THE MODE OF REPRODUCTION IN TRANSITION - A MARXIST-FEMINIST
ANALYSIS OF THE EFFECTS OF REPRODUCTIVE TECHNOLOGIES.
Martha E. Gimenez
Published in GENDER & SOCIETY, Vol. 5, No. 3 (September, 1991):334-350. Copyright, Gender & Society.
INTRODUCTION
Reproductive technologies today can be classified into four
kinds: those designed 1) to control fertility (e.g., birth control
pills); 2) to monitor and control labor and childbirth (e.g., ce-
sarean sections); 3) to monitor the quality of the fetus and pro-
vide pre-natal and neo-natal care (e.g., ultrasound and amniocen-
tesis); and 4) to help infertile and sub-fertile people to have
children who are genetically their own (e.g., in vitro fertili-
zation and artificial insemination) (Stanworth 1987, 10-11).
These technologies have always been the subject of legal, politi-
cal, and moral debates because they affect the terrain upon which
decisions about reproduction are made. Their usage has the
potential to alter the balance of power between individual men and
women and between women and institutional controls. They also
challenge long established assumptions about sexuality, repro-
duction, marriage and the family. Depending on the context, they
can be used to subvert the aims of state population policies.
Fertility control technologies allow people to control family
size and child spacing, or to avoid having children altogether.
While still controversial among some religious and political
groups, they nevertheless enjoy widespread social support; their
effects upon fertility, and on the separation of sexuality from
reproduction, are taken-for-granted aspects of modern life. On the
other hand, conceptive technologies such as AID and AIH (artifi-
cial insemination by donor or by the husband), surrogacy, IVF (in
vitro fertilization), and concomitant developments such as egg
"harvesting," freezing, and donation and embryo freezing, trans-
plant, and donation are producing qualitative changes in reproduc-
tion. Their economic, social and political implications have yet
to be fully understood.
In this essay, I shall be concerned mainly with the effects
of conceptive technologies. For the sake of brevity, I shall call
them NRTs (new reproductive technologies). Surrogacy and artifi-
cial insemination are not new; what is new is their increasing
demand and use in combination with the more recently developed IVF
and related technologies. In recent years, this has heightened
public awareness of their availability and effects. Given their
high cost and controversial nature, relatively few people are
economically and psychologically able to use the new technologies.
This, however, does not preclude the need to explore their impli-
cations; social practices which seem deviant and limited in their
scope today are often anticipations of future taken-for-granted
social patterns.
I look at the NRTs as sources of transformation of the mate-
rial conditions of reproduction and examine their effects from the
standpoint of Marxist-Feminist theory as I understand it (see, for
example, Gimenez 1975; 1978; 1980; 1982; 1987). The NRTs are an
example of the capital intensive approach to medicine typical of
advanced capitalism, where medical care is a commodity just like
any other. Like all technologies, NRTs have the potential to
change people's lives; their actual effects, however, depend on
the social and political context in which they are used. In a con-
text where gender inequality is already present, their negative
effects upon women, especially among the less privileged, are not
surprising. The NRTs, I will argue, constitute a change in the
forces of reproduction, creating the material basis for the emer-
gence of a mode of procreation which is separate from the mode of
social reproduction. Class divisions among women are likely to re-
sult in the oppression of working class women, to the extent their
participation in relations of procreation is not freely chosen
because of economic need and lack of desirable alternatives.
