Michael > Recent Status Updates

Federici has identified the advent of inflation (!!) in its contemporary form originating from the separation of workers from their means of subsistence, and the prominence of wage labour - supplanting subsistence agricultural labour from land privatization (enclosures) - forcing women into an unwaged "sector" of household reproductive labour, upon which the entire system of capitalist production depends. Monumental!

"The separation of workers trom their means of subsistence and their new dependence on monetary relations also meant that the real wage could now be cut and women's labor could be further devalued with respect to men's through monetary manipulation. It is not a coincidence then, that as soon as land began to be privatized, the prices of foodstuffs, which for two centuries had stagnated, began to rise."

"But the economic importance of the reproduction of labor-power carried out in the home, and its function in the accumulation of capital became invisible, being mystified as a natural vocation and labelled "women's labor." In addition, women were excluded from many waged occupations and, when they worked for a wage, they earned a pittance compared to the average male wage."

"In the new monetary regime, only production-for-market was defined as a value-creating activity, whereas the reproduction of the worker began to be considered as valueless from an economic viewpoint and even ceased to be considered as work. Reproductive work continued to be paid - though at the lowest rates - when performed for the master class or outside the home..."

"With the demise of the subsistence economy that had prevailed in pre-capitalist Europe. the unıty ot production and reproduction which has been typical of all societies based on production-for-use came to an end, as these activities became the carriers of dif ferent social relations and were sexually differentiated. In the new monetary regime, only... "

"That the transition to capitalism inaugurated along period of starvation for worts ers in Europe which plausibly ended because of the economic expansion produced by colonization - is also demonstrated by the fact that, while in the 14th and 15th cen- turies, the proletarian struggle had centered around the demand for "liberty" and less work, by the 16th and 17t, it was mostly spurred by hunger... "

"It is difficult to retrospectively tell how far playing the "sex card" helped the state to discipline and divide the medieval proletariat. What is certain is that this ... was part of a broader process which, in response to the intensification of social conflict, led to the centralization of the state, as the only agent capable of confronting the generalization of the struggle and safeguarding the class relation."

"Thus, between 1350-1450, publicly managed, tax-financed brothels were opened in every town and village in Italy and France, in numbers far superior to those reached in the 19th century. "

Another aspect of the divisive sexual politics that the princes and municipal authorities pursues to diffuse workers' protest was the institutionalization of prostitution, implemented through the opening of municipal brothels soon proliferating throughout Europe. Enabled by the contemporary high-wage regime, state-managed prostitution was seen as a useful remedy for the turbulence of proletarian youth..."

"And as the water table drops, Palestinian wells are running dry. Palestinians are not allowed to deepen their wells or sink new ones without Israeli permission —- and permission is almost never granted. If they build without permission, as many do, Israeli bulldozers arrive the next day. So Palestinians are forced to buy their own water back from Israel at arbitrarily high prices."

"... with the backing of the US military, [Israel] asserted total control over the aquifers beneath the [occupied] territory. Israel draws the majority of this water — close to 90 per cent — for its own use in settlements and for irrigation on large industrial farms."

"The sign announced a USAID initiative ‘to help alleviate recurring water shortages’ by adding a new well in the area. It was branded with the American flag and bore the proud words: “This project is a gift from the American People to the Palestinian People"... But Palestine doesn’t have a shortage of water. When Israel invaded and occupied the West Bank in 1967..."

"The charity paradigm obscures the real issues at stake: it makes it seems as though the West is 'developing the global South, when in reality the opposite is true. Rich countries aren't developing poor countries, poor countries are effectively developing rich countries - and they have been since the late 15th century. So it's not only that the aid narrative misunderstands what really causes poverty, it's backwards."

"Three trillion dollars in total net outflows per year is twenty-four times more than the annual aid budget. In other words, for every dollar of aid that developing countries receive, they lose $24 in net outflows."

"In 2012, developing countries received a little over $2 trillion, including all aid, investment, and income from abroad. But more than twice that amount, some $5 trillion, flowed out of [poorer nations]. In other words, developing countries 'sent' $3 trillion more to the rest of the world than they received. If we look at all years since 1980, these net outflows add up to an eye-popping total of $26.5 trillion."

"The medieval servile community fell short of these goals, and should not be idealized as an example of communalism. In fact, its example reminds us that neither "communalism"' nor "localism" can be a guarantee of egalitarian relations unless the community controls its means of subsistence and all its members have equal access to them."

"With the use of land also came the use of the "commons'- meadows, forests, lakes, wild pastures - that provided crucial resources for the peasant economy (wood for fuel, timber for building, fishponds, grazing grounds for animals) and fostered community cohesion and cooperation. In Northern Italy, control over these resources even provided the basis for the development of communal self-administrations."

Hickel is immediately on-target, identifying that the massive divide between the global South and the global North, between the massive over-exploited population of oppressed nations and those in the wealthy core, is not from a lack of institutions or targeted policies, but rather the extraction of wealth and shutting out from global market by the north. The "Development" scheme from the US/WB/IMF is false.

"... by denigrating the "nature' of those it exploits: vs. the reality of widespread penury women, colonial subjects, the descendants of African slaves, the immigrants displaced by globalization."

"Indeed, the political lesson that we can learn...is that capitalism, as a social-economic system, is necessarily committed to racism and sexism. For capitalism must justify and mystify the contradictions built into its social relations - the promise of freedom vs. the reality of widespread coercion, and the promise of prosperity vs. the reality of widespread penury."

"It is not surprising, then, if large-scale violence and enslavement have been on the agenda, as they were in the period of the "transition," with the difference that today the conquistadors are the officers of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, who are still preaching the worth of a penny to the same populations which the dominant world powers have for centuries robbed and pauperized."

"This is what occurred in the 19th century, when the responses to the rise of socialism, the Paris Commune, and the accumulation crisis of 1873 were the "Scramble for Africa" and the simultaneous creation in Europe of the nuclear family, centered on the economic dependence of women to men - following the expulsion of women from the waged work-place. This is also what is happening today..."

"...Primitive accumulation has been a universal process in every phase of capitalist development, Not accidentally, its original historical exemplar has sedimented strategies that, in different ways, have been re-launched in the face of every major capitalist crisis, serving to cheapen the cost of labor and to hide the exploitation of women and colonial subjects."

"The analysis I propose also allows us to transcend the dichotomy between "gender" and "class." If it is true that in capitalist society sexual identity becams the carrier of specific work-functions, then gender should not be considered a purely cultural reality, but should be treated as a specification of class relations."

"A return of the most violent aspects of primitive accumulation has accompanied every phase of capitalist globalization, including the present one, demonstrating that the continuous expulsion of farmers from the land, war and plunder on a world scale, and the degradation of women are necessary conditions for the existence of capitalism in all times."

"(iii) the mechanization of the proletarian body and its transformation, in the case of women, into a machine for the production of new workers."

Thus my description of primitive accumulation includes... (i) the development of a new sexual division of labor subjugating women's labor and women's reproductive function to the reproduction of the work-force; (ii) the construction of a new patriarchal order, based upon the exclusion of women from waged work and their subordination to men;...

let federici cook (feministly)

"Sexual hierarchies, we found, are always at the service of a project of domination that can sustain itself only by dividing, on a continuously renewed basis, those it intends to rule."

Experiencing a terminal case of whiplash from the authors sequencing an interview about a would-be liberated Palestine and the methods of self-emancipation amidst international political and economic collapse, followed by an interview with a recreational drug maker and DJ who repurposed augmented reality implants for soldiers for flotilla (barge?) dance parties in SE Asia. Gratuitous and excessively utopian by half.