Last Born In The Wilderness

In this episode, Silvia Federici goes over many of the details and themes in her groundbreaking book, Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation, an extensive history of the body in the transition to capitalism. Silvia discusses the conditions that led to the witch-hunts in medieval Europe, and the lasting impact these events have had on the trajectory of capitalist development into the modern era. Silvia provides a description of the social and economic system, feudalism, that governed societies in medieval Europe and how the events and struggles that occurred during that time period led to the economic and social system, capitalism, we currently exist in today. Caliban and the Witch is an incredibly important and relevant work, and provides a much-needed context of how capitalism did not merely emerge naturally out of feudalism, but was enacted piece by piece through systemic acts of state violence over hundreds of years against the landless, the poor, and in particular women. Silvia