Extended Version: Caliban and the Witch
Ben Bradley
Silvia Federici’s, Caliban and the Witch: Capitalism, Witch-Hunts, and the Possession of the Female Body
This is an extended version of our article for this month. For the shorter article, see here.
How have feminists viewed the body? Well, probably in quite a few ways given the diversity of the feminist movement. One particularly hot-take is Silvia Federici’s. Outlined in her book, Caliban and the Witch, Federici’s account involves witch-hunts, magic, machines, capitalism and population decline.
In Caliban and the Witch, Federici argues that the body was stolen by Capitalism throughout the 14th-18th centuries, focusing on Europe and European Colonialism. In particular, she argues that the body was taken over by Capitalism for the purpose of accruing profit and power. And it had a special role reserved for the female body: to be a breeding machine to produce more workers. Federici argues that this can explain a lot of our gender ideals and treatments of the body today. (It’s worth noting here that Federici’s argument concerns how Capitalism created its own femininity based on female reproductive organs; it is not an argument saying that to be a woman it is essential to have such biological capacities.)
In this article, we’re going to have a look at all of this in a little more detail. We’ll start by looking at something called “Primitive Accumulation”, and tie this into Capitalism’s need to possess the female body. We’ll then take a closer look at how this was achieved, honing in on the role of the witch hunts. Finally, we’ll look at the consequences of this: what Federici thinks this has meant for the body today.
Why Steal the Body? Primitive Accumulation Introduction
So how does Federici think the female body was turned into a machine for reproducing workers? First, the idea that the female body is a meek, submissive reproductive machine wasn’t learnt easily: Capitalism had to force people into believing it. First was Europe, and then the whole world. This happened through the sophisticated and violent witch-hunts (more on this later). However, to understand why witch-hunts were necessary, we need to first look at a process called ‘Primitive Accumulation’. Possession of the female body was one instance of this more general phenomenon.
Primitive accumulation, coined by Marx, is just a fancy way of saying that Capitalism violently stole or accumulated things in order to give it a chance of establishing itself. It stole human bodies, resources and land. This took place during the 15th-18th centuries of Capitalism’s initial growth, a necessary pre-condition for it to become the dominant political and economic system. Federici builds on the definition of primitive accumulation as an accumulation of workers and capital, and says it was also an accumulation of divisions and hierarchies along lines of gender, race and age. These were created as a means by which slavery and the possession of women’s bodies could be justified, and therefore a way of justifying the practices of primitive accumulation.
Karl Marx and Silvia Federici
Why did the ruling class feel the need to take away freedom from the people and weaken them with divisions of race, age and gender? Well, for Federici, you need to take a step back and look at history. According to Federici, in Europe life was actually generally quite good around the 13th and 14th centuries. Peasants’ revolutions resulted in high wages, food was plentiful, people had plenty of access to land, and lots of free time and festivals to enjoy. They even protested - and won - rent strikes. She doesn’t say that it was necessarily ‘better’ than modern times, just that there were many things going for it. But, Federici says, the ruling classes, the aristocracy and the Lords of the Manor, were not best pleased about this: they were losing precious power and wealth. The peasants’ successful revolutions and solidarity were a problem for the Lords and Kings.
To strike back, the aristocracy began some counter-revolutions. First were the ‘Enclosures’. This was the crown appropriating, or stealing, the peoples’ land. This land was known as the Commons (which is where the meaning of ‘common’ as a green park comes from). The ruling classes decided that privatising and owning the Commons could break up the peasant’s power, thereby giving more power, and rent, to landlords and the ruling class. Capitalism was gaining speed.
Primitive Accumulation wasn’t only practiced in Europe. It happened abroad too, as the ruling classes – the military and the crown - practiced Primitive Accumulation through the slave trade and colonialism. European invaders colonised foreign lands from North Africa to South America. They pillaged, raped, tortured, and enslaved the local people, and millions were captured and shipped back to Europe as workers in chains, owned as if they were land or possessions and paid nothing for their labour.
The enslaved people were primarily African, and were forced to manipulate and pillage the land for gold, sugar, cotton, and coffee. These were the products that rocket-fuelled early-stage Capitalism. However, there was a problem: it was clearly unjust that only those from Africa were slaves. And so Capitalism had to invent the hierarchy of racism. This helped Capitalism make it seem like Africans (and others, such as the Irish) were ‘lesser’ than the white Europeans. Here we see the accumulation of hierarchies and divisions along racial lines.
Primitive Accumulation of the Female Body: Sexism
So, Primitive Accumulation stole humans as free labour in the form of slaves - hence the capitalist justification for racism. It stole land both in Europe and abroad. It stole natural resources for fuel and global trade. How though, does this relate to the possession of the female body - and with it, the capitalist justification for sexism? In other words, why would Capitalism need to possess the bodies of women too, and create rigid boundaries around gender?
Well, Federici argues that before the industrial revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries, the human body was the most effective machine for labouring in fields and making sellable goods and services. More workers meant more labour which meant more profit. This was the mindset that was becoming popular amongst the up and coming merchants in Europe. The state also sought more power and control, and so needed larger armies for larger invasions of foreign lands. To achieve this, they needed more military workers (or soldiers). Federici argues that, to this end, Capitalism sought to possess and exploit the female body, since the female body could be used to produce more births. More births would result in more productive people, more profit, and more power and wealth for the ruling classes. This was made more urgent for Capitalism due to the population declines of the 16th and 17th centuries.