SOME FEMINIST VIEWS ON REPRODUCTIVE TECHNOLOGIES
The central feminist question is "...how and why are women
oppressed as women" (Hartmann 1985, 5)? The literature on repro-
ductive technologies answers this question from two standpoints:
a "men vs. women problematic" (patriarchy theories) or "dual-
systems" theories that examine the mutual interaction between
patriarchy and capitalism (e.g., Firestone 1971; Hartmann 1976;
Eisenstein 1979; Sargent, 1981). Rejection of the major premises
of Marxism (which gives the mode of production and changes thereof
a determinant role in historical change and social organization)
has produced analyses of patriarchy that see its origins outside
modes of production, attributing to patriarchy a determinant role
in history (Radical-Feminism) or a role equal to that of the mode
of production in determining historical change and social organi-
zation (Socialist-Feminism). Efforts to avoid "economic determin-
ism" and "class reductionism" unavoidably placed the origins of
sexual inequality outside history (e.g., in women's role in biolo-
gical reproduction and/or the sexual division of labor, mothering,
male psychology, or men's conscious interest in controlling
women's labor and/ or reproductive capacity). These views are
inherently problematic because no amount of historical or cross-
cultural research about differences in the empirical manifesta-
tions of patriarchy and no amount of theorizing about its inter-
action with capitalism can obliterate its ahistoricity and des-
criptive, rather than explanatory, value. To have the latter,
patriarchy should have a dynamic of its own, independent from
changes in the historical conditions within which it is found or
"socially constructed." (For a debate about "dual-systems"
theories see Sargent 1981; for Marxist-Feminist critiques see
Gimenez 1982; 1987; 1989; Burham and Louie 1985; Vogel 1986; for a
non-Marxist critique, see Middleton 1988, 41-45.)
Feminist thinking about reproductive technology reflects the
dominant paradigms within feminist thought: some writers stress
the role of patriarchy in oppressing women through the NRTs, while
others stress the interaction between patriarchy and capitalism.
Regardless of theoretical orientation, feminists share a common
concern with the fact that these technologies have undermined
hitherto taken-for-granted relationships between biology, women's
identity, and the meaning of motherhood.
Shulamith Firestone (1971) thought that technology would
liberate women from the burden of motherhood; today feminists are
divided in their assessment. Some have voiced an unqualified
rejection of modern conceptive and prenatal technologies (e.g.,
most of the essays in Arditti, Duelli-Klein and Minden 1984;
Corea, 1985; Spallone and Steinberg 1987). Others have combined
their critique with the recognition that they satisfy some women's
legitimate needs (e.g., Petchesky 1987; Rapp 1984; Rothman 1987a).
Some argue that these technologies have been created by men
("technodocs" and "pharmacrats") because of men's envy of women's
reproductive power and their desire to appropriate it for them-
selves. These men prey on the need for children created by
oppressive pronatalist ideologies and legitimize these technolo-
gies on the grounds that they meet the needs of infertile women.
Far from enhancing women's reproductive choices, feminist critics
argue, these technologies place women under male control. Further-
more, the technological fragmentation of the reproductive process
is mirrored in the fragmentation of women's experience of repro-
duction (i.e., as sources of the elements of the reproductive
process, sites for embryo development or transplant, or environ-
ments for fetal growth), as well as in the ways their bodies are
perceived. Women's needs and rights become subordinate to fetal
needs and rights protected by the medical establishment and the
state (Spallone and Steinberg 1987; Corea 1985).
Other feminists explore the consequences of the fact that
reproductive technologies are for sale and entail the commodifi-
cation of the process of reproduction and motherhood. They deplore
emergence of a value system uncritical of the commodification of
life. Today body parts can be sold, including those relevant to
the reproductive process, and children have become products whose
qualities we can choose (Rothman 1987a, 2; 1987b; Arditti 1987, 4).
The NRTs give parents the possibility to purchase children (through surrogacy) and elements of the reproductive process, and
to exert some control over child quality. This, in turn, has
given rise to another important theme within feminist literature
about the NRTs: their impact upon women's experience of pregnancy.
Prenatal diagnosis allows mothers to know if they are carrying a
fetus with genetic defects and to choose a healthy child of the
desired sex. This choice, however, entails a late abortion; the
painful "tentative pregnancy" is the price women in doubt about
the viability of their fetuses will have to pay. Some might
prefer not to know but, once technologies are developed, their use
becomes socially and medically expected and the right to know or
not, to use them or not, might be lost in the future. Technolo-
gies open and close doors; they increase and, at the same time,
narrow the choices women face while changing the relationship
between parents and children (Rothman 1984, 23-33; 1987a, 3-9).
