Dai Xuehong and Wu Jiacheng: Contemporary Critique of Primitive Accumulation and Capitalist Patriarchy
Silvia Federici is a highly prestigious Italian Autonomist Marxist theorist and a major representative of contemporary feminism. However, research on Autonomism within Chinese academic circles has been largely confined to the work of famous Italian left-wing thinkers such as Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt, thereby neglecting Autonomist Feminism—the movement's most significant theoretical branch. The latter has exerted a profound influence on contemporary Western leftist currents, including Autonomism and feminism more broadly. As a core representative of Autonomist Feminism, Federici has not received the attention she deserves from the Chinese academy. In fact, it was Federici who extended Marx's analysis of primitive accumulation to investigate the social status of women and the reproduction of labor power. Federici emphasizes the importance of the famous 16th- and 17th-century witch hunts [1] in promoting the development of capitalism, arguing they were the foundation for the emergence and growth of capitalism and wage labor: the violent persecution of witches (usually midwives or "wise women") in Europe and the New World, along with the slave trade, played a role no less significant than colonization and the enclosure of the European peasantry. Federici views the violent aspect of primitive accumulation as a primary characteristic of every stage of capitalist globalization and a necessary condition for the prosperity of neoliberal capitalism. Therefore, exploring the relationship between the primitive accumulation of capital and the witch hunts from the perspective of Federici's Autonomist Feminism possesses significant theoretical value and practical urgency for critiquing capitalist patriarchy and challenging neoliberal globalization.
I. The Theory and Practice of Italian Autonomist Marxism and Feminism
The Autonomist movement rose during a period of world upheaval, transformation, and adjustment in the 1960s and 1970s. At that time, major advanced capitalist economies were successively hit by "stagflation crises." Fordism faced unprecedented challenges, while the post-Fordist flexible accumulation mode of capital was on the rise, with capital accumulation tending to expand beyond the walls of the Fordist factory into all spheres of social life. Furthermore, huge setbacks in the international communist movement led Western left-wing intellectuals to generally doubt traditional class politics and the Leninist model of party organization. They began to search for new revolutionary subjects and attempted to explore new revolutionary paths outside the orthodoxy of the Third International. Simultaneously, the Black resistance movement, the left-wing student movement, the second-wave feminist movement, and the anti-war movement surged, merging into a wave of resistance against capitalism. The greatest characteristic of these new social movements was that the revolutionary subject was no longer the traditional male industrial worker but diverse and pluralistic social subjects who had broken away from parties and trade unions to possess varying degrees of autonomy.
(A) Core Views of Italian Autonomist Marxism
Faced with the dual changes in capitalist growth models and revolutionary subjects, Italian Autonomist Marxism began to emerge. Autonomism originated from Workerism (Operaismo) [2], with thinkers such as Raniero Panzieri and Mario Tronti as its initial theoretical representatives. From its inception, the Italian workers' movement exhibited spontaneous characteristics that remained outside the formal organizations of traditional parties and unions. Early Autonomism emphasized the subjectivity and autonomy of the working class, highlighting the antagonistic contradiction between labor and capital. Proceeding from the "primacy of workers' subjectivity" and the logic of antagonism, Autonomism critiqued the objective interpretive models of political economy. Negri’s new reading of Marx's theory of profit represents the ideological tendency of this school. He opposed understanding the theory of profit as an objective economic law of a historical-determinist nature; instead, he viewed profit as one pole of political power within class antagonism, uncovering the confrontation between the subjectivity of the working class and the subjectivity of capital represented by the theory of profit. Negri pointed out: "The theory of the subjectivity of the working class and of the proletariat is both the premise of the theory of profit and the necessary result of its development—opposed to the fact that all surplus labor is extorted, objectified, and socialized, and at the same time capital achieves its own unity as a class and as control over exploitation." Based on this, Negri regards the theory of profit as part of the theory of surplus value. Profit is not just the averaging of surplus value but the socialization of surplus value within the circulation process. Surplus value originates from capital's unpaid appropriation of surplus labor, concentrating the antagonistic contradiction between labor and capital in the sphere of production. However, while surplus value is generated in production, it can only be realized in the sphere of circulation. The law of profit is the manifestation of the law of surplus value in the circulation stage. Through circulation, surplus value is socialized, transforming capital into social capital. Capital brings the whole of society into the process of capital valorization, making all social groups objects of capitalist expropriation. This indicates that the antagonistic contradiction between labor and capital likewise exists in the sphere of circulation.
