Report of discussion with Max Dashu

 January 27, 2015

Before I left Oakland for home, I stopped by Max’s archives.

I met with Max for four hours; it was extremely interesting and helpful.

My goal in the meeting was to learn from Max about the Witch Hunts.  I achieved my goal; I learned so much.  It was in reading Caliban and the Witch that I saw that the motivation of the Witch Hunters went beyond their desire to suppress women’s sexuality and their activities which were competitive with the developing medical profession, and by reading John Riddle’s book, I also realized the existence of and the significance of a widespread knowledge and use of contraception and abortion.   This was the real power of women-the power to decide whether or not to create the next generation.  This was the power that those who were in control could not abide.

I originally learned about the Witch Hunts from Witches, Midwives and Nurses by Ehrenreich and English and I knew that women who were burned as witches were many times healers.  I definitely saw that what we were doing represented a revival of women’s knowledge around healing.  

Max rounded out my knowledge hugely. 

Max became irritated with me because she said I wasn’t listening.   It is true that I sometimes interrupted her (as she did me), and also I sometimes didn’t get the full import of what she was trying to communicate. 

Despite certain differences, mostly in emphasis, it was clear that we profoundly agree about the origin and nature of women’s oppression.  We both see that the development of patriarchy resulted in the lowering of women’s power and status. We both see capitalism as an “advanced form” of patriarchy.  We both think that ethnicity and class have to be taken into consideration in any historical explanation.  We both think that the causation of the Witch Hunts and other attacks on women as being multi-causal.  Both of us distinguish between capitalistic or imperialistic patriarchy and the patriarchy found in non-capitalistic or imperialistic societies, and agree that patriarchal capitalism and imperialism is worse for women. In other words, “all capitalistic societies are patriarchal, but not all patriarchal societies are capitalistic.”

Both of us kept the free-ranging discussion from turning into an argument; neither of us were there to convince the other, so we kept bringing the conversation back to a discussion where each of us would have the opportunity to explain our points more fully, etc.

We also talked about the recent attacks of trans-gender women.  Max has worked with atheist groups, and told me about a recent conference where transgender women wanted to participate in a female-only workshop that is traditionally held at the atheists’ conference.  The workshop is held in the nude and the females did not want the transgender women to attend.  (I know she said they wouldn’t allow those who had not had surgery, but I don’t remember whether she said they also objected to those who had had genital surgery).  In protest, the transgender women sat, knees akimbo, around the entrance to the workshop and sent looks of disapproval to the participants when they came in.  Max supported the females by also sitting on the floor and encouraging the participants when they came in. 

We both see this is a serious attack and it constitutes a crisis in feminism.  We also agreed that those who want to destroy feminism, including some leftists who have always been hostile to feminism, are taking advantage of this opportunity to attack feminists by supporting the transgender women.  I think the support is also material.

We talked about Caliban and the Witch.  Max was critical of Federici’s mischaracterization of the era prior to the 14th century.  Federici said that Witch Hunting had started then; that before there was no Witch Hunting.  She has the references to show that in fact, there was Witch Hunting several centuries prior.

I don’t think that Federici’s definite assertion that there was no history of Witch Hunts in the preceding era, negated the value of her insight that the crime of Witchcraft, which focused on contraception and abortion, was invalid.  In reading the whole sentence that Federici had stated, she left room for at least some of the facts that Max had alluded to.  Perhaps I’m conflating the explanation of Heinsohn and Steiger with Federici’s, but I recall that she emphasized that the crime of Witchcraft (as compared to Sorcery) was invented in the 14th century.

Max feels that everything flows from the establishment of patriarchy, and we should not focus on some of the subsequent developments, but rather fight against patriarchy in all of its manifestations.  I feel that a quantum leap happened as a result of the Witch Hunts (as well as the enclosures) that helped the feudal lords to accumulate capital, that this enabled them to launch a campaign of conquest and pillage and colonialization that would result in the establishment of capitalism in Europe and in the huge expanse of territory in the colonies.

We didn’t talk about it too much, but I agree with Max that the viewing the earth as a resource to exploit, and starting with seeing women as resources to dominate and exploit is the root of the problem.  I just think that we need to apply that insight into the current manifestations of this patriarchal/capitalist/imperialist/industrialist outlook.  

