3-10-05, 9:06 am

Capitalism Gone Mad

In the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels wrote that capitalism has 'resolved personal worth into exchange value....for exploitation veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct exploitation....stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honored...converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage-- labourers.'

So Marx and Engels might be the only ones to fully understand today’s capitalism gone mad story based on a brief, recent newspaper article. In fact, they might see these wild events as 'normal' in a system where normality is defined in exchange value.

The story deals with an Illinois Appeals Court decision concerning the property value of sperm. It seems that a female doctor a number of years ago got her male doctor lover to provide her with sperm through an oral sex encounter. She then used this sperm to inseminate herself, bear a child, and subsequently file a paternity suit against the male doctor, using DNA evidence to prove his paternity. The court awarded her $800 a month in child support.

The male doctor, who only found out about this after the paternity suit was filed, according to the newspaper story, has filed his own counter suit, accusing the female doctor both of 'profound personal betrayal' and 'theft' of the sperm, which his attorney claims as his private property (an interesting twist on Pierre Proudhon’s famous dictum that 'property is theft').

The Illinois appeals court has ruled that he can sue on 'emotional distress' but not on 'theft,' because his sperm 'donation' could be 'kept' by the female doctor. This isn’t exactly King Solomon’s decision to divide a baby, in the famous biblical story, but it does give us insight into modern capitalism. In personal injury and other suits, peoples financial awards are calculated based on their likely earning power (that is, an assembly line worker who loses an arm will get far less than a doctor). Alimony settlements and other property settlements in divorce settlements are based on class lifestyles, not on any rational calculation of need.

In this story, the fate of the child produced in this way is largely forgotten. The female doctor’s reduction of her own pregnancy to something like a stock market swindle, and the male doctor’s countersuit to defend the property value of his sperm (there are 'sperm banks' but they pay no interest) is both comical and grotesque.

Both of these people I assume can easily afford the cost of raising a child. Both probably support the Bush administration’s 'crusade' to limit malpractice judgments against doctors. I don’t know if they support or oppose the Bush administration’s virulent anti-abortion policies, but abortion was, according to the story, not an issue here. The initial alimony payment the female doctor received is close to what a minimum wage worker would earn today. How would Bush, who flaunts his religiosity every chance he gets, rule in this decision? (I am afraid to ask how Scalia would rule.) Would he reward the male doctor with a 'sperm depletion allowance' modeled after the oil depletion allowance so sacred to his Texas cronies? While the female doctor was certainly a good businesswoman, her actions certainly don’t reflect positively on any conservative definition of 'family values.' Perhaps he would turn it over to the conservative clergy who have long maintained that sexual relationships are for procreation only and live off both their donations, tax exemptions, and ability to keep their followers believing in unreal things.

In any case, Marx and Engels would find the whole affair an expression of the class character of the law and the cash nexus that connects and underlines capitalist culture and morality, one that shows that the greatest advances in technology can highlight the worst values and policies of the capitalist system.



--Norman Markowitz is a contributing editor of Political Affairs and writes a regular column for this online edition.

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