The new world, if there’s going to be a new world, will not be bursting out of our head, like Minerva out of the head of Zeus. It will be the result of a long process of experimentation.
The following is a transcript of a conversation between participants of ISSA2024: To Live Together and Silvia Federici that took place on the 7th of October, 2024 on the island of Vis. Our gratitude goes to the collective effort of Morana Trenta, Timon Mürer & Niall Kennedy transcribing and editing the conversation, and also to all participants of ISSA who joined with their questions.
Silvia Federici (Parma, 1942) is one of the leading contemporary feminist scholars and activists. She is a professor emerita and teaching fellow at Hofstra University in New York State. In 1972, she co-founded the International Feminist Collective, the organization that launched the Wages for Housework campaign worldwide. After a period of teaching and research in Nigeria, she was active in the anti-globalization movement during the 1990s. Her most famous book, Caliban and the Witch, has been translated into over 20 languages. Her work with George Caffentzis has made a significant contribution to the theory of commons and autonomy.
ISSA: Thank you so much for joining us today. It’s beautiful weather on the island, it’s sunny. And we just had a debate on the 60th anniversary of the Yugoslav Praxis journal. At the same time, today is the anniversary of the 7th of October, while the Nakba has been taking place for many more decades. We have crowd-sourced the questions from the participants of ISSA2024: To Live Together, and, given the date and context of our conversaiton, we will start by a question from a Croatian journalist among us:
“Considering your work on capitalism and colonialism, to what extent do you think that Russia’s aggression against Ukraine and Israel’s probably genocidal campaign in Gaza constitute a crucial rupture in world history? Regarding the fact that the rest of the world, the so-called Global South, has a significantly different view of these two events, less so in the case of Ukraine, but still significantly different. The Western elites are more unified than in a long time, and at the same time, they are more estranged from the rest of the world than in a long time. This comes together with the return to economic protectionism and trade bloc competition, also in relation to the EU and US, contrary to the proclaimed creeds of open markets.”
Silvia Federici: First of all, thank you for inviting me, and I’m really happy to be with you also on this terrible day. I appreciate all the questions that you sent me, and I would like to leave a reasonable amount of time for the discussion after this initial round, so that we can also hear more directly from people in the audience. I cannot answer all the questions of the Croatian journalist, and I will try to be very schematic.
First of all, I’d like to make a difference between the attack of Israel against the Palestinians, what I would call a genocidal campaign against the Palestinians, and now the Lebanese, and Russia’s aggression against Ukraine. The destruction of life is terrible in every situation, and has always to be condemned. On the other hand, I think there’s an important difference because it can be argued that in many ways the Russian aggression was also provoked to a great extent by the politics of NATO, which, contrary to agreements that were made in the past, has extended to the doors of Russia. If anything similar had happened at the border of the United States, and we have the famous case of the Russian missiles in Cuba, and we know that that almost triggered a nuclear war, probably the response would have been even more fierce than the response of Russia. So, this is not to condone the killing, in particular, the destruction of civilian lives. But really, I think it’s important, because what we see in Israel is really the culmination of a long-standing policy of expulsion of Palestinians from their ancestral land, and a policy of killing, policing, torturing, and ignoring any legitimate demand for self-determination.
What has happened since October 7th? October 7th has been the proper justification – and of course, the killings on October 7th of Israeli people have to be condemned – but nevertheless, what has happened on October 7th gave the Israeli government the justification to complete and accelerate a project that has been there all along since 1948, which is, in fact, to create a Greater Israel, and delegitimize the existence of the Palestinians. They delegitimized the right of the Palestinians to be on their land, and by continuous provocation of killing, created a constant state of siege. It’s important for Palestine, as we know, but it’s also important to repeat it, and repeat it, and repeat it, because there’s so much denial, there’s so many lies, so much, you know, “truth” today is really imposed by the power of bombs.
But the reality is that Israel has lived in and imposed a state of apartheid. And what has happened in the last year has been a turning point, and a turning point both in the escalation of the violence, because a whole region has practically been destroyed: one year of bombardment, and we are talking about hundreds of thousands of people killed. And not only bombardments, but the sadism, the barbarity, people being told to leave to “safe zones”, and then shot as they are leaving. Children rushing for some food, and being bombed as they are rushing. And the systematic destruction of anything that connected people to the past. And really why do we talk about extermination and genocide? Because it’s the extermination of a whole population. Anything that created a sense of collective identity, the libraries, the archives, everything personal and public has been destroyed, every productive infrastructure, the hospitals, the schools, the water system, and then starvation. It’s exceptional, the level of cruelty, violence, and destruction. And what is more, the fact that this is happening with the support, the instigation, I’ll say support, because when you send bombs, like the United States and the European Union are doing, this is not just condoning, this is actually supporting and instigating. That this is happening, you know, with the approval, support, if not instigation, of all the major governments, those who erect themselves as defenders of “democracy” and “human rights”. And then nothing, nothing seems to stop them. I think that they could probably burn all the Palestinians alive, and the United States would still say that Israel has the right to defend itself.
