A-Infos (en) France, Alternative Libertaire AL Septembre - Interview, Silvia Federici (feminist): "Capitalism separates and isolates women" (fr, it, pt) [machine translation]

How is capitalism possible? In Marxist question Marx's answer: by the unpaid labor. The 
worker of the labor force is exploited, and the wealth it produces is extorted by the 
capitalist. How is the work of the workman possible? In feminist issue, Silvia Federici 
answer: by the work of women that allows the worker to reproduce his daily labor. In an 
interview with Hourya Bentouhami, philosopher and activist U, Silvia Federici returns to 
the specificity of patriarchy within capitalist societies. ---- AL: Is it that you can 
explain your background that goes from the study of witch hunt (in "Caliban and the 
Witch") as having contributed by you to the first form of primitive accumulation with 
enclosures[1]women, on reflection you lead today on domestic work and capitalism on a 
global scale in what amounts to a form of neo-colonialism?

Silvia Federici: In the 1970s, we started to analyze the reproduction work, domestic work, 
as a very important field of exploitation of women and struggle in capitalist societies. 
This led us to think that women have to lead an independent struggle not only provide 
support function of the struggles of men. From this perspective, I began to think the 
history of the construction of domestic work, and this led me to rethink the history of 
primitive accumulation. I realized early on that it was important to understand what 
capitalism is, how it developed and how turned the job is called in modern reproductive 
labor society - especially the housework. So I interested in pre-capitalist societies to 
understand how this work has been transformed, especially in Europe. I then studied the 
Middle Ages. And I realized that in feudal society which was a very oppressive society 
because of slavery (which was a strong operating system), the serf in many cases had as a 
pay access to land, so reproducing means[2]. In most cases, they worked the land of a 
community way. Land owners (the lords) gave them a plot of land to breed. I studied this 
Community reproductive system and I found that it was the land of great solidarity, where 
strong links are built. I especially as women in this system were less isolated and less 
dependent on men that in the capitalist system. Less dependent than the housewife of 
modern life, separated, isolated in his house, often destitute, while the wife of the 
medieval village is a woman who is always with other women. This research thereby permit 
me also seize the role of women in pre-capitalist struggles against feudal power. It is 
leaning on the struggles involved women and that developed against the feudal system that 
I started to understand the development of capitalism: it was not an internal change 
factor system social, but operated in the manner of an against-revolution.

AL: Although there have always been social violence, you insist on the specificity of 
capitalist exploitation.

Silvia Federici: Yes, I do not want to idealize the Middle Ages, nor between men and women 
at that time. I'm always afraid to make big generalizations because of a feudal society to 
another there are also many differences. However, what made me think lies in this fact: in 
a community where goods are in the labor share in a Community regime, the way women and 
men worked was a stronger character of cooperation. Community schemes have established 
relationships and opportunities: in the late Middle Ages, before the great growth and the 
religious heresies, which were in fact social heresies, there was an alternative to the 
feudal system and the beginning of a market society. We observe peasant wars in the late 
fifteenth century, they brought thousands of people. For example, in Spain, farmers went 
from one village to another to recruit during the uprisings. They had a great experience 
weapons.

I also found that there was a difference in women's position in relation to the capitalist 
situation that I noticed later studying pre-capitalist societies, pre-colonial Africa, 
where there was a sexual division work. Women cultivated, were a particular type of 
culture, they had their own harvest; and men had theirs on their side. So there was a 
sexual differentiation, but did not put women in a position of weakness because this 
differentiation was accompanied by a greater cooperation between the women themselves, 
especially in agriculture. To give you an example, in 1929 in Nigeria, in the city where I 
was near the Niger Delta, which became famous because of the "war on women" that took 
place there, the British who had colonized the region already taxed harvest of men. But 
this year, they decided to also tax the women harvest, which had the effect of seeing 
women lift. They began to organize in the entire region, 10 000 women converged on Aba, 
released prisoners, organized an office of the administrative city. Taken by surprise, the 
British had to retreat. It is this struggle which dates the entry of African women in 
British anthropology. We realized that from this form of community agricultural work, 
women were highly organized. This was described in this beautiful book of Wole Soyinka 
(Ake - The years of childhood), his mother was engaged in the movement at the time when he 
himself was still a little boy. Fela's mother had also taken part. It is an extraordinary 
episode.

