WEBVTT - Part Two: Witches: Witches Were Pretty Cool Even Though They Didn't Really Exist 0:00:01.760 --> 0:00:07.080 Cool Zone Media. Hello, and welcome to cool People who 0:00:07.080 --> 0:00:10.080 did cool stuff. I'm your host, Marcare Kildrey, and every 0:00:10.080 --> 0:00:13.960 week I cover people being cool, except when I have 0:00:14.000 --> 0:00:18.119 special episodes like today, where instead I cover things I 0:00:18.160 --> 0:00:21.439 think are cool, and I think witches are cool or 0:00:21.440 --> 0:00:24.360 at least interesting. The actual definition of witches I came 0:00:24.400 --> 0:00:26.239 up with earlier, where you like, do magic to hurt 0:00:26.239 --> 0:00:29.560 people or whatever, Like, I don't know, that's like not 0:00:29.680 --> 0:00:32.280 actually particularly cool. That's like saying like violence is cool, 0:00:32.440 --> 0:00:37.279 Like violence is sometimes useful or necessary, but overall it's 0:00:37.280 --> 0:00:39.840 like nothing to be proud of, right, because it's mostly 0:00:39.880 --> 0:00:42.680 done in bad ways. So I guess that's actually how 0:00:42.720 --> 0:00:46.120 I probably feel about what would definitionally be understood is witchcraft, 0:00:46.440 --> 0:00:49.680 but the concept of witches as we currently talk about 0:00:49.680 --> 0:00:55.240 them super cool. Except this episode isn't really about the 0:00:55.320 --> 0:00:59.400 current version of witches. It's more about how we got there, 0:01:00.200 --> 0:01:05.319 and specifically how the concept of the witch was developed 0:01:05.640 --> 0:01:10.960 by a bunch of misogynists and church people both Protestant 0:01:11.000 --> 0:01:16.000 and Catholic, in order to keep power relations going. And 0:01:16.959 --> 0:01:20.920 that's bad, but reclaimed stuff is good. It seems obvious 0:01:20.920 --> 0:01:23.600 that I think that I'm a punk punk is an 0:01:23.640 --> 0:01:28.680 example of a reclaimed slur so, which is an example 0:01:28.760 --> 0:01:32.399 of a reclaimed category of crime that has now become 0:01:32.400 --> 0:01:36.000 an identity for people. Anyway, this is part two. If 0:01:36.000 --> 0:01:37.920 you go back to part one, you'll hear me talk 0:01:37.959 --> 0:01:41.760 about how which is kind of weren't real except service 0:01:41.800 --> 0:01:45.520 magicians were and some of them did witchcraft, so actually, 0:01:45.920 --> 0:01:49.360 which is kind of were real. Also, no one knows, 0:01:50.400 --> 0:01:54.280 but we're going to talk about the inquisition. There's a 0:01:54.320 --> 0:01:56.200 money python joke I could do here, but I'm not 0:01:56.240 --> 0:01:58.600 going to. It's a leave it as an exercise for 0:01:58.640 --> 0:02:02.880 the audience too. Imagine the money python joke. Also, this 0:02:02.960 --> 0:02:05.240 is a solo episode. You probably figured that out by now. 0:02:05.240 --> 0:02:09.640 There's no Sophie, there's no guest. There's a Rory. 0:02:09.760 --> 0:02:10.400 Hi. Rory. 0:02:10.840 --> 0:02:16.079 Rory is our audio engineer. Anyway, where were we The 0:02:16.160 --> 0:02:21.239 Hammer of Witches, which is a pretty. 0:02:20.320 --> 0:02:20.920 I'm not gonna lie. 0:02:20.960 --> 0:02:23.560 It's a pretty cool name for like real evil book. 0:02:23.840 --> 0:02:26.440 And it's like, like evil is cool and spooky. This 0:02:26.480 --> 0:02:29.280 is like evil evil. This is like, you know, uh, 0:02:29.360 --> 0:02:33.240 exercising institutional power to destroy people. That this is like 0:02:33.400 --> 0:02:36.440 the biggest most dangerous in cell book ever written, which 0:02:36.520 --> 0:02:41.080 is kind of impressive. Okay, so the story of the 0:02:41.080 --> 0:02:43.600 Hammer of Witches. That's not the entire episode, it's going 0:02:43.639 --> 0:02:46.400 to be part of it. There was this