The last theme I will examine in this section has to do with
conflicting views about the meaning of motherhood stated in the
literature. There is criticism of pronatalism (stressing the
social, not natural or instinctual basis for motherhood) and of
women with such a strong need for children that they are willing
to put up with the economic and psychological costs inherent in
the use of IVF. Surrogacy is criticized because it fragments
motherhood into, for example, egg donors, biological carriers, and
social rearers. Potentially, IVF has similar effects if used in
conjunction with other techniques. The biological need of social
rearers to mother (i.e.; women who pay for eggs or surrogacy to
have a child) receives the medical, legal and social approval de-
nied to the egg donors or surrogates who, in most cases, are also
the genetic mothers (e.g., Corea et al. 1987, 4; Raymond 1987,
62). Some argue that surrogates are the "real" mothers, although
technology has effectively "deconstructed" motherhood and could
eventually abolish it biologically with the development of arti-
ficial wombs (Stanworth 1987, 16). Others, however, are critical
of IVF with egg or embryo donation because it "permits the per-
petuation of the traditional and comforting definition of mother-
hood: the mother is the woman who delivers the child" (Laborie
1987, 51). The sharp division in feminist thought about these
issues is captured in these assessments of Mary Beth Whitehead's
claim to the child she bore under contract:
When she claimed her intimate connection to the child,
claimed that it is a part of her, it grew out of her flesh,
in her body... then she was accused of biological determinism
...Is there no language we can use to express the particular,
unique relationship that is pregnancy? Has feminism nothing
to offer Mary Beth Whitehead here? So often ... we have found
ourselves defending women's rights to be like men... to work
at men's jobs for men's pay. But what of our rights to be
women (Rothman 1987b, 314-315)?
Parenthood is not essentially biological. It is social: it
comes about when people develop social expectations and
assume responsibilities. Elizabeth Stern was an expectant
mother during the nine months of Mary Beth Whitehead's preg-
nancy ... To privilege Mary Beth Whitehead's claim is to
support the biological essentialism that justifies the sexual
division of labor and the definition of women first as child-
bearers (Brenner 1987, 4).
These statements capture two different forms of social conscious-
ness that reflect social and political divisions among U.S. women,
as well as radically different theoretical assumptions about the
nature of motherhood: motherhood as a primarily social bond
or as a biologically grounded reality.
What could a Marxist-Feminist perspective add to the feminist
literature on the NRTs? How would it differ from feminist pers-
pectives? These are the questions I intend to answer in the
section that follows.
THE MARXIST-FEMINIST PERSPECTIVE
From a Marxist-Feminist perspective, as I understand it, the
fundamental feminist question is: what are the capitalist struc-
tures, processes, and contradictions which, at the level of the
mode of production, establish observed forms of gender inequality
in market and social relations? From this standpoint, gender ine-
quality is always historical in the Marxist sense, meaning that in
studying any aspect of social reality, one ought to focus not only
on the elements that it has in common with other periods but also
on those unique to the mode of production under consideration.
There is no production in general, because production is always
production at a given stage of social development. Likewise, there
is no gender inequality in general; gender inequality has causes
and structural supports specific to each mode of production and is
intrinsically related to other historical forms of inequality.
What matters, therefore, is not the chronological origin of gender
inequality, but the historical conditions of emergence and per-
sistence of gender inequality within a given mode of production.
For example, just as the fact that wage labor predates capitalism
is not helpful for understanding why it is the predominant capi-
talist form of labor, the fact that sexual divisions predate
capitalism is not helpful for understanding the causes and meaning
of gender inequality today (for the reasoning behind this argument
see Marx [1859] 1970, 189-193; Rosaldo 1980; Gimenez 1982;
Middleton 1988, 44-45).
