The Marxist case for abortion

Rethinking the imagination of bodies in Soviet Marxism

Authors

  • Bogdan Popa Transylvania University, Brașov

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18452/27983

Keywords:

cold war, queer theory, Queer Marxism, Romania, Socialism, Eastern Europe

Abstract

This article proposes to rearticulate a pro-abortion Marxism to offer an alternative to current debates that posit individual rights versus anti-abortion advocacy. The 2022 decision of the Supreme Court of the United States to overturn Roe v. Wade (1973) raises the specter of the consolidation of the anti-abortionist movement in Eastern European countries, which are strongly influenced culturally and politically by the North American country. To advance a psychoanalytic Marxist critique, I concentrate not only on a theoretical addressing of individualism but also on a dialectical interpretation of capitalism. I make two arguments here. First, that while US social constructionism saw bodies as formed from a naturally given material, productivist bodies were a vehicle for a Soviet Marxist ideology that aimed to emancipate the entirety of humanity. Second, I trace an ideological shift in Romanian cinema from a Marxist body to a politics of natality, which provided the basis for the 1966 banning of abortion in that country. While I criticize Soviet productivism as a theory that sought to undermine capitalism (like Slavoj Žižek (2014), I see such materialization as the wrong Marxism), I show the relevance of a historical argument for a Marxist pro-abortion politics.   

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Published

2024-01-10

How to Cite

Popa, B. (2024). The Marxist case for abortion: Rethinking the imagination of bodies in Soviet Marxism. Berliner Blätter, 88, 147–159. https://doi.org/10.18452/27983

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