This essay was originally written for a course entitled ‘Reading Marxist Theories’ in April 2019, as part of my MA in North American Studies at the FU, Berlin.
Witches Sabbath – Hans Baldung 1510
How did the European Witch Hunts Contribute to the Genesis of Capitalism?
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The European witch-hunts, a period between the fifteenth to seventeenth century in which thousands of women were tortured and executed, is often dismissed as an initiative solely led by the Church and a vestige of medieval superstition. Since the early twentieth century, this period has been the subject of much debate amongst Marxist feminist activists and scholars, such as Silvia Federici (2014) and Maria Mies (1986), who have sought to investigate the role accusations of witchcraft played in establishing the sexual division of labour. Feminists are defined by Mies (1986:6) as ‘those who dare to break the conspiracy of silence about the oppressive, unequal man-woman relationship and who want to change it,’ and their work reveals that, rather than being ‘the last dying spark of the Feudal world,’ (Federici, 2014: 165) the witch-hunt was in fact a state sponsored initiative that played a crucial in the process of primitive accumulation and the development of capitalism.
Within such investigations, it’s argued that during the phase of original accumulation accusations of witchcraft served to sediment the patriarchal order, creating racialised and gendered social hierarchies which demarcated subjects suitable for exploitation or expropriation, as well as acting as a process of social enclosure, rewriting the metaphysical underpinnings of society and the way humankind related to nature (Mies,1986). Since the 1960s, this narrative has been adopted by strands of the Neo-pagan feminist movement, who link ecological concerns and political struggles with spirituality, embracing forms of witchcraft and claiming that ‘witchcraft is not incompatible with politics (…) the Craft is a religion historically conceived in rebellion and therefore can be true to its nature only when it continues its ancient fight against oppression’ (Adler, 2014: 147).
This history provides a framework by which radical feminists have explored alternative modes of living which conjoin a concern for nature with egalitarian visions for society and challenges the current capitalist mode of production. However, the early movements which emerged during the phase of second wave feminism have since been charged with over-romanticising this pre capitalist history, subscribing to Margaret Murray’s (1921) mythic matriarchy, and over inflating the number of victims from the ‘Burning Times.’ Furthermore, their essentialising discourses which associate women and indigenous societies with ‘nature’ justified violent forms of cultural appropriation and contributed to further expropriation in the name of their own liberation (Mies,1986:35). However, in recent times there has been a revival of conjoining radical feminism with spiritual concerns, and now that practices such as Haitian Vodou, Santeria and Ifa are finally gaining recognition as a legitimate spiritual practice within the public sphere, the intersectional dimensions of oppression and racialised expropriation are now taking centre stage within their critiques of capitalism and patriarchy.
In this essay I would like to explore this history of primitive accumulation developed by Marxist feminists, investigating the role the European witch-hunts played within the genesis of capitalism, as well as assess the utility of such a narrative within emancipatory projects of the contemporary feminist movement for imagining radical new futures and alternative modes of living. I will do so by first examining why feminist scholars have sought to uncover this hidden history which was overlooked by Marx, and then revisit the historical process of primitive accumulation. Unfortunately it is beyond the scope of this essay to adequately assess all the multifaceted ways in which the European witch-hunts were utilized in the bloody transformation from a Feudal to Capitalist society, and therefore I shall focus upon how it helped to establish ‘the patriarchy of the wage’: transforming previously powerful and economically independent women into tamed and subordinate wives, relegated to the domestic sphere and limited to unpaid reproductive labour. I will then make some brief comments on how this narrative has been mobilised by contemporary feminist movements as well as assess some of their shortcomings.
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Behind Marx’s Hidden Abode
In his extensive three volumed work, Capital (2014), Marx sought to look behind the sphere of exchange in order to examine the ‘hidden abode of production.’ By doing so, he was able to demystify and critique the ideas of bourgeois political economists who claimed the emergence of capitalism was a natural and peaceful transition. Instead, he revealed the exploitative nature of the capitalist means of production, in which wage labourers are only recompensed for the socially necessary cost of their reproduction, while surplus value is extracted and delivered directly into the pockets of the owners of capital (Fraser, 2016: 164). For Marx, the defining features of this mode of production are: private property; a free labour market; self expanding value achieved through infinite accumulation of capital; and the centrality of the market within commodity production (Fraser, 2014:57-58).