Max recognized a lot of the components of the creation of capitalism, bringing precious metals to Europe to enable monetarism, raw materials, slaves, etc.  But, if she sees that these developments forced women into the modern mold, the housewife who recreates the labor force and recreates the worker too, she didn’t say so.  She did say that her criticisms of C&W are “additive”, meaning she doesn’t criticize what Federici said, but thinks she omitted significant information.

My impression is that Max thinks that I over-generalize to pinpoint a particular point in history.  She sees the evolutionary aspect of patriarchy and how it leads to capitalism.  How men in patriarchy saw women as a resource, the same as other natural resources.  I agree with that, but I think that the Witch Hunts had the effect of terrorizing women, resulting in seeing their reproductive activities as resources to enable the modern work force to arise.

We also differed on whether the reason they went after the Witches was to control their sexuality.  To me, patriarchy wants to control women’s sexuality as a means to control their reproduction.  

Max has devoted her life to studying and gathering together the information to support her view of history, and the result is awesome.  She allowed me to read her manuscripts. (Much of the original material that she viewed at the local San Francisco Library was right on the shelves.  She said they’ve now been placed in less accessible sections.)  The wealth of detail that she has gathered brings home the reality of how the Witch Hunt played out all over Europe over four centuries.

I agree with her that the concrete detail is necessary to prevent us from romanticizing the Witches and seeing the Witch Hunts as some kind of medieval aberration.

As to the Witch’s costumes.  She said that women accused of witchcraft were forced to march through town wearing the pointed hats.  Also, she said that much of the details, like the shoes and the dress come from the everyday wear of poor women, especially older poor women. She mentioned Belgium, in particular.

We both are worried about what may happen in this country if the depression gets worse and people are turned against each other.  Some modern version of the Witch Hunts are possible.

Academic Women:  Our discussion of the role of academic women is illustrative of how Max and I both agree and still go a different place with the significance for action.  She sees the way that the academic world influences academic women to look at their goal as getting prestige, seeing who can get their papers published, etc.  I focus more on the power relationships and the way that patriarchal academia uses its control of jobs and the prestige that goes with it to derail young feminists who seek a career in women’s studies.  I think that we see the cause and effect differently, but we both see how empty and irrelevant most of their work is.  I, in addition, believe that they are being manipulated by academia to spin their wheels, or even worse, to attack the second wave of feminism with their emphasis of personal liberation and changing society by changing labels and self-definitions.

Earth At Risk Conference, Pat Maginnis, Barbara Hoke, Molly Arthur, and Mary Lou Singleton

MEMORANDUM

NOVEMBER 25, 2014

TO: FRIENDS OF WOMEN’S HEALTH IN WOMEN’S HANDS

FROM: CAROL DOWNER

RE: TRIP TO EARTH AT RISK CONFERENCE, SAN FRANCISCO, 11-22 & 23-2014

BACKGROUND:  MARY LOU SINGLETON INVITED ME TO GO TO THE EARTH AT RISK CONFERENCE TO MEET MEMBERS OF THE WOMEN’S LIBERATION FRONT (WoLF).

SUMMARY:  DURING AND AFTER THE 2-DAY CONFERENCE, I VISITED THE WoLF TABLE.  I MET WITH MOLLY ARTHUR, MARY LOU SINGLETON, AND STOPPATRIARCHY.ORG.   I VISITED PAT MAGINNIS AND BARBARA HOKE IN OAKLAND,  AND PAT AND I ATTENDED A HEARING TO PROTEST CHILD ENDANGERMENT AND ANIMAL CRUELTY BY A LOCAL HAYWARD RODEO GROUP.

SUMMARY OF PROGRAM:
INFORMATIVE ABOUT 1) the extreme risk of ecological collapse: 2) the cause of collapse: capitalist system and its attendant -isms, colonialism, racism, patriarchy, militarism, masculinity; 3) power structure research about the way capitalism pathologizes our social relations, how the U.S. Constitution protects property rights over the people’s rights, 4) what to expect if and when the people challenge capitalist’s corporate rule.

THOUGHT-PROVOKING in presenting legal strategies to expose and force show-downs on basic legal protections of eco-cidal capitalistic behavior; in suggesting projects to directly transform our consciousness, our immediate environment, and the control of our lives.

INSPIRATIONAL in sharing indigenous culture’s example of how people can successfully live in cooperative, communal society that is earth-loving, in poetry performance to express our anger and sorrow; in exhorting us to build: 1) human connections with friendship, 2) human connections with nature “gardens of hope”, solidarity in defending and befriending mountains, rivers, insects, trees and other plants.

