Echos of Marx and Malthus : the rocky road from populati on control to reproductive rights

Abstract

In this study, I link key debates about the regulation of human fertility and population control to considerations about women’s reproductive rights. First, a brief discussion of old rivalries between Thomas Robert Malthus and Karl Marx introduces the deeply political nature of considerations about human reproduction.Next, I move from the 18th and 19th centuries to the 20^th century, and show that we find Marx and Malthus dressed in new clothes by political rivals who applied old competitions to new political conflicts.I focus on the post WW II period, when new debates about population and human reproduction were accompanied by new global paradigms of human rights –and argue that a twentieth century practice of rights was compromised by competitions between politics of left and right– set in the Cold War.

Drawing on histories of medical doctors and population planners who were active in Europe and the Americas, I focus on the case study of family planning and reproductive rights in Chile to show the ill-effects that Cold War competitions –the political dichotomies of left and right– had on the politics of health and reproductive rights.