Although this analysis has been fundamental in revealing the exploitative nature of the capitalist mode of production and outlining a theory of value determined by ‘socially necessary labour time,’ it has been criticised by both Marxist feminist and postcolonial scholars alike, due to the fact that he examines capitalist production solely from the perspective of the white, waged, male proletariat, using the English example as the classic model. As a consequence of such a limited, Eurocentric perspective, he overlooked what Nancy Fraser (2014:60) refers to as ‘the background factors that ensure production’s conditions of possibility,’ namely: social reproduction, the annexation of nature and the utilisation of public political power for economic ends. These background factors do not operate within the sphere of production, but rather are non-marketised social relations upon which the capitalist system depends for its survival.
By examining these factors, we can reveal how capitalism is not merely an economic system, but an ‘institutionalised social order,’ (ibid.:67), which permeates all aspects of life, albeit in a heterogeneous and uneven manner. From this perspective, we can see that the genesis of capitalism did not only entail a drastic transformation of the Feudal economy through the establishment of private property and the creation of a pool of ‘free’ wage labourers, but also required a complete upheaval of social relations and the cosmological underpinnings of society. This was achieved by restructuring gender relations, divorcing ‘Man’ from the realm of Nature, and drawing a distinction between politics and the economy.
The witch-hunts were critical in this historical restructuring of society, not only as a means to domesticate women, but also by destroying ‘a universe of practices, beliefs and social subjects whose existence was incompatible with the capitalist work discipline,’ (Federici,2014:165), which at the time was permeated with animistic and pagan beliefs, which did not place Man at the centre of the universe, nor followed the regimented hierarchy of the capitalist time and space. Furthermore, the persecutions played a key role in the professionalisation of law and medicine, as well as a process of population control and torture which was then later exported to the colonies (Mies,1986).
By looking beyond Marx’s hidden abode of production, and developing an expanded notion of class to include the intersections of race and gender, we can see how, rather than being some kind of ‘premodern aberration,’ capitalism’s structural entanglement with racial and sexual oppression has been a necessary component in the ever-expanding accumulation of capital, which continues to this day.
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Primitive Accumulation
Primitive accumulation, as outlined by Marx in the first volume of Capital (2014:274), is the historical process which paved the way for establishing the structural conditions necessary for the capitalist economy, which depends upon a distinction between the owners of capital and ‘free labourers.’ These labourers are free in the sense that, unlike slaves, they are not part of the means of production, nor do they own the means of production themselves: they are free to sell their labour power to the owners of capital, as well as free from the ‘burden’ of their own self-subsistence (Fraser, 2014: 57). Therefore original accumulation is the process by which producers are divorced from the means of production, and in the case of the Feudal era, agricultural producers were expelled from communal lands, which was transformed into private property.
During the fifteenth century, this was first achieved under the guise of religious reform, with the property of the Catholic church being confiscated, and either gifted to favourites within the royal estates or sold to speculating farmers and citizens. Later, the ‘Inclosures Act’ of 1773 provided the parliamentary support of this ‘systematic robbery of communal lands’ (Marx, 2014:277) and accelerated the process, providing us with an example of how public power was utilised in the service of capital. Marx’s analysis of this process of expropriation is particularly useful as it serves to dispel the myths presented by political economists who claim that the transition to capitalism was a smooth process, marching in the direction of progress: emancipating producers from the fetters of serfdom, tyrannical Feudal lords and guilds. Instead, he skillfully reveals that this history is in fact ‘written in the annals of mankind in letters of blood and fire,’ (2014: 274).
There were many benefits to be gained from having access to the common lands, the main of which was to provide people with a means of subsistence. Having a wider access to land (aside from their own feudal allotment) also protected peasants from the risk of harvest failure. Furthermore, the commons encouraged a democratisation of agricultural practices and worker co-operation, as peasant assemblies were mobilised to collectively decide which crops should be planted and the optimum time for harvest. They also allowed social activities and communal village life to flourish, being the location of festivals, sports and meetings – all of which were considered unproductive activities in the eyes of the emerging capitalist class (Federici, 2014: 71).