However, Capitalism had to find a way to justify this. So, just as it used racism to make the violent injustice of slavery seem okay, Capitalism used sexism to make female bodies appear naturally destined for the “baby-maker” role.
The Witch-Hunts: How Capitalism stole the Female Body
So now we have an idea of Federici’s argument for the Capitalist motivation to turn the female body into a reproductive vessel: population declines, and a need for more workers and soldiers. And we can see it happened in the context of Primitive Accumulation: Capitalism selling people as slaves, taking land with the ‘Enclosures’, and selling and shipping commodities from afar. The two main effects were stealing resources, and weakening opposition by creating hierarchies of gender and race. This cemented capitalism’s power.
The question now, is: how does Federici argue that Capitalism actually achieved this? In other words, how did it create these gendered divisions and hierarchies, and capture female bodies to turn them into breeding machines? Answer: The witch-hunts!
Even if misogyny and patriarchy still existed pre-Capitalism, the women of Europe, Federici argues, generally still had control over their bodies and over their reproductive capacities. The rising Capitalist state sought to break this control, and women were not going to lie down and submit. And why would they? What would be in it for women?
Federici argues that Capitalism, by its nature violent, decided the most effective way to turn women into breeding machines would be through the violent witch-hunts. That is, by ostracising and persecuting women who refused to reproduce just because the state and man commanded it. With witch-hunts, the state effectively criminalised birth control, and decreed that the uterus belonged to the public, rather than to the individual person. The threat of being burnt at the stake, as was so common during witch-trials, struck fear into the hearts of anyone who dared to resist Capitalism’s encroachment upon the human body.
What Happened in the Witch-Hunts?
From the 15th century, the number of state-backed witch-hunts in Europe exploded, with hundreds of thousands of women between the 15th-17th centuries being killed and tortured in Europe. It was a campaign of terror, in which women were degraded and demonised. Witch-hunters used torture, rape, executions, and rumour-spreading that destroyed innocent women's lives.
Salem witch trials, illustration from Pioneers in the Settlement of America by William A. Crafts, 1876.
Witch trial in Salem, Massachusetts, lithograph by George H. Walker, 1892.
The accusations of witch-craft centred around infanticide, abortion, non-monogamous sexuality, and contraception. Why else was it mainly women who were tried, tortured, burned alive or hanged, accused of having sold body and soul to the devil and, by magical means, murdered scores of children, sucked their blood, made potions with their flesh, and performed many other abominations? (p.182). (Does a stereotype of the lecherous old woman, hostile to new life, who captures and eats the flesh of children, remind you of any children’s stories? These were popularised during the rise of the witch-hunts).
Federici argues that it was sophisticated propaganda to capture the female body, kill it, and turn it into a breeding machine. Women were under surveillance by the state to ensure that they did as they were told (made more babies). Female midwives were ordered to leave the bed where the mother was giving birth, and medical experts, usually men, replaced them. Any women that resisted, and decided that actually they did not want to become a vessel for reproducing Capitalism’s workers and soldiers, were duly accused of witch-craft. In this way, Federici argues that Capitalism sought (and gained) possession of the female body, turning it into a machine for Capitalism’s ends.
Consequences Today
For Federici, the witch-hunts were incredibly successful at achieving Capitalism’s goal of possessing the female body: it was on the stake where witches perished that the bourgeois ideals of womanhood and domesticity were forged (p.202). We now live with the consequences of the ‘ideal’ woman as a heterosexual, tame virgin, ready to produce babies for their husband and for society.
Of course, with 20th century feminism’s achievements, women now have more control over their bodies, with abortion and contraception (mostly) widely accepted (though we may worry that this acceptance is once again being lost). Nonetheless, Federici holds that to a large extent the ingrained idea of what it is to be a ‘woman’, and certainly to be a “good” woman, has spread through society, such that it now goes unquestioned. Think of the ideals of women as virginal and pure, and the common trope of associating sexual women with magic and demons. Or think of the common understanding of women as carers – unequal parental leave being a prime example.
Nowadays we associate witches with silly cackling women on broomsticks. But there is a reason this is the case. If everyone understood Federici’s analysis of witch-hunts, then perhaps we would be in solidarity with witches: we would understand their tarnished reputation as being thanks to Capitalism’s scheme to steal peoples’ bodies for their own ends. It is our job to question such stereotypes, interrogate them, and gain the freedom to unite and own our bodies and our souls. We are our bodies, we decide what we do with them, and we decide how we use them. Let’s be witches!
Sylvia Federici
Silvia Federici is a well-known Marxist feminist, and a really influential figure in thinking around anti-capitalist feminism. She was influentially involved in the Wages for Housework campaign, and as you’ll have read in this article, wrote the book Caliban and the Witch.
Verso Books invited reflections from activists, writers, and scholars to discuss the provocations of Federici’s arguments on capitalism and colonialism, bodies and reproduction, race and slavery—and the powerful figure of the witch. Check out the collection!
Ben Bradley
London-based Ben graduated from the University of Manchester in Italian and Arabic, and then worked as a primary school teacher. He now works for the civil service in between reading anthropological and feminist theory. His piece on the female body is his first published article.
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