So I think that this is a turning point. It’s a turning point because, in a sense, it is the striptease of democracy. We have all long known that this is a democracy of capitalism, that this democracy is a democracy that hides, in fact, a lot of fascist politics in these democratic nations and governments. Nevertheless, now that actual violence and disregard, total disregard for human life, total disregard for human rights, is becoming more and more clear, more and more evident. As I said, the striptease of democracy. And also the tacit, the consensus, the silence of the other countries, the so-called BRICS, the countries that many have looked at as an alternative, an alternative to capitalist development in the Global North.
So I think it is a turning point from the point of view of our understanding of what democracy is, what the plans of international capital are. But it is also a turning point for the movements. Now every movement, every collective or social movement that wants to mobilize for a more just society has, in a sense, to pause and rethink and reorganize. And I think there are very important steps to be taken. Clearly, immediate action is crucial. And I think that immediate action, of course, has to go beyond demonstrations. I think that what we need to do is to have the kind of mobilization that addresses, in particular, those in society who have the power to stop it: like the workers who are producing the bombs. The workers that are the longshoremen who are actually packing the bombs and sending them. In other words, this war would not take place without a whole set of very specific mechanisms. And I think it’s very urgent that organizing begins to address this. Imagine a general strike of workers, who would say “No, we won’t send, we won’t ship, we won’t build these bombs, we stop!” So this is very, very important.
On the other hand, the question of systemic change, the question of understanding what are the mechanisms that are allowing this capitalist system? I’ve written a number of articles on the situation in Palestine. And the main theme has always been: Palestine is the world. Because I think it’s very important to understand what is happening in Palestine and now in Lebanon, and the redrawing of the map of the Middle East, which is what is really happening now. When we put it in the context of international capital, international capitalist institutions, and then the US and the European Union, who are their main protectors and promoters, and looking at their policy in Africa, the policy of AFRICOM – it is not an accident. For example, there were four million or more refugees in Sudan. The whole story of the eastern part of Africa and the involvement of the United States, and particularly now also East Africa, the Sahel, AFRICOM, Libya, Congo, also Haiti and many other countries. So there is a massive, massive intervention.
Palestine is the world because I think what we are witnessing is the result of a massive process now of expansion of capitalist relations that is very much directed to displace, to displace many people, to establish control over the resources of the world, over the wealth of the world, direct control of multinational corporations, and also to displace the people who are living in the areas in which extractivist companies have to operate. This is happening both because of the historical tendencies of capitalism to extend its reach and to privatize, to separate people from the means of their reproduction so that they have no autonomy, so that they can be more easily controlled and exploited. And also because in today’s new forms of capitalist development, the digital economy, you cannot have a world digital economy without practically destroying, consuming the earth, without an immense amount of extractivist activity to produce the lithium, the coltan, and the many other minerals that are necessary.
And this is why we are seeing this huge migration movement. People are leaving their homes, not because they want to and are attracted by the “great happiness” that we have in Europe and in the United States, but because they cannot survive, because their fields have been taken over either by oil companies, mineral companies, or they are taken over by agribusiness to produce food that the local population can no longer consume because it’s directed to the big markets of the United States or the EU. So I think that this is very important to see, to understand for every movement: what are the mechanisms? The international division of labor, for instance, this hierarchical division of labor. The fact, for example, that those who are producing are not those who are consuming.
What are the mechanisms that we need to deactivate in order to begin to create a more just society? I think that this is very, very important. This is a moment of action and at the same time of pause. It’s a moment of action because we need to stop this amazing, barbaric, savage attack on human life, which really, in a way, makes our life meaningless. Because if this can take place, what else? I remember more and more in the last few days the beautiful poem by Bertolt Brecht, which says, “What kind of times are these in which speaking of trees feels like a crime?” You know, we have everything. Every moment of happiness, you feel guilty because in a way, what is happening? You know other people are being mutilated, are being killed, are being destroyed. Their lives are being destroyed.
So at the same time we need a sort of pause, a pause because I think we need to understand more broadly and understand that whatever we do, whatever action we do, no matter how small it may appear, has to contain in itself the element for the creation of a different society, for the subversion of the mechanisms that today are fueling this genocide, which today is Palestine, but it’s actually occurring in different places across the world. I say we have Palestine in the streets of New York or in the streets of the United States, where the police can kill, mostly young black men, immigrants with total impunity. We have Palestine also in the United States and the richest countries in the world, where we are told that a majority of people will not be able to have enough resources if they have an emergency, to have the money to deal even with the most minimal emergency. And many, even here, go hungry. So this is my response to the first question.
