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Assignment 2 Section 9

Silvia Federici mentions multiple events throughout the chapter, The Accumulation of Labor and the Degradation of Women, in order to convey how the political and economic conditions brought along a new trend of labor force, impacting the population of lower working class, and in particular, the female population.

The start of this movement towards capitalism began with the Enclosure and the tendency of land privatization, a trend among wealthy lords and farmers of Europe. This was the act of taking away the system of public land ownership (used for agricultural purposes) and taking control of these lands for their own profit (Frederici, 2004: 79). The result was disastrous, because it destroyed entire villages and communities, depriving the people of what seemed to be their only way of survival; it destroyed their way of living. With no other source for food, many within the peasant community became very poor and this further broke down the solidity of the rural population. People begged for jobs, and young family members left home to become wonderers known as vegabonds. Moreover, these people were forced to become dependent on others for survival, particularly to their landowners and employers, because wage became a type of enslavement.

The core of how this event relates to the degradation of women stems from how this movement completely destroyed women’s independence. When this movement struck, women were at a disadvantage because their lives weren’t suited to become vagabonds or migrant workers. Several limitations they faced include having to care for their children and being subject to male violence; this prevented them from adapting a nomadic life style (Frederici, 2004: 83). Furthermore, women were ostracized by society by often being excluded from waged occupations, and earning less then men even while doing the same work. As a result, the only place they could work was at their homes doing reproductive labor. However, the problem was, because the trend was turning towards monetary values, there was a heavier value put on actual production of market commodities rather than the reproduction of workers. Therefore, even the one thing that they were allowed to do, which was procreation, was deemed utterly valueless. This may have been the cause of women being under-acknowledged within society and being viewed as weak, dependent beings who can’t survive without their husbands. The society and government made it so that women would be powerless without men, and this act of taking about their ability to become, or rather, remain capable individuals is the defining instance where women suffered degradation.