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Silvia Federici (Parma, 1942) is one of the leading contemporary feminist scholars and activists. She is a professor emerita and teaching fellow at Hofstra University in New York State. In 1972, she co-founded the International Feminist Collective, the organization that launched the Wages for Housework campaign worldwide.

For issue #110 of The Internationalist, we draw from her interview with the Island School of Social Autonomy (ISSA). Here, Silvia Federici calls for immediate mobilization against genocidal atrocities and a rethinking of collective movements to challenge capitalist exploitation.

ISSA: Thank you so much for joining us today. It’s beautiful weather on the island, it’s sunny. And we just had a debate on the 60th anniversary of the Yugoslav Praxis journal. At the same time, today is the anniversary of the 7th of October, while the Nakba has been taking place for many more decades. We have crowd-sourced the questions from the participants of ISSA2024: To Live Together, and, given the date and context of our conversaiton, we will start by a question from a Croatian journalist among us:

“Considering your work on capitalism and colonialism, to what extent do you think that Russia’s aggression against Ukraine and Israel’s probably genocidal campaign in Gaza constitute a crucial rupture in world history? Regarding the fact that the rest of the world, the so-called Global South, has a significantly different view of these two events, less so in the case of Ukraine, but still significantly different. The Western elites are more unified than in a long time, and at the same time, they are more estranged from the rest of the world than in a long time. This comes together with the return to economic protectionism and trade bloc competition, also in relation to the EU and US, contrary to the proclaimed creeds of open markets.”

Silvia Federici: First of all, thank you for inviting me, and I’m really happy to be with you also on this terrible day. I appreciate all the questions that you sent me, and I would like to leave a reasonable amount of time for the discussion after this initial round, so that we can also hear more directly from people in the audience. I cannot answer all the questions of the Croatian journalist, and I will try to be very schematic.

First of all, I’d like to make a difference between the attack of Israel against the Palestinians, what I would call a genocidal campaign against the Palestinians, and now the Lebanese, and Russia’s aggression against Ukraine. The destruction of life is terrible in every situation, and has always to be condemned. On the other hand, I think there’s an important difference because it can be argued that in many ways the Russian aggression was also provoked to a great extent by the politics of NATO, which, contrary to agreements that were made in the past, has extended to the doors of Russia. If anything similar had happened at the border of the United States, and we have the famous case of the Russian missiles in Cuba, and we know that that almost triggered a nuclear war, probably the response would have been even more fierce than the response of Russia. So, this is not to condone the killing, in particular, the destruction of civilian lives. But really, I think it’s important, because what we see in Israel is really the culmination of a long-standing policy of expulsion of Palestinians from their ancestral land, and a policy of killing, policing, torturing, and ignoring any legitimate demand for self-determination.

What has happened since October 7th? October 7th has been the proper justification – and of course, the killings on October 7th of Israeli people have to be condemned – but nevertheless, what has happened on October 7th gave the Israeli government the justification to complete and accelerate a project that has been there all along since 1948, which is, in fact, to create a Greater Israel, and delegitimize the existence of the Palestinians. They delegitimized the right of the Palestinians to be on their land, and by continuous provocation of killing, created a constant state of siege. It’s important for Palestine, as we know, but it’s also important to repeat it, and repeat it, and repeat it, because there’s so much denial, there’s so many lies, so much, you know, “truth” today is really imposed by the power of bombs.

But the reality is that Israel has lived in and imposed a state of apartheid. And what has happened in the last year has been a turning point, and a turning point both in the escalation of the violence, because a whole region has practically been destroyed: one year of bombardment, and we are talking about hundreds of thousands of people killed. And not only bombardments, but the sadism, the barbarity, people being told to leave to “safe zones”, and then shot as they are leaving. Children rushing for some food, and being bombed as they are rushing. And the systematic destruction of anything that connected people to the past. And really why do we talk about extermination and genocide? Because it’s the extermination of a whole population. Anything that created a sense of collective identity, the libraries, the archives, everything personal and public has been destroyed, every productive infrastructure, the hospitals, the schools, the water system, and then starvation. It’s exceptional, the level of cruelty, violence, and destruction. And what is more, the fact that this is happening with the support, the instigation, I’ll say support, because when you send bombs, like the United States and the European Union are doing, this is not just condoning, this is actually supporting and instigating. That this is happening, you know, with the approval, support, if not instigation, of all the major governments, those who erect themselves as defenders of “democracy” and “human rights”. And then nothing, nothing seems to stop them. I think that they could probably burn all the Palestinians alive, and the United States would still say that Israel has the right to defend itself. 