ISSA: Thank you so much. And I think many people here agree. Just two days ago, we had a solidarity event with the people of Palestine, where we tried through reading poetry and performance, to at least in a way give and share what we can, through arts and culture and also donations. But I’m sure we will come back to these questions during our discussion. Let us move to the next question: What is feminism without women? To quote Rosi Braidotti, would feminism benefit from this decoupling? And it is certainly much more than simply the struggle of women’s liberation, for example, decolonial feminism, feminist politics of location, and so on?
Silvia: I think that feminism has historically and to this day developed as a response by the women’s movement, in response to very specific forms of exploitation, very specific forms of oppression. That’s why there’s no sense in this decoupling, because in fact, what we have seen is that “woman” is not a biological concept. “Woman” is a category of exploitation.
It has meant, in the history of the liberation movement, unpaid labor, it has meant the devaluation of reproductive work. It has meant a particular place in the sexual and international division of labor. So decoupling women from the struggle is to hide again, to cover again, a whole area of exploitation that in fact, in a very revolutionary way, the feminist movement has uncovered. And I may add that before the feminist movement, no male-dominated movement, not socialist, not anarchist, not Marxist, has ever dealt with the question of reproduction, has ever dealt with the question of procreation, with the question of domestic work, with their devaluation. And yes, of course, it is much more than changing the position of women in society. But what it is, without a feminist presence in the movements, you wouldn’t be able to actually understand what that change has to be.
It is much more, because through our analysis of the devaluation of women’s work, we have been able to see something about the system as a whole. Changing the place reproductive work has in the capitalist economy, in the capitalist system of social relations, actually produces a change in the system as a whole. Because we understood, as some feminists in Argentina, in Latin America have put it, that there is a conflict between capital and life.
That in fact, capitalism is a system that structurally is committed to the devaluation of women’s life. And so the feminist movement too has grown. We have gone from the analysis of the sexual division of work – women reproduce life, men are the ones who produce goods for the market – to actually understand something more about the system. But if it hadn’t been for the struggle of women, all areas of exploitation would have continued to exist, would not have been questioned. Which means it would have continued to be reproduced to the benefit of the capitalist system. Because that unpaid reproductive work, as we have shown, is what sustains the condition of existence of every work activity in this society.
ISSA: In this context, how do we counter the attacks against feminists by men who present themselves as victims?
Silvia: You know, I would say that what I’ve always said to feminists when they’re talking about, how do you educate men? And my answer has always been: No, we don’t waste time educating men. Men are educated by the fact that we build our organization, we build our social power, we change our life in ways that makes us not dependent on men. And we have seen that change very clearly. At the beginning of the feminist movement, when, for example, in the United States, during the Vietnam War, women were there to say, yes, we support the struggle of the Vietnamese, but what about women? What about femicide, et cetera? And they were often booed. They were booed!
It was only when the movement grew, when a lot of women left the organizations of the male left, that men began to listen. They didn’t begin to listen… You know, women have pleaded with men, trying to educate the men of their community for decades, for centuries.
But it’s only when women began to build their autonomous power and stop being the servants of men, also in the male-dominated social movements, that men have become feminists. Many have become feminists or begun to support or stop opposing the feminist movement. So I would say that I think it’s by building women’s power in society that we also put an end to or neutralize those accusations.
Srećko: Thank you. The next question is kind of connected to this: how do we argue against the liberal weaponization of women’s emancipation, which is used to justify colonialism?
Silvia: Yes, not only colonialism, but also to justify capitalism, racism. I think it’s very important to see that very, very early, already in 1975, with the first global conference on women organized by the United Nations, the first global conference in Mexico City, already very early in the development of the feminist movement, when it was clear that the feminist movement was growing, the United Nations intervened and tried to place itself at the head of it. And of course the feminist rhetoric was domesticated, very domesticated, where emancipation is emancipation through work, emancipation is by getting a job, et cetera. And I have often drawn a connection between the role of the United Nations in intervening in feminist politics in the 1970s – there are the four conferences in Copenhagen, Beijing, Nairobi, and Mexico City – and the role that the United Nations played in the anti-colonial struggle. Because if you remember when it became clear that the anti-colonial struggle was very strong and could not be bought off in a sense, could not be combatted, then the United Nations began the process of decolonization. They placed themselves at the head. Again, they appointed themselves as the liberators, which is what they’ve done with women. They appointed themselves, and first of all, of course, killed those African leaders that opposed this policy. They killed Lumumba, right? They subjected, as in Kenya, the liberation movement to massive, massive torture and imprisonment, hanging. But then they become the decolonizers. Decolonizers that allow the installation of national flags, but perpetuate the dependency of the new nations, independent countries, their dependency, financial and otherwise from the original colonizing country.