My training as a sociologist makes me critical of expla-
nations which gave individual level variables the role of inde-
pendent variables in the creation of gender inequality as an
objective element of the social structure. Sociologically, women
and men are social beings; their differences in resources, power,
attitudes and behavior are dependent variables that have to be
explained. From the standpoint of Marxist theory, on the other
hand, people are "ensembles of social relations" (Marx [1845]
1976, 4) and, among these relations, the most crucial in determin-
ing historical identities and opportunities are the relationships
with nature, through labor, and through sexuality and procreation.
This standpoint does not imply a theoretical dualism: at the meta-
theoretical level of analysis, production (i.e., the exchanges
between humans and nature) is twofold. It entails the production
of things and the production of life (Engels [1884] 1972, 71).
Production presupposes reproduction: the reproduction of life,
biologically, physically and socially is part of the material
basis of social organization (Marx and Engels [1845] 1976, 31-32;
Engels [1884] 1972, 71-72). Historically (i.e., within a given
mode of production), whether or not the organization of production
determines the organization of reproduction depends on the level
of development of the productive forces and corresponding changes
in the social organization as a whole. Kinship was dominant in
pre-class societies, but the development of the productive forces
resulting in growth in the productivity of labor and, consequent-
ly, the possibility of surplus production, led to the emergence of
private property, social classes and the state, and a new kind of
social organization: "...a society in which the system of the
family is completely dominated by the system of property" (Engels
[1884] 1972, 72).
The historically specific structural determinants of gender
inequality under capitalism are located in the specifically capi-
talist articulation between production and reproduction, which
makes the latter dependent on the former. The structural determi-
nants, located at the level of analysis of the mode of production,
are conditions for empirically observable forms of male and female
activity and for the continuously reproduced effect of their
actions. At the level of market and social relations, men and
women engage in conscious, intentional activities through which,
while they make choices and build their lives, they unintention-
ally reproduce their conditions of existence. Structures are
reproduced constantly through the unanticipated consequences of
intentional behavior and the latter, in turn, is what it is
because of the structures that condition its possibility.
Non-Marxist social science is divided between voluntaristic
and deterministic perspectives. Feminist theory, as stated earlier
in this essay, tends to rest upon voluntaristic assumptions.
Marxism, on the other hand, given its historical materialist
premises, acknowledges the dialectical unity between agency and
structure, subject and object; socio-historical agency has an
objective social content and structures are embodied in socio-
historical agents. From this standpoint, the development of the
NRTs and their effects upon women and men and upon the mode of
reproduction cannot be solely explained in terms of the motives of
those who develop them, sell them or, once they are available,
purchase them. There is no male conspiracy to separate procreation
from its social, economic and legal integument in the mode of
reproduction in order to victimize women, nor are women blindly
falling into the victim role. The development of the NRTs is part
of the overall development of the productive forces, a Marxist
concept that refers to the growth in productivity and human
capacities inherent in the use of science and technology in the
process of production (see Bottomore et al. 178-180; Cohen 1983).
From a Marxist-Feminist perspective, analysis of the NRTs has
to go beyond what is empirically observable: e.g., relationships
between women and their babies, donors or sellers of the elements
of the reproductive process and recipients or buyers, etc. This
requires theoretical investigation of the social relations under-
lying these phenomena which are to be found in the capitalist mode
production and reproduction.
