Michael’s Reviews > Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation > Status Update
Michael
is on page 84 of 285
Even the individual's relationship with God was privatized: in Protestant areas with the institution of a direct relationship [with God]; in the Catholic areas by individual confession. As a result, the physical enclosures [were] amplified by social enclosure, the reproduction of workers shifting from the openfield to the home, from the community to the family, from the public space (commons & church) to the private.
— Apr 03, 2026 08:42AM
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Michael’s Previous Updates
Michael
is on page 92 of 285
"forcing women to procreate against their will or (as a feminist song from the 1970s had it) forcing them to "produce children for the state," only in part defined women's function in the new sexual division of labor. A complementary aspect was the definition of women as non-workers, a process much studied by feminist historians, which by the end of the 17th century was nearly completed."
— 1 hour, 7 min ago
Michael
is on page 91 of 285
"In all phases of capitalist development the state has had to resort to regulation and coercion to expand or reduce the workforce. Down to the present, the state has spared no efforts in its attempt to wrench from women's hands control over reproduction. Consequently women have often been forced to procreate against their will, and have experienced an alienation from their bodies, their labor and even their children"
— 1 hour, 9 min ago
Michael
is on page 89 of 285
"The outcome of these policies that lasted for two centuries… was the enslavement of women to procreation. While in the Middle Ages women had been able to use various forms of contraceptives, and had exercised an undisputed control over the birthing process, from now on their wombs became public territory, controlled by men and the state, and procreation was directly placed at the service of capitalist accumulation."
— 1 hour, 30 min ago
Michael
is on page 89 of 285
"Also, the suspicion under which midwives came in this period - leading to the entrance of the male doctor into the delivery room - stemmed more from the authorities' fears of infanticide than from any concern with the midwives' alleged medical incompetence... With this shift, a new medical practice also prevailed, one that in the case of a medical emergency prioritized the life of the fetus over that of the mother."
— 1 hour, 32 min ago
Michael
is on page 88 of 285
"New forms of surveillance were also adopted to ensure that pregnant women did not terminate their pregnancies. In France, a royal edict of 1556 required women to register every pregnancy, and sentenced to death those whose infants died before baptism after a concealed delivery, whether or not proven guilty or any wrongdoing. A system of spies was also created to survey unwed mothers and deprive them of any support."
— 1 hour, 33 min ago
Michael
is on page 88 of 285
"the main initiative that the state took to restore the desired population ratio was the launching of a true war against women clearly aimed at breaking the control they had exercised over their bodies and production. …this war was waged primarily through the witch-hunt that literally demonized any form of birth-control and non-procreative sexuality, while charging women with sacrificing children to the devil."
— 1 hour, 40 min ago
Michael
is on page 88 of 285
"an almost fanatical desire to increase population prevailed in all countries during the period when mercantilism was at its height...in France and England the state adopted a set of pro-natalist measures that, combined with Public Relief, formed the embryo of a capitalist reproductive policy. Laws were passed that put a premium on marriage and penalized celibacy"
— 1 hour, 45 min ago
Michael
is on page 87 of 285
"...It cannot be a pure coincidence, however, that at the very moment when population was declining, and an ideology was forming that stressed the centrality of labor in economic life, severe penalties were introduced in the legal codes of Europe to punish women guilty of reproductive crimes."
— 2 hours, 41 min ago
Michael
is on page 87 of 285
"other factors contributed to increase the determination of the European power-structure to control more strictly women's reproductive function. Among them, we must include the increasing privatization of property and economic relations that (within the bourgeoisie) generated a new anxiety concerning the question of paternity and the conduct of women..."
— 2 hours, 41 min ago
Michael
is on page 86 of 285
"[1580s Europe] was a population crisis without precedents… Death struck at "the poor". It was not the rich, for the most part, who perished when the plague or the smallpox swept the towns, but craftsmen, day-laborers, and vagabonds…We also have the complaints of ministers who from the pulpit charged that the youth did not marry and procreate, in order not to bring more mouths into the world than they could feed."
— 2 hours, 44 min ago
