Federici presents a new discourse of capitalism, through a process of criticising Marx’s notion of primitive accumulation, stating that it brought about a transition in which the working class was formed to suggest that new gender and racial hierarchies had emerged.
This essay will attempt to describe and evaluate the contributions made by Silvia Federici in her book “The Caliban and the Witch” (2014) (TCATW)where she helps to explain capitalism’s investment in sexism and racism, demonstrating how the capitalist system was dependent on the subjection of women, the slavery of Black and Indigenous people, and the exploitation of the colonies. Federici illustrates that unpaid labour, particularly that of domesticated women and enslaved people, is a necessary support to labour.
How Silvia Federici’s Critique of Marx Redefines Primitive Accumulation
To understand Federici’s contribution to the debate about primitive accumulation, Marx’s definition of it needs to be established first. To Marx, primitive accumulation is the process by which capitalism created the material base (through systematic exploitation of labour, expropriation of resources, and colonial plundering), beginning with the gathering together of commodities, then gold and silver, and finally money: “money and commodities are no more capital than the means of production and subsistence are” (Marx,1976. p.874).
Federici’s theory is presented as a critical departure from Marx and accuses Marx of neglecting the creation of a patriarchal regime that excluded and subjugated women to males as he “analysed primitive accumulation almost exclusively from the point of the waged industrial proletariat: the protagonist” (Federici, 2014, p.63).
She indicates that Marxism overlooked women’s roles in labour-power, reproduction, and the transformation of the female body into “a machine for the manufacture of new workers” (Federici, 2014, p.12) if Marx had included women’s perspectives, he would never have equated capitalism with a stride toward the liberation of workers since he would have observed that women never obtained the same gains that men did.
Federici explores how women lost autonomy and “have paid the highest cost, with their bodies, their work, their lives (Federici, 2014, p.63).
She writes “primitive accumulation […] was also an accumulation of differences and divisions within the working class, whereby hierarchies built upon gender, as well as “race” and age” (Federici, 2014, p.63).
She reports on how the “capitalist class introduced to discipline, reproduce[d], and expand the European proletariat, beginning with the attack it launched on women, resulting in the construction of a new patriarchal order” (Federici, 2014, p.68), also how women were also more negatively impacted by enclosures because, once the land was privatised and monetary relations began to dominate economic life, they found it more difficult to support themselves than men, being increasingly confined to reproductive labour at a time when this work was completely devalued (Federici, 2014, p.74) and even then when they had to sexually exploit themselves, “reproduction of the worker began to be considered as valueless from an economic viewpoint and even ceased to be considered as work.
Reproductive work continued to be paid — though at the lowest rates” (Federici, 2014, p.75).
Unpaid Labour, Gender, and Racial Exploitation in Early Capitalism
To support her claim, she makes the example of the comparison of women to witches when in Europe “journeymen petitioned the authorities not to allow women to compete with them and even refused to work with men who worked with women …. [they were also] interested in limiting women to domestic work” (Federici, 2014, pp.94–95) but the women — faced with the intimidating tactics male workers used against them [and] those who dared to work out of the home, in a public space … were portrayed as sexually aggressive shrews or even as “whores” and “witches” (Howell 1986:182-83 cited in (Federici, 2014, p.95)
The racial hierarchies introduced further oppressed Black and Indigenous women in the time of slavery and colonialism as now “white women were upgraded or married off within the ranks of the white power structure” (Federici, 2014, p.108) The new hierarchy meant that now even if women were oppressed by capitalism, white women could move up the social ladder even if meant exploiting themselves to white richer men.
This left Black and Indigenous women silenced and made them more vulnerable to the advantage of not only men but also capitalism. Anna J. Cooper famously said, “Even though the Black man’s voice is a “muffled strain in the Silent South [but] the one mute and voiceless note has been the sadly expectant Black Woman” (Cooper, 2017, p.13).
Federici proves expertly and skilfully her contribution to primitive accumulation, which Marx did not consider, through detailing the resistance and exploitation women faced which was fuelled by rampant misogyny and racism throughout history and how gender hierarchy but also a triangle of oppression that Black and Indigenous women faced.
Gimenez in “Capitalism and the Oppression of Women Marx Revisited” (2005) validates Federici’s argument that there is a gender hierarchy in capitalism where “most women are working women whose fate, and that of their families, are shaped both by gender oppression and class” (Gimenez, 2005, p.11).
She notes that “some of the implications of Marx’s work for feminism indicates that as long as capitalism rules, propertyless women will remain oppressed because women’s ability to satisfy their needs, reproducing and generationally, will remain subordinate to the changing of capital accumulation” (Gimenez, 2005, p.29).
Much like Federici, the acknowledgement of a universal struggle in gender hierarchy within capitalism remains to exploit women and is a cycle of self-exploitation of the woman to survive every day… However, it is crucial to this discussion that women have property, it does not change the situation of other women globally, the exploitation of women is global, not a personal struggle.
Reassessing Capitalism Through a Gendered and Racial Lens
Federici completely provides a new paradigm of capitalism by rightfully criticising Marx’s idea of primitive accumulation and claiming that primitive accumulation caused a shift in which the working class was altered, generating new gender and racial hierarchies. TCATW provides a deeper and more compelling insight into the gender hierarchies but a new paradigm of a triangle of oppression that is equally as important to consider as capitalism affects different types in various ways.
Bibliography
Cooper, A. (2017) A voice from the South: By a black woman of the south on Jstor. University of North Carolina Press; the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Library. Available at: https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/10.5149/9781469633329_cooper.10.pdf (Accessed: January 11, 2023).
Federici, S., 2014. Caliban and the witch. Second, revised edition ed. Brooklyn, NY: Autonomedia.
Gimenez, M.E., 2005. Capitalism and the Oppression of Women: Marx Revisited. Science & Society, 69(1), pp.11–32.
Marx, K. (1976) Capital Volume I. Available at: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/Capital-Volume-I.pdf (Accessed: January 11, 2023).
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