The Marxist concept of mode of production refers to the his-
torically specific combination of the elements of the production
process -- labor, the subject of labor, and means of production --
through social relations between the agents of production (e.g.,
relations between capitalists and workers) mediated by their res-
pective relationship to the conditions of production. The mode of
reproduction, in turn, refers to the historically specific combi-
nation of labor and the material basis of physical and social re-
production. This includes the means of reproduction (e.g., house-
hold goods, utensils, raw materials, the household infrastructure,
etc.) and the biological conditions of reproduction. Labor and the
material basis of physical and social reproduction are combined or
brought together through relations of physical and social repro-
duction;i.e., relations between people mediated by their relation-
ship to the material conditions of reproduction. Neither relations
of production nor relations of physical and social reproduction
are purely voluntaristic and intersubjective relations. They rest
upon a material basis that exerts its effects whether or not those
affected are aware of them or believe in them. For example, capi-
talists objectively exert power over workers regardless of their
self-perception as businessmen just doing their job; women who are
full-time wives and mothers, if they lack independent wealth, are
objectively under their husbands' economic control regardless of
their beliefs about their relative power within their household.
In capitalist society, the optimal combination of the elements of
the mode of reproduction, from the standpoint of capital, occurs
within the nuclear family, whose oppressive features have been
thoroughly examined in the feminist literature.
Under capitalism, the mode of production determines the mode
of reproduction. This conclusion does not stem from Marxism's
inherent "economic determinism" but from the very nature of the
capitalist mode of production as a whole. Under capitalism, pro-
duction is for profits, not for the satisfaction of needs; the
needs of reproduction (e.g., marriage, wage or salary levels
sufficient to permit the daily and generational reproduction of
labor of different qualities by giving access to education, health
care, housing, family size, etc.) are subordinate to the needs of
production and have never been fully met. Fertility differentials
according to social class, the welfare state, growth of under-
ground economies, and the presence of a substantial proportion of
the population living below or near poverty level in all
capitalist countries attest to the subordination of reproduction
to production under capitalist conditions.
Among the owners of capital, reproduction is subordinate to
the maintenance and expansion of privately owned wealth. The legal
system ensures the orderly intergenerational transmission of
wealth, power, privilege and prestige. A question for empirical
research on NRTs is whether concern with property and lineage
among the very rich lessens or increases the likelihood that they
may use surrogacy alone or in conjunction with IVF. If so, will
they choose donors exclusively within their class, perhaps among
relatives? The incidence of sterility and sub-fecundity among the
wealthy, on the other hand, may be minimal, as they have access to
the best food, health care, living and working conditions.
The ability of the propertyless to form stable relations of
reproduction is determined by their access to the conditions of
reproduction. This, in turn, depends on whether or not they find
steady employment. Accumulation strategies prevalent in different
sectors of the economy open and close opportunities for male and
female workers. There are all sorts of reasons why men and women
enter into different relations of reproduction and why children
are raised or not by their biological parents. Underlying their
variety, however, are the characteristics of the capitalist mode
of production itself: 1) the universalization of commodity produc-
tion and proletarianization make employment a prerequisite for
access to the material conditions for reproduction; 2) constant
revolutionizing in the technical and social division of labor
results in the development of occupational differentiation, occu-
pational hierarchies, and pay differentials; 3) fluctuating struc-
tural unemployment and a fluctuating but ever growing subprole-
tariat composed of unemployed and unemployable people keeps wages
down; and 4) the erosion of the servant strata and concomitant
transformation of most women into servants in their own home (Gi-
menez 1990, 37-42). It follows that 1) it is structurally impos-
sible for capitalism to provide full employment in jobs that pay a
"family wage" to all adult workers regardless of sex; and 2) male
workers have only one major source of economic survival: waged (or
salaried) work, while female workers have two: waged (or salaried)
work and unpaid domestic work. From a Marxist-Feminist standpoint,
this is the structural (i.e., not reducible to micro-level expla-
nations such as, for example, male agency) basis of the capitalist
mode of reproduction among propertyless workers (i.e., the combi-
nation of the elements of reproduction under conditions that make
housekeeping and reproduction a source of economic survival for
propertyless women). Concomitantly, this is the basis for the
objectively unequal locations of male and female workers in pro-
duction and reproduction. These result in observable forms of
gender inequality in the market, where male and female workers
compete for jobs in a context that subordinates female employment
to domestic labor. Differences in male and female biology mediate
the effects of these structural tendencies upon the work force;
sexuality and reproduction form the basis for relations of
cooperation and dependency between men and women in reproduction
and cement the primacy of domestic employment for women.
