Feminism and Social Reproduction: An Interview With Silvia Federici

Silvia Federici interviewed by George Souvlis and Ankica akardi

George Souvlis and Ankica akardi: What were the formative experiences for
you politically and personally?

Silvia Federici: The first most formative experience in my life was WWII. I grew up
in the immediate postwar period when the memory of a war that had lasted for years,
added to the years of fascism in Italy, were still very fresh. At an early age I was
aware that I was born into a world deeply divided and murderous, that the state far
from protecting us could be an enemy, that life is extremely precarious and, as Joan
Baez song later said, there but for fortune go you and I. Growing up in postwar and
presumably post-fascist Italy it was difficult not be politicized. Even as a little girl I
could not help not to be antifascist hearing all the stories my parents told us, and my
fathers tirades against the fascist regime. I also grew up in a communist town, where
on May Day workers sported red carnations on the jackets and we wake up at the
sound of Bella Ciao, and where the struggle between communists and fascists
continued with the fascists periodically trying to blow up the monument to the
partisan and the communist retaliating against the headquarter of the MSI
Movimento Sociale Italiano which everybody knew was a continuation of the now
banned fascist party. By the time I was 18 I saw myself as a radical, that at the time
the prototype struggle was still that of factory workers or the anti-fascist struggle.
Coming to the US was also a major, politically formative turning point. I came in the
summer of 67. The University of Buffalo where I was to study for the next three
years was a very active campus, being on border with Canada and a place of passage
for many anti-war activists trying to escape the draft. I arrived in the midst of several
mobilizations in support of the Buffalo 9 , who had been arrested trying to cross,
against the framing of Martin Sostre, a Puertorican activist much respected in the
black community, who was framed by the FBI. Very soon I was joining student and
anti-war protests. I started working with Telos and with an underground journal called
the Town Crier. In the US I learned about the legacy of slavery, racism, imperialism.
While in the US I also became acquainted with the Italian new left,
with Operaismo and the extra-parliamentary groups that formed in the wake of 68 in
France and the Italian Hot Autumn. I was particularly inspired by Trontis reading of
Marx, saying that first comes the working class and then capital, meaning capital does
not evolve out of its autonomous logic but does so in response to working class
struggle, which is the prime motor of social change. That has been a big lesson for
me, it has taught me to always look for the struggle, the social contradictions as keys
to understanding social reality. Operaismo also provided a critique of historical
materialism and the politics of communist parties. But of course it was important that
I became acquainted with the new Italian political thought in the US, because here I
could never forget the history of colonialism and enslavement, the history of the
wageless. This history and of course my experience growing up in still patriarchal
postwar Italy, shaped my approach to feminism which was another, truly
revolutionary moment in my life. I will not speak of that because my work speaks for
it. Ill speak instead of what it meant for me in the early 80s to be able to spend time
teaching in Nigeria, my first encounter with sub-Saharan Africa. By the time I had
done a good amount of reading about colonialism, as well as the politics of
development and under-development, but Nigeria was another moment of subjective
political transformation, no because it changed my view of social relations but
disclosed a whole reality that was immensely different when lived from my
knowledge of it through books. In Nigeria I learned about communal relations, about
the continuing importance of land, I learned about the curse that oil is for the
countries in which it is found, and the great creativity of African people. The teaching
I had been able to do there came to an end with the escalation of the debt crisis and
political repression. However, back in the US, I began to spend more and more time
in Mexico, and more recently in other countries of Latin America, also because of the
publication of Caliban and the Witch in Mexico, Argentina and Ecuador and now in
Brazil. I mention Latin America because despite the hardship that people, women in
particular are facing, because of the politics of extractivism, the ever present violence
by armies, the paramilitaries, the narco-traffickers, the DEA with its War Against
Drugs- the struggles that people are making to maintain their autonomy, to recreate
often coming from a situation of total expropriation, autonomous, collective forms of
reproduction and self-government, represent not a model but an inspiration that
positively affects my own political thinking and practice.

GS+AC: Were you involved with Lotta Femminista in the 70s with Leopoldina
Fortunati, Mariarosa Dalla Costa, Selma James and others? What was the
relationship between this movement and Operaismo?