So there is a parallel here, and it’s very important. I think that the intervention of the UN has done a lot of damage to the movement. You know, for years, I heard younger women say, oh, the feminist movement is all bought off. No, it’s not bought off. Today, more and more women see the fraud that this intervention has represented, because they see that the famous emancipation through wage labor has not taken place. We see that the rhetoric of the United Nations has helped millions of women, has celebrated the entrance of millions of women into a wage workplace, ignoring that this work, these jobs were precarious, hazardous, very poorly paid, taking place in conditions that were destructive of women’s life. Think of the free export zones, all over Latin America, Africa, Mexico, Asia, where women work an unlimited number of hours, often producing electronic equipment among fumes and in very dangerous conditions.
So I think that the idea that, so-called leaving the home, taking a job outside the home, would really be the path to emancipation, which is what the United Nations promoted; today, it’s shown to be very, very lacking. So I think that the grip that institutions have on feminism is less strong than it was, for example, in the 1980s or 90s. This is my view. But certainly, there are two movements, two different movements, two different worlds. One is committed to improving the condition of women, to give them access to capitalist wealth, is committed not to changing society, but actually making some moderate improvement in the life of certain women, while using their work. The other is committed not just to change women’s life, but to change society. If there’s something that we have learned over the decades, you cannot positively change our life without dramatically changing this society. We are subverting the system and creating a society that is not built on the exploitation of people and nature.
ISSA: Do you think that the claim for wages for housewives as a main career is still relevant as a transformative action? What other actions and policies do we need to build to overcome the unjust social organization of care and reproductive labor?
Silvia: First of all, we never asked, never, for wages for housewives. We asked for wages for housework, which meant for anybody who does the work, not just for women. So, it was never meant to perpetuate this confinement. This is what I want to make clear, because we’re accused of wanting to perpetuate women’s confinement to domestic labor. So, housework. In fact, I think that the demand for wages for housework is one road to desexualize this work. If this work were paid, men would do it. Men, too, would do it. But it’s still very important, because for us, that campaign was very crucial. Because first of all, it meant to establish that this is work, and to show the role of this work in society, in the capitalist organization of work. We showed that without housework, nothing moves. Without housework, no other type of work is possible. We said, there’s no general strike until women cross their arms. It’s only when women cross their arms that there’s going to be a general strike, right? So, to show that the little money the government gives… – no, that is not charity! In fact, for generations, women have worked and worked and worked and made it possible for capitalism to reproduce the workforce at a minimal, minimal cost.
So, that was very important. Because lots of women were desperate and had to depend on a man, the money was also important, to gain some autonomy and not to have to depend on a man. We know many women stay even when the men are violent, because they are not economically capable of supporting themselves. Second, not being forced to accept any job, any job that comes along, because you want to have a little money, to have the possibility to choose. So, this was very important. And also, to contract with the government, with the state, social services. With what power do you insist on having certain social services when this work is not seen as work? When this work is totally naturalized? When this work is seen as something that “Oh, that’s what women do.” It rains, and women do housework. It rains, and women take care of children.
So, we wanted to denaturalize this work, to problematize this work, and many other things. The issue of money: Many women said, “Oh my God, if you have wages for housework, then women will continue to do the work.” This is nonsense. Is that an argument that you would use with a factory worker? Would you tell them, no, do the work for free, because if you take the money, you’re going to continue to do the work? So, only in the case of women. The naturalization of housework has gone so deep that even among many feminists, there is a fear of connecting [it to] money. But I will also say that that money we demanded is money that would not be used to buy weapons. Think of it, every week now, billions are going to Ukraine, from the United States and the EU, to Ukraine and to Israel. Billions, every week, to buy bombs. So, we have to redirect. We have to redirect where the money, where the wealth that we produce [goes].
And of course, money is not the only form of wealth. We could ask for free housing. We could ask for free commodities. We could ask! But we first have to establish that we are working. We are the ones who are keeping the society going. As domestic workers in Spain say, without us, nothing moves.
ISSA: If not before, then definitely today, through climate collapse and other contemporary crises, we are more aware of the continuity between the capitalist subjugation of women, the slave trade, colonization. And in the same way, in parallel the continuity of exploitation and devastation of nature with all its species. What, in your opinion, would be a key method for surpassing this humankind, anthropocentric, patriarchal approach to life?
Silvia: For instance, eco-feminism arose very early in the history of feminist movement. We went from feminism to eco-feminism, because the inseparable, inextricable, indivisible connection between reproduction and the wealth of nature was very, very clear. If you imagine doing reproductive work in conditions in which the water is contaminated by pesticides or worse, and in conditions in which the forests have been cut down, when we know that the forest is a whole reproductive system. Or, for example, can you imagine what Palestine is going to be? Today, there are already maps of the new Gaza. The new Gaza has phosphorus, white phosphorus, on its ground, all over the place. White phosphorus is poison, completely poisonous.
So, the issue of the relation: so, very early, from thinking about housework, domestic work, the struggle against patriarchal relations, against violence, against men, the violence of men towards women, which is a violence of institutions. There’ll be no violence of men if there were not impunity, if the government were not condoning or had not historically condoned much of this male violence in the home and outside the home. The way, for example, rape or domestic violence has been treated, that has been a scandal. But it became clear, the connection between that violence and the violence against nature, deforestation, fracking, for example – fracking is the most violent. So, we find that more and more over the years, to the present, women are leading a lot of the ecological movement and the struggle to reclaim land, to prevent deforestation, to replant areas that have been devastated by deforestation.