Through this reinterpretation of the theory of profit, Negri effectively elucidated the following core points of Autonomism: First, capital accumulation transcends the factory production process and permeates all social life—society is the factory, and the "social factory" is the most important feature of late capitalism. Second, labor is not limited to wage labor in factories but needs to be redefined within antagonistic power relations. Third, all social groups are subject to capital's expropriation; therefore, the revolutionary subject is no longer limited to male industrial workers but should encompass all social groups that are pluralistic and heterogeneous—the so-called "social worker." Negri and Hardt noted: "The most important general phenomenon of the labor transformation we have witnessed in recent years is the transition to what we call the factory-society. The factory is no longer the paradigmatic site or concentration of labor or production; the labor process has exceeded the factory walls and spread throughout society." This means society becomes an extension of the factory, organized just like one. In the circulation stage outside of production, capital absorbs all social elements, causing social relations and relations of production to gradually merge into one. All social life and human activity become sources for capital to realize value valorization. "Capitalist relations of production are expanding to absorb all aspects of social production and reproduction, that is, the entire realm of life." As all social life is absorbed by capital, the distinctions between work and life, production and reproduction, and productive and unproductive labor become blurred, which will radically change the definition of production. "Production is becoming 'man producing man,' an activity that produces forms of life." Production is no longer merely material production but the production and reproduction of human life forms and social relations—that is, "biopolitical production."
(B) Theory and Practice of Italian Autonomist Feminism
Italian Autonomist Feminism is the most important theoretical branch of the Autonomist Marxist school. It generally identifies with the core views of Autonomism and has exerted a massive theoretical influence on the movement. Feminist scholars such as Federici, Maria Rosa Dalla Costa, Selma James, and Leopoldina Fortunati are all key theoretical representatives. Their most significant contribution was using the theoretical framework of Autonomism to conduct a political-economic analysis of housework.
First, Autonomist Feminism, represented by Federici, redefined labor to include women's housework within the category of labor. Autonomism emphasizes the priority of subjectivity and the logic of antagonism, holding that "the concept of labor is not fixed but is historically defined through antagonism." Redefining labor is part of social antagonism and the basis for Autonomist Feminism’s analysis of the power struggles in gender oppression. It opposes limiting labor to the wage labor of male industrial workers, as this ignores the housework undertaken by women in the home. Federici pointed out that in Capital, Marx did not yet recognize that the reproduction of labor power makes women's unpaid housework—such as cooking, washing, raising children, and sex—an essential part. Capitalism must constantly reproduce its own conditions of existence. Labor power, as a special commodity, is constantly consumed in production and must be reproduced through the consumption of means of subsistence. However, means of subsistence cannot be consumed directly: clothes must be washed, food cooked, and houses kept clean. All of this involves women's unpaid housework. Housework is a vital pillar of capitalist reproduction and should therefore be regarded as labor.
