Eros and Alienation , Capitalism and the Making of Gendered Sexualities,
Alan Sears, 2025 Pluto Press
“Sexual liberation requires socialist revolution. Socialist revolution requires sexual revolution.”
This a fascinating deep dive into how capitalism shapes personal relationships.
Marxists have long focused on the oppression of women and the sexual division of labor as a prop for capitalism. Capitalists refuse to pay for the reproduction of the workforce that they need to exploit. They push the costs of reproduction onto the private family. An important way that capitalists justify this is through the sexist ideology of the woman’s role. Women are portrayed as naturally nurturing and oriented to child raising.
To back up the sexual division of labor and privatized reproduction, capitalism oppresses LGBTQ people since they do not fit into “proper” gender roles. Laws, employment practices, and social discrimination backs up the oppression of women and LGBTQ people.
All of this is true and important to understand. However, this book examines a deeper connection between capitalism and sexual alienation.
Capitalism and Sexual Alienation
“the antiqueer logic of capitalism derives from the alienation of labor at the heart of the system.”
Capitalism promotes the work ethic. Capitalists want workers to focus on creating surplus value. Too much pleasure can get in the way of the hard work that is the basis of exploitation. Capitalism has discouraged “drugs, sex and rock and roll”!
Sears expresses this dynamic of capitalism this way:
“ … the antiqueer logic of capitalism derives from the alienation of labor at the heart of the system. The alienation of labor …is founded on relations of compulsion and subordination that require the containment of eroticism.”(3)
And
“Erotic self-realization is separated from transformative life-making in conditions of alienation, organizing work and sex into purportedly distinct realms of existence and directing energies primarily toward subordinated labor.”(6)
Social Reproduction
“sexual contracts reproduce male dominance”
Alienation is not limited to wage labor. It impacts even housework and reproduction of children in the family:
“The impact of alienation in the private realm of unpaid or poorly paid reproductive labor does not result from direct capitalist control, but rather from the need to …perform subordinated labor to obtain access to the resources of lifemaking.”(5)
In traditional nuclear families the husband earns a wage or takes profit and supports his wife in return for her services in the home, child-rearing, housework etc. This dynamic applies in both heterosexual and gay households and no matter the gender of the worker in the home. The partner working at home is dependent on and subordinate to the wage earner.
However, in practice “Despite formal equality, sexual contracts reproduce male dominance” (74)
For an explanation of Social Reproduction Theory see:
https://firebrand.red/2025/08/why-marxists-need-to-understand-social-reproduction-theory/
“Social reproduction is the labor of replenishing and recreating the working class. Justified by oppressive gender ideology and “family values,” this work is essential to the maintenance of capitalism and has historically been forced on women without pay. Contrary to class-reductionists, Marxists should view social-reproductive labor as integral to the proletariat, and place high importance on the struggle for gender liberation.”
Transactional Sexuality
This is part of a general trend:
“Sexuality under conditions of alienation tends to become transactional as people face relentless pressure to offer up their core human capacities in exchange for access to resources to meet their wants and needs.”(7)
Sears explains that these current patterns were not dominant in previous historical periods:
“The containment of sexuality has played a crucial role in shaping contemporary relationships of social reproduction, which have increasingly been organized around sexual attraction as a core dynamic of relationship-formation. It is a relatively recent historical phenomenon largely dating to the twentieth century…”(10)
Alienation causes sexualization of commodities:
“we experience our broad-spectrum wants and needs for human connection as desire to be satiated through sexual coupling and/or consumption of sexualized commodities.” (10)
Sexual Revolution Requires Socialist Revolution
“Sexual liberation is needed by all people, not just LGBTQ people”
The author notes that erotic containment is rooted in the alienation of capitalism. This means that:
“Sexual revolution is woven into the fabric of this broader revolutionary process, as erotic containment is a fundamental feature of capitalist alienation.” (19)f
Sexual liberation requires socialist revolution!
Likewise, socialist revolution requires sexual revolution:
“sexual revolution was a crucial element in the development of workers’ democracy and self-regulation as opposed to governance from above.”(141)
This point is important in building the movement to overthrow capitalism. Sexual liberation is needed by all people, not just LGBTQ people. This understanding can help undermine bigotry and create more unity across genders and sexual orientations.
What would a sexual revolution be like?
“ a real sexual revolution will actually transform our erotic lives rather than incrementally expanding the realm of normative expressions of gender and sexuality. This kind of revolution will lead us beyond the bounds of what we can realistically envision right now, because our imagination is generally based on our experiences of a specific set of social relations.”(151)
Historical Regimes of Sexuality
“The most effective social policy regimes have balanced productivism with pleasure..”
The author presents a materialist analysis of the development of different forms of sexual relations. In the late 1800s the capitalist emphasis was on repression to ensure the dominance of exploitation and accumulation. Homosexuality as a defined category was created by the development of capitalism, yet it was repressed to shore up the nuclear family. Mass pressure from the working class along with the need to promote working class consumption led to sexual liberalism still conditioned by capitalist alienation.
Sears outlines phases of the development of homosexuality:
“ the invert dominant before the broad welfare state (roughly 1870–1940), the gay dominant generally corresponding to the broad welfare state (roughly 1940–1990) and the homonormative-dominant associated with the neo-liberal lean state (roughly 1990 to the present. (98)
Though capitalism always rests on alienation and repression of erotic life, its needs vary in different periods:
“The most effective social policy regimes have balanced productivism with pleasure, so that the toll of alienated labor is matched in certain kinds of potential reward or moments of escape. The complex balance between sexual repression and the unleashing of desire is dynamic rather than fixed, to contain working-class resistance and motivate participation in alienated labor.”(83)
Will Sexual Liberalism Continue?
“the trend is toward maximizing exploitation by increasing oppression and suppressing sexual and gender freedom. This shift flows from the current requirements of capitalism.”
In an otherwise excellent book, there is one major flaw. The book implies that the current stage of market oriented sexual liberalism is more permanent than it is likely to be, though the author admits that this could change.
The Trump administration is engaging in a wide-ranging attack on all oppressed people. It attacks immigrants, women and people of color (abortion, “DEI”) and especially Trans people. The attack on Trans people has been part of the attack on all LGBTQ people. Even same sex marriage is now likely to be overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court.
This is not a deviation from the norm unique to Trump and MAGA. It is pursued by all capitalist parties to one degree or another. This is a trend across the world. In the balance between productivism and pleasure to motivate wage labor, the dynamic is toward maximizing exploitation by increasing oppression and suppressing sexual and gender freedom. This shift flows from the current requirements of capitalism.
Capitalists need to emphasize productivism today because of the long-term capitalist economic crisis caused by the downward pressure on profit rates. With no ready capitalist solution to this economic trend, the ruling class tries to ramp up the rate of exploitation. It tries to increase its profits by lowering wages and attacking the social wage.
One way to undercut working class resistance to increased exploitation is by dividing the working class by increasing oppression. Another way is to increase sexual repression to drive up the energy and time put into wage labor. This is a basis for the shift to the Right internationally.
This underscores the argument for socialist revolution that the book makes. We will need revolution not just to overcome the still alienated sexuality of sexual liberalism but also to eliminate the increased repression of intensified productivism.
This is an excellent book that opens up deep discussion of the issues raised. It is a thoroughly materialist account of the development of sexuality and gender focusing on LGBTQ issues but applicable to all forms of sexuality. It is a must-read for anyone interested in these issues.
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