asshole guy 0:02:46.680 --> 0:02:51.000 named Heinrich Kramer. He joined the Dominican Order, and soon 0:02:51.120 --> 0:02:53.680 enough he's an inquisitor. This is like, uh, you know, 0:02:54.040 --> 0:02:57.640 fourteen hundreds. He shows up in Germany and is like, hello, 0:02:57.720 --> 0:03:00.440 I am an inquisitor and I'm specifically mad about witches 0:03:00.520 --> 0:03:04.280 because I hate women. And local authorities are like, no, 0:03:04.440 --> 0:03:08.320 we don't really need you. Fuck off, which is, after all, 0:03:08.520 --> 0:03:12.080 worn a big deal, nothing to get inquisitioning about. So 0:03:12.160 --> 0:03:14.760 our guy, Heinrich, He's like, all right, fine, I'll go 0:03:14.800 --> 0:03:17.440 to Skydad's main man, the Pope, and get his permission 0:03:17.480 --> 0:03:20.080 to do some fucking witch hunting. And you know, earlier 0:03:20.120 --> 0:03:21.920 I was like talking about all these popes that were like, 0:03:21.960 --> 0:03:26.040 witches aren't real. There's a problem with investing absolute power 0:03:26.080 --> 0:03:30.560 into specific individuals. It's the monarchy problem. And besides the 0:03:30.560 --> 0:03:35.000 moral problem, there's the specific problem of well, if you 0:03:35.080 --> 0:03:37.560 have a different guy, then he might have a different 0:03:37.560 --> 0:03:39.320 point of view and he might have a bad take, 0:03:39.800 --> 0:03:41.280 and then all of a sudden, the bad take is 0:03:41.320 --> 0:03:47.400 the rules. So in fourteen eighty four, Pope Innocent to 0:03:47.440 --> 0:03:50.240 the eighth proves his own name to not have been 0:03:50.320 --> 0:03:53.360 much of a nominative deterministic thing. Because he is not 0:03:53.400 --> 0:03:56.680 so innocent. He writes a papal bull which is basically 0:03:56.720 --> 0:04:01.240 a decree, because in Catholicism they just rename everything, And 0:04:01.280 --> 0:04:06.320 this decree says that witchcraft counts as heresy. It says, quote, 0:04:07.280 --> 0:04:11.160 many persons of both sexes, unmindful of their own salvation 0:04:11.400 --> 0:04:15.400 and strain from the Catholic faith, have abandoned themselves to devils, 0:04:15.560 --> 0:04:20.719 incubi and succubi, and by their incantations, spells, conjurations, and 0:04:20.760 --> 0:04:25.640 other accursed charms and crafts, enormities and horrid offenses, have 0:04:25.800 --> 0:04:29.320 slain infants. Yet in the mother's womb, as also the 0:04:29.360 --> 0:04:32.880 offspring of cattle, have blasted the produce of the earth, 0:04:33.240 --> 0:04:36.240 the grapes of the vine, the fruits of the trees, 0:04:36.640 --> 0:04:41.120 nay men and women, beasts of burthen herd beasts, as 0:04:41.160 --> 0:04:46.440 well as animals of other kinds, vineyards orchards, meadows, pastureland, corn, wheat, 0:04:46.760 --> 0:04:50.360 and all other cereals. This is all one sentence. I 0:04:50.400 --> 0:04:52.400 don't even I'm not even gonna quote the entire sentence. 0:04:52.400 --> 0:04:54.520 There's a lot of anywhere you might think there's a period, 0:04:54.560 --> 0:04:59.360 there's a semicolon. These wretches, furthermore, afflict and torment men 0:04:59.400 --> 0:05:02.960 and women, beasts of burthen herd, beasts as well as 0:05:03.000 --> 0:05:07.000 animals of other kinds, with terrible and piteous pains and 0:05:07.040 --> 0:05:11.080 sore diseases both internal and external. They hinder men from 0:05:11.080 --> 0:05:15.359 performing the sexual act and women from conceiving. That's like 0:05:15.480 --> 0:05:20.719 only half the sentence. That's yeah. Anyway, So the papal 0:05:20.760 --> 0:05:24.600 bull is like, I'm afraid of them witches. They make 0:05:24.680 --> 0:05:27.719 men impotent, and they also do all of these other things. 