commodification of everything — including human intimacy — should be dismantled. Reform efforts cannot resolve capitalism’s contradictions; they can only contain them. Marxists’ role is not to humanise exploitation but to eliminate it.
[1] Sex Work is (Gig) Work: Assessing the OnlyFans effect: Benjamin Weil
The Baffler, MAY-JUN 2022, No. 63 (MAY-JUN 2022), pp. 78-86
BBC investigation into OnlyFans exposes the brutal reality of platform capitalism — and the political forces seeking to conceal it
“What sort of society drives its artists into pornography? One that does not need virtually any of them—is, in fact, ashamed of them, and wishes them to be ashamed too. It wishes the artists had the same view of themselves that it does—as scoundrels capable of any degradation. After all, there is always the danger one of these “scoundrels” may hit a nerve with the public and expose the rottenness of the social order before tens of millions.”[1]
David Walsh
"The community of women is a condition which belongs entirely to bourgeois society and which today finds its complete expression in prostitution. But prostitution is based on private property and falls with it. Thus, communist society, instead of introducing a community of women, in fact abolishes it."
Frederick Engels— The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State
"If you expel prostitution from society, you will unsettle everything on account of lusts."
Saint Augustine
The worst part about prostitution is that you're obliged not to sell sex only, but your humanity. That's the worst part of it: that what you're selling is your human dignity, not really so much in bed, but in accepting the agreement - in becoming a bought person.
Kate Millett
A BBC investigation has inadvertently torn the veil from one of the most profitable and ideologically protected sectors of the platform economy: the sexual content industry centred on OnlyFans. What the documentary reveals — and what it desperately attempts to obscure — is the operation of a system of exploitation inseparable from the social order defended by the British ruling class and its media apparatus.[2]
The investigation documents a world in which women are coerced, threatened, physically assaulted, and financially drained by predatory “managers” who openly describe their method as the “pimp method.” One agent, following a business model discussed in public Telegram forums, threatened to have a woman and her daughter “written off” before sending masked men to strangle her in her own home. As this article notes this is not an aberration but the norm: “he is following a business model that is discussed openly in these forums.”
Yet the BBC’s framing is entirely predictable. It isolates the most grotesque abuses, invokes the language of “modern slavery,” and calls for regulatory tinkering — all to prevent any examination of the capitalist foundations of the industry.
A platform built on the commodification of human intimacy
OnlyFans, owned by Fenix International, generated $684 million in pre-tax profits last year. Its business model is simple: extract a 20 per cent rent from the sale of sexualized images and interactions, while disclaiming responsibility for the conditions under which this content is produced. The platform “takes its 20 per cent cut and washes its hands of everything else.”
This is the purest expression of the rentier logic of platform capitalism. OnlyFans does not produce content; it extracts value from the labour of others. It does not employ creators; it parasitises them. It does not police exploitation; it creates the conditions in which exploitation becomes the norm.
The OFM Empire Telegram group, with 24,000 members, functions as an open training ground for predatory extraction. Agents take 50–70 per cent of creators’ earnings, demand full account access, impose fines for leaving contracts, and enforce compliance through threats and violence. This is not a fringe phenomenon. It is the informal enforcement arm of a platform that relies on the atomization and desperation of its workforce.
The BBC’s ideological function: to contain, not expose
The BBC’s response exemplifies bourgeois journalism confronting the fallout of its social structure. The documentary references the Online Safety Act — a broad censorship tool aimed at suppressing political dissent — and features an interview with the UK’s anti-slavery commissioner, who describes the issue as “modern slavery.”
This framing is politically significant. Calling it “modern slavery” portrays extreme exploitation as a rare crime rather than a fundamental feature of capitalism. This allows the state to target a few offenders while leaving the economic forces that compel women into the industry unchallenged. The BBC’s stance “individualises exploitation, prosecutes the worst offenders, and leaves the economic structure that produces the desperation intact.” In doing so, the BBC isn’t exposing the system; it’s managing public outrage to ensure the system’s continuation.
The pseudo left’s role.
The BBC's probe into OnlyFans has triggered the expected reaction from the pseudo-left circle surrounding the Labour Party, NGOs, and the 'sex-positive' academic industry. Fearing that revelations of coercion, violence, and exploitative middlemen could threaten their rallying cry “sex work is work,” they have swiftly come to the platform economy's defence with fervour often seen among junior allies of capitalism.
Their stance is not just incorrect; it is politically regressive, lacking in theoretical credibility, and socially harmful. The so-called pseudo-left argues that the abuses reported by the BBC — including women being threatened, strangled, extorted, and robbed by “managers” employing the “pimp method” — are caused by too little regulation, not capitalism itself. Their repeated answer is always the same: increased oversight, more NGOs, and expanded “labour rights” for an industry fundamentally based on turning human intimacy into commodities.
This is not Marxism; it represents the ideology of the petty-bourgeois professional class, which sees commodification not as a social disaster but as a career opportunity. The pseudo-left views OnlyFans creators as ‘entrepreneurs’ needing better protections, and uses terms like “choice” and “agency which reflect the upper-middle-class worldview. This reflects the pseudo-left’s class stance: a segment disconnected from the working class and uninterested in challenging the profit-driven system.
