Summary Of Caliba And The Witch

In the book Caliban and the Witch by Silvia Federici, she explains to us the history and effect of capitalism in society through a women’s perspective. The book goes into great detail on the many aspects of capitalism and focuses on various elements of it such as primitive accumulation, women, and labor. Silvia provides the reader with her view of capitalism and how it spawned from oppression of gender, and class. Caliban and the Witch give deep insight into the roles of women during this time and how women and many classes were meant to stay at the bottom of the barrel while the rich continued to capitalize off of them. According to Silvia, the first signs of struggle against the government appeared during the times of feudalism. Since then there has been a pattern of oppression without any real end in sight. Capitalism has long

kept women and the working class from achieving a new level of success; rather they have been suffocated and kept from climbing up the ranks.
Silvia’s work is so important because of the unique stance she chose to portray capitalism and to give everybody a taste of how women were constantly suppressed in this society. Women often did things under the table to avoid punishment from the patriarch society. They were treated like second-class citizens, constantly needing the approval of a man in order to achieve the simplest of things. This was the society women were living in during the feudal times. Once commercialization began women were further suppressed thus making it harder to own property, work, and make money. The reason, why women are not mentioned much in history, is due to the constant silencing they received all throughout feudalism and societies thereon after. Mistreatment stemmed from rape and sexual assault to forced marriages and property issues. Silvia brings to light many examples of the belittling of the lower class as well. They were often left at the mercy of their lords; serfs constantly had to take orders and instruction from the people above them. Eventually, a revolution took place. Serfs were tired of the treatment that they were receiving and saw no other way to displace the ideology at the time. The revolution eventually abolished serfdom and the feudalism system but led to the introduction of capitalism.
The main point throughout the whole book that Silvia attempts to make is that capitalism was built off of men capitalizing off the mistreatment of women as well as built in a way to maintain the class structure.

A structure in which the wealthy class, men specifically, maintain a political and ideological supremacy over all in society. The wealthy wanted to remain in charge and the only way that they could do this post feudalism was to sell the ideology that the working class could ultimately achieve the status of the wealthy. Silvia provides us with a great amount of empirical evidence to back her claims making her arguments extremely valid in nature. Such as her account of how many of the higher officials were facing social pressure so in return they counteracted this pressure with exploitation schemes of their own to clear their name and to make everyone happy for the time being. The people who in fact did remain happy were the bourgeois. Although Silvia does provide us with some theoretical content, it is with empirical content that she is able to present her argument from the women’s perspective at an effective

level.
Silvia goes head to head with many of Marx’s ideologies one of them primarily being on the subject of primitive accumulation. Silvia argues that Marx saw primitive accumulation through only one perspective but does not take into account workers and women. The consistent exploitation that these groups of people go through is just one of the components of capitalism itself. In this argument, I believe that Silvia is right. The research and analysis done by Silvia should be used to further the knowledge of citizens living in a capitalistic economy and should definitely raise eyebrows. If more people knew of the oppression and the exploitation of more than half of the world’s citizens then there would be an anti-feudal type movement present. During the anti-feudalism movement, people began to create their own ideologies that were more communal base and centered towards bringing more equality in society. But repeatedly throughout the different societies we see the strength of the rich as they can enforce their will any which way they please. The flexing of power has come in the form of many attacks on the working class and women, such as the witch hunts, the rapes, and the work labor capitalistic system.