And that’s why we also see new forms of violence against women, because a lot of women are being killed. Berta Cáceres, we all know about her, but actually there are thousands of Berta Cáceres in Colombia, in Ecuador, in Mexico, who disappeared, who have been killed, and their bodies now are being left on the streets. There’s a new form of violence. Rita Segato speaks about it, where not only women are killed, but the killing is publicized as a pedagogical tool to discipline a lot of women, so that the bodies are actually left – they are not hidden, but they are left – in the street. So, the struggle now against the disciplining of women by the capitalist organization of work, it’s very intimately connected with the struggle for the defense of the ecological environment.
ISSA: This brings us directly to one of your most famous works, namely Caliban and the Witch, in which you show that witchcraft was, in fact, a means for women to reclaim their bodies, to challenge patriarchy, and to build, to reclaim autonomy. So, how can we, in today’s context, when through technology and algorithms, further alienation and consumerism, fascism, war, and climate crisis, when we precisely are losing autonomy, how can we rebuild or reinvent forms of “social autonomy”? Which is, by the way, also a term you use precisely like that in Caliban and the Witch. How can we rebuild forms of living together? And even if you want, good life, as difficult as it sounds to speak about good life – we started this conversation by you quoting Brecht “An die Nachgeborenen”, which is exactly about how can we speak about good life when genocide is happening? But how can we, in this context, reclaim autonomy, lead a good life while fighting against patriarchy, war, and fascism?
Silvia: Wow, what a question. So, first of all, very quickly: Number one, in Caliban and the Witch, I have outlined several groups of women who were likely to be accused, women who had been dispossessed, older women who were seen as useless, who were dispossessed and depended on begging, hoping for some help from their neighbor, at a time in which the imposition of a new work discipline that made work equal to religion was very important. Healers – you didn’t have a doctor until the 16th century with the rise of the medical profession, the state-protected medical profession. Before, it was the healer, it was the women who knew about herbs and who cured humans and animals. So they were not women who were making a statement. Capitalism, in the witches, destroys practices, they were old practices, but they now had to be destroyed, had to be put out of use because they were contrary, they stood in the way of the imposition of a strong discipline of labor. So that’s important. Today, we have to fight, the first being the return of witchcraft accusations, and I’ve written now more articles, because we have seen since at least the 1980s, that – hand in hand with the extension of capitalist relations, with the presence of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, in every part of the Third World, this massive process of recolonization, recolonization through structural adjustment, basically disempowering people – together with that, we have seen the return of accusations of witchcraft, because in these societies that have been pauperized and in which land has been taken over by many companies, these missionaries, Pentecostalists, Christian fundamentalists arrive. And they tell people that the reason they are poor is not because of the International Monetary Fund, but it’s because there are women who are witches. And many calculated that at least 30,000 women have been killed, tortured. This is happening in Africa, it’s happening in India, in Papua New Guinea. So the struggle against the new witch hunting accusations is very, very important.
And I must say, as I predicted, this whole idea of the witch does not only stay in Africa or in India, but slowly will be moving also into Europe, into the United States. It’s interesting that in one of the presidential debates just a few days ago, the candidate for Vice President of Trump, JD Vance, accused Kamala Harris of being a witch, of practicing witchcraft. Yeah, twice: first, he called her a cat lady. And second, it was in a Christian fundamentalist meeting, and he said she practices witchcraft, to show this idea of the woman with occult power. I’m not fond of Kamala Harris, don’t take me wrong, but the fact that she’s being accused of being a witch, I think, should be really a warning also to all women.
So, how do we build another society? Well, first of all: a big feminist anti-war movement, huge, feminist, anti-war. Why don’t we have thousands and thousands of women in the streets, thousands and thousands of women directly as feminists, protesting the killing of children, the killing of people, the use of weapons to destroy, and the use of our wealth to destroy this planet and its people, rather than to build a good life for all? This is very, very important.
Secondly, I’ve been inspired by what is happening, especially in the Global South, in places like Latin America, by the whole question of collectivizing reproduction, about creating new communal forms of life, rebuilding the commons, which is not a return to the past, but is really inventing new forms of being together, producing together, reproducing together, which is both crucial to ensure that our struggles are growing, and also crucial as a form of self-defense, of strengthening, and expanding our imagination as to what is possible. Expanding our imagination as to what kind of society we want to build. What is a just society?
