Federici’s key contribution to Marx’s critique of political economy is to introduce the concept of reproductive labour, meaning all the (usually unpaid) labour which is required to reproduce the capacity of the worker to work. This includes domestic labour in the home, including care work, responsibility for the bulk of which conventionally falls on women. Federici’s insistence on the centrality of “reproductive labour” to social reproduction is the missing link in philosophy, it allows us to understand any thinking problem as, firstly being a question of the material reproduction of the thinker’s capacity to think.
A Feminist Critique of Marx by Silvia Federici
Witch-Hunting, Globalization, and Feminist Solidarity in Africa Today