Second, Autonomist Feminism developed the "social factory" theory, analyzing the relationship between housework and capital accumulation. It views the family as the core of the social factory and women performing housework as "social workers" with revolutionary potential. Dalla Costa noted: "In the wage, housework not only has use value but also plays an extremely crucial role in the production of surplus value." Capital accumulation occurs beyond the factory; the family is a vital component of the social factory. The production of surplus value depends not only on wage labor but even more on women's housework, because housework produces the special commodity of labor power. The value of labor power is formed through women’s unpaid housework; therefore, wages hide not only the surplus labor of male workers but also the unpaid labor of domestic workers. Women are subject to the unpaid exploitation of capital within the home. Furthermore, housework is productive labor. Fortunati argued: "The reproduction process is a process of value formation; housework is productive work." Clearly, seeing housework as a source of capital accumulation and as productive labor is a major consensus of Autonomist Feminism. Women, as domestic workers, are the social workers of the social factory and thus become the new revolutionary subjects in the feminist struggle. Selma James pointed out that the strategy of feminist class struggle is based on the unwaged woman in the home. Whether she works outside for money or not, her labor in producing and reproducing the working class leaves her exhausted and weakens her ability to resist—she does not even have time. In short, unpaid housework subjects women to a specific gendered division of labor and serves as the economic root of gender oppression. Capital accumulation originates from women's unpaid labor in the home; thus, the antagonistic contradiction between capital and labor also exists in the family. Women possess immense revolutionary potential and will play an important role in the struggle against capitalism.
Based on these core views, Dalla Costa, Federici, Brigitte Galtier, and James—representing feminist groups in Italy, the United States, France, and the UK, respectively—founded "The International Feminist Collective." They subsequently launched the "Wages for Housework" movement in Padua and London. Over the next five years, feminists in multiple cities across North America and Europe responded, sparking a movement against capitalism and patriarchy in almost all developed capitalist countries, which to some extent influenced the entire trajectory of feminism. Federici was the spiritual leader of this movement; in 1975, she published the movement's theoretical manifesto, Wages Against Housework. She stated: "If we take wages for housework as a political perspective and fight for them, it will bring a revolution to our lives and our social rights as women." This indicates that wages for housework are not merely economic compensation but possess political significance. The political aim of this movement was to expose the patriarchal nature of capitalism and make people realize the critical role of women's housework in capital accumulation, thereby opening a "second front" outside the class struggle of industrial workers to disrupt the capitalist order of reproduction.
In summary, the rise of autonomist Marxism and its feminist schools constitute the theoretical roots of Federici’s thought on primitive accumulation. Federici played a significant role in the autonomist feminist movement, and the "Wages for Housework" campaign represented her core theoretical demand during her early period. However, certain problems existed in the early theoretical praxis of autonomist feminism, which impelled Federici to delve deeper into the internal connections between gender and capital, and between primitive accumulation and capitalist patriarchy.
II. Innovations in Federici’s Critical Theory: The Witch-Hunts, Mechanisms of Primitive Accumulation, and the Patriarchy of the Wage
The 1970s was merely the embryonic stage of Federici’s feminist theory. During this phase, her thought lacked originality and was primarily subordinate to the autonomist feminist school. It was only after the 1980s that Federici's theoretical research entered its mature period. At that time, the global left-wing movement was in retreat, neoliberalism was making a comeback, and flexible accumulation [3] became the mainstream form of capital accumulation. Consequently, the "Wages for Housework" movement led by autonomist feminists like Federici faced immense challenges. As David Harvey pointed out, flexible accumulation made "gender relations... much more complicated," while "recourse to female labor... much more widespread. By the same token, the social basis for the ideologies of entrepreneurship, patriarchy, and property rights has been strengthened." In this context, women began to participate more in flexible wage labor, accounting for a large proportion of the tertiary sector in particular. However, this did not bring about female liberation; rather, it strengthened patriarchy and complicated gender relations, thereby altering the direction of feminist struggle. Furthermore, neoliberalism brought areas that were previously outside the market into full marketization. The rise of the domestic service industry transformed a vast amount of housework into wage labor in developed capitalist countries, leading to the danger that the slogan "Wages for Housework" might lapse into complicity with neoliberalism. Within the autonomist school, the "Wages for Housework" movement was also called into question. Hardt and Negri noted: "Family wages keep family control firmly in the hands of the male wage earner and perpetuate a false conception of what kind of labor is productive and what is not. As the distinction between productive and reproductive labor gradually fades, the legitimacy of family wages also fades." In their view, wages for housework would solidify the gendered division of labor and strengthen male control. Since capitalism had already become a "social factory," the distinction between production time and reproduction time had disappeared, and the significance of fighting for wages for housework no longer existed.