“Sex work is work”: the slogan of capitalist realism.
The phrase “sex work is work”, often associated with the pseudo-left, is not an innovative idea; rather, it exemplifies capitalist realism—the notion that all human interactions must become commodities, and opposing this is seen as prudish or anti-sex. However, the women featured in the BBC documentary were not acting out of genuine ‘agency.’ Instead, economic hardship pushed them into an industry designed to profit from their bodies. The platform itself deliberately blurs the line between ‘content creation’ and outright sexual exploitation.”
The pseudo-left’s claim that this is merely another form of labour is comparable to the justification of child labour in the 19th century: “They choose to work. They need the money. Who are we to judge?” This is not liberation but capitulation. Their support for OnlyFans is deliberate, reflecting the material interests of a class that has embedded itself into the commodification of identity, sexuality, and self-presentation.
In this class, commodification is portrayed as empowerment, precarity as flexibility, exploitation as entrepreneurship, and the market as the definitive measure of value. These ideas serve as ideological tools of neoliberalism, framing capitalist relations around concepts such as “consent,” “agency,” and “self-expression.”
The women from the working class featured in the documentary — facing threats, assaults, and financial exploitation — are absent from the pseudo-left’s perspective. They serve as uncomfortable reminders that capitalism is not a space for self-promotion but a system rooted in coercion.
The pseudo left’s political function: to neutralise opposition to capitalism
The pseudo-left is essential in maintaining the stability of the capitalist system. By claiming that exploitation can be defined as “safe,” “ethical,” or “empowering,” they shift blame away from the system itself and onto individual bad actors. This tactic is similar to the BBC’s ideological strategy, which “individualises exploitation, prosecutes the worst offenders, and leaves the economic structure that produces the desperation intact.”
The pseudo-left adopts a progressive veneer, condemning 'pimp managers” but defending the platform that allows them. They criticise violence yet endorse the market that necessitates it. They push for regulation but oppose any challenge to the commodification of the human body. Their politics are not reformist but rather counter-revolutionary.
The Marxist position: abolition, not sanitisation
The Marxist view is straightforward: turning human intimacy into a commodity isn't a problem that rules can fix. It originates from social forces that erode stable jobs, weaken cultural work, and push millions into precarious survival strategies. “No amount of regulation can make the commodification of the human body humane.”
The pseudo-left opposes this stance because it dismisses Marxism, class analysis, and the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism. It also rejects the idea that human relations should be freed from market forces. Instead, it functions as an ideological cover for the very system responsible for the horrors reported by the BBC. The working class must oppose the pseudo-left’s attempt to normalise exploitation. Fighting against the platform economy—such as OnlyFans, Uber, Deliveroo, Amazon, and the broader digital rentier capitalism—requires a revolutionary agenda: expropriating tech monopolies, abolishing the market in human intimacy, reimagining culture and labour as public goods, and building an independent socialist movement.
Predictably, the pseudo-left aligned with the Labour Party and NGOs will claim that “sex work is work,” asserting that the core issue is stigma and insufficient regulation. This stance effectively concedes to capitalism, cloaked in radical rhetoric. It normalises and accepts the commodification of deeply personal human relations as inevitable.
It views the OnlyFans creator as an “entrepreneur” in need of better labour protections, ignoring the fact that most women join the platform due to economic coercion. The document succinctly highlights this: “The language of ‘choice’ and ‘agency’ is the ideology of the upper-middle class, for whom OnlyFans might be a lucrative side hustle. For Rebecca from South Wales, it was a trap. “The pseudo left’s celebration of 'agency' is the moral alibi of the market. It is the same logic that hails Uber drivers as “micro entrepreneurs” while they sleep in their cars.
The BBC investigation should be viewed within the broader decline of sustainable income in the cultural and creative sectors. As highlighted even well-known artists like Kate Nash now incur losses on each performance and resort to platforms like OnlyFans to finance their tours. This is not due to personal shortcomings but results from factors such as streaming services paying just $0.00173 per play, touring expenses increasing by 40% since the pandemic, 80% of music revenue being captured by only 1% of artists, and the monopolisation of cultural production by a few large corporations.
Given these conditions, turning to sexual commodification is not a voluntary choice but a forced response to the collapse of stable, socially supported cultural work. OnlyFans is not an exception; it represents the inevitable outcome of neoliberal cultural production.
Why can't regulation humanise exploitation? The BBC’s suggestion of increasing regulation is deceptive. Regulation assumes that the market is legitimate, but the market for sexualized images isn’t a flawed part of the system; it’s a lucrative and growing sector of capitalism. The violence Rebecca endured isn’t an accident; it’s the way this market enforces itself, demanding continuous content creation even in desperate conditions.
“No regulation can humanise the commodification of the human body." The state cannot eliminate this exploitation because it is inherently designed to uphold the market. The socialist solution: eliminate the conditions that lead to commodification.
The only way forward is to eliminate the social conditions that force women into the platform economy, such as unstable jobs, social isolation, cultural monopolisation, and the reduction of all human interactions to market exchanges. This entails expropriating tech monopolies, socialising digital platforms, transforming cultural labour into a public good, and forming an independent political movement for workers. The violence reported by the BBC is not an isolated incident; it is capitalism laid bare without its ideological mask.