The new world, if there’s going to be a new world, will not be bursting out of our head, like Minerva out of the head of Zeus. It will be the result of a long process of experimentation. Our struggle must be an experimentation and a construction with different relations, different social relations, including relations of production and reproduction. I think that thinking and building a society where we break with the individualization of life, we break with the isolation in which they are forcing us to live and work, and create collective forms of existence, of social bonding. I think that this is the path that we need to go. That’s the notion of the commons, the notion of re-enchanting the world. Re-enchanting the world is actually a world where we don’t confront this monster of capitalism alone. And we don’t simply confront capitalism collectively in the demonstration when we are in the street, but we do it in our everyday life. We do it in our everyday life by changing the way we think about the way we reproduce our existence.
ISSA: In a very modest way, we are trying to do this on a very remote Adriatic island. How do you, in this context, see our experiment of building a school on top of the hill near Tito’s cave? What would be the topics you would be most interested in us developing further and contributing to this planetary change we desperately need? And what would be the topics you would be interested in developing further and talking to us and thinking together with us if you, hopefully, come next year in person to the island of Vis?
Silvia: First of all, congratulations for doing that. This is very exciting and very important. Secondly, what we’re discussing now are those topics. How we can build a different society, how we can organise work, how we want to reproduce ourselves, what does it mean to raise children, what does it mean to take care of nature, what does it mean to live in a way that is not destructive of other human beings and not destructive for the world? I find it very important that much of the inspiration for the idea of the commons has come from Latin America, from communities that have a long tradition of Indigenous struggle and of communalism. Communalism is something that we need to experiment with in this concrete realisation. The issues that we are discussing now are the issues that I’ll be interested in developing with you all, and I hope I can come to the island.
ISSA: We hope so too. To take this conversation a bit further, would you could comment on Italian politics and how you see it developing under Giorgia Meloni. What do you think the future of the left is in Italy, particularly with regards to the refugee crisis, how do you think that will develop?
Silvia: This goes straight to my heart, because I’m devastated about what is happening in Italy. Frankly, it’s not the matter of Meloni that concerns me the most, but the fact that since World War II, and more and more over the years, Italy has become a colony of the United States. Do people know that Italy has 140 NATO bases? 140 NATO bases.
Somebody has said that Italy has become an aircraft carrier for the United States. It’s the place from which the United States launches its wars on the Middle East. When you have 140 NATO bases, the fact that we have a right-wing President, in a sense, pales. She is the outcome. She is the product of a severe process of recolonization. Recently, I’ve been reading again some of the material of the Marxist autonomist Left, Toni Negri, and they never talk about the bases. Why is it? They talk about cognitive labor, but they never talk about what is really happening in Italy.
What used to be the Mafia in the South, which was brought back by the US during and at the end of World War II, is now extended all over the country. It shows that capitalism needs illegal forms of production, needs to have a facade of legality, but underneath are the death squads, the narcotraffickers, the mafias, and the presence of this broad network of illegal forms of production is growing. In fact, I’m finding out that the model of the Italian Mafia is now spreading from Mexico to all over Latin America, to Ecuador, Colombia. So I think Italy is in a very dangerous and difficult situation. It has many movements, particularly people who are going back to the land, people are creating alternative forms of production and food production. There are people who are struggling to help the immigrants. In my town, there are several collectives and groups who are working with immigrants, occupying houses, negotiating with them. There are also people on Lampedusa.
But fundamentally, the country is so colonized that it’s becoming much more difficult. In comparison, Germany has 50 NATO bases. Italy is the country that has the highest number of NATO bases in the world, because it holds a strategic position in the Mediterranean. We have huge military bases, the Sixth Fleet in Naples, Dal Molin in Vicenza, Comiso… We have nuclear warheads from Brescia to Sicily.
This is what mostly worries me. Everybody looks at Meloni, but Meloni is a product of a much broader situation that is very worrisome. There is a huge struggle to extricate Europe from this colonial setup, which in many ways affects every country. Italy is perhaps the most extreme case. Daniele Ganser, the Swiss social writer, has pointed out in NATO’s Secret Armies, this powerful book that everybody should read, that the United States never left Europe. No, it never really left Europe.
There is a profound process of post-war colonization that has shaped the European community. This is what we should really be concerned with. We see now that what the United States decides, every country follows.
Italy is sending arms to Israel, sending money, sending support, while most Italians don’t have a job and have difficulties finding one. Italian people have to choose between paying the electricity bills which are getting higher and higher, and deciding what food to eat. There’s a big struggle there that has to take place.
ISSA: And we hope it comes. Here, we can return to the eternal question about the contradictions, the dispersion and the fragmentation of the Left.
Silvia: Recently, I’ve been reading material on the topics of cognitive capitalism, cognitive labor, particularly by Italian autonomist Marxists. Cognitive labor, it’s supposed to be the new form of labor, and usually it’s examined separately from everything. They do not recognize that in order to have cognitive labor, you have to have extractivist companies, taking out the lithium, taking out the minerals. In order to create a digital commons, which they are very enthusiastic about, you have to destroy the earthly commons. You have to destroy the land used to feed the people, and now it’s producing migration. This is very important, because it makes you understand that a lot of the fragmentation that is taking place in the movement today, it’s also part of the change in the organization of production.