Reproductive technologies, ranging from the oldest forms of
fertility control to the latest conceptive technologies, can be
fruitfully conceptualized as forces of reproduction, a concept
similar in its theoretical importance for the study of social
change to that of forces of production. Recent developments in re-
productive technologies constitute changes in the forces of repro-
duction that have already produced, albeit in a small scale,
profound changes in the relations of reproduction.
To speak of forces of reproduction does not entail a form of
technological determinism. Technological developments and their
use always take place in the context of social relations and power
struggles that affect their economic and social effects. Under ca-
pitalism, existing relations of reproduction presuppose the unity,
in the context of the nuclear family, of relations of sexuality,
physical and social (daily and generational) relations of repro-
duction (e.g., domestic work and childcare), and economic cooper-
ation between men and women (Mitchell 1971; Secombe 1974; Gimenez
1978). Capitalist development, however, at the same time that it
selects that unity as the most "functional" for intergenerational
reproduction, constantly undermines it through changes in the
productive forces in the realms of production and reproduction;
thus conditions are created for the emergence of other social
relations of reproduction.
The NRTs have qualitatively changed the biological conditions
of reproduction by entirely separating procreation from hetero-
sexuality. A new theoretical concept is needed to capture these
changes in the mode of reproduction: the mode of procreation --
i.e., the combination of the biological elements of the process of
reproduction through relations of procreation separate from sexu-
ality and from the social relations of reproduction. Taken for
granted, obvious or "natural" meanings of motherhood are under-
mined by changes in the material conditions of procreation which
determine their real (i.e., material, objective) "deconstruction,"
first in practice (i.e., the material fragmentation of motherhood
among women with competing social, genetic and biological claims
over a child) and then in thought (i.e., the emergence of compe-
ting concepts of motherhood). One of the main tenets of Marxism is
that social existence determines consciousness and not vice versa,
and that changes in the material conditions of life determine
changes in consciousness (Marx [1859] 1970, 21). This metatheore-
tical standpoint does not entail a naive determinism; it simply
gives primacy, in the constitution of the social world, to the
lived experience of people who, in the processes of producing
things and reproducing life physically and socially, daily and
generationally, transform the world and themselves at the same
time. From this standpoint, dominant ideas about motherhood
acquire their social power or efficacy from the unity of biologi-
cal and social reproduction that underlies the experiences of most
people. Conceptive technologies and surrogacy shatter that unity;
several kinds of woman-child relations have now become possible:
relationship); b) genetic and gestational but not social (sur-
rogacy with AI by the genetic and social father); c) genetic and
social, but not gestational (it entails womb leasing and embryo
transplant); d) gestational and social but not genetic (through
egg donation or purchase and embryo transplant); e) gestational
but not social or genetic (the child is genetically unrelated to
the woman who bears it - it entails womb leasing and embryo trans-
plant); f) genetic but not social or gestational (egg donation or
sale); and, g) exclusively social (possible through surrogacy,
embryo donation or purchase, step-parenting or adoption ). Father-
hood, in turn, can be genetic and/or social, the latter the effect
of AID or embryo donation (also possible through adoption and
step-parenting).
Acknowledging that everything that people do is social by de-
finition, in the taxonomy presented above I have qualified as so-
cial those relations between parents and children which are embed-
ded in relations of physical and social reproduction (usually, but
not necessarily, established in the context of marriage). The op-
posite of social, in this sense, is not asocial but procreational.
My argument is that the NRTs create the material conditions for
the structural separation between relations of procreation, and
relations of social reproduction, as an unintended effect of indi-
vidual decisions. Unlike the latter, the relations of procreation
are relations between people mediated by their relationship to the
biological conditions of reproduction. They do not entail the so-
cial expectation of a concomitant involvement of gestational and/
or genetic donors or sellers in the process of physical and social
intergenerational reproduction. Given the fact that the ideologi-
cal connection between biological and social parenthood is still
dominant, because the material conditions that sustain it are
still prevalent, it is to be expected that people entering in
these relations, particularly women, find it difficult, after-
wards, to relinquish their claim on the child thus produced.