As a direct result of this violent expulsion of peasants from their land, there was a rapid increase of landless labourers and levels of poverty. However, the tentative capitalist industry had not yet grown large enough to absorb this newly created pool of workers, and furthermore, many of them were not exactly willing to adapt to the new mode of production. Therefore bands of roving and rowdy vagabonds would travel the land, in which women occupied positions of dancers, tricksters, prostitutes and singers (Mies,1986:79), as well as Heretic and Millenarian sects who actively criticized the newly imposed social order. Groups such as the Taborites, Cathars and Brethren of the Free Spirit preached what may be considered a medieval form of Liberation Theology: challenging Christian and secular authority, the new emerging social hierarchies, accumulation of wealth, and practicing forms of aestheticism loyal to the teachings of Jesus found in the New Testament (Federici,2014:33). Within such groups, sexual and social divisions were non-hierarchical, and women were often at the forefront of such movements, rather than relegated to the role of housewife.
However, in response to such subordination, bloody laws were decreed in order to discipline and destroy the Heretics and criminalise vagrancy. Consider, for example, a law enacted in England under James 1 : ‘Any one wandering about and begging is declared a rogue and a vagabond. Justices of the peace in petty sessions are authorised to have them publicly whipped and for the first offence to imprison them for six months, for the second, for two years. Whilst in prison they are to be whipped as much and as often as the justices of the peace think fit’ (Marx, 2014: 283).
With this is mind, the witch-hunts should be viewed as extension of these disciplinary and bloody laws: ‘a class war carried out by other means,’ in which the Church provided the ideological scaffold, while the secular courts led trials and executions (Federici,2014:168). Charges of witchcraft occured in areas experiencing the most extreme forms enclosure, whereas those where communal land tenure and social relations did not undergo radical transformation, such as Ireland and the Scottish Highlands, were largely unaffected. Drawing from Rosen’s (1969) collection of original medieval documents, Federici presents countless examples of old begging widows accused of cursing those who refused to provide food or alms to those in need. It appears that local power relations were reflected within accusations: the accused were mostly poor wage labourers and peasants, while accusations were made by local elites who were asserting new notions of private property – another key component in the development of capitalism.
However, when we look beyond the hidden abode of production, we see that rather than merely divorcing producers from the land, and allowing them to sell their labour power within the free market, primitive accumulation was a process which introduced a hierarchy of differences: between men and women, as well as the so called ‘civilized’ European world from the colonies, and a division between ‘Man’ and Nature (Mies,1986:77). Such hierarchical divisions are a necessary element within the value expanding process of capital accumulation, as they subjectivise and demarcate particular groups to be targeted for either exploitation or expropriation. Expropriation differs from exploitation, as exploited waged workers are, in theory, free to sell their labour power for which they are recompensated, whereas expropriation involves the confiscation of capacities and resources, which are fed into capitalist circuits of commodity production (Fraser,2016). The witch-hunts played a crucial role in establishing these gendered differences within Europe, allowing women’s bodies to become expropriable resources, ensuring the continued creation of labourers to participate within the economy. And as we will see, they also provided the model by which subjects in the New World were transformed into expropriable labour.
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Disciplining the Witch
Although before the genesis of capitalism, property was still inherited and transferred to men, women were ‘less dependent and less differentiated from them, physically, socially and psychologically’ (Federici, 2014: 25). Alongside from playing a key role in anti-feudal struggles and heretical sects, between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries, women enjoyed a relative level of independence and autonomy, being at the forefront of migrations from the countryside to emerging metropolises. In the city, women were highly active in the sphere of production, and skillfully practiced craft based professions such as weaving, bricklaying, ale brewing, prostitution, medicine and obstetrics, as well as being able to head their own households. Much of this work was conducted collectively, and therefore was a source of sociability and empowerment, rather than alienation and isolation. However, as Mies (1986: 81) points out, the sexual and economic independence of women presented a threat to the emerging bourgeois order, and therefore the witch-hunts were a means by which females were disciplined and subordinated, devaluing their productive activities and stamping out any rebellion which challenged the system of wage labour.
Alongside having a disciplinary function, charges of witchcraft contributed to the control of women’s sexuality and reproductive capacities. In face of a declining population during the 1600s, as a result of the sweeping plagues and outbreaks of smallpox, figures such as Jean Bodin, who developed the modern theory of sovereignty and was an devoted demonologist, asserted that it was the state’s responsibility to ensure there were enough workers to fill positions in the new, ever expanding economy (Federici, 2014: 88). During this time, women held a monopoly upon the sphere of reproduction, as traditional medicine women and healers administered forms of contraception, abortion and had full control over midwifery. However, the preoccupation with population growth led to the conjoining of midwifery and birth control with witchcraft and infanticide, and as Federici argues, the witch-hunt was an attempt to ‘criminalise birth control and place the female body, the uterus, at the service of population increase and the production and accumulation of labor-power’(ibid.:181). Consequently, thousands of practicing midwives were tortured and executed, thus securing male hegemony over the field of science, while women were reduced to merely their reproductive capacities.
