Multiple faces of marxist feminism

Heleieth Saffioti and Silvia Federici

Abstract

Marxism and feminism have a history of alliances and disagreements, in which feminism or the 'women's question' was often incorporated into Marxist agendas and theories and then subjugated and made into political and epistemological concerns of a minor degree. We seek a more functional articulation between feminism and Marxism, which is simultaneously both, from an investigation of the work of Brazilian Heleieth Saffioti and Italian Silvia Federici. Focusing on Women in Class Society we follow Saffioti's analysis of the constitution of Brazilian capitalism and the position of women in it, following her argument about the partial integration of women in the mode of production. In the following, we develop Federici's analyzes, especially in Caliban and the witch, on the formation of capitalism through the enclosure of the commons in Europe and its relation to the expropriation of reproductive labor done by women. Finally, we compare their perspectives, focusing problematically on how each of them deals with the relationship between labor and women's position in capitalism. While Saffioti thinks in terms of women's partial integration and social periphery in view of their semi-exclusion from the 'world of work', Federici goes further by focusing on the importance of female reproductive work by understanding how women are rather essential parts of capitalist production process, even if their work is unpaid and unrecognized as such.

Keywords: Reproductive labor. Marxist feminism. Women’s work. Federici. Saffioti.