Towards the radicalization of Karl Marx from the feminist contributions of Silvia Federici

Abstract

Silvia Federici has sought to keep the debate on the links between Marxism and feminism alive. Thus, after an intense research and militancy work, it has highlighted both the importance of Karl Marx for feminist thought as well as the author's modest awareness of the situation of women in capitalism. It is from this horizon that, in this paper, we intend to reconstruct this analysis from a careful hermeneutic exegesis, centered on the Marxian conception of human nature and its inseparable link with the idea of work. We will critically reveal the limitations and the power that inhabit these ideas of Marx if we approach them from a feminist perspective. Firstly, we will examine her philosophical-anthropological developments, in which she interprets work as a vital essence, to see how her bias relegates women to the space of the natural. Later we will focus on his analysis of the concept of labour power to address the opacities that his approach presents in the way in which it is produced and reproduced. Finally, we will explore the implications that this lacuna in Marx entails around the question of social time.