Primitive Accumulation: The Collapse of Feudalism
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In Capital, Volume One, Karl Marx criticizes classical political economy for its myth of "primitive accumulation," which falsely attributes the rise of capitalism to the personal virtues of capitalists (thrift, productivity) and the vices of workers (laziness, waste). Marx rejects this account as bourgeois mystification, arguing instead that capitalism emerged violently through the forceful expropriation of peasants, the destruction of traditional economies, and the coercive power of the state. Primitive accumulation, he maintains, was not a one-time event but an ongoing, global process of dispossession.
Silvia Federici builds on this analysis in Caliban and the Witch, arguing that primitive accumulation also involved the violent regulation of women’s reproductive labor. She contends that the witch hunts were a critical part of this process, representing the first capitalist attack on women’s bodies. Through these persecutions, women’s traditional knowledge and authority over childbirth, healing, and communal life were destroyed. Federici sees this as part of a broader capitalist effort to restructure family relations, criminalize women’s autonomy, and transform them into reproductive laborers.
Wally Seccombe's A Millennium of Family Change complements this perspective by examining how the family became a site of economic production under capitalism. Seccombe argues that the family should be seen as part of the economic base, as it is responsible for the reproduction of labor power. He shows how women’s unpaid domestic labor became essential but undervalued under capitalism, reinforcing patriarchal family structures. Together, these analyses highlight how capitalism’s rise depended on not only the expropriation of land but also the control of women’s reproductive labor and the transformation of the family.
References
Federici, Silvia. Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation. New York: Autonomedia, 2004. https://files.libcom.org/files/Caliba...
Seccombe, Wally. A Millennium of Family Change: Feudalism to Capitalism in Western Europe. London: Verso, 1992. https://dokumen.pub/a-millennium-of-f...