Review by dorothylune - Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation

dorothylune 's review for:

Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation by Silvia Federici

2.5

challenging dark informative reflective medium-paced

Caliban and the witch (pub. 2004) shows us the transition from Feudalism to Capitalism through a feminist lense, including also the infamous witch hunts and the gendered division of labour which is starting to be spoken about again in the world currently. It introduced me to primitive accumulation, something I've never heard of before since I haven't read Marx yet, which is the theory of how class distinctions began, in Marxist economic theory. It claims that the capital-owning class came to be when they gave the proletariat no choice but to earn a wage by working on the privatised land that they first conquered & enclosed.

Before finishing the book I read some reviews claiming that Federici has left out important historical information about the witch hunts by watering the details down, so do keep that in mind when reading.

Content Warnings