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Current theories of reproductive behavior fall within voluntaristic or deterministic frameworks. Micro-economic theories that view children as con sumer goods or home produced goods which parents either purchase or produce subject to income, price, and taste constraints, are essentially voluntaristic. Sociological theories, on the other hand, stress the socially determined and coer cive nature of reproductive behavior. From the standpoint of historical material ism, both theories are open to criticism because they provide a reified and ahis torical account of reproductive behavior based upon unacknowledged capitalist forms of consciousness and forms of social objectivity. It is argued that a scien tific analysis of reproduction should transcend the voluntaristic and determin istic alternatives which are the hallmark of bourgeois thought. Instead, using the method of historical materialism, reproduction should be conceptualized in structural, concrete, and historical terms; i.e., as the reflection of the reproduc tive strategies of classes in the context of a given mode of production.

The question of the oppression of women, the critique of which constituted feminism as an academic and political pursuit, has been feminism's enduring source of strength and appeal, yielding numerous critical theories and perspectives. This has produced continual conceptual shifts defining an evolving feminism, such as the shift from women to gender and from inequality to difference. It has also involved shifts from theorizing the general conditions of women's experience—oppressed at home and in the workplace, while juggling the conflicting demands of both—to theorizing the implications of the claim that, while gender may be the main source of oppression for white, heterosexual, middle-class women, women with different characteristics and experiences are affected by other forms of oppression as well. A possible way for Marxist feminism to remain a distinctive theoretical and politically relevant perspective might be to return to class, in the Marxist sense, theoretically reexamining the relationship between class and oppression, particularly the oppression of working-class women, within capitalist social formations.

Considers the salience of some of Marx's methodological thought for feminist issues & politics in the context of globalization. Following a look at some of the characteristics of globalization & its effects on women, a Marxist critique of globalization is elaborated. It is contended that Marxist analysis, specifically, Marxist-feminism, provides the perspective necessary to make sense of globalization, particularly in terms of its impact on women & the material conditions determining the ideologies through which women interpret their shifting conditions. The theoretical & ideological polarizations in feminist thought spawned under globalization are delineated, calling for an alternative form of feminism that allows for a different way to think about Marx, feminism, & globalization & enables the transcendence of these polarities. J. Zendejas