In
her recent volume Re-enchanting the World: Feminism and the Politics of
the Commons
(PM Press, 2019), Silvia Federici fruitfully brings together feminist
reflections with discussions of the commons as a possible way of overcoming
capitalism. In this blog post, I will introduce the main lines of thinking in
this impressive collection of essays.
Federici’s
key contribution in this volume is the combination of feminism with the
literature around the commons. As she notes right at the beginning, ‘from a
feminist viewpoint, one of the attractions exercised by the idea of the commons
is the possibility of overcoming the isolation in which reproductive activities
are performed and the separation between the private and the public spheres
that has contributed so much to hiding and rationalizing women’s exploitation
in the family and the home’ (P.4). As is equally clear from this quote, the
book is not just analytical, but it is also driven by a strong normative
interest in contributing to change beyond capitalism.
Importantly,
Federici’s normative interests are based on a clear analysis of the current
capitalist system. This includes, first, an understanding that primitive
accumulation is an ongoing process. Identified by Marx in Capital, Vol. 1 as
the moment when capitalism took off in Britain with peasants being driven off
their land to make way for private sheep farming, such processes continue
today. Referred to as the new enclosures, she identifies, for example, land
grabbing as a clear example in this respect. ‘Land expropriation … is the
precondition both for a commercialized agriculture and for a wage-dependent and
disciplined proletariat’ (P.36).
Equally,
Federici acknowledges, going back to her own work in the 1970s, that capitalism does
not only depend on ongoing primitive accumulation, but it has also always
relied on unpaid labour often performed by women in the household, i.e. the
sphere of social reproduction. ‘Capitalist accumulation is structurally
dependent on the free appropriation of immense quantities of labor and resources
that must appear as externalities to the market, like the unpaid domestic work
that women have provided, upon which employers have relied for the reproduction
of the workforce’ (P.105).
What
is new, however, is this more recent emphasis on the financialisation of
reproduction. With the state having abandoned welfare tasks, ‘an increasing
number of people (students, welfare recipients, pensioners) have been forced to
borrow from the banks to purchase services (health care, education, pensions)
that the state formerly subsidized, so that many reproductive activities have
now become immediate sites of capital accumulation’ (P.62).
Despite
this rather bleak picture, not all is lost yet and the commons can
play a decisive role in overcoming capitalism, Federici asserts. Importantly,
commons are not only shared and jointly managed resources, but they are social
relations. ‘Commons are constituted on the basis of social cooperation,
relations of reciprocity, and responsibility for the reproduction of the shared
wealth, natural or produced’ (P.95). They are a way of re-appropriating the
wealth people have produced, but is currently owned by either private capital
or the state.
Moreover,
there is a particular role for women in relation to the commons, Federici
argues. As women are mainly responsible for social reproduction work, they have
always relied more on access to the commons and have been disproportionately negatively
affected by privatisation and austerity. Hence, women can point towards an
alternative path based on the commons. ‘Grassroots women’s communalism today
leads to the production of a new reality, shapes a collective identity,
constitutes a counter power in the home and the community, and opens a process
of self-valorisation and self-determination from which there is much that we
can learn’ (P.108).
Nevertheless,
it is not only women, who can play a leading role in the struggles for
expanding the commons. Federici acknowledges correctly the importance of
reaching out to indigenous people and support them in their claims to the lands
of their ancestors (PP.5 and 78-84). Especially considering the current
struggles by the Wet’suwet’en Nation in Canada against the construction of a pipeline on
their land (see Canada Lays Bare
the Lie it Calls “Reconciliation”, 28/02/2020). Contesting capitalism
through a focus on the commons can only work, if fragmentations along gender,
race and ethnicity are overcome. Broad alliances including indigenous people
are essential in this respect.
At
times, Federici may underestimate the structuring conditions of capitalism and
the power of capital in oppressing moves towards unifying and expanding
existing commons. Nevertheless, this is an important book in the way it points
to current initiatives of overcoming capitalism by working from the ground up
and drawing on the particular role of women. ‘For reproductive work’, Federici
concludes, ‘insofar as it is the material basis of our life and the first
terrain on which we can practice our capacity for self-government, is the
“ground zero of revolution”’ (P.196). I highly recommend this book for reading!
Andreas Bieler
Professor of Political Economy
University of Nottingham/UK
University of Nottingham/UK
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