So I think that this is a turning point. It’s a turning point because, in a sense, it is the striptease of democracy. We have all long known that this is a democracy of capitalism, that this democracy is a democracy that hides, in fact, a lot of fascist politics in these democratic nations and governments. Nevertheless, now that actual violence and disregard, total disregard for human life, total disregard for human rights, is becoming more and more clear, more and more evident. As I said, the striptease of democracy. And also the tacit, the consensus, the silence of the other countries, the so-called BRICS, the countries that many have looked at as an alternative, an alternative to capitalist development in the Global North.

So I think it is a turning point from the point of view of our understanding of what democracy is, what the plans of international capital are. But it is also a turning point for the movements. Now every movement, every collective or social movement that wants to mobilize for a more just society has, in a sense, to pause and rethink and reorganize. And I think there are very important steps to be taken. Clearly, immediate action is crucial. And I think that immediate action, of course, has to go beyond demonstrations. I think that what we need to do is to have the kind of mobilization that addresses, in particular, those in society who have the power to stop it: like the workers who are producing the bombs. The workers that are the longshoremen who are actually packing the bombs and sending them. In other words, this war would not take place without a whole set of very specific mechanisms. And I think it’s very urgent that organizing begins to address this. Imagine a general strike of workers, who would say “No, we won’t send, we won’t ship, we won’t build these bombs, we stop!” So this is very, very important. 

On the other hand, the question of systemic change, the question of understanding what are the mechanisms that are allowing this capitalist system? I’ve written a number of articles on the situation in Palestine. And the main theme has always been: Palestine is the world. Because I think it’s very important to understand what is happening in Palestine and now in Lebanon, and the redrawing of the map of the Middle East, which is what is really happening now. When we put it in the context of international capital, international capitalist institutions, and then the US and the European Union, who are their main protectors and promoters, and looking at their policy in Africa, the policy of AFRICOM – it is not an accident. For example, there were four million or more refugees in Sudan. The whole story of the eastern part of Africa and the involvement of the United States, and particularly now also East Africa, the Sahel, AFRICOM, Libya, Congo, also Haiti and many other countries. So there is a massive, massive intervention.

Palestine is the world because I think what we are witnessing is the result of a massive process now of expansion of capitalist relations that is very much directed to displace, to displace many people, to establish control over the resources of the world, over the wealth of the world, direct control of multinational corporations, and also to displace the people who are living in the areas in which extractivist companies have to operate. This is happening both because of the historical tendencies of capitalism to extend its reach and to privatize, to separate people from the means of their reproduction so that they have no autonomy, so that they can be more easily controlled and exploited. And also because in today’s new forms of capitalist development, the digital economy, you cannot have a world digital economy without practically destroying, consuming the earth, without an immense amount of extractivist activity to produce the lithium, the coltan, and the many other minerals that are necessary.

And this is why we are seeing this huge migration movement. People are leaving their homes, not because they want to and are attracted by the “great happiness” that we have in Europe and in the United States, but because they cannot survive, because their fields have been taken over either by oil companies, mineral companies, or they are taken over by agribusiness to produce food that the local population can no longer consume because it’s directed to the big markets of the United States or the EU. So I think that this is very important to see, to understand for every movement: what are the mechanisms? The international division of labor, for instance, this hierarchical division of labor. The fact, for example, that those who are producing are not those who are consuming.

What are the mechanisms that we need to deactivate in order to begin to create a more just society? I think that this is very, very important. This is a moment of action and at the same time of pause. It’s a moment of action because we need to stop this amazing, barbaric, savage attack on human life, which really, in a way, makes our life meaningless. Because if this can take place, what else? I remember more and more in the last few days the beautiful poem by Bertolt Brecht, which says, “What kind of times are these in which speaking of trees feels like a crime?” You know, we have everything. Every moment of happiness, you feel guilty because in a way, what is happening? You know other people are being mutilated, are being killed, are being destroyed. Their lives are being destroyed.

So at the same time we need a sort of pause, a pause because I think we need to understand more broadly and understand that whatever we do, whatever action we do, no matter how small it may appear, has to contain in itself the element for the creation of a different society, for the subversion of the mechanisms that today are fueling this genocide, which today is Palestine, but it’s actually occurring in different places across the world. I say we have Palestine in the streets of New York or in the streets of the United States, where the police can kill, mostly young black men, immigrants with total impunity. We have Palestine also in the United States and the richest countries in the world, where we are told that a majority of people will not be able to have enough resources if they have an emergency, to have the money to deal even with the most minimal emergency. And many, even here, go hungry. So this is my response to the first question.