SF: I was never part of Lotta Feminista. I was already in the US when it was formed,
and the Italian women I worked with in the campaign for wages for housework had
broken with Lotta Femminista, precisely on the question of WFH. I cannot speak
therefore about its relation to Operaismo. Both Mariarosa dalla Costa and Leopolda
Fortunati have spoken about it and I refer to them. As for myself, I have already
spoken of my debt to Operaismo and how it influenced my approach to WFH. I can
add that Trontis Operai e Capitale (Workers and Capital), in addition to giving a
central role to class struggle in the shaping of capitals movements, also introduced
the concept of the social factory. He actually did not use this term, but argued that at
a certain point of capitalist development the factory begins to reshape society in its
own image, for its own productivity needs. He had in mind, in particular, how
educational systems have been restructured to prepare the proletarian youth for
industrial work. This resonated with our analysis of the community, the home, the
family as centers for the production of labour power, as capitalist constructions,
rather than legacies of pre-capitalist social relations, which was at the time the
dominant idea even in the feminist movement.
GS+AC: Your work bears some similarities to that of Paddy Quick, Maria Mies
and Wally Secombe. All of these writers argue that to analyse womens
oppression in capitalism several points must be taken in account: sexual division
of labour; social reproduction; the control of womens bodies and reproductive
power; and the dynamic influence of family forms. In this, you explicitly situate
your work within the theoretical heritage of the domestic labour debate, drawing
on Dalla Costa and James argument that the sexual division of labour and
unpaid work play a central function in the process of capitalist accumulation.
Could you tell us a bit more about the distinctions between your work? And,
what do you see as distinction in this between the capitalist and the feudal
systems?

SF: Although all the authors you mention grounded the position of women in
capitalist society in the process of reproduction, there are significant differences
among us.
One difference (for example between the analysis of wages for housework and that of
Maria Mies) is that we have always defined domestic work as a capitalist
construction, and specifically as work whose social aim is the reproduction of labour
power. I have often stressed that in reality domestic/reproductive work has a double
character: it reproduces our life and at the same time it is expected to reproduce the
work-force and because of it is subjected to specific constraints. In Mies work you do
not find always this distinction. In her analysis there is a continuity between domestic
work and subsistence-oriented reproduction in so called underdeveloped countries.
This is partially true. But there is a difference between reproductive/domestic work
under conditions in which women have access to land or other forms of reproduction,
as for instance in many indigenous communities, and domestic work which is not paid
and depends on a (mostly male) wage. However I have a large base of agreement with
Mies and appreciate how she has expanded the concept of reproduction to include
agricultural work in much of the so-called third world.
The distinction between the feudal system and the capitalist system stems from the
radical expropriation to which workers are subjected to in capitalism, and their
separation from the means of reproduction. This is the motor of capitalist
development as well as the intense exploitation of labour. As I have stressed
in Caliban and the Witch, capitalism is the first system of exploitation that sees
labour, rather than the land, as the main form of wealth. For this reason it has
developed a whole new politics with respect to the disciplining of the body, especially
the body of women, and the management of reproduction beginning with procreation.
Capitalism must control the work of reproduction, as it is a central aspect of the
process of accumulation, so that reproductive work functions as the reproduction of
labour power, i.e. our capacity to work, rather than (for instance) the reproduction of
our struggle.

GS+AC: In Caliban and the Witch you refer to Robert Brenners article The
Agrarian Roots of European Capitalism. What do you think of Brenners work
and the work of other Political Marxists?

SF: I do not remember now all the arguments of Brenner and the school of Political
Marxism. I agreed with its stress on the transformation of agrarian relations in Europe
as crucial for capitalist development, although the formation of an agrarian/land
market was also made possible by the river of silver that came into Europe following
the conquest of vast regions of South America. But I have the same critique of this
school that I have of Marxs approach: their ignorance of the role the reconstruction
of reproductive work has played in the capitalist take off. They have correctly seen
the separation of the peasantry from the land as a en essential condition for the
existence of capitalist relations, but have ignore the separation of production, from
reproduction, the devaluation of reproductive work, its confinement to a seemingly
non- economic sphere and the consequent devaluation of the position of women, who
with the transition to capitalism are destined to become the main subjects of this
work. Like Marx, Brenner and the school of Political Marxism ignores the witch-
hunts of the 16th and 17th centuries in their analysis of the impact of capitalist
development on agrarian relations, which I think is a major mistake.
GS+AC: Do you think it is possible to capitalism could ever exist without the
appropriation of womens unpaid domestic labour?

SF: No, I dont think it is possible, because womens unpaid labour, which continues
into the present, is the condition for the devaluation of labour-power. Without this
work, the capitalist class would have had to make a major investment into all the
infrastructures necessary to reproduce labour-power and its rate of accumulation
would have been seriously affected. There is also a political side to the devaluation
and consequent naturalization of reproductive work. It has been the material basis for
a labour hierarchy which divides women and men, which enable capital to control the
exploitation of womens work more effectively through marriage and marital relation,
including the ideology of romantic love, and to pacify men giving them a servant on
whom to exercise their power.