0:05:28.000 --> 0:05:30.360 And Okay, one of the things that's horrible about talking 0:05:30.400 --> 0:05:32.600 about all this like witchcraft stuff and this witch trial stuff. 0:05:32.800 --> 0:05:35.800 So like we're really seeing the return to this. Honestly, 0:05:35.880 --> 0:05:41.760 like the evangelical embrace of the pro life thing really 0:05:41.800 --> 0:05:44.320 has this vibe of like they're all a bunch of 0:05:44.320 --> 0:05:48.000 baby murderers, and I don't know, there's gonna be some 0:05:48.000 --> 0:05:52.800 other fun comparisons coming up later about suddenly people believing 0:05:52.839 --> 0:05:57.840 in real wild stuff, especially because the Protestants, once they 0:05:57.880 --> 0:06:00.240 come on the scene, they're gonna like specifically believe Eve 0:06:01.000 --> 0:06:05.280 they're way more that. Yes, of course sex is bad, 0:06:05.360 --> 0:06:07.960 but it's still like, you got to be having it, 0:06:08.000 --> 0:06:09.640 so therefore you've got to be married, and you can 0:06:09.680 --> 0:06:12.279 only be married in ways that are procreative. 0:06:11.640 --> 0:06:13.080 And blah blah blah. 0:06:13.120 --> 0:06:17.840 Anyway, I've read in a couple places, but like anecdotal sources, 0:06:18.200 --> 0:06:21.560 that the clergy was really mad about this particular degree 0:06:21.600 --> 0:06:23.560 because they were like, no, we have a long standing 0:06:23.600 --> 0:06:25.560 tradition of not giving a shit about witches, and then 0:06:25.600 --> 0:06:28.599 here's this pope and isent the eighth being like blah 0:06:28.600 --> 0:06:33.080 blah blah, witches this and that, and they're like, that's bullshit, 0:06:33.600 --> 0:06:37.640 none of that's real. But all the clergy didn't stop 0:06:37.680 --> 0:06:42.040 this from influencing the Pope's pet misogynist murderer, the aforementioned inquisitor, 0:06:42.400 --> 0:06:46.120 Heinrich Kramer. Kramer went on to kill fifty people over 0:06:46.120 --> 0:06:48.800 the next five years, after he'd been given permission specifically 0:06:48.839 --> 0:06:51.680 to do so by the Pope. Why did he so 0:06:51.800 --> 0:06:55.800 desperately want to hunt witches, Well, it sounds like it 0:06:55.839 --> 0:06:58.039 was because he was low key stalking this local woman, 0:06:58.200 --> 0:07:02.080 Helena Schubern. He was obsessed with her, and she didn't 0:07:02.160 --> 0:07:04.520 like him. She didn't go to church, perhaps because she 0:07:04.560 --> 0:07:06.240 was avoiding him, or maybe she just didn't like going 0:07:06.279 --> 0:07:09.520 to church. One day, she was supposedly walking past Kramer 0:07:09.560 --> 0:07:13.560 and spat and said, fie on you, you bad monk. May 0:07:13.640 --> 0:07:16.520 the falling evil take you, which is a pretty sick 0:07:17.120 --> 0:07:19.080 like I don't want the falling evil to take me. 0:07:19.240 --> 0:07:22.400 That sounds scary, Like what even is that? Is it 0:07:22.520 --> 0:07:26.720 just the slow embrace of darkness? Who knows? Anyway, maybe 0:07:26.760 --> 0:07:27.600 maybe other people know. 0:07:27.720 --> 0:07:29.040 I don't know what the falling evil is. It just 0:07:29.080 --> 0:07:30.000 sounds cool and spooky. 0:07:30.840 --> 0:07:35.840 However, it's not a good idea to say this to inquisitors. 0:07:36.240 --> 0:07:39.560 She was put on trial for witchcraft. She was acquitted. 0:07:40.480 --> 0:07:42.480 Kramer got so mad about it that he invented the 0:07:42.480 --> 0:07:45.280 modern witch hunt. The local bishop was like, you are 0:07:45.360 --> 0:07:47.440 senile and crazy, get out of here. And this is 0:07:47.480 --> 0:07:49.400 presumably when he went to the Pope for permission to 0:07:49.480 --> 0:07:52.520 murder people. But I've like read the timeline in different ways, 0:07:52.520 --> 0:07:54.239 so I wasn't exactly sure how to put it together. 