ISSA: Thank you so much. And I think many people here agree. Just two days ago, we had a solidarity event with the people of Palestine, where we tried through reading poetry and performance, to at least in a way give and share what we can, through arts and culture and also donations. But I’m sure we will come back to these questions during our discussion. Let us move to the next question: What is feminism without women? To quote Rosi Braidotti, would feminism benefit from this decoupling? And it is certainly much more than simply the struggle of women’s liberation, for example, decolonial feminism, feminist politics of location, and so on?

Silvia: I think that feminism has historically and to this day developed as a response by the women’s movement, in response to very specific forms of exploitation, very specific forms of oppression. That’s why there’s no sense in this decoupling, because in fact, what we have seen is that “woman” is not a biological concept. “Woman” is a category of exploitation.

It has meant, in the history of the liberation movement, unpaid labor, it has meant the devaluation of reproductive work. It has meant a particular place in the sexual and international division of labor. So decoupling women from the struggle is to hide again, to cover again, a whole area of exploitation that in fact, in a very revolutionary way, the feminist movement has uncovered. And I may add that before the feminist movement, no male-dominated movement, not socialist, not anarchist, not Marxist, has ever dealt with the question of reproduction, has ever dealt with the question of procreation, with the question of domestic work, with their devaluation. And yes, of course, it is much more than changing the position of women in society. But what it is, without a feminist presence in the movements, you wouldn’t be able to actually understand what that change has to be.

It is much more, because through our analysis of the devaluation of women’s work, we have been able to see something about the system as a whole. Changing the place reproductive work has in the capitalist economy, in the capitalist system of social relations, actually produces a change in the system as a whole. Because we understood, as some feminists in Argentina, in Latin America have put it, that there is a conflict between capital and life.

That in fact, capitalism is a system that structurally is committed to the devaluation of women’s life. And so the feminist movement too has grown. We have gone from the analysis of the sexual division of work – women reproduce life, men are the ones who produce goods for the market – to actually understand something more about the system. But if it hadn’t been for the struggle of women, all areas of exploitation would have continued to exist, would not have been questioned. Which means it would have continued to be reproduced to the benefit of the capitalist system. Because that unpaid reproductive work, as we have shown, is what sustains the condition of existence of every work activity in this society.

ISSA: In this context, how do we counter the attacks against feminists by men who present themselves as victims?

Silvia: You know, I would say that what I’ve always said to feminists when they’re talking about, how do you educate men? And my answer has always been: No, we don’t waste time educating men. Men are educated by the fact that we build our organization, we build our social power, we change our life in ways that makes us not dependent on men. And we have seen that change very clearly. At the beginning of the feminist movement, when, for example, in the United States, during the Vietnam War, women were there to say, yes, we support the struggle of the Vietnamese, but what about women? What about femicide, et cetera? And they were often booed. They were booed!

It was only when the movement grew, when a lot of women left the organizations of the male left, that men began to listen. They didn’t begin to listen… You know, women have pleaded with men, trying to educate the men of their community for decades, for centuries.

But it’s only when women began to build their autonomous power and stop being the servants of men, also in the male-dominated social movements, that men have become feminists. Many have become feminists or begun to support or stop opposing the feminist movement. So I would say that I think it’s by building women’s power in society that we also put an end to or neutralize those accusations.

ISSA: Thank you. The next question is kind of connected to this: how do we argue against the liberal weaponization of women’s emancipation, which is used to justify colonialism?

Silvia: Yes, not only colonialism, but also to justify capitalism, racism. I think it’s very important to see that very, very early, already in 1975, with the first global conference on women organized by the United Nations, the first global conference in Mexico City, already very early in the development of the feminist movement, when it was clear that the feminist movement was growing, the United Nations intervened and tried to place itself at the head of it. And of course the feminist rhetoric was domesticated, very domesticated, where emancipation is emancipation through work, emancipation is by getting a job, et cetera. And I have often drawn a connection between the role of the United Nations in intervening in feminist politics in the 1970s – there are the four conferences in Copenhagen, Beijing, Nairobi, and Mexico City – and the role that the United Nations played in the anti-colonial struggle. Because if you remember when it became clear that the anti-colonial struggle was very strong and could not be bought off in a sense, could not be combatted, then the United Nations began the process of decolonization. They placed themselves at the head. Again, they appointed themselves as the liberators, which is what they’ve done with women. They appointed themselves, and first of all, of course, killed those African leaders that opposed this policy. They killed Lumumba, right? They subjected, as in Kenya, the liberation movement to massive, massive torture and imprisonment, hanging. But then they become the decolonizers. Decolonizers that allow the installation of national flags, but perpetuate the dependency of the new nations, independent countries, their dependency, financial and otherwise from the original colonizing country. 

