Let’s say, as Foucault did, that “capitalism” repressed all forms of sexuality outside of the context of procreative monogamy because sexual activity made use of energy that “capitalism” would rather have at its own disposal in the form of labor, and that procreative monogamous sexuality was only tolerated because it brought more labor power into the world. If “capitalism” has that kind of power (without having a central organizing/orchestrating force other than the shared interests of capitalists), then does it not stand to reason that “capitalism” reasserted its control over sexuality in the wake of the “sexual revolution” by coming to terms with the fact that humans were going to want to have illicit sex and creating a space in which that sex could occur, provided that it was commodified? Foucault made the argument that “capitalism” allowed illicit sex to occur only in the brothel, but I’m sure if he were alive he’d see the growth of the porn industry as capitalism finding a way to assimilate and mitigate the threat of the sexual revolution. My only problem with this whole formulation is the use of “capitalism” as a subject agent in a sentence, which makes the whole thing too simplistic. Maybe it makes more sense to say that “capitalists” saw their best interest in repressing non-procreative sex outside the marital chamber because the nuclear family did an excellent job of preserving the labor order that it needed to function in its original form, and thus that capitalists rather than capitalism saw the threat of the sexual revolution on the horizon and responded to it by trying to find a way to turn it into a product to sell to those who fomented it, thus sucking all of the power out of the movement and arrogating it to themselves.