For instance, we can be critical of the industrial setup. We can be looking with horror at cities like Detroit, but in those cities, people knew each other. 9-5 labor can be slavery, but 9-5 over a lifetime, with a human community who knew each other, where everybody knew each other… When you went on strike, you always knew who had your back, whom you could trust. You could share the food. The family pooled its resources together. Everybody went on the picket line. The mother and the children went on the picket line. These were communities that lived together. They built a profound level of trust and knowledge. Today, we can celebrate flexible working hours, we are more dispersed, but that doesn’t create a kind of bonding.
Fragmentation doesn’t come out of nothing. It comes from people who don’t know each other, who may communicate over the internet, but you don’t build great bonds of solidarity communicating over the internet. It is very different when you know your neighbors and you know that your life depends on them. The reciprocity, interdependence that we talk about so much, that comes from really cardinal knowledge, from real day-to-day knowledge, not just through connecting over the internet.
ISSA: What are your thoughts on reparations for African descendants of slaves and how that may connect with your work on wages for housework? The use case of many activists and some politicians, pushing Trump and then Biden for direct cash payments through the tax system, which would mean that people would literally get the money in their bank account. In terms of a practical sense, what do you think of it? Could that be a use case for reparations or other kinds of ideas for wages in general?
Silvia: First of all, 100% yes. Reparations, reparations, reparations. I think it’s so crucial to establish the principle of reparations. Who owes to whom? It is a scandal to hear people speak of the African debt. Can you imagine Africa that has been expropriated of millions of people, enslaved, brutalized, brought to build incredible wealth elsewhere? Africa that has also been expropriated of all of its natural wealth. Think of the Congo where they used to amputate the arms of the workers if they didn’t produce enough. Reparation is very important as a political principle, as a way of turning the question of “Who owes to whom?” upside down.
How has it to be done? Clearly, the question of money is important, but it’s not the only one. Once you establish the principle, once you build a strong movement behind it, what are the forms of that payment? First of all, knowing that it will never be enough, never. There’s no way, there’s no compensation that can come even close to compensate for what has been done, what colonialism has done to this region. There’s no illusion about that. But, across the United States, for instance, there are now a lot of movements discussing it.
What are the forms? I’m not going to say what is the best form. It is black people who have to decide. They are the descendants of those who were killed, flogged, expropriated, transported. For instance, free schooling, free access to education, monetary payment, free access to social services. In other words, what can be demanded? What should be the demand? It’s something that should be the process of a broad debate and decision-making among black movements in the US and abroad.
Reparations are on the agenda. It should start with the cancellation of every debt. Reparations should say: you owe us, we don’t owe you. Right? Cancellation of the African debt. So there’s a lot of things that can be worked out. I’m not going to basically side with one form or another. This has to come out of a big debate in the black movement in the United States. In my modest opinion, there should be a cash payment, and there should not be only one cash payment, and not once and for all.
ISSA: To come back to what you said that we should not waste time trying to educate men. Even in anarchist and Marxist circles where people, and notably men, have been educated, women still continue to be ostracized and abused. So even in these contexts, abused people who are, in theory, against the criminal justice system, when such things happen, still turn to these systems. How do you suggest we deal with this? How do you suggest we move out of this?
Silvia: There is now a broad literature, and also a large set of experiences, about the response of women to feminicide and to male patriarchal violence. My comment about education is that I think that the idea of educating men is not successful. We’ve done that. I think it’s the question of what kind of network, what kind of relations women have to construct to actually protect themselves, at the same time that we denounce. The most important thing is what we do within our community with other women, fundamentally, this is where the energy should be directed.
Today, for instance, there is a broad movement in the United States which is both against feminicide, against violence against women, and at the same time, it’s also abolitionist in the sense that it’s struggling against incarceration, prison, police, and is looking at other models of justice, like restorative justice. This kind of movement is very important, because we don’t want the struggle to defend our life to turn into strengthening the police, and to give the police and the institutions the justification to come into our life.
For example, in the early 70s, many of the first movements, women’s movements, that fought against violence against women were demanding more severe penalties. And we saw that those penalties ended up by victimizing populations, like black people, who were already being victimized. The violence at the higher spheres was not touched. The call for more policing turned against the very communities that were the victims of this violence.
Strengthening, with a strong feminist movement, where you have in communities, strong ties among women, women who know each other’s lives, breaking down the taboos of privacy, who can actually help each other in so many different ways, and confront life on a day to day basis, in a more communal way. I think that this is the way to confront the violence. To not only defend, but also to change the views and the relations that are producing this violence.
ISSA: A question about BRICS. It’s hard to group all those countries together, especially Brazil. For instance, Brazil and Cuba, don’t have much in common with Russia or China, and so on. But What’s your opinion and do you think that they are doing a good thing with the counter-hegemony towards the US? Or are they destroying the space for a potential new non-aligned movement?