The 200-300 people that attended the conference all agreed that capitalism cannot be reformed and must be replaced with ways of organizing society that recognize the necessity of living in harmony with the earth and all its creatures.  They also all agreed that the strategy of influencing our elected officials and other governmental or business leaders is almost useless; that instead we have to build communities that take direct, dynamic and creative political action.

26 SPEAKERS PUT ON INDIVIDUAL OR PANEL PRESENTATIONS:
Keynote speakers:  
Vandana Shiva, (leader, author)
Alice Walker, (author)
Derrick Jensen, (author)
Chris Hedges, (author)

Panelists:
Dini ze Toghestiy, indigenous speaker
Freda Hudson, resistance leader, Tar Sands. Fracking
Caleen Sisk, Tribal Chief
Dahr Jamail, Journalist
Sarah M. Mah, anti-rape feminist
Yuly Chan, anti-rape, anti-prostitution feminist
Anne Keala Kelly, Hawaiian journalist, filmmaker
Diane Wilson, author, eco-warrior, fisherwoman
Dominique Christina, slam poet
Jeannette Armstrong, Okanagan Nation Knowledge Keeper
Sakej (James) Ward, teaches warrior societies
Vince Emanuele, Veterans for Peace organizer and spokesperson
Cherry Smiley, Indigenous Women Against Prostitution
Thomas Linzey, Attorney, Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund
Gail Dines, Professor, Sociology and Women’s Studies, Wheelock College
Richard Manning, environmental author and journalist
Stephanie McMillan, author, Why Capitalism Must Die, cartoonist
Saba Malik, activist on racism, peak oil and anti-civilization
Charles Derber, environment, power structure author
Kourtney Mitchell, activist, anti-violence and pro-feminist
Guy McPherson, ex-professor, environment author
Stan Goff, ex-military, author anti-sexism, anti-capitalism
Doug Zachary, Veterans for Peace fund-raiser

FEATURED ORGANIZATIONS: Asian Women Coalition Ending Prostitution, Code Pink, Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, Deep Green Resistance, Elder Creek Center for the Land, Indigenous Women Against the Sex Industry, Iraq Veterans Against the War, One Struggle, Place for Sustainable Living, PM Press, Stop Patriarchy, Stop Porn Culture, Survival International, Unis’tot’en Clan, Vancouver Rape Relief, Veterans for Peace, Warrior Sisters, Winnemem Wintu Tribe, Women’s Liberation Front

FERTILE GROUND ENVIRONMENTAL INSTITUTE (FGEI), organized and sponsored conference. Founded in 2008 in Bellingham, Washington, national organization.
Primary focus is organizing and hosting events with focus on hard-hitting analysis of our current predicament and strategic planning for real victories. 

FGEI position: Every successful social movement in history has used force to achieve its goals.  There is a continuum of tactics that range from boycotts, strikes, and civil disobedience to sabotage and outright revolution.  A serious ecological movement is based around communities that embrace and promote dynamic, creative political action.

HIGHLIGHTS OF PROGRAM (If there are few [or no] notes about a speaker or workshop, it means I couldn’t hear what was said).

COLONIZATION AND INDIGENOUS LIFE

• Women are leading the movement to save the earth.  Have to change water system. “We can live without electricity; we can’t live without clean water”.  Indigenous can teach us “what it means to be human”.  “It’s how you respond to living things; protect them”.  “Don’t have to be colonizer; come live with us, re-indigenize planet”.

• Many mountains losing water.  Mt Shasta, main spring going dry 2 months last 3 summers.

• Other culprit: RELIGION.  We’re regressing.  Things they say take us forward are taking us backward.

• Hawaii is an “illegal occupation” as per UN.  

• Hawaiians (natural, not people of color from other places) are fighting about it.”  Country under arrest (50-70% indigenous people incarcerated).  Economic terrorism and cultural genocide.  American Empire is spreading throughout Micronesia.  Overwhelmed with tourism-prostitution, pornography.  Largest U.S. Military command.

• Hawaii like woman being raped continuously.  “Aloha is a philosophy, not a tourist slogan”  It’s a way of sharing, valuing each other and the earth.

KEYNOTE SPEAKER: DERRICK JENSEN
Has written 20+ books. 

• BAD NEWS: Oceans are dying; there’s no more fish.  People being murdered.  Movement being infiltrated, people are disappearing.  158 species going extinct every day.

