What is Reddit's opinion of Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation?

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

Here is the thing, the oppression or subjugation of women has existed in many different societies throughout human history, but the way capitalism has developed required a very specific type of oppression.

There is an incredible book about this called Caliban and The Witch in which the author shows how the control and subjugation of women in the turn between the middle ages and the early modern period was crucial to the development of capitalism as a mode of production.

So it's not that the patriarchy results from capitalism. It's one of its pillars. The same way colonization, slavery and imperialism are, you know? Capitalism wouldn't have become what it is without it.

Incidentally, the Salem Witch Trials and similar witch hunts had an analogous character to them. Most of the "witches" were relatives of landlords and bosses to the poorer sections of colonial towns. People at that time had very poorly-formed conceptions of themselves as economic agents, and so conceived of their sorrows in religious terms, as the work of evil spirits and witches. Many of the children who accused adults of witches had, for years, heard those adults' names being uttered with disdain by their parents who paid rent to them or worked for them.

Caliban and the Witch goes into this in much better detail, but the point I'm making here is that it's a tried-and-true tactic of the ruling class to turn working people on each other using divisions of religion, race, and gender.

Don't fall for it. They're protecting Capitalism, the actually-existing world order of global slavery that funnels money to a tiny class of owners, in effect right fucking now.

Danke! Und ich wechsel noch grad ausgerechnet vom "Caliban and the Witch" Tab auf das. Der Spruch... wollen die sich gezielt gegen ernsthafte Kritik verteidigen, durch Totlachen?

Lachen befreit ja echt, wir dürfen dabei nur nicht vergessen dass die Häufung von Gewalttaten in diesen ideologischen Zusammenhängen nicht aus der Luft entsteht. Nicht nur die Verletzten durch homophobe und antisemitische Prügelattacken rund um die Regenbogenparade, auch allein dieses Wochenende schon wieder ein Brandanschlag in Mistelbach und zweimal Schüsse in ein Asylquartier in Stockerau, alles noch ungeklärt freilich.

Ack! Fell asleep last night before doing this. Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation.

I also ordered the more highly reviewed of the translations of Malleus Maleficarum because I wanted to do some primary source reading :)

Now is a good time to read Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation by Silvia Federici

The full text of the essay is available for free as a PDF, but here is an Amazon link, which features my absolute favorite customer review ever:

>My step mom said this book was radicalizing me so she threw it in the trash when I wasn't looking. 228 people found this helpful

I haven't read this one but it's been in my amazon cart for awhile! I heard a talk by a herbalist in my community who referenced this book in talking about this exact topic -- how feudalism was an essential component of that shift. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1570270597/ref=ox_sc_saved_title_1?smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER&psc=1

A book I have read is Medical Bondage: https://www.amazon.com/Medical-Bondage-Origins-American-Gynecology/dp/0820351350

It's specifically about enslaved women in america and how white american society viewed these sisters as human capital (and human capital generators). It's not the exact topic either but super interesting.

I also recommend the podcast For The Wild by Ayana Young. She interviews a lot of awesome experts in areas of social justice, environmentalism, feminism, etc. I can't think of a podcast on this specific topic, but they talk a lot about remnants of patriarchy surviving today and issues around it.

Of course! I admit I'm not super up-to-date with my gender theory (working on it), but I do know my stuff on workers' rights, sociology, and general progressive issues.

To get you started with some nice and easy videos, subscribe to PhilosophyTube, Peter Coffin, and Radical Reviewer good choices include:

• Should the Rich help the poor?
• Authoritarianism
  
• Intro to Anarchy
• Mad Marx (4 episodes)
  
• What was Liberalism? (4 episodes)
  
• Queer
  
• The philosophy of Antifa (this one's long)
  

But videos can only get you so far. I was personally unwilling to read for the longest time due to my dyslexia, but these two videos really helped me:

• How to Highlight a book
  
• How to read difficult books

For reading I recommend (all in Amazon UK, but they are all available in the US and by other means as well):

• Caliban and the witch (here's an introductory video again by PhilosophyTube (I love him so much))
  
• A people's history of the United states (this one's a long boy but pretty essential)
  
• The shock doctrine (introductory video)
  
• Marx and Marxism
• Anarcho-Syndicalism

I haven't yet read these ones but I've heard positive reviews:

• Queer Theory: An Introduction
  
• We Were Feminists Once
  
• whipping girl
  

That IS quite a lot, so don't feel bad if you're overwhelmed. You don't need to know everything all at once! I certainly don't. Start wherever you're comfortable. But I will say that I only started seriously reading in late 2018, and since then I've read over twice the amount of books I've listed here. If my dyslexic ass can do it, so can you!