Federici also realized that the theories and movements of early autonomist feminism had defects. Faced with the latest changes in capitalism, she had to initiate a completely new theoretical innovation: "I decided to start studying the history of women in the period of transition to capitalism at the end of the 1970s... and in 2004 published the book Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation." This work is a story about the origins of capitalist patriarchy and a further development of the autonomist feminist method; it constructs women as devalued, subordinate "Others." In this work, Federici commits herself to studying the relationship between gender oppression and the structural transformation of capitalism, analyzing how the roots of capitalist accumulation are inextricably linked to the subjugation of women. Federici points out: "Costa and James showed the possibility of transcending the dichotomy between patriarchy and class, and gave patriarchy a specific historical content. They also opened the way for a reinterpretation of the history of capitalism and class struggle from a feminist perspective." Federici highly affirms the theoretical contributions of [Mariarosa] Dalla Costa and [Selma] James, believing her own theoretical work to be a further extension of the path they blazed. Federici argues that the relationship between capital accumulation and the oppression of women must be re-analyzed from the perspective of the history of capitalist development, thereby providing a more concrete historical perspective on gender oppression. To this end, Federici analyzes the origins of capitalism—the primitive accumulation of capital. She states: "It is precisely because of the need to analyze the history of capitalist development from a gender perspective that Marx's theory of primitive accumulation must be re-examined. Thus, we find that the 16th and 17th centuries, when witch-hunting was prevalent, coincided with an era when female labor was devalued and capitalism divided labor by gender." In short, Caliban and the Witch analyzes the end of European feudalism and the rise of capitalism, demonstrating how the consolidation of the capitalist system depended on the subjugation of women, the enslavement of Black and Indigenous peoples, and the exploitation of colonies. This book is Federici’s most important representative work and an in-depth exploration of the nature of capitalism and the roots of gender inequality in modern society.
As is well known, Marx provided the classic discourse on the primitive accumulation of capital and wage labor in Capital. He regarded primitive accumulation as the "pre-history" of capitalism, playing a vital role in the birth of the capitalist mode of production. Marx initially used the concept of primitive accumulation to explain England's transition from feudalism to capitalism, noting: "So-called primitive accumulation, therefore, is nothing else than the historical process of divorcing the producer from the means of production." The formation of capitalism depends on the creation of a landless working class; the primitive accumulation of capital is the process by which capitalists use naked violence to forcibly expropriate the means of production from laborers, turning them into proletarians. In Federici’s view, Marx’s analysis of primitive accumulation was not conducted from a gender perspective. However, the transition from feudalism to capitalist production involved a large-scale reorganization of social relations, accompanied by large-scale, state-organized acts of persecution against women. In this process, women's labor was devalued, and patriarchy was gradually established. The secret of the primitive accumulation of capital is hidden within the witch-hunts directed at women, which occurred almost simultaneously with colonialism and the enclosure movement. Although there was no strict legal definition of "witchcraft" as a specific crime at the time, once a woman was accused of being a witch, she would face cruel punishment and be persecuted to death. Bourgeois historical narratives, however, describe the victims as social failures, depoliticizing the persecution and intentionally ignoring or covering up the fact that hundreds of thousands of women were brutally persecuted in the early stages of capitalism. Federici believes that traditional Marxist historians have not studied this period of history much because they believe it is unrelated to class struggle. In fact, the witch-hunts not only deepened the split between men and women but were also of great significance to the emergence of the capitalist mode of production and the formation of the proletariat. Federici’s analysis of the relationship between witch-hunts and the primitive accumulation of capitalism unfolds from the following two aspects.