• WHAT TO DO: “If you’re going to say the prayer, you have to be part of making the prayed for thing happening.”

INDICATORS OF ECOLOGICAL COLLAPSE
Stages of Grief on Planet Dying: acceptance, rage, depression. We need new consciousness.

Diane Wilson: fisher-woman in Texas.  “Texans love tar sands”.  Texans lost faith, “You can’t fight city hall”.  You have to get involved when your home is destroyed in front of you.  Never say you’re not for progress.  It’s time to put yourself out there.  You have to work outside the box.  I kept waiting for someone with a better education, more abilities, more connections than me, to come along.  Finally, I realized I was the right person.  Need hope, have to get out of the box.

Green revolution a disaster for agriculture.  Destroying bio-diversity.  1/3 of  world suffering from “Hidden Hunger”.  People have enough calories, but deficient in nutrition.

“no way to grow food in monoculture and be sustainable.”

BUILDING RESISTANT COMMUNITIES

• “We (indigenous speaker) decolonized ourselves.  We refused to accept or comply and prevent destruction.”  We had to support the inherent ability of every organism to protect itself from harm.

• “Now is the time to do battle.”  We need hundreds and hundreds of groups, working together, to face down power.

• We must have structure, leadership, rules and norms.

• We must eliminate horizontal hostility.

• Women are the protectors of the higher nature.

• “We put the ‘Indian’ back in our children.  We decolonized their minds.”

• We changed our beliefs, and how we live.  We went to our homelands, wintered there.  We put away fish.  We kicked out a mining company, others.  We started managing our land.

• We need the warrior arts.  Daily practice to develop skill sets of self-defense.  We need to fall in love with earth again.  We need our ceremonies; we need to respect each other and earth.

• Present system designed to separate us from natural world.  We must teach our children to fall in love with trees, soil; that every living being has spirit; the mountains have spirit.

• We may have to defend our land, but we’re not going to encourage that, but, if necessary, we will fight for all that we love.  If does result in violence, so be it.

• We reject the idea that the state can dictate whether or not we can defend ourselves.

• Resistance may mean hierarchy-different forms of leadership-persuasion rather than orders-structure is action-based.

LINZEY-KEYNOTE SPEAKER

• The problem is the U.S. government, not the corporations.  The environmental laws are good, but it’s a waste of time trying to enforce the law, because, under the Constitution, it’s not permissible for a governing body (usually municipal) to pass laws to restrict legal uses (factory farms, fracking).

• The only thing environmental regulations regulate are the environmentalists.

• “Taking amendment says you can’t ban corporate business for doing something legal without being sued for loss of business.

• Constitution establishes property rights above people’s rights.  Constitution not necessarily democratic.

• Example: community laws banned corporations from factory farming, Then corporations went to State legislators to enforce corporate rights..  Ultimately lost at federal level.

• Still thinks this process can be useful because it forces corporations to show how unfair the law is to the community-“the system illuminates itself!”

• How to force change: now 200 municipalities are going up against the federal government.  People are beginning to see that the Constitution doesn’t protect peoples’ rights.

ECO SYSTEM RIGHTS are not property, but have rights to exist on their own.  In Ecuador, wrote new constitution giving eco system rights.  The River is the Plaintiff.  A Watershed can be a plaintiff.

• In Nepal, there’s a Right of Nature Network.

• The problem of liberal politics is that it’s “pressure politics”.  The real problem is the government itself.

CAPITALISM AND SOCIOPATHOLOGY
7 Pillars of Capitalism:  Anti-social values & practices created by ruling elites.

1. Individualism
2. Competition
3. Ecoside-violence against nature
4. Militarism
5. Class violence, inequality
6. Profits over usefulness
7. Fictive democracy

Carol’s note:  He asked audience how many of them were sociopaths.  Nearly all raised their hands.  I did not, because I believe that mental health comes from battling one’s oppression every day, and, whether or not I am lessening my oppression, I am somewhat protected from falling into being sociopathic.

Stephanie McMillan: People need a collective organized class struggle. Capitalism comes from surplus value.  Proletariat class needs to take over.  Capital treats living things as objects.

• 95% of environmentalists think solution is more capitalism. They believe that it’s FATHER CAPITAL PLUS MOTHER EARTH

• Capitalists do cooperate.  They just have antagonistic relations with the rest of us.  The antagonism is between 1% of us and 99% of us.