AL: That reminds analyzes the Nigerian feminist, Oyeronke Oyewumi, author of The Invention 
of Women. She worked on the Yoruba. She explains in her book that imported a certain way 
of seeing the kind from Western countries, and it does not match the Namibian reality: 
there are sex differences but they do not necessarily work in a matrix exploitation and 
domination.

Silvia Federici: From the moment of sexual difference becomes exclusion, hierarchy, then 
it must be fought. Sexual difference in itself does not mean oppression: at least when one 
is in a non-capitalist society. For example, Nigerian feminists have spoken of this 
institution in the family in which the infertile woman could find a form of social 
compensation to her infertility. If she could not procreate, she could marry another 
woman, which could have a child with a "servant".

However, capitalism produces the difference, including sexual difference. What capitalism 
does is separate, isolate. The witch hunt has not only meant the subjugation of women, but 
also the separation of women among them. She made women rally, friendship between women a 
dangerous thing. There was a period in capitalism in which a woman was afraid to be seen 
with other women, because she could be suspected of participating in a cult of witches. 
This was accompanied by legislation that has gradually forbidden for women to get together 
with other women to walk alone in the street, to accompany their friends. And also to have 
strong relationships with their families after marriage. In England, for example, it was 
thought that women, once married, had to build a new loyalty to the husband. The witch 
hunt has been fundamental to restructure the relationships within the family in three 
directions: the woman's relationship with the family, with other women and with children. 
Solidarity among women is attacked: solidarity must focus on the nuclear family around the 
figure of the husband. The woman must devote all his energy to it. Intense female 
sociality that existed in the Middle Ages is attacked. Then, solidarity with the parents 
and family or you just also attacked. You have to be in solidarity with your children.

  This is also reflected in the reproductive policy. In the Middle Ages, when the life of 
the mother was in danger, the mother is saved. From industrialization, the opposite is 
true: the mother is sacrificed. With the professionalization of medicine, priority is 
given to the child. This can be explained from the labor market: the child, the new life 
is the new productive worker, older people can be abandoned because they are not 
productive; relations with friend-es are not productive, relations with the husband are 
productive because they allow the husband to break free of domestic work. That's what I 
see in the transition from a pre-capitalist society to a capitalist society. Of course 
there are many differences between the pre-capitalist societies, this is a generalization 
but women community relations tissue is a common element that is found in Africa, in 
Europe, but also in Latin America, despite the contrasts between these different 
historical models and experiences.

About recuillis by Hourya Bentouhami

When global capitalism set women together

Silvia Federici has also made a valuable contribution to feminist reflections on the 
international division of labor at work since the 1970s This has broadly weakened the 
status of women by subjecting them to specific forms of exploitation - solidarity and pre 
livelihood activities being eaten away by the extension of capitalist relations and 
neoliberal restructuring - but it also helped establish or strengthen neo-colonial 
relations between women themselves, because if production is redistributed internationally 
reproductive work is also. First, as she recalled, the emigrants massive use of the Third 
World in the North American metropolises of Western Europe and the rich countries of the 
Middle East has allowed bring a colonial solution to the problem of housework for women of 
middle and upper classes. This leaves unchanged the status quo between the sexes in the 
distribution of household tasks and relationships "maids-madams" arising preclude any 
feminist solidarity. Next, it should be noted that the important international babies 
flows to these same rich countries (via the adoption and surrogacy) exchange which 
sometimes tends toward commodification, reports the weight of procreation (the 
consequences for work or risks health) on women in the third world instead of to assume 
the community. Finally, through sex tourism or prostitution of immigrant women is the 
sexual dimension of reproductive work that is redistributed. Thus, the new international 
division of labor "accentuates division in women by specialization and fixing tasks that 
reduce our possibilities of life and introduce us to new hierarchies and stratifications, 
endangering the possibility of a fight common " [3].

Marco (AL 92)

[1]The enclosure (fencing, in French) at the end of the Middle Ages in England 
corresponded to the expropriation of peasants out of communal lands. The term "enclosures 
women" is the dispossession of women to control their bodies and their knowledge.

[2]The reproduction means designates Marx all necessary means not only sexual reproduction 
of workers, but also for their own survival, reproduction of their cells, muscles, etc. 
(it can go through the means of production as among the serfs - land, tools, livestock - 
or access to consumer goods necessary through wages as in the proletariat - food, 
clothing, heating, housing).

[3]"Reproduction and feminist struggle in the new international division of labor" (1999).

http://www.alternativelibertaire.org/?Interview-de-SIlvia-Federici-Le
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