These processes of demonisation and housewifization ensured that women were rendered invisible and relegated to the domestic sphere, merely being a body by which to maintain the reproduction of the labour force. Thus we begin to see the origin of the division between waged production and unwaged reproduction, a distinction which has proved indispensable for the continued creation of a labour force to be supplied to the capitalist economy, and is the basis for modern forms of gender based subordination which persists until today (Fraser, 2014).
However, to only focus upon the witch-hunts, and the subjectivation of white, European women presents a limited perspective which overlooks the systems of racialized accumulation that occurred simultaneously during the bloody years of primitive accumulation. As Fraser (2016:174) outlines ‘commercial capitalism brought not only land enclosures in the core, but also conquest, plunder and the hunting of black skins’ throughout the periphery.’ The modes of torture and establishment of social hierarchies developed within the Old World were transported to the New, and then reimported back to Europe: a process which Federici (2014:219) refers to as a ‘constant cross fertilization.’ Furthermore, colonial female subjects faced a far worse fate than the persecuted women of Europe, for the labour of female slaves was expropriated in a double sense: not only were their bodies utilized as a means of reproducing the unfree labour force, but also used upon the plantations in the extractive economy of colonial commodity production (Fraser, 2016). This colonial history of racialised expropriation was often overlooked by early Neo-pagan feminist movements, and contributed to the perpetuation of exclusionary discourses which led to forms of cultural appropriation and further expropriation of both indigenous resources and knowledge (Mies,1986: 35).
Nonetheless, an examination of these processes is essential for any feminist analysis which seeks to uncover this hidden history of the primitive accumulation of difference. As Mies, following Engels, argues, the progression of the European capitalist class depends on the regression of others, and therefore ‘a feminist strategy for liberation cannot but aim at the total abolition of all these relationships of retrogressive progress’ (1986: 77), meaning there is no liberation without an end to all forms of exploitation and expropriation.
Thankfully, now that non-Western forms of spirituality such as Santeria and Vodou are gaining recognition in the public sphere, more voices are being heard within the feminist witchcraft movements, and their manifestos have been updated to condemn forms of expropriation in both the core and periphery. However, in these calls for recognition their radical critique for redistribution is often sacrificed, and like other feminist groups, can be susceptible to having an affinity with the neoliberal paradigm of self care (Fraser, 2012).
Although Federici and other feminist scholars have been critiqued for over estimating the number of witches who were executed during this period, with current figures placing the number between 50,000 to 100,000 actual executions (Ehrenreich & English, 2010: 14), they present a valuable contribution to Marxist theory by revealing the non-economic conditions upon which the capitalist social order depends. In their revelation, they present a narrative which has been adopted by both secular and spiritual feminists as an empowering means to explore notions of female power and autonomy. Whether you view such a narrative as a literal history or merely a myth is irrelevant, for rather than following the defeatist doctrine that ‘there is no alternative’, it provides a utopian blueprint that extends beyond the narrow confines of the capitalist ordering time and space, and allows for a radical reimagining of the world based upon egalitarian means.
Bibliography
Adler, M.. (2014). Drawing down the moon: witches, druids, goddess-worshippers, and other pagans in America. New York, Penguin Books
Ehrenreich, B. & English, D. (2010) Witches, Midwives, and Nurses: a History of Women Healers. New York, The Feminist Press.
Federici, S. (2014) Caliban and the Witch. New York, Autonomedia.
Fraser, N. (2012) Feminism, Capitalism, and the Cunning of History. Paris, Fondation Maison des sciences de l’omme.
Fraser, N. (2014) Behind Marx’s hidden abode: for an expanded conception of capitalism. New Left Review. 86.
Fraser, N. (2016) Expropriation and Exploitation in Racialized Capitalism: A Reply to Michael Dawson. Critical Historical Studies. 3, 163-178.
Marx, K. (2014) Capital, Volume 1: A Critique of Political Economy, CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
Mies, M. (1986) Patriarchy and accumulation on a world scale, London, Zed books
Murray, M. (2016). Witch-cult in Western Europe: a study in anthropology (classic reprint).
Rosen, B. (1969). Witchcraft. London, Edward Arnold.
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