Change has been one of the key mantras of this coming election, and genetics has become a hot button issue over the past few years in electoral politics in general. We see genetics emerge in debates about stem cells and the future of certain forms scientific research in this country under the pressure of religious fundamentalists (see this White House Statement and New York Times Op-Ed).

The Senate has passed three different bills concerning stem cell research. The Senate passed the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act, making it legal for the Federal government to spend Federal money on embryonic stem cell research that uses embryos left over from in vitro fertilization procedures. President Bush vetoed this bill.

Then they passed a bill making it illegal to create, grow, and abort fetuses for research purposes. The last bill would encourage research that would isolate stem cells without the destruction of human embryos. Congressman Ron Paul introduced the Cures Can Be Found Act, with 10 cosponsors. With an income tax credit, the bill favors research upon nonembryonic stem cells obtained from placentas, umbilical cord blood, amniotic fluid, humans after birth, or unborn human offspring who died of natural causes.

Bush vetoed another bill, the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act of 2007, that would have amended the Public Health Service Act to provide for human embryonic stem cell research.

I have a close friend who spent many years researching the genetic structure of both HIV1 and HIV2. As the primary elections began, he looked at me in a mix of fear and self-loathing as he stated, “I never thought I would say this, but I want to vote for Al Gore. I want someone who understands science to be running the country. I mean you can pass a law telling me I can’t research on stem cells and you don’t even fucking believe in evolution? We live in an anti-science religious state, man!” I nodded in agreement with the “anti-science religious state,” but couldn’t go as far as ever thinking I would vote for Al Gore.

Genetics does also hold gigantic implications for the progressive politics as well. The right does not hold a monopoly on a specific genetic-politics. We see this in debates over Genetically Modified crops, pharmaceutical research, health care and insurance coverage (specifically people getting denied health care for genetic reasons.) And we have started to see a reemergence of genetic inscription of race, which is apparent with GenSpec marketing race specific vitamins. Genetics are everywhere in politics today, but I want to think about a different way that genetics is being used politically. This form of a genetic-politics determines how we can do politics, what changes are possible and how we behave as human beings.

Back when I was 17, I worked at a gigantic national chain video store. One day while smoking a cigarette on break with one of my managers, he looked over at me and said, “I don’t understand how you can work in the service sector and still have radical politics. People are just assholes. We see it everyday. People treat us like shit because it is human nature to be greedy and mean.” 16 years later I still have my politics and I remember that conversation like it was yesterday. There is an inherently sinister notion of defeatism in this sentiment. I recognize that this Hobbesian notion of human nature is not new, but more recently these ideas of “human nature” have become understood in genetic terms.

Human behavior and human potential is being explained and understood as genetic, which of course makes sense to us on may levels. Most people in US have some faith in science (even if the present leadership doesn’t). Secondly, and more important, the behavior that is usually described genetically is so naturalized to us, as Americans, that we just believe it is “nature.” What becomes geneticized is the economic, political and gender inequalities that are inherent in the present late capitalist, liberal democratic and patriarchal system. This is scary because these inequalities become inherently human and determine our behavior making change not up to us but up to natural selection (as if it had a design), but as the advocates (both academic and popular) argue it is precisely these behaviors of exploitation that have created us as homo sapiens sapiens (i.e. human.)

The argument goes: Social relations and human behavior is the product of self-interested competition between individuals. The genes of these individuals calculate their interests in the logic of cost-benefit analysis; its goal is the proliferation of genetic endowments through natural selection. As I said above, there is a faith in science. Even many of the scientist and individuals who oppose Intelligent Design have a design of their own. In this logic, natural section has a plan and genes are rational actors that think like stockbrokers.

Many evolutionary biologists and social scientist have fought long and hard against these conceptions of evolution and genetics (see Susan McKinnon and Steven J. Gould’s critiques of evolutionary psychology as well as Marshall Sahlins’ critique of sociobiology), but the image works so well that we, as Americans, believe that the logics of hierarchy and capital exploitation can be explained biologically…absolutely in nature. So social change can only go so far until the unnaturalness of progressive politics fall apart.

To go further into these genetic theories, it is believed that people are driven to maximize their own reproductive success. They invest first and foremost in their own genetic children and do not want to waste resources on children and people who are not genetically connected to them. Any other forms of social relations and solidarity are seen as fundamentally unnatural, or more precisely impossible. This behavior can only be explained through a self-interested form of sharing called reciprocal altruism, which means people only show solidarity if there is a material benefit to them.

Within this logic, politics becomes a matter of choosing the candidate for the maximization of benefit that I will receive from the next government. If we go back to the story of my friend, we can see that only certain political moves become thinkable; in this case voting for Al Gore becomes an act of depoliticizing politics, but it is the only act that seems natural. This theory of science has devastating effects on the possibility of thinking and practices other ways of social and economic organizing. It restructures how we understand and practice community, family, gender and the production and distribution of necessities … and yes, it destroys any notion of significant social and political change.