Silvia: Look at what they are doing about Palestine! Look at them. Where is Brazil? They all have benefited from Israel, in the sense of new forms of surveillance, new forms of military equipment, the drones and so on. Not only what Israel is doing in Palestine, but what they’re doing across the world for many years now. I lived in Africa, wherever I went, Israelis were taking care of security, they were present. I was surprised, in Kenya, Nigeria, to see the presence of Israelis, training troops, also providing security personnel.
So, no, the BRICS are not an alternative. I think it’s very unfortunate, a sign of desperation, that part of the Left believes that the enemy of the US is our friend.
I work a lot with women in Argentina, particularly women from Ni una menos. You probably are familiar with Verónica Gago, Luci Cavallero, they have done really important work on the issue of debt, the debt economy, the struggle. A very important detail comes from their studies of China’s investment in Argentina. They have found that every time China makes an investment in some project in Argentina, they want to make sure that the people on the ground are in proper relation with the International Monetary Fund, that the project is within the purview of the International Monetary Fund’s program for the region. That, to me, is an eye-opener.
They are not an alternative to capitalism. They are a very strong capitalist country. We know China’s incredibly brutal conditions of work. We remember Foxconn. People used to threaten suicide as a form of struggle. They would put protection on the roof of Foxconn’s building, because people would go up and threaten to jump off. The work conditions are brutal, it’s a form of slavery. I have been fighting for many years, collecting information, against the death penalty all over the world. China executes about 2000 proletarians every year.
China is not an alternative, or the other BRICS countries. India? India is a ferocious defender of the caste system, an expropriator, completely engaged in the process of land expropriation. In sum, no, the BRICS are not an alternative. They are only a different articulation of capital’s exploitation of humans and resources.
ISSA: You pointed out the role of far-right evangelicals in Latin America and Africa. Unfortunately the Left has not understood how dangerous they are. They produce Mileis, they produce Bolsonaros, they produce Trumps. I’m very glad you pointed to that very big danger for the world. Now, having said that, I cannot wrap my brain around one thing you said, that the biggest problem with Italy right now is the 140 bases, as opposed to 50 in Germany. I come from Greece which is also full of US bases, and the government there is a neoliberal right-wing one. To me, having lots of US bases and being like a neo-colony of the US is rather what the traditional right-wing does. Remember that the far-right all over the world is all against NATO. Think of Orban, Vučić, Le Pen, AfD in Germany, and their supposedly left-wing ideological partner, Wagenknecht, all against NATO. The big problem with Meloni and Salvini is that they let people drown in the Mediterranean, that they curtail my rights as a queer person, that they are typical fascists. So, Meloni is not bad, in my eyes, because of the U.S. bases. She’s bad because she lets people drown in the Mediterranean and she’s happy about that.
Silvia: Tell me, what is the European Union’s policy towards immigrants? They have constructed what we know now for many years as Fortress Europe. What is happening in Italy with the immigrants? Absolutely, the question of immigration is a big scandal in Italy and in every country. But from where does the policy come? It comes from the European Union, not only from the fascists. Fortress Europe, the policy on immigration, was not built just by a few right-wing countries. It was built, actually as it is, in the United States.
So, Trump, for example, is boasting that he’s going to deport all immigrants. But Kamala Harris has been saying that she’s going to increase the number of agents enormously. We have a border with Mexico which is already completely militarized. It’s like a military zone. And yet she’s going to propose even more agents. Biden has done nothing to really change the situation of immigration. And in Italy, in Europe, the European Union has really been the one who has set the directive, the conditions and the limits on immigrants coming into different countries. Yes, we are against this horror.
Tell me, what was the policy for immigrants before the rise of Meloni? The Partito Democratico had the same policy. Italy has been waging a war against immigrants all across the country, for many years now. Also the treatment of African workers in the South, where they are working in conditions of near slavery, under the control of mafia organizations. What I was trying to point out is that the Italian government, and other European governments, in a way, are colonial governments. I’m not saying that they are not dangerous, but that we make a mistake if we ignore which are the real powers that are governing the country.
I know Greece now has a very right-wing government, but I also know the history of Greece, with Britain, and the civil war. I was in Rosa Nera on Crete, and the comrade who was running it at the time had spent seven years in jail because he was fighting against the deployment of American naval bases off the coast of Crete. I think that this question of the very strong presence of NATO, the US, in Europe, is a question that I think Italian movements are not raising. No to fascism, obviously, but they are not the ones who have introduced the persecution against immigrants. They may be more vociferous, but actually the persecution and the limits have preceded, for a really long time, the advent of a fascist government with Meloni.
ISSA: Thank you so much. We could go on for a whole day, there is a lot of interest, but hopefully we will have an opportunity to continue in person next year.
Silvia: All the best. Bye, stay well, we’ll see each other on the island, hopefully.