• We, (the revolutionary working class) need to organize collectively, get rid of system and the new system will be developed in the revolutionary struggle.

• We need to find a way to speak to people on visceral level about the discontent people have about their lives. 

• Example: abused child will cling to abusive parent; it can’t leave parent unless there is an alternative.

• To win, one must destroy enemy’s ability to wage war.

(Carol: In Iranian revolution, even though Shah had world’s 5th largest army, he couldn’t stop revolution, because the army refused to attack its own people.)

CHRIS HEDGES: KEYNOTE SPEAKER
Capitalism has no internal check.

• Crushing the Occupy movement is a danger sign.  Means rulers can only speak through force.  They are preparing.  They’ve already passed Draconian regulations.  They can now hold someone indefinitely, including at offshore prisons.

• Inverted totalitarianism.  Corporate state has all the levers of power.

• We must go back to mass movements and fight the fascists.

• Resistance is a way to affirm life.

• Greatest evil isn’t radical—it has no roots.  It asks no questions.  It can spread over the whole world. 

RAPE, MILITARISM AND MASCULINITY
Masculinity sees female body as permeable-coitus, lactation, menstruation, birth.  Transgression of female boundaries is thrilling.

• Can lead to mass incarceration, genocide, and mass addiction.

• Many vets are dying from suicide, alcoholism, drug addiction and CANCER.

• Masculinity is a script, and a performance.

Question from audience: Are men victims?  Panelist answer: No, they’re damaged, but not victims.

CONFRONTING MISOGYNY
Third Wave Feminism: Example: Jennifer Baumgardner “What is feminism is individual to each woman”.  Does not see structural inequality within a racist/sexist global capitalist economy.  Men are missing as a class.

• This is all coming from the Academy.

• Post-modernism meets Post-Structuralism.

“There’s no such thing as It”, Feona Attwood 2012-example

Pornography facts:
36% of the internet is porn.  She listed all the features of the internet, including privacy, payment online, etc. as having been developed by pornography industry.

• Porn has driven the net.

• In January, they’ll have a Pornography meeting in Las Vegas.

• We need to go from “empowerment” to “liberation”.

• We are not living in the same world.  But, as Gramse said in 1929, we need a Pessimism of Intellect and a Optimism of Will.

• Indigenous, Asian Women Against Pornography (Canada) are fighting a Global system of imperialism.  Patriarchy is part of national oppression.  Sexual conquest is part of war.  Involves World Bank, International Monetary Fund.  Part of privatization, tourist industry.

• Under Mao, China had no prostitution. Now, in the 1980’s, prostitution is in every city.

• Prostitution undermines indigenous communities.

VANDANA SHIVA-KEYNOTE SPEAKER
The world economy, organized as it is, has become a CATASTROPHE!

• GNP is the only measure, meaning the measure of that which is commodified, is all that counts.

• The commodification of women, prostitution and porn, is now counted in the GNP.

• Environmental damage is not measured.

• Soil, water degradation is not measured.—only products produced.

• Industrial farming is our biggest threat.

• Next year is “THE YEAR OF THE SOIL”.

• Patenting of seed is commodification.  We have seed monopolies.

• Anniversary of Bhopal is coming up.  

• GMO crops –toxic systems of agriculture.

• Eliminating insects who are the best controllers of insects.

• We have only 22% biodiversity.

• “Species have intelligence as they evolve.”

• By 2050, ½ of American kids will be autistic.

• We must create commons, stop privatization.

• Cited Ghandi and Rosa Parks as examples of how we have to affirmatively take action to take what is ours. (Ghandi-salt, Parks-seat on bus).

• We must each create a “garden of hope”, and be free (not commodified) creative beings.

KEYNOTE SPEAKER: ALICE WALKER
We need to recover our friendships.

MY REACTIONS AND THOUGHTS FROM THE CONFERENCE

I avoid learning about the damage to our environment because it is so depressing, because 1) my consciousness is already raised; I believe that global warming is real and serious and 2) other than making modifications in my own lifestyle and working to help women to learn about our bodies and to love them, I don’t know what else to do at this time.  In this conference, I was able to get past the depression, because I was among friends, looking at these hard facts together, and I was learning about concrete actions that are taking place and also get suggestions on projects I could do.

Ultimately, I realized that I, at base, am an optimist.  No matter how bleak it looks, I keep remembering being in Iran after their revolution.  I also think about how although globalization is hurting people and the earth, it is also linking us more together, and that gives me great hope.