GS+AC: Could you tell us a bit about the difference between the Wages for
Housework tradition and feminist unitary theory (of Lise Vogel, Sue
Ferguson, Cinzia Arruzza, etc.) when it comes to understanding the relationship
between capitalism and patriarchy?

SF: I have not read the work of Sue Ferguson and Cinzia Arruzza. As for Lisa Vogel
some of the main ideas at the basis of her theory are taken from Dalla Costa and
James work who already provided a unitary theory as they explained the
reconstruction of patriarchal relation in capitalism starting from the definition of
womens social function as the unpaid re/production of the work force. Where I
believe Dalla Costa and myself as well separate from Vogel is in the view of
socialism as a liberatory system. Marx and the Marxist-socialist tradition have an
optimistic view of capitalist development as creating the necessary conditions for a
non-exploitative society.
I am writing now from Mexico, after having travelled in recent months through
several countries of Latin America, everywhere confronted with communities that are
facing destruction at the hands of mining, agribusiness companies which are today the
leading sectors of capitalist development. Speaking of my work, and my own
perspective, I can say that I have learned from Marx and continue to use his work, but
I less concerned today with building a unitary theory that Vogel was, unless today
Marxist are prepared to abandon the development bias that so far have been such an
essential part of their theory and politics. Across the world, from the rural areas to the
urban favelas, in a world where favelization is a growing process, capitalist
development is death.. and the challenge today is how to build an alternative to it.

GS+AC: You edited the book Enduring Western Civilization, in which you says
that the formation of the Western Canon went hand-in-hand with the exclusion
of the other, both the sexual, the gender, the ethnic, the religious and the
racial. This process was closely interlinked with the formation of westernized
analytical categories through which we perceive the world. Recent work, such
asVivek Chibbers Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital, offers a
sustained defense of theoretical approaches that emphasize universal categories
like capitalism and class. His work, in others words, constitutes an argument for
the continued relevance of Marxism in the face of some of its most trenchant
critics. What do you think both about this kind of reasoning and the general
issue of the use of universal categories for the critique of capitalism that derive
from this study? There is any way to balance the two, critique of west and the
use of analytical tools that derive from it, or they are mutually exclusive?

SF: Again, I am not comfortable commenting on works I have not read, or have not
consulted in long time. So I will confine myself to some comments on the concept of
the West and the presumed need of universal categories. As I, with others, have
shown in Enduring western civilization, the concept of West and Western is a product
of the cold war, when, in the aftermath of the Bolschevik revolution Western came to
stand for capitalist, industrially/technologically developed, innovative etc. whereas
communism was racialized, seen as asiatic, understood as backward, incapable of
development. For this reason I do not use ever Western, which also hides class
relations, hiding the different /antagonistic relation in Europe, the US the so-called
West and similarly the class/ antagonistic relations in regions such as Africa, Latin
America. West/Western are political terms, untenable in their content, and intended to
present global politics as formed by opposite worlds, in which no divisions, no
hierarchies exist, and presumably one common interest prevails.
As for universal categories I can say that clearly we need a certain level of abstraction
in our analyses, but we cannot understand capitalism and the history of the global
economy unless we look at it from the viewpoint of different subjects. In a society
which is the results of century of construction of hierarchies and therefore extremely
different experiences the idea of a universal viewpoint is bankrupt. Capitalism cannot
be understood in its totality if it is not approached from the viewpoint of the slaves,
the colonized, as well as the viewpoint of industrial workers, from the viewpoint of
proletarian women as well as proletarian men, and I would say the viewpoint of
children, and of course an ecological viewpoint.

GS+AC: Recent years have seen both an increase in migration to Europe, as well
as a rise in the parties of the far-right. How do we, on the left, fight this terrible
situation?

It is impossible to express in a few words the pain and indignation I feel seeing what
governments and so many people in Europe are doing to the refugees from wars the
same governments have financed. It is scary to see that year after year, almost every
week in the Mediterrenean boats carrying refugees have shipwrecked and hundreds
and hundreds have died, so that the Mediterrenean is now a big cemetery and this is
happening in front of everybodys eyes, not in hidden concentration camps not to
mention the hospitality centers, which are jails where those undocumented are
thrown and kept for indefinite periods in wretched conditions.
It is of course deplorable that the response among many, also workers, is not
solidarity but rejection, persecution, and nationalistic postures. It is particularly
worrisome as it is often a war among the poor, as often those who Want to raise
barriers are people themselves struggling to survive, who think they can protect
themselves not through solidarity with the refugees, but by a politics of exclusion. I
would like to add though that we need to know ore about the neo-Nazi who attack
refugees, in Germany for example, as there is evidence of complicity on the side of
the authorities and the police, to the point we can think of the neo-Nazi surge as
instruments of control for refugees who may be useful as cheap labour power but only
to the extent they accept to stay at the bottom of the social ladder.
GS+AC: Theres been a rise of certain leftist formations from Corbyn and
Sanders to Podemos in recent years. Do you see any hope in these
developments for signification social transformation? How do you think the
contemporary left should relate to the state?

