What can the work of Marx tell us about surrogacy and vice versa; what can the work of surrogacy tell us about Marx? My research on commercial surrogacy in Georgia offers an interesting case study to reassess the relevance of Marxist research frameworks, as it uncomfortably disrupts capitalist dualisms of production versus reproduction, family versus market, gift versus commodity and waged versus unwaged work. Today, Georgian surrogates are paid for putting their reproductive biologies and gestational bodies to work in the (re)production of babies, family happiness and surplus value in the surrogacy industry. Yet, neither in classic political economy accounts nor in its Marxist counterpart are they seen as ‘real’ workers. On the contrary, surrogates and their ‘labour of love’ are made invisible and relegated to the hidden abodes of reproduction. In this chapter I use the work of Marx and his disobedient feminist ‘granddaughters’ to analyse and politically translate the invisibility of reproductive work in the global surrogacy industry.

The first premise of all human existence and, therefore, of all history, [is that humans] must be in a position to live in order to be able to make history. But life involves before everything else eating and drinking, a habitation, clothing and many other things. The first historical act is thus the production of the means to satisfy these needs, the production of material life itself. (Marx and Engels [1845] 1987)