I think the main message I received was “we must fall in love with the earth”.  My own addition to that is, “we must fall out of love with industrialization”.

Also, everything that we do in self-help, which is having positive interactions amongst women, learning to trust each other, bonding, rejoicing in our bodies and getting acquainted with them, as well as learning how to control our fertility, to ease menstrual cramps, nurse our babies.  All this is entirely consistent with the goals of building communities, respecting nature, rejecting authoritarianism, seizing control of our lives.

Of course, I can’t help but be sad that the same individuals who are putting out this strong message seem to be unable to apply it to their own physical sexual and reproductive ownership.  The self-help movement should be on that stage, because we have learned how to gain power, both psychologically and physically through mutual help and the use of simple tools.

MEETING WITH PATRICIA MAGINNIS

Pat and I went out to breakfast, then later she, Barbara Hoke and I had dinner.  After that, Pat and I went to a board meeting of the Hayward Department of Recreation and Parks.  They were considering removing their approval of some events put on by a rodeo group.  The events consist of putting a very young child on the back of a sheep to try to ride it, milking a cow in the arena, the use of a electric prod on horses. 50 people from the rodeo community came out to support these activities.  About 10 of us opposed it.  Eric Mills heads up the protest.  Although there were women and children there, the testosterone level in the room was palpable.  Also, this group is 100% white.  Some are ranchers, others run the rodeo.  The rodeo people won.

Pat and I made copies of some of her cartoons at the local copy place, and we talked about some of the events in the late 1960’s that prompted her to create them.  They are really great.  Pat loves to have people use her cartoons.  If you’re interested in using any, I recommend you write her or call her.  She is hard of hearing, so e-mail or snail mail is probably better.

Also, Pat would like to compile her cartoons.  If anyone wants to help in such a project, there are people in Northern California that have worked with Pat to create her website and I’m sure she and they would like to hear from you.

Barbara Hoke continues her 20-year coordination of the defense of an Oakland abortion clinic that is harassed each weekend.

CONTACTS:
Molly Arthur Birthkeeper Summit (April 30-May 3, 2015)
Molly6@pacbell.net
(415) 435-8031

Mary Lou Singleton
enchantedfamilymedicine.com

Suzanne Jay
Asian Women’s Coalition Ending Prostitution
awcep.info@gmail.com
(604) 760-1175

FOLLOW-UP:
Gail Dines
Professor of Wheelock College

• I need to get in touch with her by e-mail.  What does she know about the Academy and how the post-structuralism and queer theory and pro-pornography movement developed?  Who funds it?

Molly Arthur-Molly has friend who uses herbal contraception

• Plan for conference.  Perhaps go to Sacramento to speak.

Suzanne Jay
e-mail, maybe go visit.

IDEAS:

• Article on commodification
• Get in touch with herbalists to track down people using herbal contraceptives and spreading the knowledge of it.
• Write Gail Dines to find out more about how post-structuralism and queer theory have affected the women’s studies departments.

Important New Book: "Caliban and the Witch, Women, The Body and Primitive Accumulation" by Silvia Federici

Dear Friends:  I have just finished reading Caliban and the Witch by Silvia Federici.  This book examines European history in the 14th through the 17th centuries and the conquest and colonization of the Americas and other areas, and the African slave trade.  Federici shows how the Witch Hunt, along with other brutal policies of the European rulers, the nobility along with the Church and mercantilists, damaged both men's and women's rights, forcing them into new work relationships, and how this same ruling class spread their mayhem around the globe, stealing lives and resources.

I believe that Federici's analysis of these cataclysmic events of four centuries explains why women are so ignorant of our bodies and have so little independent control over our bodies, whereas in ancient times, effective birth control methods were known and used among women in general and midwives in particular.  It shows that we can reclaim this knowledge.  Working together, we can undo the harms that were done to us.

Fully understanding this history as Federici tells it reinforces my belief that all women and all people of color who descend from colonized and enslaved peoples have every reason to blame capitalism and its exaltation of patriarchy for past atrocities and their present oppression.  I also believe that if white men of ordinary intelligence understand how capitalism is wrecking our planet today, they will also blame capitalism and they will see that racism and sexism is keeping humankind from taking effective action against capitalism.

I urge you to read this book.  I already had a general understanding of history, but Caliban and the Witch has helped me to interpret and understand it better and provided me with a road map on how to bring about social change.  I'm hoping to inspire you to run right out and get it; I've written a summary which I am attaching (see below).  After you read it, please let me hear back from you.