0:07:55.760 --> 0:07:58.960 And so then he's like murdering people and he's like, hell, yeah, 0:07:59.000 --> 0:08:02.800 this is the rules. I'm in cel murder man. He 0:08:02.880 --> 0:08:06.119 wrote the most influential book on witch hunting, even though 0:08:06.440 --> 0:08:08.760 it actually strayed. This is going to shock you. It 0:08:08.800 --> 0:08:12.120 actually strayed from most of the accepted inquisitorial material, and 0:08:12.200 --> 0:08:15.800 the Catholic Church would soon disavow this book. This book 0:08:15.880 --> 0:08:18.880 is The Hammer of Witches, and it influenced secular courts, 0:08:18.920 --> 0:08:21.280 but not religious courts by and large, So this like 0:08:21.400 --> 0:08:24.640 wasn't being used by the Church inquisition. This was being 0:08:24.760 --> 0:08:29.840 used by local secular courts. That book, The Hammer of Witches, 0:08:30.240 --> 0:08:33.600 is a misogynistic tone about why women are uniquely weakned 0:08:33.640 --> 0:08:35.960 evil and that they should be tortured and burned at 0:08:36.000 --> 0:08:40.040 the stake. It's bad. It presents the idea that witchcraft 0:08:40.080 --> 0:08:42.800 is heretical, which is actually a secular crime at the time, 0:08:42.840 --> 0:08:45.199 so this is why secular courts are doing their witch hunting. 0:08:45.880 --> 0:08:49.760 It also contains some pretty elaborate forgery. It claims that 0:08:49.800 --> 0:08:53.319 a respective theological institution supported it, and like even has 0:08:53.360 --> 0:08:55.760 like all the signatures and then like signatures of notaries 0:08:55.800 --> 0:08:58.480 and things like that on it. But it's almost certainly 0:08:58.559 --> 0:09:01.360 all a forgery. It seems as though everyone at that 0:09:01.400 --> 0:09:06.360 institution hated this book. It's possible that the book was 0:09:06.400 --> 0:09:09.080 banned after three years by the church in fourteen ninety, 0:09:09.360 --> 0:09:12.120 but this is disputed. It seems like people believed it 0:09:12.160 --> 0:09:13.040 was banned. 0:09:12.720 --> 0:09:15.079 But the I don't know whatever. 0:09:15.160 --> 0:09:17.280 I'm not going to get into the weird details about 0:09:17.280 --> 0:09:19.200 the list of banned books and when they were published. 0:09:20.040 --> 0:09:23.960 But Kramer himself was condemned in fourteen ninety for doing 0:09:23.960 --> 0:09:26.800 shit unethically and illegally, and from then on, as best 0:09:26.800 --> 0:09:28.680 as I can tell, he wasn't personally allowed to murder 0:09:28.720 --> 0:09:32.760 people anymore. His book, though, continued to go through dozens 0:09:32.800 --> 0:09:37.320 of editions, leading to uncountable more deaths. Eventually, the book 0:09:37.360 --> 0:09:39.720 pretended had a second author, basically like one of the 0:09:39.720 --> 0:09:42.960 printings they were like, it's by two people, like a 0:09:43.040 --> 0:09:46.160 respective theologian's name was added to it, even though we 0:09:46.400 --> 0:09:49.880 probably didn't approve of it. The Hammer of Witches says 0:09:49.960 --> 0:09:54.280 quote the witches deserve the heaviest punishment above all the 0:09:54.280 --> 0:09:58.040 criminals in the world. It was obsessed with the sex 0:09:58.160 --> 0:10:02.559 lives of evil women. Sexuality is the literal basis of witchcraft, 0:10:02.559 --> 0:10:06.160 according to this book, and the devil fucks power into people. 