Easily one of my favorite writers & revolutionaries, Federici has advanced the idea and necessity for the commons: social spaces & relations NOT governed by the logic of the capitalist market. Upholding indigenous commons & other international examples of rejecting capitalist enclosures, it is women can be found at the center of resistance. Women are the most exploited workers, doing the daily reproductive (& unpaid) work that are essential for the production of labor power and allows for the whole world to even exist. As such, they possess a deep understanding of what is needed and what must be! A re-enchantment: land reclamation, liberation, revalorization of reproductive work, reconnection with nature and our bodies. Power that comes from the ground rather than from the state and relies on solidarity, cooperation & collectivity. The commons is a political frame by which we must remake the world and is the act of “recovering the power of collectively deciding our fate on this earth”.

For me Federici's Caliban and the Witch was ground breaking and illuminating. This series of essays, written over 20 years is equally as informative and brilliant. To try to capture all her analysis in this review would be a disservice to her work. One of the most important aspects of her work is her centering of women and the centrality of the oppression of women in the development of patriarchal capitalism. Her extensive analysis, not only of the history of this oppression but also how it has impacted in different parts of the world is crucial. Her explanation of how the concept of the development of 'commons'; of communality and of our interaction with each other and with nature is a way forward to revolutionize and defeat capitalist patriarchy can give us all some hope.

Enjoyed the title essay, but the jist of this book was not what I anticipated.

Lots of information here, but more familiar and far less world transforming than Caliban and the Witch. The final chapter was also much less conclusive. There didn’t seem to be a thesis to this in the way that there was in C&tW. Worth reading anyway, and provides some ways to think those ideas (about accumulation and enclosure) through in the present day, which is needed!