Carol Downer

MEMORANDUM

TO: Friends

FROM: Carol Downer

DATE: October 9, 2014

Caliban and the Witch, Women, The Body and Primitive Accumulation, Silvia Federici, 2nd revised edition, 2014, Autonomedia, online ordering www.autonomedia.org

About the author: Federici has the chops to write this book.  She worked with Wages for Housework in the 70’s, then with others to write books and articles about the transition of feudalism to capitalism.  The first edition was published in 2004.  She taught in Nigeria for 3 years, during which time she witnessed the Structural Adjustment imposed on the Nigerian economy by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund that selectively impoverishes the country for the enrichment of the few.  She recognized that this was similar to the way that European nobility, along with the Church and the mercantilists, accumulated capital.

Summary:  Disclaimer: This is a greatly simplified summary.  Federici reviews and quotes from many studies of European History in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.  Over this 4 centuries, there were ups and downs and complexities. I have attempted to contact her, but I have not yet heard back from her.  I urge you to read the book to absorb all of the information and analyses.

Federici recounts the cataclysmic events in the Middle Ages in Europe.  The Black Death killed off a sizable proportion of the population.  Famines reduced the birth rates, and there was a scarcity of labor, causing wages to skyrocket.  These dislocations created conditions that resulted in serfs’ revolts in the Middle Ages, Federici sees the actions of the nobility along with the Church and mercantilists to impoverish the feudal workers as a counter-revolution against the people’s uprisings to tear down the fences, and protests to demand redistribution of the land.  

This counter-revolution was a many pronged attack. 

1. They forced serfs off the land through enclosing the commons, pushing men into becoming waged workers, 
2. They created a sexual division of labor; they forced women to reproduce the labor force through the Witch Hunts which destroyed women’s knowledge of contraception and abortion, 
3. They gave wages to male workers who then had the power to force the unwaged (females) to perform the social reproduction which enhanced the productivity of the waged workers.

Federici also characterizes this a primitive accumulation of capital.  This term means “how the rich got their money in the first place”.  Turns out it’s not because they’re so smart or worked so hard, but because they used force to take people’s lands and their labor away from them.  In the case of the Witch Hunt, it means many things:  Among them, it destroyed the knowledge that women had amongst themselves about how to prevent pregnancy, so they produced more children who became members of the work force.  They burned old and poor widows or single women who had been forced to beg, thus acquiring what little belongings and land that they might have.  They terrorized women and kept them from moving about freely or traveling or meeting. In the case of enclosing the commons, it took resources away from the serfs and peasants because they couldn’t graze their cattle there or hunt in the forest or fish in the streams.  Therefore they either were forced off the small plots of land that they held under a feudal agreement with the noble and became vagabonds or went into the city to work for wages or worked agriculturally for wages.  All these moves resulted in increasing the wealth of the already rich.

Federici recounts how the European ruling class then used its increased wealth to finance exploration of other lands, resulting in their “discovery” of the Americas.  They then sent armed expeditions to Latin America where they killed many thousands outright, enslaved others and forced them to dig out the silver and gold they found, which they sent back to Europe.  Prior to this, European wealth was primarily land, cattle, horses and valuable objects.  The influx of precious metals made a monetized, capitalistic economy possible.  This in turn enable the ruling class to build an infrastructure, fund institutions, fuel the industrial revolution.

She recounts the brutal enslavement of the people in the Americas where people, male and female, were beaten, often to death, to force them to work until they dropped.  It wan’t until the slave trade was slowed down that there was any concern for maintaining the life of the slaves and attention was turned to reproducing new slaves.  She talks about how the Witch Hunts were conducted in the New World with the same ferocity with the cooperation of the the Church, both Catholics and Protestants.  Indians were characterized as devils.

Witch Hunts continued to be conducted in other colonies, such as India and Africa, and in the New England colonies.

She has lots of details about how many features of our so-called modern industrial way of life came into being.  She also shows how the capitalist expansion reinforced patriarchal organization, reduced women’s power, both their reproductive power and their ability to move around in society and have independent agency.  Such “modern” features as racism and the various uses of prostitution at different times and places are included.  The science of demography was invented; the study of the birth and death rates, and especially what causes the birth rate to go up and down so that the policy makers can influence it through “carrot” and “stick” measures.