caliban and the witch women the body and primitive accumulation

Men claim property in herds, weapons, and instruments of labor. The emergence of private property and exchange value with the “ world historical defeat of the female sex”

To the interconnections between reproduction and production, Engels associates The family–establish a society’s level of development.

Production of human beings–the organization of work and the organization of Proceeds from the supposition that the production of means of existence and the He begins his study by pointing out that historical materialism Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, Engels presents theĭetermining factor in history as the “production and reproduction of immediate Work on the “woman question.” Already in The She acknowledged that she was extending, not departing from, classic Marxist Toward liberation because he would have seen that women never achieved theįederici’s analysis would have been stronger had Perspective of women, he would have never associated capitalism with a step Neglected the transformation of the female body into “a machine for the

She implies that Marxismįailed to consider women’s role in the reproduction of labor power and Women from waged work and subordinated them to men. SheĬharges Marx with ignoring the emergence of a patriarchal order that excluded With or against Marx?įederici presents her analysis as a criticalĭeparture from Marx, as a redressing of some of his most serious omissions. This article interrogates these claims, questions the extent to which Federici departs from, critiques, or builds on Marxism, and considers the political implications that follow. Rather than linked in any way to dynamics unleashed by capitalism, liberation comes out of struggle and resistance autonomous from those dynamics. Looking at history from the perspective of women, she claims, tells us why. Federici insists that there has never been anything liberating about capitalism, not its expansions of industry and productivity, not its technology, and not its centralizing and organizing capacities. Federici demonstrates that unpaid labor–especially that of women confined to the domestic sphere and of enslaved workers–is a necessary support for waged labor.Īlthough Federici draws from Marx–the primary contribution of her book is its rethinking of Marx’s account of primitive accumulation–she nonetheless rejects the Marxist-Leninist idea that capitalism has any progressive features. The book examines capitalism’s investment in sexism and racism, showing how the consolidation of the capitalist system depended on the subjugation of women, the enslavement of black and indigenous people, and the exploitation of the colonies. Silvia Federici’s Caliban and the Witch is a classic work of anti-capitalist feminism.

Caliban and the witch women the body and primitive accumulation