SF: This is not an easy question to answer. We just learned a cause of a major
surprise for most that the Zapatistas have proposed to participate in the presidential
elections of 2018 with an indigenous woman candidate. It is not the case they have
changed their politics, it seems, but that they are so besieged that they try in this way
to break the encirclement and make broader sectors of the population aware of the
massive, violent attack they have been experiencing since the death of Galeano. That
said, we see that left-leaning governments and the whole politics of progressivism, in
Europe as in Latin America is in crisis. Few have mobilized in Brazil to demand the
reinstatement of Dilma Roussef, though many condemned her impeachment as a
fraudulent move, almost a coup. The record of progressive government is that at best
they have alleviated some of the most extreme forms of poverty, but have not changed
the node of production, have not implemented the reform the social movements who
brought them to power demanded, have not reined in the violence of the army and the
police. Perhaps a different discourse could be made for chavism, as it was ore
respectful of peoples power, but it too relied on extractivist politics, which has made
the country dependent on the ups and downs of the global market. And what to say of
Bernie Sanders who after spending months explaining why his followers should not
vote for Clinton now says it is the only way? What a lesson in cynicism.
I dont call the politics of the commons spontaneist. There are now in the word
many communitarian regimes that have hundred of years of history behind them. And
there is not much spontaneity in the defence of common goods in many parts of the
world when this must confront the violence of paramilitaries and armies, and
companies security guards. Clearly we should not dogmatic in these matters. At the
local levels it is possible many time to exert some influence on governments. But
what we see is that the centres where decisions are made are becoming more and
more distant from the reach of people. We also see the formation of an international
power-structure that constantly supersedes the power of the nation state, as is the case
of the EU.
Of the constant interference of the IMF and World bank in state politics, especially
but not exclusively in the third world, we see a proliferation of Free Trade
Agreements like the TTP or the TTIP (fortunately not yet signed) which establish
the direct rule of capital over the global economy, so that no decision can be taken at
the economic level that is not approved by the big corporations, and national
sovereignty is totally eliminated. Under these conditions how to be optimistic about
the instalment of left/radical governments?

GS+AC: A wave of change rolled through Latin America at the turn of the
twenty-first century, sweeping away neoliberal governments. Crucial to this have
been the new social movements that emerged demanding both socio-political and
economic rights. This, though, has produced tensions between the ruling parties
and the social movements. Do you believe that these tensions can be solved in a
way that cam promote the interests of the working classes in Latin America?

SF: I visited Ecuador in April of this year and had many encounters with ecological
and womens groups and the reports were unanimous. Why, people are asking, is the
left in Europe or the US speaking of Correa as a radical, when his politics are fully in
line with neo-liberalism? Why given that more than any previous government Correa
is now attacking the land of indigenous people and he displays in his everyday
policies a complete contempt for women? Being brought to power by a movement of
indigenous people Correa introduced into the countrys constitution the principle that
nature too has right, and at first seemed determined not to exploit its oil resources, but
has since changed his mind, now is promoting foreign investment and petroleum
drilling in the park of the Yasuni. Not surprisingly he has repeatedly clashed with the
same indigenous populations that once supported it, and his government is widely
condemned as contemptuous of movements from below, authoritarian, and supportive
of corporate power. Evo Morales too speaks of Pachamama when he goes abroad but
follows a similar extractivist politics, which in addition to destroying lands, forests,
rivers, is creating internal form of colonialism. This is not to say that they are not
groups of workers who may support their politics, as extractivism means wages for
some, though at the cost of the destruction of the livelihood of many, in the same way
as in many US communities young workers support fracking.
I must say there is a broad gap between the view of these governments elaborated by
radical theorists in Latin America like Luis Tapia, Raul Zibechi, Raquel Gutierrez
Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, and many others and the view of them held by many leftist
in the US and Europe.

GS+AC: Could you comment on the recent US presidential elections?

SF:: The US elections are a sad show, whose dangerous implications are already
evident, if it true that dozens of white supremacists groups have now emerged to the
surface feeling supported and legitimated by Trumps pronouncements.
It is demoralizing to see sectors of the US working class falling for someone like
Trump. But of course Clinton with her ties to Wall Street, the CIA, the war machine
is not an alternative. And she can play the feminist only because since the 70s
feminism has been institutionalized, so that women could be integrated into the global
economy as cheap labor.
Interview conducted on 19/10/2016