You can also message me whenever you like for more information and I'll try to get back to you. You can also try asking questions over at /r/Anarchy101. Leftism can be a hard ideology to break into, so it really does help to have a guide.

Not to allow women to fulfil their species essence? After all, a substantial chunk of patriarchal oppression over the last half millenium or so has been the relegation of the role of women to merely reproductive labour (or, at best, domestic labour). Women, until extraordinarily recently, were not allowed to act as self-realised human beings in any capacity - not even within the private, domestic sphere. Even the forms of productive craft they could engage in were highly socially controlled. They were basically expected to sit around and do sweet fuck all but look pretty, squeeze out babies and clean the house.

The book that famously triggered the second wave of feminism - The Feminine Mystique - is about housewives going batshit crazy because they were so existentially unfulfilled in that expected role of housewife. In a nutshell - alienation. They were, like workers, considered a mere instrument. But they worked at one more step removed, not just subservient to a capitalist, but subservient to their husbands. Capitalists robbed workers of their humanity in the economic sphere, but women have historically had their humanity stripped from them in every sphere. Betty Friedan was talking about 50s housewives, but even Wollstonecroft talked about the crippling expectations on women to be mere beautiful things in service of men and that was in 1792.

Marx states that primitive accumulation is a precursor to capitalism, but in Caliban and the Witch, Silvia Federici makes a very compelling argument that primitive accumulation is basic and necessary characteristic of capitalism itself. Capitalism requires a constant influx of expropriated capital. And where does it get it? Women's unpaid labour - both reproductive and domestic. And that fundamental alienation and expropriation can still exist under socialism unless it is recognised as the labour it is AND women are seen as fully human, wholly realised beings. And that, comrade, is why feminism is important within socialism. And it is why I am thoroughly fed up with boys on the left shitting on feminism. Yes, we all think liberal feminism is stupid (me included), but let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater, eh?

Ní saoirse go saoirse na mban.

I recommend you read this book for a convincing argument about how the rise of capitalism and the subjugation of women are directly related

Possible next events/book selections links:

https://libcom.org/files/Caliban%20and%20the%20Witch.pdf

https://www.amazon.com/Caliban-Witch-Women-Primitive-Accumulation/dp/1570270597/ref=pd_sim_14_2?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=1570270597&pd_rd_r=9NGKXXPQVQGMYHR6ZYWK&pd_rd_w=nTAB7&pd_rd_wg=WyDTx&psc=1&refRID=9NGKXXPQVQGMYHR6ZYWK

https://www.amazon.com/Witches-Pagans-European-Religion-700-1100/dp/0692740287/ref=pd_sim_14_4?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=0692740287&pd_rd_r=FPJP44PD17YEPBA1K932&pd_rd_w=zXRVP&pd_rd_wg=qccrM&psc=1&refRID=FPJP44PD17YEPBA1K932

Actually, the women's genocides and the Holocaust DID happen! 0% lying about it, and 0% lying about what has to be done to make it not happen again. And you're sucking so much fascist groin for free that you don't leave me the convenience of saving a bullet for fascist scum that LITERALLY WANT TO SEXUALLY ENSLAVE ME AND DO ENSLAVE TRANS WOMEN EN MASSE WITH THE BOURGE, ALL THE FUCKING TIME.

Hey fashie. Hey. Hey! Listen. I know you're upset right now. And I think you know what to do about it.

anti "essential oils" its a sentiment that can be drawn back to racism, misogyny and witchcraft if you dig deep enough. reddit is not a great place to talk about this kind of stuff and im not an expert, if you are curious there are a lot of great books on the topic caliban and the witch has some great takes in it.

basically science is the new religion, anything that deviates is heresy or a joke