First, the witch-hunts during the period of primitive accumulation were the starting point of the capitalist gendered division of labor. They excluded women from waged labor, caused the separation of production and reproduction, and established a patriarchy based on the wage. Federici points out: "My description of primitive accumulation includes many historical phenomena not analyzed in previous research, but which are extremely important for capitalist accumulation. These include: (1) the development of a new gendered division of labor that subordinates women’s labor and reproductive functions to the reproduction of labor power; (2) the establishment of a new patriarchal order that excludes women from compensated work and makes them subordinate to men; (3) the mechanization of the proletarian body, transforming women into machines for the production of new workers. Crucially, I place the witch-hunts of the 16th and 17th centuries at the center of the analysis of primitive accumulation." In Federici's view, primitive accumulation not only separates the means of production from the laborer but also separates material production from the reproduction of labor power. The witch-hunts demonized women, stripped certain jobs traditionally performed by women from the realm of paid labor, and separated the private sphere from the public sphere. This socio-economic reorganization reinforced women's subordinate status by utilizing and systematizing organizational structures related to male authority. The witch-hunts defined women as irrational, providing a rational basis for excluding them from the wage system while legitimizing their exploitation. In all societies centered on production, production and reproduction are unified, but the development of capitalism separates production and reproduction, leadings to a gendered differentiation between the two. Under these circumstances, only market-based production is seen as value creation, while the invisible reproduction of labor power is naturalized and labeled as female labor. Women are simultaneously excluded from waged labor; even when they participate in it, their average wages are much lower than men's. The emergence of the "full-time housewife" further enabled men to control women's labor through the wage, while making women more dependent on men. In short, capitalism utilizes the wage and the market as a means to legitimize uncompensated labor, completely separating commodity production from the reproduction of labor power, ultimately resulting in women becoming "absent shadow laborers." Thus, capitalism falls into a cycle: the devaluation of women's reproductive labor → the devaluation of women's status → the devaluation of labor power → the devaluation of waged labor → the devaluation of the male working class.
Second, the witch-hunts in the process of primitive accumulation bound women to reproductive functions, making them unable to control their own bodies. Federici points out: "Witch-hunting treated abortion and all forms of contraception as crimes against humanity, thereby enabling the state to control the primary source of labor power—women's bodies." As women’s bodies are the means of production for the reproduction of labor power, the purpose of capital and state power controlling women's bodies is to ensure that female procreation conforms to the requirements of economic rationality. The witch-hunts placed abortion, infanticide, and sexual perversion at the core of the witch trials, accusing witches of being those who destroy the reproductive capacity of humans and nature. Since many witches were midwives or doctors who possessed knowledge about childbirth, persecuting them was intended to prevent a female monopoly on reproductive knowledge and cause them to lose control over their bodies. Furthermore, the witch-hunts normalized sexual behavior; non-productive sexual activities were uniformly prohibited, ensuring that sexuality served the reproduction of capitalist labor power entirely. In this process, women essentially were reduced to machines for producing new workers, becoming part of a new capitalist "patriarchy of the wage"—men obtain wages in the sphere of production and thus obtain power, while women are confined to the sphere of reproduction without wages and thus must be controlled. The "patriarchy of the wage" regulated women's reproduction, bodies, and sexuality, placing them under state control and converting them into economic resources. From then on, women could no longer freely control their own bodies; under violent oppression, their bodies became machines for the reproduction of labor power, serving capital accumulation completely.
In summary, analyzing the roots of women's oppression from the perspective of the history of capitalist development is Federici's major theoretical innovation. Through her investigation into the witch-hunts during the period of primitive accumulation, Federici elucidates that patriarchy is inherent to the origin and development of capitalism. Primitive accumulation caused not only the separation of the laborer from the means of production, but also the separation of production and reproduction, and the separation of the re-producer (woman) from the means of re-production (the body), ultimately establishing the "patriarchy of the wage." The capitalist expropriation of women's unpaid reproductive labor began precisely after the witch-hunts of the period of primitive accumulation.