Depending on their own experiences with children, childhood
memories and experiences, social class, and political views, some
women might perceive parenthood as essentially social. Most women,
however, are likely to adhere to a biologically based concept of
motherhood rooted not only in ideology, but also on their own ex-
perience of pregnancy and childbirth. Their claims are forcefully
stated by Rothman: "What of our right to be women?" Empirical re-
search is likely to show a gap between most women's views on the
significance of pregnancy and childbirth as a basis for women's
sense of motherhood and personal identity and feminist and scho-
larly perspectives which stress their social construction. This
gap, similar in its social determinants and political significance
to that which Luker (1984) identified between pro-life and pro-
choice women's views on sexuality, contraception, abortion and
motherhood, is likely to narrow as women's level of education and
structure of opportunities improve. It is not likely to disappear
in the near future, however, because biology posits limits to the
"social construction" of motherhood and the use of the NRTs (which
alter the biological basis for feelings and experiences) is unli-
kely to become widespread at least in the near future. In my un-
derstanding of the conditioning that nature exerts upon social
reality, I follow the views of Timpanaro (1975), a Marxist scholar
critical of the tendency in Western Marxism to adopt idealist
philosophical and methodological standpoints in its efforts to
avoid "vulgar materialism." If compared to changes in modes of
production, he argues, nature changes slowly; for all practical
purposes, it can be taken as constant. The fact that we are
biological beings, however, remains; as such, we have strengths
and frailties (e.g., the capacity for pleasure, the experiences of
pregnancy, childbirth, disability, pain, illness, aging, death)
that affect our experience and shape our consciousness:
To maintain that, since the "biological" is always presented
to us as mediated by the "social," the biological is nothing
and the "social" everything, would ...be idealist sophistry.
(If we agree), how are we to defend ourselves from those who
will in turn maintain that, since all reality (including eco-
nomic and social reality) is knowable only through language
(or the thinking mind), language is the sole reality and the
rest abstraction (Timpanaro 1975, 45)?
Since the time Timpanaro's work was published in English, what he
warned us about has happened: today the latest intellectual fad is
the reduction of social reality to a text. Current debates about
the meaning of motherhood and womanhood are not equivalent to de-
bates about competing texts; they are the effects, in people's
consciousness, of material changes in women's lives which reflect
class and socio-economic divisions among women as well as profound
changes in women's relations to pregnancy and childbirth. Feminist
arguments that support the notion that motherhood is essentially
social are correct from a social scientific standpoint. Motherhood
and fatherhood are social institutions. The extent to which gene-
tic bonds are legally and socially recognized varies historically
and by social class (see, for example, Smart 1987). Politically,
the issue is more complex. Feminists have critiqued the dangers of
biological essentialism. But those who defend the claim of biolo-
gical mothers who find themselves unable to fulfill a surrogacy
contract also acknowledge a realm of experience which is the
material condition for the persistence of the biological concept
of motherhood. Court decisions and changes in women's lives and in
social and political perceptions of motherhood cannot fully eradi-
cate the effects of that material condition because, "although the
biological level has virtually no importance in determining traits
distinguishing large human groups...it does again have a conspi-
cuous weight in the determination of individual characteristics"
(Timpanaro 1975, 45). In addition to class, socioeconomic status,
and racial/ethnic differences, differences in women's biological
history are also extremely important to understanding how indivi-
dual women experience sexuality, pregnancy, childbirth, and the
effects of the NRTs (see, for example, Petchesky 1987, 76). Writ-
ing courageously about her feelings in dealing with the negative
results of amniocentesis, Rapp tells us: "having spent fifteen
years arguing against biological determinism in my intellectual
and political life, I'm compelled to recognize the material reali-
ty of this experience" (1984, 323). Reproductive experience
is not "imbibed raw" (Petchesky 1987, 73). On the other hand, it
is irreducible to thought about it and the historically specific
meanings that mediate it have developed precisely on its terrain.
