John Marx s Capital Volume I And The Witch - 990 Words

With the advent of capitalism, philosophers such as Karl Marx took the challenge to analyze the process of primitive accumulation that began in the fifteenth century when common land was appropriated to fulfill the interests of capitalists (Mezzadra, 2011, p.317). Since the social relation of capitalism placed emphasis on private ownership of property as opposed to state ownership, citizens began to rely on wage labour in order to secure their status as property owners. Within his novel Capital Volume I, Marx delineates as well as critiques the diverse social relations that surround the capitalist mode of production. Marxist philosopher Silvia Federici also examines production as the space of the political through a gendered perspective in her novel Caliban and the Witch. Accordingly, this paper will analyze the various materialist notions employed by Marx to argue that the social relation of capitalism is not inherent in nature nor separate from individuals in society. Through the m ethod of dialectical materialism, Marx differentiates between the abstract and the concrete regarding capital, value, and labour in order to understand the power relations that exist within capitalism. However, this paper will also provide a feminist critique of his method by utilizing arguments made by Federici regarding the sexual division of labour that exists contemporarily and historically within the capitalist mode of production. Ultimately, I suggest that the account of capitalism as