Holloway - Crack Capitalism.pdf - Libcom

invoLve different sociaL reLations from those of men, as they wouLd Later,
in a money-economy ... If we aLso take into account that in medievaL
society collective reLations prevaiLed over familiaL ones, and most of
the tasks that femaLe serfs performed ... were done in cooperation with
other women, we then realise that the sexuaL division of Labour, far
from being a source of isoLation, was a source of power and protection
for women. (2004: 25)
This changes radically in the centuries that follow. One particular
activity (labour) was separated off from the others, generally
being located in a different place (the factory) and this was seen
as an activity for men. Women continued to take charge of the
activities of reproduction, but they no longer had direct access
to land for growing crops, nor to common land for grazing
animals, nor to the same collaborative support of other women.
In a money economy, the man's wage defined the conditions of
the family and the work of reproduction came to be seen as
unimportant. Women were excluded from the wage in various
ways: by being excluded from paid employment, by receiving
much lower wages when they did perform wage labour, and
even in many cases by the woman's wage being paid directly to
her husband (Federici 2004: 98).
The creation of the new hierarchy was not achieved easily. It
meant a redefinition of women's role in society and a redefinition
of the meaning of being a woman. This took centuries of struggle
involving the passing of laws to restrict the rights of women,
the intervention of the churches, the insensitivity, brutality and
at best collusion of the masculine (and masculinised) wage
labourers and, crucially, the slaughter of more than a hundred
thousand women condemned as witches, the torture of many,
many more and the intimidation of millions. That is how women
were reduced to invisible non-persons. Capitalism was built on
a brutal and bloody misogyny.
This too was an enclosure: not just of the bodies of women,2
but of their doing. The woman/housewife created did not
have her doing contained directly in wage-labour, but it was
contained just as effectively, within the constraints of servicing
and reproducing wage labour. Primitive accumulation involved
a double personification: the personification of labour and the
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