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Title: 'To Create & Maintain Their Wealth' Author: JaurĂa Language: en Topics: Return Fire, JaurĂa, speciesism, animal liberation, industrialism, labor, Silvia Federici, Jason Hribal, exploitation, gender, patriarchy, accumulation, capitalism Source: Translated for Return Fire vol.3 Notes: PDFs of Return Fire and related publications can be read, downloaded and printed by searching actforfree.nostate.net for "Return Fire", or emailing returnfire@riseup.net
Normally, industrialisation and capitalism (as well as the class
relations generated in their womb) are explained to us through the
figure of production and wage labour. This approach ignores and mutes
the role of millions of subjects whose labour-power has also been used
for accumulation; and whose exploitation and resistance has also formed
part of the story. On the one hand, we are talking about non-human
animals and their unpaid work, essential for the development of major
industries and the generation of wealth; on the other hand, we refer to
women relegated to the caregiver/reproductive role, carefully designed
to ensure the continuity of the system and discourage any hint of
dissent or solidarity.
Although we cannot aspire in these lines to a comprehensive analysis of
the issue and its nuances, we would like to throw together some of the
key proponents as proposed by the author Silvia Federici and the
historian Jason Hribal.
The first delves into the roots of the State and economic control over
the feminine body and social role, dating back to the post-colonial
American witch hunts [ed. – and much before]. For Federici, the
capitalist system is not a logical evolution of society, but a plan
carried out in a calculated manner for a few to create and maintain
their wealth and privileges. In this regard, criminalising sexual and
reproductive freedom meant creating a break from the norm of the time
and, simultaneously, neutralising experiences of self-organisation and
social functions of some women who could be possessors of knowledge
linked to respect for nature and the community. Thus, any possible
resistance to the necessary social transformation for the emergence and
development of capitalism was annihilated or contained. Women were
gradually set aside from productive economic activities and, when waged
work became the main source of wealth, women's bodies began to be
conceived of as reproductive machines for the creation of the future
labour force. At the same time, unpaid housework accounted for the
livelihood and the daily reward for the existing [male] labour force:
“capital has made and makes money out of our cooking, smiling, fucking.”
(Federici, 1975).
Also profitable to the bosses and to the system in general was all the
energy produced by non-human animals. In his work, Hribal shows to what
extent these were depended on during industrialisation: “On the
agricultural farms, it was oxen, horses, mules, and donkeys, as well as
the occasional cow, ewe, or large dog, which pulled and powered the
plows, harrows, seed-drills, threshers, binders, presses, reapers,
mowers, and harvesters. In the mines, they towed the gold, silver,
iron-ore, lead, and coal. On the cotton plantations and in the spinning
factories, they turned the mechanical mills that cleaned, pressed,
carded, and spun the cotton. On the sugar plantations, they crushed and
transported the cane. On the docks, roads, and canals, they moved the
carts, wagons, and barges of mail, commodities, and people. In the
cities, they powered the carriages, trams, buses, and ferries. On the
battlefields, they deployed the artillery and supplies, they provided
the reconnaissance, and they charged the lines. This was the labor of
production: producing the power necessary to propel the instruments of
capitalism. Indeed, the modern agricultural, industrial, commercial, and
urban transformations were not just human enterprises. The history of
capitalist accumulation is so much more than a history of humanity. Who
built America, the textbook asks? Animals did” (Hribal, 2003).
Already in previous economic systems, other-than-human animals had been
used as currency, or as products, or as machines for production. What
capitalism skilfully did was to take control of those ambiguous
relationships in which the animal was, at the same time, a resource and
a member of the human community. It dissociated those 'products' and
'machines' from the subject who they came from, from the individual
character of the 'operator's' experience. In this way, not only the
interests and the needs of the animals themselves were muted, but also
the voices that were beginning to rise up to show solidarity with them
and to demand an end to their slavery.
In the same way, this system achieved that the very concept of 'woman'
be assimilated almost exclusively into the role given to her in the
hetero-patriarchal home. According to Federici, capitalism has led women
to believe that household chores and caring for children are 'an act of
love', and it is still commonly accepted that only maternity, infinite
patience and caring dedication make us 'real women'.
Even so, to Silvia Federici the female body is not the only one in which
capitalism intervenes, but the bodies of the proletariat in general are
dominated through hunger, reproduction, the subordination of basic needs
to work, etc. The case of the non-human animals is an absolute exponent
of this domination, their bodies at the same time being a source of
labour-power, machine production and products. In all these cases, the
control of the reproductive capacities of individuals plays a
fundamental role for the accumulation of wealth. The sows, cows and
sheep on the farms, female elephants and lionesses in the zoos and
circuses, the orcas in the aquarium... usually resist reproducing. Their
pregnancies are induced, their deliveries are scheduled, their daughters
[sic] are stolen and killed by the same industry that steals life from
them. It's them who decide how many bodies will be born and how they
will optimize their productivity. Lives are created in order to be
exploited and destroyed. In a more veiled way, States legislate to
punish a woman who does not want to collaborate in the reproduction of
the workforce [ed. – see for example the recent extention of
prohibitions against abortion in Spain, Brazil, etc.], and to have the
last word about how, when and how much she should give birth:
“Capitalism has always needed to control the bodies of women because
it's an exploitative system that privileges labour as the source of
wealth accumulation[…] Imagine if women go on strike and don't produce
children; capitalism comes to a halt” (Federici, 2014).
Denial of reproduction, exercised both by humans and by individuals of
other species, is without a doubt a powerful form of resistance, but
it's not the only one. The animals have made changes in the history of
labour by slowing or shutting down production, attacking their
exploiters, fleeing and even forming maroon communities free in nature.
The women accused and persecuted for witchcraft were not the only people
who dared to challenge or question the power of the Church, the
patriarchy and the economic system. If exploitation and rebellion exist
beyond the classification of genus and species, so too can solidarity.
Taking again the example of the witch hunts, the criminalisation and
isolation of certain subjects means a breakdown in the community. The
woman who wants to be something more than 'woman', who claims herself as
a free individual, owner of her body and of her relationships, is
presented as a monstrous lover of the devil, and enemy of humanity. She
who wants to control her reproduction is shown as a devourer of
children, who can make men impotent. Ultimately, the woman is 'something
else', different from other members of the social group. Midwives and
healers, and the religions linked to respect for nature, are also
stigmatised. Wildness and nature become something undesirable, and
punishable. In the same way, non-human animals are punished and subdued
until they are docile enough to be useful. These animals are also
perceived as 'something else', however much they work and live with the
group, and although there is no real taxonomic or logical difference
between what it means to be 'human' and what it means to be 'animal'.
Thus, although capitalism in practice places workers, housewives and
beasts of burden in the same position, only those who contribute with
waged productive work are considered among them as members of the
working class, and on the basis of this consideration build
relationships of mutual support and solidarity. Both Hribal and Federici
pursue with their research, more or less explicitly, a break with this
limited view of the idea of class. Their proposals seek to broaden the
concept of the commons, to put it into practice, and promote recognition
among equals from below, by eliminating the barriers imposed from above
to prevent that we find and help each other.
It's a newly-born idea, which has much to say and discuss, but at the
same time it's one of the oldest ideas in the world: we are in this
together, and together we'll get through this.