Silvia Federici's "Marxism, Feminism, and the Commons"

I don't usually buy books from Amazon, but I did for Silvia Federici's Re-Enchanting the World: Feminism and the Politics of the Commons - tempted by the low price and cheap next-day delivery. It's ironic because Amazon represents the complete opposite of everything Federici argues for: it super-exploits workers, is incredibly ecologically destructive, and contributes to the isolation of individuals.

This essay, "Marxism, Feminism, and the Commons" was of particular interest to me, because I am receptive to socialist, feminist, and commons politics. Federici makes a strong case for a feminist and (to a lesser extent) ecological revision of Marx, and a turn away from the state as well as a reconfiguration of the class struggle. By commons, she means a social formation characterised by communal ownership and control of the things essential to social reproduction (the essential labour of care, and of the home), and a new way of conceiving of our relationships with others based on our commonality.

Federici frames the essay as an exploration of the compatibility of feminism and commons politics with Marxism. To her, the core of the Marxist method, historical materialism (the thesis that the technology and methods of production - think of an agricultural economy versus an industrial economy versus a slave economy - heavily influence the way those societies are organised), is essential. But there is a need to go beyond it and widen its scope. The first central claim is that the idea of the "working class", as the oppressed and exploited class in capitalist society, needs to be expanded. The orthodox Marxist will restrict the working class to wage-labourers, focusing in particular on urban and industrial workers. Federici argues that all labourers should be the subject of analysis - including women engaging in domestic work, the rural poor, and subsistence workers in the third world. Capitalism divides these labourers (think of farmers being caught between rising wages and low produce prices), when really all ought to be united in resistance to exploitation. Marxists tend to contribute to this division in their disregard of rural labourers and the importance of women's work. Marxist feminists have done part of the work amending this blindness - Federici cites Dalla Costa, Selma James, Lepoldina Fortunati, among others (p. 155).

Women in particular have always played an essential role in production, even when they do not participate directly in it. "Reproductive work", as in reproduction of daily life, including domestic labour, is the precondition for all production. Even hyper-capitalist industrial England recognised this, and legislated to remove women from factory work and increase male pay. This happened in line with industry becoming more labour-intensive as steel production increased (pp. 157-158). Arlie Hochschild has shown that even as women re-entered the workforce in the mid-late 20th century, they faced a "second shift" upon returning home, with the burden of domestic and child-caring labour still existing. In Australia, the HILDA report shows that women on the whole do less paid work and more domestic work than men, with total hours labouring higher on average than men (ABC, 2025). This is while women are being underpaid, whether because they are being paid less for the same work or because "feminine" work like childcare and aged care is less valued.

Federici next challenges the Marxist idea that capitalism is a historically progressive force (pp. 160-166). This is a convoluted topic and really only relevant to the uncritically orthodox Marxist. I think the average progressive knows that capitalism doesn't just dig its own grave in the way Marx said it would. It's also clear that if capitalism progressed world-wide to the "advanced" stage that Western countries enjoy, ecological collapse would be the outcome, not socialism.

Beyond these theoretical concerns, Federici makes strategic appeals to radicals. Instead of building towards a revolution to overthrow capitalism and institute socialism, we ought to build new communities here and now, in the image of the commons. That means the replacement of the "cash nexus" (in Marx's terms) with direct person-to-person interaction in all parts of our lives, including the provision and trade of goods and services. We need to weaken divisions like that of gender, race, and where and how we live, so that the new commons can be as harmonious as possible. And we need to establish new forms of collective decision-making and social cooperation, so that the commons can be effectively governed. We need to restructure both social production and social reproduction here and now. This includes ending domestic isolation, and communalising things like house-work. Anitra Nelson writes on housing in a post-capitalist future in Small is Necessary: Shared Living on a Shared Planet. For those interested in this general avenue of post-capitalist theorising, I'd recommend Exploring Degrowth.

Federici's argument is a bit more abstract than I would like (that's partly why I've linked to supplementary works in the paragraph above). But I think she's generally right in saying that old ideas of working-class revolt aren't the most effective ones any more. It is indeed urgent, for obvious climate and ecological reasons, to come together and build new, sustainable, and communal modes of social production and reproduction. Organising on the basis of a socialist future while still living capitalist lives is nonsensical, our lives ought to prefigure the type of world we need.

Though this doesn't mean turning away from the state as a method of progress entirely, which Federici advocates (p. 167). I don't think it ought to be the main focus, either in parliamentary or revolutionary strategies, but it can't just be ignored. Necessary technology (think pharmaceuticals, electricity, the internet) will need to be collectively managed in some way. The state ought to genuinely democratic, but it can't just be wished away. In the meantime, electoral participation could be used as a means to divert resources towards radical communal projects, growing their potential. This sort of thing can be seen in the success of councillor Sue Bolton in Merri-bek, Melbourne.

Re-Enchanting the World: Feminism and the Politics of the Commons was published by PM Press in 2019. Page numbers here reflect this version. "Marxism, Feminism, and the Commons" is the third-to-last essay. Find a full copy online here.