III. The Deepening of Federici's Critical Theory: New Changes and New Critiques of Contemporary Capitalism
Federici’s analysis of primitive accumulation and witch-hunting holds not only historical significance but also profound contemporary relevance, as neoliberal globalization has ushered in a new round of primitive accumulation accompanied by the rise of a modern form of witch-hunting. In the mid-1980s, Federici traveled to Nigeria to serve as a contract teacher at the University of Port Harcourt, an experience that allowed her to witness firsthand the destruction of traditional modes of production in Third World countries by neoliberal globalization and the sharp decline in the status of women. Federici saw how austerity programs imposed by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on "debtor nations" plunged Nigeria into a severe debt crisis, as international capital consortiums forced the country to undergo neoliberal reforms aligned with Western capitalist interests. For a time, Nigeria became a mirror image of England during the era of primitive accumulation; a massive wave of "enclosures" [4] and land privatization emerged, and peasants lost their land, becoming proletarians. This left women, who relied on the land for their livelihood, with no means of support. Their status plummeted, misogyny became rampant, and it was as if the witch-hunts had returned. Neoliberalism, she concluded, is the root cause of the recurrence of primitive accumulation. Against this backdrop, movements of women resisting the new patriarchy emerged in Nigeria. To suppress these women's revolutions, organized capital-driven violence against women made its comeback. This demonstrates that primitive accumulation and witch-hunting are far from over; they are sweeping the globe once again in the contemporary era. Federici noted: "In this context, my work on the transition to capitalism took on a whole new meaning. In Nigeria, I realized that the resistance to structural adjustment was part of a long-term resistance to land privatization and 'enclosures'... reaching back to the origins of capitalism in 16th-century Europe and the Americas... The first Nigerian feminist organization also gave me a better understanding of how women defend their resources and refuse the new patriarchy promoted by the World Bank." The Nigerian experience significantly altered Federici’s thinking, imbuing her research on primitive accumulation with a new theoretical significance.
First, Federici recognized that primitive accumulation is not merely the starting point of capitalism but an inherent mechanism within it that accompanies the entire process of capitalist development. From Federici’s perspective, traditional Marxist views suggest that the violent dispossession mechanisms of primitive accumulation disappear once capitalism matures, at which point capital enters a stage of productive accumulation based on the exploitation of surplus value. This process is supposed to bring about a massive liberation of productive forces, laying the foundation for the transition to a higher stage of communist society. However, the capitalist mode of accumulation is far more primitive and violent than imagined; its violent dispossession of wealth and the continuous devaluation of women's status can never be terminated. Federici points out that primitive accumulation "is a phenomenon that always constitutes capitalist relations, appearing repeatedly, 'is part of the continuous process of capitalist accumulation,' and 'always occurs simultaneously with its expansion.'" Primitive accumulation does not precede capital accumulation; rather, it is a foundational mechanism inherent in the structure of capital accumulation. Capital accumulation is always accompanied by the violence of primitive accumulation.
Second, Federici uses the mechanism of primitive accumulation to reconstruct the relationship between capital accumulation and women's housework. Federici divides capital accumulation into two categories: one is productive accumulation (exploitation), and the other is primitive accumulation—referred to as non-productive accumulation or "accumulation by dispossession"—which targets forms of labor other than wage labor, including women's domestic labor. Regarding this point, Federici integrates the theoretical resources of Rosa Luxemburg and David Harvey. Grounded in the imbalance between the proletariat as producers and as consumers, Luxemburg pointed out: "Surplus value can be realized neither by workers nor by capitalists, but by those social strata or social structures belonging to non-capitalist modes of production." Capitalism is a non-self-sufficient system; it cannot complete accumulation by relying solely on the production process. Expanded reproduction can produce surplus value, but as long as effective demand is insufficient, capitalism cannot realize that surplus value, and the system will eventually collapse. Therefore, capitalism must rely on "primitive accumulation mechanisms" to achieve violent control, appropriation, and dispossession external to the production process. It is a new form of slavery that cannot survive without an "outside." Harvey also noted that capital truly needs something "outside of itself" to achieve accumulation: "...using the discourse of contemporary postmodern political theory, we could say that capitalism must and frequently does create its own 'Other'." In the era of new imperialism, accumulation by dispossession is a more dominant mode of accumulation than expanded reproduction (exploitative accumulation). Federici further points out: "Reproduction was exiled from the sphere of economic relations and deceptively relegated to the 'private,' 'personal,' 'external,' and especially 'female' sphere of capital accumulation, rendering it invisible work and naturalizing exploitation. It is also the basis for establishing a new gendered division of labor and new domestic organization, subjecting women to men and further distinguishing women and men socially and psychologically." In short, for Federici, the mechanism of primitive accumulation means turning women's housework into an "outside" of capitalist exploitation, placing it outside the public economic sphere to become an object of direct violent dispossession by capital that bypasses the production process. This conceals the dispossession of capital and renders women's housework an invisible labor. As an external expression of capital accumulation, women's housework has the same value as colonies or unprivatized communal land; capital can only realize accumulation by continuously encroaching upon and plundering the "outside" without compensation.