0:10:06.600 --> 0:10:08.600 If you don't fuck the devil, you don't get as 0:10:08.640 --> 0:10:12.600 cool magic powers In the book, Kramer writes, the devil 0:10:12.679 --> 0:10:16.520 has power over those who follow their lusts. As for 0:10:16.559 --> 0:10:19.640 why women are particularly prone to witchcraft, it's because women 0:10:19.679 --> 0:10:23.680 are more carnal. Of course, we also have bad memories, 0:10:23.720 --> 0:10:27.520 which is why we're undisciplined and impulsive. We're vain, our 0:10:27.640 --> 0:10:31.960 voice is a siren song, and we ruin men. He writes, 0:10:32.920 --> 0:10:36.439 woman is beautiful to look upon, contaminating to the touch, 0:10:36.800 --> 0:10:42.199 and deadly to keep. And all witchcraft comes from carnal lusts, 0:10:42.600 --> 0:10:47.120 which in women are insatiable. Oh and also, plus, Jesus 0:10:47.160 --> 0:10:50.040 was a boy, so boys are clearly more holy. Yeah, 0:10:50.040 --> 0:10:53.000 obviously hasn't heard of my home. Jesus is a transman theory, 0:10:53.040 --> 0:10:56.360 although you know, maybe he's just being trans inclusive. Jesus 0:10:56.400 --> 0:10:58.320 is a transman theory, being that, well, if you don't 0:10:58.360 --> 0:11:05.200 have an earthly father, you have xx chromosomes. Anyway, this 0:11:05.360 --> 0:11:09.080 is not necessarily always true, but whatever this is, go 0:11:09.120 --> 0:11:14.280 with it. So, according to Kramer, witches meet the devil 0:11:14.320 --> 0:11:17.240 at the witch's sabbath, swear an oath to him, and 0:11:17.280 --> 0:11:21.440 make an ointment from dead baptized babies. Earlier works on 0:11:21.480 --> 0:11:24.040 these sabbaths were a bit more pornographic describing how people 0:11:24.040 --> 0:11:26.400 would kiss Satan on the asshole and such, and the 0:11:26.440 --> 0:11:29.200 Sabbath was more of a lustful orgy in the earlier books, 0:11:29.679 --> 0:11:32.440 But in The Hammer of Witches, neither the witches nor 0:11:32.559 --> 0:11:35.400 the devil actually enjoy the sex. It's just a solemn 0:11:35.480 --> 0:11:38.160 duty in the name of evil. Like lie back and 0:11:38.200 --> 0:11:41.920 think of Satan. But after her initiation into evil, the 0:11:41.920 --> 0:11:45.440 witch likes fucking lots of people, probably everyone but Kramer. 0:11:45.840 --> 0:11:49.320 This whole book is so so incel coded. Just looking 0:11:49.360 --> 0:11:52.040 at an impure woman can corrupt a man, since eyes 0:11:52.080 --> 0:11:56.360 are the mirror of the soul. Also, only the witches 0:11:56.360 --> 0:11:59.200 can see the devil during these ceremonies, and observers see 0:11:59.240 --> 0:12:03.120 only the women lying on their backs orgasamine, which makes 0:12:03.120 --> 0:12:05.280 me wonder if people weren't just like watching women masturbating 0:12:05.320 --> 0:12:07.320 in the forest or whatever, which seems like a perfectly 0:12:07.320 --> 0:12:10.800 fine and healthy pastime. Get together with your you know, 0:12:10.960 --> 0:12:16.360 gal pals, and go masturbating the woods. The sexual powers 0:12:16.400 --> 0:12:19.360 of witches are endless. They can cause lust in men, 0:12:19.400 --> 0:12:22.200 They can destroy relationships. They can turn dicks into other 0:12:22.240 --> 0:12:25.200 things or steal them outright. They can make a man 0:12:25.320 --> 0:12:28.840 no longer attracted to a given woman. They can also 0:12:28.880 --> 0:12:32.679 cause impotence or sterility. Some witches would collect dicks and 0:12:32.760 --> 0:12:35.080 keep them in a bird's nest where they lived off 0:12:35.080 --> 0:12:38.360 of corn and oats, like they were little baby bird dicks. 0:12:39.360 --> 0:12:42.640 And according to this book, all accused witches are guilty, 0:12:42.960 --> 0:12:45.280 and the ones who don't confess are damned. The ones 0:12:45.280 --> 0:12:50.199 who do confess are you know, saved by being burned alive. 0:12:51.120 --> 0:12:55.760 It's real good, much like the good that comes from 0:12:56.160 --> 0:12:58.240 giving all of your money to the people who gave 0:12:58.320 --> 0:13:01.360 us money. That's what you should do. You totally shouldn't 0:13:01.360 --> 0:13:04.080 either subscribe to cooler zone media and therefore not have ads, 0:13:04.600 --> 0:13:07.800 or just press the forward fifteen seconds but in like 0:13:08.600 --> 0:13:09.360 four or five times. 