Silvia Federici: The revolution is now

Image by Hannah Matthews for Ojalá.

The first of two interviews with Silvia Federici on fascistization and the feminist movement today.

Interview • Verónica Gago interviews Silvia Federici • Leer en castellano

Historian Silvia Federici and Verónica Gago, researcher and member of Ni Una Menos in Buenos Aires, sat down in New York City last month to do an interview to mark the birth of Ojalá. 

The two women shared their thoughts on the challenges of popular feminisms today. 

Federici highlighted growing attacks against the reproduction of life and the brutal increase in the exploitation and dispossession of communities from their land, water and time. She spoke of the fascism that hides in confrontations between political blocs and of the importance of joy in the feminist struggle.

The interview has been lightly edited for clarity and brevity.

Verónica Gago: In recent years we have witnessed a period of mobilization, protest and the exponential expansion of feminism.

How can we read this “political growth”? Does that expression describe what is happening? How can we think through this effervescence?

Silvia Federici: Well, I think that when we talk about political growth we are not talking about the feminist movement in general.

This growth is not something that is visible in every place. And I think that they are especially important, you know, the developments that have taken place and are taking place, above all, in Latin America. I think the impact of the politics of popular feminism—what we call popular feminism—is so strong that it has also impacted movements way beyond, for example in Europe.

I think there's been a growth of consciousness that is reflected in the discourses and the strategies that the movements are trying to achieve cannot be achieved unless we do have a process of really broad social change. One of the first elements is anti-capitalism, which has been in the background for much of the history of the feminist movement.

But today anti-capitalism is more and more in the foreground. Many of the struggles that we have seen over the last few years have taken on the corporate world directly. Particularly struggles against land privatization and expulsions of millions of people from their lands.

The imposition of structural adjustment programs has created massive austerity, mass impoverishment and ecological devastation. The feminist movement now has taken on some of the most fundamental issues that any movement has to confront to create a different type of society, which is the capitalist enclosures of life.

“Today feminism is not limited only to changes in the condition of women. Feminists have something to say about everything, about every aspect of life. ”

We've seen a feminist perspective on debt, a feminist perspective on ecology, a feminist perspective on the justice system —the injustice system— in the United States. 

We’ve seen the formation of a feminist abolitionist movement that has fought against incarceration, fought to defund the police. There is also the increasing importance within feminism of the struggle against coloniality, the struggle against the system, the increasing prominence of Black feminists, anti-colonial feminists.

VG: I have been thinking about the combination between massiveness and radicality as a feature of this cycle of feminism. 

How can we think in different cycles and rhythms, and also when this massiveness is not as strong? I don't know if we should talk about moments of active rearguard (retaguardia activa) or if we should think in a different geometry of movement and forces? I also like to think about different forms of the massive that are not always public.

SF: I think that there are at least three interconnected tasks that a feminist movement has to take on today, and I want to speak to each of them. 

First is building a vision of where we are going, what kind of society we want to build. Obviously our collective imagination is still very much limited by all the capitalism that we interiorize and what kind of society we live in. It is necessary to experiment.

Second is the importance of building strategies. Once we have an idea, then comes the question of strategy. Strategy implies understanding and building debates, research and so on to understand where capitalism is going. What is capital planning, where is capitalism weakest, what is the most crucial terrain in terms of unifying the movement, in terms of overcoming the way in which we have been divided.

And third: what are the tools we need? Whether it is journals, whether it is a movie or documentaries… How do we build this network? How do we build common ground? 

The moments in which the movement is not in the street or not immediately confronting the state and capital are moments of construction. This is a key strategic issue. 

The struggle cannot be only oppositional, it has to be positive and constructive. That positivity, that construction, is the terrain of experimentation. 

VG: Can you talk a little bit more about this experimentation?

SF: Our reproductive activities allow us to reproduce the struggle in those moments in which we are not massively present in the street. This building of commons is a condition for the reproduction of struggle. In fact it is a way of measuring our success, measuring our feminist power.

“How much can we shift our reproductive activity from the reproduction of labor power to the reproduction of our power to struggle? I think that this is as in a way it is to be the measurement of how much we are succeeding in our growth.”

I think that in those moments in which we are not [mobilized in the streets] there's a lot of invisible work happening: the work of building connection and strengthening our affective relations with each other.

VG: How do you characterize the backlash in that moment of extreme neoliberalism? And what are the differences between today and the backlash after the feminist struggles in the 1970s?

SF: There are important differences. 

There's obviously similarities too, but the one difference perhaps is that in the 70s we had to fight not only against the right but also against the left. It took a long time before men on the left began to show at least some sign of respect or admit they may have something to learn from the feminist movement. 

Some of the first responses [from male comrades] with nothing short of scandalous. Women were whistled at in the 60s. The response was often really hostile. That's certainly changed today. 

I think that today the response of the right is almost more violent because there has been a long long process for the right wing in this country. There's been a process of fascistization that has been very complicated. I think the feminist movement needs to analyze this process much more carefully than we have done until now.

VG: In what sense do you use fascistization?

SF: There's a kind of frozen conception of what the right wing is, we produce schemes taken from the fascist period, the Nazi period, and so on, where there's a right wing and then there's the center.

Today it is far more complicated, and the two are more intermixed than they may appear.

There's been a fascistization of the economy. Fascistization is a strategy and a politics that gives more and more power to capital. It reduces investment in the reproduction and the spaces of working class power, and creates new and deeper divisions among people around the lines of class and race.

The idea of two blocs, you know, the center—or left—and the right, of Democrats and Republicans, so to speak, can be really deceptive. There is a general fascistization taking place in every country. 

In Italy for instance, women are telling me that the situation is so bad. The government is so right-wing, there is a militarization of daily life. Women walking alone have been stopped in the train station or in public places by police asking for their documents.

We have to see this fascistization as something that is continuously and inseparably produced by economic policies. 

VG: This idea of the fascistization of economies sheds light on everyday violences. At the same time you talk about joyful militancy, but this does not mean that the conditions of organizing are somehow easy.

SF: Joyful militancy is another way to talk about why the revolution is now. 

Enough with this idea of the revolution which has become in the future, so one day the children of my children will live better. No. The revolution is now.

We have one life. Every day is precious. We cannot think of the revolution in the future. If we struggle, it is because the life that we have is unbearable and painful.

“Struggle cannot add to our pain. It has to improve our lives.”

We have to figure out what it means to do something positive. The first thing that it means is breaking out of isolation. Struggle means connecting with other people, not confronting the system and the pain and suffering in your life alone. That you feel that you have some protection.

There’s the idea of generating a new emotional affectivity, going beyond the suffocation and loneliness of the nuclear family. Acquiring new knowledge, acquiring new lovers, not only in the sexual sense, but in people that you care for and that give you strength.

It becomes a connective tissue with other people. That is revolution and, unless you have that, then there's no sense in struggling.