Third, Federici believes that witch-hunting has always been an inseparable part of the mechanism of primitive accumulation, emerging alongside it, with its most important function being the control of the female body. "With the development of capitalism, it was not only necessary to enclose the commons, but also the body. However, this process was different for men and women, just as it was different for those destined for slavery and those subject to other forms of forced labor (including paid labor)." Primitive accumulation requires a continuous "enclosure movement" of the female body to tame it and turn it into a machine for the reproduction of labor power. Contemporary neoliberal witch-hunts are intended to re-intensify control over the female body, expand the labor market, and lower the price of labor. The new round of capitalist structural adjustment also includes the dismantling of the welfare state and the financialization of reproduction, causing female reproduction to lose welfare protections and fall into debt and mortgage crises. All of this again deprives women of bodily autonomy, forcing them into passive submission to the order of capitalist reproduction. Meanwhile, in the service industry, women's bodies are constantly under inspection, with everything from appearance to attitude being scrutinized; plastic surgery and dieting are in many cases effectively mandated. These are all part of the "enclosure" of the female body.
Finally, Federici argues that women are a natural force of resistance against the mechanism of primitive accumulation, which leads the capitalist state to repeatedly launch witch-hunts to suppress their resistance. Federici notes: "Today, faced with a new process of primitive accumulation, women are the main social force hindering the complete commercialization of nature. Women are the world's subsistence farmers. In Africa, even though the World Bank and other agencies try to persuade them to shift their activities to other cash crops, they still produce 80% of the food consumed by the people." In Federici's view, women naturally resist neoliberalism. Women in the Third World unite to resist the hijacking of land and agriculture by capital; they build farmland irrigation facilities, restore many communal lands, and improve the natural environment destroyed by capital. These actions make women the greatest potential subversive force against the neoliberal mechanism of primitive accumulation, inevitably drawing the hostility of capital. Therefore, violence against women and organized misogynistic speech and behavior have become rampant in Third World countries. In essence, this is not a gender conflict but a class conflict: capital seeks to suppress the entire proletariat by suppressing women, ultimately ensuring the smooth implementation of the neoliberal project.
In summary, Federici imbues historical research on primitive accumulation with contemporary significance, identifying the permanence of the primitive accumulation mechanism and the close relationship between witch-hunting and that mechanism. Federici also points out that capital accumulation always requires an "outside." Everything external under non-capitalist relations of production is a target of capitalist dispossession, and women’s domestic labor is such an "outside." Consequently, capital's mechanism of primitive accumulation is essentially patriarchal.
IV. Conclusion: The Contemporary Effects of Federici’s Critical Theory
As an anti-capitalist theorist and activist, Federici has dedicated her life to the feminist and socialist causes, advancing the theory and practice of autonomist Marxism and autonomist feminism, exerting a profound influence on contemporary critical theory.