0:13:09.559 --> 0:13:12.080 You probably know how many times to put it. Here's 0:13:12.120 --> 0:13:21.080 the ads and we're back. 0:13:22.559 --> 0:13:26.319 So this book is bad, but also its impact on 0:13:26.360 --> 0:13:30.520 the witch trials has been overstated. Like I mentioned before, 0:13:30.679 --> 0:13:32.840 interest in the witch trials really kicked off during the 0:13:32.880 --> 0:13:35.840 nineteen seventies or so, and there wasn't as much research 0:13:35.840 --> 0:13:38.960 available back then. The Hammer of Witches was likely the 0:13:39.000 --> 0:13:41.480 only tone available in print in English at the time, 0:13:41.880 --> 0:13:44.200 and so people read it and were like, oh, the 0:13:44.240 --> 0:13:48.120 witch hunts were pretty much just misogyny. But this book 0:13:48.520 --> 0:13:52.880 didn't really cause the witch trials? So what caused the 0:13:52.880 --> 0:13:57.040 witch trials? There are a bunch of different hypotheses. Most 0:13:57.040 --> 0:13:59.520 of them are wrong. I'm going to talk about one 0:13:59.559 --> 0:14:01.440 of the more can convincing ones for a moment before 0:14:01.440 --> 0:14:03.240 I get to the one that I find most convincing. 0:14:03.600 --> 0:14:05.360 This next one I don't think is like wrong. It's 0:14:05.360 --> 0:14:08.800 just we's wrong in some ways. But whatever, it has 0:14:08.840 --> 0:14:11.479 a lot of good truth in it. It's worth understanding. 0:14:12.880 --> 0:14:16.400 A Marxist feminist named Sylvia Federici wrote what is in 0:14:16.440 --> 0:14:19.160 my Circles the single most important book about witches and 0:14:19.200 --> 0:14:23.360 the witch Trials. It's called Caliban and the Witch. It 0:14:23.400 --> 0:14:26.160 covers a reasonably wide range of topics, but the core 0:14:26.200 --> 0:14:29.840 of its argument, as I understand it, is this the 0:14:29.880 --> 0:14:33.920 witch trials represent the patriarchal oppression of women, the excizing 0:14:33.960 --> 0:14:36.640 of women from the healing arts like you've got the 0:14:36.680 --> 0:14:39.240 good learned doctors who are men and who went to 0:14:39.320 --> 0:14:42.160 man only school, and in the early modern era, they 0:14:42.200 --> 0:14:45.480 become the only acceptable form of healing, so more organic 0:14:45.520 --> 0:14:50.080 and folk practices were being shoved out and criminalized. Federici 0:14:50.320 --> 0:14:54.920 ties this idea into the idea of primitive accumulation. This 0:14:54.960 --> 0:14:57.760 is a concept in Marxism that, while I'm not a Marxist, 0:14:58.120 --> 0:15:01.920 I think is worth understanding because I overall think that 0:15:02.320 --> 0:15:05.680 Marx had incredibly important contributions to the study of economics. 0:15:06.480 --> 0:15:08.760 Even if I disagree with whatever. You don't need to 0:15:08.800 --> 0:15:10.920 know why disagree with Marx. Just listen to like half 0:15:10.920 --> 0:15:15.080 the episodes I do. Primitive accumulation might be better translated 0:15:15.120 --> 0:15:18.880 these days as original accumulation, because the word primitive has 0:15:18.920 --> 0:15:21.520 different connotations than it did when the idea was coined. 0:15:22.160 --> 0:15:25.400 It originally kind of meant like original, like oh, this 0:15:25.480 --> 0:15:27.720 is the first version of this. The primitive form of 0:15:27.760 --> 0:15:30.640 it just means the original form of it. It's not 0:15:30.760 --> 0:15:35.480 like the accumulation from primitive people, although that happens. By 0:15:35.880 --> 0:15:38.320 the reason that it sounds confusing this because we'll get 0:15:38.320 --> 0:15:43.160 to it. Primitive accumulation. Basically, wealth has to come from somewhere, 0:15:43.240 --> 0:15:46.960 right in Marxist economic theory simplified here the labor theory 0:15:47.000 --> 0:15:49.440 of value. Wealth comes from the labor of the working class. 