So there is a parallel here, and it’s very important. I think that the intervention of the UN has done a lot of damage to the movement. You know, for years,  I heard younger women say, oh, the feminist movement is all bought off. No, it’s not bought off. Today, more and more women see the fraud that this intervention has represented, because they see that the famous emancipation through wage labor has not taken place. We see that the rhetoric of the United Nations has helped millions of women, has celebrated the entrance of millions of women into a wage workplace, ignoring that this work, these jobs were precarious, hazardous, very poorly paid, taking place in conditions that were destructive of women’s life. Think of the free export zones, all over Latin America, Africa, Mexico, Asia, where women work an unlimited number of hours, often producing electronic equipment among fumes and in very dangerous conditions.

So I think that the idea that, so-called leaving the home, taking a job outside the home, would really be the path to emancipation, which is what the United Nations promoted; today, it’s shown to be very, very lacking. So I think that the grip that institutions have on feminism is less strong than it was, for example, in the 1980s or 90s. This is my view. But certainly, there are two movements, two different movements, two different worlds. One is committed to improving the condition of women, to give them access to capitalist wealth, is committed not to changing society, but actually making some moderate improvement in the life of certain women, while using their work. The other is committed not just to change women’s life, but to change society. If there’s something that we have learned over the decades, you cannot positively change our life without dramatically changing this society. We are subverting the system and creating a society that is not built on the exploitation of people and nature.

ISSA: Do you think that the claim for wages for housewives as a main career is still relevant as a transformative action? What other actions and policies do we need to build to overcome the unjust social organization of care and reproductive labor?

Silvia: First of all, we never asked, never, for wages for housewives. We asked for wages for housework, which meant for anybody who does the work, not just for women. So, it was never meant to perpetuate this confinement. This is what I want to make clear, because we’re accused of wanting to perpetuate women’s confinement to domestic labor. So, housework. In fact, I think that the demand for wages for housework is one road to desexualize this work. If this work were paid, men would do it. Men, too, would do it. But it’s still very important, because for us, that campaign was very crucial. Because first of all, it meant to establish that this is work, and to show the role of this work in society, in the capitalist organization of work. We showed that without housework, nothing moves. Without housework, no other type of work is possible. We said, there’s no general strike until women cross their arms. It’s only when women cross their arms that there’s going to be a general strike, right? So, to show that the little money the government gives… – no, that is not charity! In fact, for generations, women have worked and worked and worked and made it possible for capitalism to reproduce the workforce at a minimal, minimal cost.

So, that was very important. Because lots of women were desperate and had to depend on a man, the money was also important, to gain some autonomy and not to have to depend on a man. We know many women stay even when the men are violent, because they are not economically capable of supporting themselves. Second, not being forced to accept any job, any job that comes along, because you want to have a little money, to have the possibility to choose. So, this was very important. And also, to contract with the government, with the state, social services. With what power do you insist on having certain social services when this work is not seen as work? When this work is totally naturalized? When this work is seen as something that “Oh, that’s what women do.” It rains, and women do housework. It rains, and women take care of children.

So, we wanted to denaturalize this work, to problematize this work, and many other things. The issue of money: Many women said, “Oh my God, if you have wages for housework, then women will continue to do the work.” This is nonsense. Is that an argument that you would use with a factory worker? Would you tell them, no, do the work for free, because if you take the money, you’re going to continue to do the work? So, only in the case of women. The naturalization of housework has gone so deep that even among many feminists, there is a fear of connecting [it to] money. But I will also say that that money we demanded is money that would not be used to buy weapons. Think of it, every week now, billions are going to Ukraine, from the United States and the EU, to Ukraine and to Israel. Billions, every week, to buy bombs. So, we have to redirect. We have to redirect where the money, where the wealth that we produce [goes].

And of course, money is not the only form of wealth. We could ask for free housing. We could ask for free commodities. We could ask! But we first have to establish that we are working. We are the ones who are keeping the society going. As domestic workers in Spain say, without us, nothing moves.

Excerpted from the conversation between participants of ISSA2024: To Live Together and Silvia Federici that took place on the 7th of October, 2024 on the island of Vis. 

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