First, Federici has, to a certain extent, developed the Marxist-feminist theory of gender. Her discourse on primitive accumulation and the violent rise of capitalism is the core of her thought, describing the transition from pre-capitalist to capitalist modes of production. Federici argues that primitive accumulation is a destructive and regressive process that brought terrible consequences not only to women but also to countries subjected to capitalist colonial rule. By analyzing centuries of capital’s destruction and persecution of women and their bodies in Europe and its colonies, she provides a compelling case for the gendered nature of early primitive accumulation. The pervasive inequality in modern society shows that even in contemporary neoliberal capitalist society, these problems have not been fundamentally resolved. Recognizing the importance of the relationship between reproduction, domestic labor, and capital accumulation allowed Federici to gain a new understanding of the history of capitalist development and class struggle. She draws heavily on Marx’s discussion of the labor theory of value and primitive accumulation in Capital to explore how female labor was transformed into a specific capitalist form, which she believes is crucial to the reproduction of the capitalist system. Building on Marxist theory, Federici presents her view on the role of reproductive labor in primitive accumulation and capitalist development. In her historical analysis of the logic of primitive accumulation and capitalist expansion, gender, race, and class hold prominent positions. Federici adheres to a Marxist analytical framework, viewing colonization and patriarchy (Western, white, male) as dual tools of capital accumulation. Therefore, in a certain sense, Federici’s critical analysis of capitalist society is both feminist and Marxist in nature.
Second, the "Wages for Housework" movement led by Federici revealed the relationship between capital accumulation and women's domestic labor, prompting intellectuals to pay attention to labor outside of wage labor and becoming the most widely and deeply influential movement in the history of Marxist feminism. In Federici’s view, a feminism based on classical Marxism tends to reduce women to female workers, which easily allows gender issues to be obscured by class issues. Meanwhile, although radical feminism highlights the power relations of gender oppression, it treats patriarchal structures as operating independently beyond class. The theory of domestic labor transcends both, as the relationship between domestic labor and capital accumulation highlights both gender and class issues, achieving a true marriage between Marxism and feminism.
Third, Federici’s analysis of the mechanism of primitive accumulation fully demonstrates the relationship between patriarchy and capitalism and provides supporting historical facts. In Federici’s view, capitalism originated from the organized persecution of women; the violent witch-hunts allowed for the formation and solidification of a gendered division of labor, where men perform paid labor and women perform unpaid labor. In the era of primitive accumulation, the bourgeoisie implemented the wage labor system and intensified control and discipline over the body by suppressing women, making gender inequality an important prerequisite for class inequality. Since primitive accumulation never stops, capital's devaluation of women's status also hardly ever ends, which demonstrates that patriarchy is an essential characteristic of capitalism.
Finally, Federici has opened up new fields for the critique of capitalism. She elucidated that, in addition to productive accumulation, capitalism also involves non-productive accumulation—a mode of accumulation that has increasingly become mainstream in the neoliberal era. For instance, Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt were deeply influenced by her, arguing that contemporary late capitalism is a continuation of primitive accumulation, wherein capital absorbs all externalities and achieves accumulation by expropriating "the common." The theory of "digital labor" proposed by the renowned British Marxist scholar Christian Fuchs [5] was born out of the domestic labor analyzed by Federici. He pointed out: "Housework is a form of internal colonization and a continuously developing form of primitive accumulation within capitalism." Fuchs further argues that digital labor on social platforms, much like domestic labor, is expropriated by capital without compensation, demonstrating that digital capitalism still continues the mechanisms of capital’s primitive accumulation. The contemporary revival of "Social Reproduction Theory" in the United States has also been influenced by Federici. This theory posits that the reproduction of the working class exists outside of wage labor and exploitation, pervading all social spheres such as homes, schools, shopping centers, entertainment venues, hospitals, public transportation, and prisons; the value created by this social reproduction is invisible and expropriated by capital without compensation. Social Reproduction Theory redefines the relationship between exploitation (usually associated with class) and oppression (usually associated with gender and race), suggesting that the mechanisms of oppression are reflections of the mechanisms of primitive accumulation.
In summary, as a Marxist feminist theorist and activist with outstanding theoretical contributions and far-reaching influence, Federici deserves greater attention. Her critique of capitalist patriarchy from the perspective of primitive accumulation and witch-hunting warrants deeper reflection and exploration.
(Author’s Affiliation: School of Marxism, Nanjing University)
(This article is a staged result of the Research Fund for Basic Scientific Research Business Expenses of Central Universities project, "Research on the Value Guidance of a Community with a Shared Future for Humanity and the Construction of Gender Justice.")
Online Editor: Tongxin Source: Foreign Theoretical Trends, Issue 4, 2023