but what prompted professor ghodsee's op-ed, book and course is what she sees as a particular problempitalism:sh relations as commodities to be bought and sold.eb ever hear of ate called seeking.com, which matches young women, so"lled "sugar babies," cessful older men, or" sugar daddies?" it boasts 10 million active users. >> on this website, one of the pages, which is directly targetedo university students, is called "sugar baby university." it has a debt clock that is increasing in real time. and the language of the website is, "don't go into debt when you can be somebody's sugar baby instead." and take the time and affection that you might otherwise spend with random hookups ons, you can actually get paid for that time. >> reporter: time is money, proto-capitalist ben franklin pointed out in 1748. but money cuts the bonds ofti human reships wrote karl marx exactly a century later, and capitalism can commodify everything, says ghodsee, including sex. but no commodities at all! >> women were very much burdened with lack of bare necessities, for example. you go to supermarket, there i

but not so, ghodsee argues, under socialist countries we typically demonize, like east germany, whichted gender equality in s newsreels. >> a really key part of what was going on in the statsocialist regimes of 20th century eastern europe is that they were fully incorporating women into t labor force, and that allowed women to achieve a measure of economic independence that was really rather unparalleled. >> reporter: so std es that coerlitical conformity and ora planned economy also ed policies to emancipate women. >> so, for example, ing like maternity insurance. what we would think of as job- avotected, paid maternity or kindergartens and creches that are basically available to all women, federally funded or nation so these were all policies that were put in place to reduce the economic burden on women for care work that is done in the private sphere.or >> rr: but wait a second, socialism? state control of production and politics? didn't the berlin wall's toppling squash that dream? n anyonetalgic for the soviet union, to many americans, socialism is political devil worship. but ot