About the author
Italian-American scholar and activist (b. 1942), a co-founder of the International Wages for Housework Campaign in the 1970s and a longtime teacher at Hofstra University. Federici's work fuses Marxism and feminism around the concept of social reproduction, and her historical study Caliban and the Witch made her one of the most widely read feminist theorists of her generation.
Synopsis
A collection of essays spanning four decades. Federici reconstructs the case that capitalism could never function without the vast unwaged work of social reproduction, performed overwhelmingly by women. She traces the Wages for Housework campaign, analyses the globalisation of care work, and argues that any serious anti-capitalist politics must start from the labour that sustains life, not only the labour that produces commodities.
Core passage idea
Paraphrase · Modern copyrighted workFederici argues that the unpaid work of the home is not outside the economy but the very ground capitalism stands on — the production and daily renewal of the workers themselves.
By naming reproduction as productive, Federici dissolves the line between 'the economy' and 'the home.' If capitalism runs on unpaid care work, then the family is a site of exploitation and struggle, and feminism and anti-capitalism become inseparable rather than rival causes.
To avoid a bubble
Pair with market-liberal accounts that treat household labour as a private choice outside the economy, and with orthodox Marxists who locate exploitation only at the point of waged production.
Reading note
The essays vary; the early Wages for Housework pieces and the later writing on care and globalisation are the core. Read it with Federici's historical work Caliban and the Witch for the long view of how capitalism disciplined women's bodies and labour.
Best paired with
bell hooks, Ain't I a Woman; Karl Marx, Capital, Volume I.