This terrain, as the NRTs demonstrate, is not immutable. It
constitutes the material base for new biologically grounded
experiences and emergent forms of consciousness.
CONCLUSION
Current changes in the material conditions of reproduction
reflect the development of the forces of production under capital-
ism and, as such, require a Marxist analysis. Using Marxist-Fe-
minist theory, I have endeavored to identify the structural deter-
minants of the problems, experiences, and ideological conflicts
that feminists have so eloquently written about. It is important
to differentiate between 1) concrete instances -- at the level of
analysis of social and market relations -- where male dominance
and class and racial/ethnic differences may be the most important
factor in determining how the NRTs are used and how they affect
individual women, and 2) the structural determinants of technolo-
gical change and changes in social relations which are irreducible
to micro-level explanations based on the motivations of the men
and women who participate in these relations as scientists,
doctors, lawyers, buyers, sellers, etc. This distinction is
important theoretically, methodologically, and politically because
it helps clarify research goals and set political aims.
The NRTs, I have argued, are part of the overall process of
development of the forces of production which, in changing the
biological conditions of intergenerational social reproduction,
have established the material basis for the structural separation
between the mode of procreation and the mode of social and physi-
cal reproduction. As feminists have abundantly documented, the
relations of procreation are not only oppressive for women, espe-
cially for working class and minority women, but are open to
public scrutiny, medical manipulation and intervention, and state
supervision. These structural changes and their unintended effects
are unlikely to be substantially modified through changes in the
ideology or the gender of those at the top of the research, medi-
cal, state and business organizations within which these techno-
logies are used. While in specific instances women's control or
men's support for feminist values could make a difference, in the
society as a whole the process of structural differentiation is
likely to continue unabated until it runs into structurally gene-
rated contradictions and effective political opposition seizing
the opportunity provided by those contradictions. The possible
nature of those contradictions, and whether or not this process
could be ultimately stopped or controlled, are the topic for an-
other essay. My point is that as as long feminist concerns remain
focused on the unintended effects of those structural changes,
while identifying their causes in male dominance alone or in
interaction with general capitalist processes like commodifi-
cation, their structural underpinnings (which require far more
theoretical work than is possible in this essay) are likely to
remain unnoticed and unchallenged.
Ideological differences among women about the nature of these
technologies and about the meaning of motherhood are not likely to
be resolved at this time of transition. As Marx once observed,
"[P]roduction ... produces not only an object for the subject, but
a subject for the object" (Marx [1859] 1970, 197). In separating
the mode of reproduction (physical and social) from the mode of
procreation, the NRTs not only create new objects for sale and
lease (ova, wombs, sperm, embryos) but also new historical sub-
jects willing to enter in these relations: women willing to sell
or donate their eggs or bear a child for another woman; men eager
to have a child with another woman while planning, with their
wives, to raise the child as their own; couples willing to donate
extra embryos to anonymous recipients; women who can "father"
children by having another woman bear their child (Rothman 1987,
235); sperm donors unconcerned about the number of genetic chil-
dren they may have, etc. The emergence of these subjects is still
in the process of becoming. Women and men using these technologies
are caught between two worlds, entering into relations of
procreation, isolated from social relations of reproduction, whose
corresponding forms of consciousness are still in the making.
Paraphrasing Marx, this much can be said about the effects of the
NRTs at this time: "[A]ll fixed, fast-frozen relations, with
their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions are
swept away, all new formed ones become antiquated before they can
ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is
profaned, and men and women are at last compelled to face with
sober sense their real conditions of life and their relations with
their kind" (Marx [1848] 1976, 487, my emphasis).
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