In her book. Population Target, Bonnie Mass has made an important contribution to the understanding of population control, particularly as it is being carried out in Latin America. This is a well-researched and documented study of who is promoting population control, for which reasons, and through which means. We are presenting here a description of the book from the publicity leaflet sent out by the publishers, followed by our comments and criticism. This book was co-published in 1976 by the Canadian Women's Educational Press and the Latin American Working Group (LAWG) and is available from LAWG, Box 2207, Station P, Toronto, Canada (Pages 304; Price $ 5.50 plus 15% for postage and handling).
Today, tens of thousands of Third World people are "targets" of population control strategies aimed at reducing their consumption of public services and precious resources. Population Target exposes the fraudulent myth that the "population explosion" is a threat to human survival. Bonnie Mass examines why miserable social conditions and spiraling trade deficits in nations struggling to develop will not end by implementing "family planning" or "responsible parenthood" programs. Poverty, political unrest and other manifestations of social ills are a direct result of inequitable distribution and production of wealth, stratification of classes of people and pillage of resources. Unemployment and slow economic growth in underdeveloped regions are not. Mass proves, created by "too many people".
And yet, the U.S. Population Control Establishment composed of government elites, top-ranking military and billionaire industrialists, persist in sponsoring multi-million dollar campaigns advocating sterilization and birth control as a means of averting the "population explosion". Financial giants such as Rockefeller, Ford,Carnegie, Mellon and Hugh Moore for over two decades have lobbied governments to rally behind demographic programs which will ostensibly resolve the social and economic problems of the Third World. The powerful influence of the Population Establishment has brought about multilateral support from the United Nations, convincing much of the world that Latin America, Africa and Asia can escape their famine and debt by reducing their food and commodity consumption. Population control programs, they insist, can achieve this end by reducing the numbers of hungry people and non-producers. In 1975, the United States took the unprecedented step earmarking 67 percent of its foreign health allocations for population planning.
Population Target provides a penetrating analysis of the historical development of today's birth and population control theories and programs. An in-depth chapter on the history of the birth control and eugenics movements highlights the work of Reverend Thomas Malthus and Margaret Sanger. The evolution of modern day population programs is traced through its private, bilateral and multilateral phases. Mass' strong evidence of monopoly capitalist control over food production and distribution, and her critical evaluation of common demographic arguments, exposes the overpopulation myth. In contrast to coercive means of planning families, the Cuban and Chinese methods of birth planning are studied. Case studies of population control in Puerto Rico, Brazil, Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Guatemala and Colombia present cogent portraits of the vast array of birth control programs now implemented in Latin America, aimed specifically at eliminating the marginal and unemployed in these countries, and deployed as a method of controlling the exploited and oppressed everywhere.
In whose interests is it to promote massive birth control campaigns? Why are these programs reaching into sparsely populated domains, such as the Amazon Basin, and into regions where only coffee beans grow and no doctors exist? And why are these programs so generously spread among Latin America's favelas and barrios where protests against social Injustice continually take place? And how can Latin America be considered incapable of feeding Its own people, the author asks, when 60 percent of its arable land remains fallow?
Population Target convincingly argues that the wealthy industrialists of the Population Control Establishment represent the same imperialist interests which invest in all types of lucrative cash crops, livestock, resource extraction, low cost industrial production and speculative financial enterprises. Ignoring the needs of the surrounding population, high-level technology, agribusiness and industrialization have forced thousands of Latin Americans out of work and off their lands. In order to camouflage their own role in creating poverty and unemployment, the corporate investors resort to blaming the poor for their marginal and nonproductive position in society. Their response to social needs is: "Keep your numbers down; there are no jobs".
Isis comments:
In exploding the population myth and analyzing the economic and political motivations behind population control, Bonnie Mass has provided a very good study of how population control is used to oppress women. The detailed and well documented facts and figures (e.g. funding sources of population control agencies, money allocated for population control by governments and agencies etc.) make this book a valuable instrument for exposing and fighting the oppressive use of population control. This book does have a serious defect, however; it lacks an analysis of the specific oppression of women as women. It does not analyze the factor of male domination and control of women which is an integral part of the economic and political motivations for population control and the denial of reproductive freedom and self-determination of women. To ignore this is to arrive at distorted conclusions. Perhaps in this case, it is foregone conclusions which have led Bonnie Mass implicitly to deny the existence of the oppression of women as women.
By now, we are all too familiar with the foregone conclusions of the traditional male-dominated left which asserts that their version of socialism is the answer and that women should stop "dividing" the class struggle. According to them, women's liberation will be an automatic result of a socialist revolution. Women, therefore, must work within their organizations and on their terms. In contrast, there is a growing number of women around the world who are asserting that while a socialist revolution is a necessary condition for women's liberation, it will not guarantee it. They note the serious lack of analysis within most of the left of patriarchy, male-dominion and women's specific oppression. In order to achieve a true socialist revolution which will liberate both women and men, this analysis must be made now and incorporated into the struggle now. True unity within the working class can never be achieved if it is based on the oppression of women and marxists will have to stop demanding their kind of false unity.
In contrast, Bonnie Mass asserts that the women's movement has failed to see the economic and political bases of women oppression. She identifies the women's movement with "bourgeois feminism" and makes statements such as: many women's organizations are geared to the interest; privileged women and yet speak on behalf of all women It is a very typical ploy of marxists' rejection of feminism to disparage and dismiss the women's movement by label it "bourgeois" and identifying it with a small elite of women who have tried to coopt the movement for their own advantage. It is also false and an insult to the masses of women everywhere struggling for basic change in society. It is different from a legitimate criticism of feminists industrialized countries for not being quick enough perceive the oppressive nature of population control for not denouncing it loudly enough. This kind of criticism and self-criticism is going on in the women's movement Europe and North America and analyses are being mad their relationship between the forces which would impose population control on Third World women while denying access to safe and effective birth control and abortion First and Second World women.
Unfortunately, Bonnie Mass does not analyze this connection nor limit herself to a legitimate criticism of the women's movement. Instead of unmasking the perverted use of women's issues by the forces of imperialism and the attempt by an elite to coopt the women's movement, she uses these attempts to distort the women's movement by association (see her chapter on "Iran: Royalty and Feminism"), male-controlled western-dominated mass media has already done an excellent job of giving a distorted and false picture of feminism. It is really unfortunate that Bonnie Mass other leftists feel compelled to do the same. The destructive for the over-all struggle for liberation for Linda Gordon points out, "feminism and anti-imperialism have an objective basis for unity, in opposition to all of domination." When the traditional left begins to seriously the specific oppression of women and cease demand that women join in a false unity based on i subordination and oppression, men and women will be to work together "in the struggle for a better world".
In spite of these serious reservations about the book, we recommend Population Target. Its wealth of facts statistics make excellent ammunition in the fight against population controllers and it is a good starting point further analysis. Women with a feminist perspective should carry the analysis further so that we can arrive at more complete and adequate analysis of the "political economy of population control".