0:15:50.040 --> 0:15:53.120 But what about the raw materials? Those are gathered through 0:15:53.240 --> 0:15:56.760 primitive accumulation, which is to say, the extraction of value 0:15:56.760 --> 0:16:00.640 from the natural world. Colonialism does this right, show up 0:16:00.680 --> 0:16:02.520 somewhere and cut down all their trees and send them 0:16:02.520 --> 0:16:04.680 off to England and suddenly have extracted all the value 0:16:04.680 --> 0:16:08.760 from Ireland. This is the thing that comes before capitalism. 0:16:09.400 --> 0:16:12.560 Marx came up with the idea of primitive accumulation to 0:16:12.640 --> 0:16:16.320 counteract the Adam Smith pro capitalist idea that what started 0:16:16.360 --> 0:16:19.160 capitalism was that the industrious worker eventually built up more 0:16:19.240 --> 0:16:21.520 value than the lazy worker did, and so this is 0:16:21.520 --> 0:16:23.600 how the lazy worker ended up a worker and the 0:16:23.640 --> 0:16:26.760 other guy ended up an owner. Marx was like, no, 0:16:27.040 --> 0:16:28.960 it was because the proto capitalist just like robed the 0:16:28.960 --> 0:16:31.720 shit out of everything and everyone, or to quote him 0:16:31.720 --> 0:16:34.680 directly from capital and of course he's going to use 0:16:34.680 --> 0:16:39.120 outdated racial terminology here. The discovery of gold and silver 0:16:39.200 --> 0:16:43.480 in America, the extirpation enslavement and entoument in minds of 0:16:43.480 --> 0:16:47.120 the Aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting 0:16:47.160 --> 0:16:49.680 of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a 0:16:49.720 --> 0:16:53.000 warren for the commercial hunting of black skins signaled a 0:16:53.080 --> 0:16:57.800 rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production. So basically, 0:16:58.280 --> 0:17:02.000 primitive accumulation is like run around privatize everything, and you know, 0:17:02.200 --> 0:17:04.480 ties into the enclosure of the comments that I talk 0:17:04.480 --> 0:17:08.800 about all the time and things. Anyway, Marxist feminists, especially 0:17:08.800 --> 0:17:11.359 those in developing nations, started talking about how basically this 0:17:11.440 --> 0:17:15.240 accumulation continues today based on the unpaid work of women, 0:17:15.920 --> 0:17:19.760 that the whole of capitalism is upheld by unpaid domestic labor, 0:17:20.520 --> 0:17:23.840 reproductive labor as it's called, which is another weird phrase 0:17:24.119 --> 0:17:26.760 because it makes you think that they mean like making babies, 0:17:27.000 --> 0:17:30.919 but they actually mean reproducing social conditions. I think that, honestly, 0:17:30.960 --> 0:17:34.040 all this terminology needs to be renamed, because otherwise this 0:17:34.160 --> 0:17:35.520 is never going to come across to people. 0:17:35.560 --> 0:17:36.760 But maybe I'm wrong. 0:17:38.160 --> 0:17:40.960 The unpaid stuff that greases the whole economy is the 0:17:41.000 --> 0:17:45.240 reproductive labor doing the dishes and child rearing, and the 0:17:45.359 --> 0:17:47.920 unpaid labor of teaching kids as compared to the paid 0:17:47.960 --> 0:17:52.080 labor of teaching kids, all of that stuff. A German 0:17:52.119 --> 0:17:54.720 woman named Mariah Maiz wrote a book called Patriarchy and 0:17:54.720 --> 0:17:58.200 Accumulation on a World Scale that is like and behind 0:17:58.240 --> 0:18:00.960 this accumulation is a genocidal or like what happened to 0:18:01.000 --> 0:18:04.360 women in the witch hunts of Europe. And I'm under 0:18:04.400 --> 0:18:07.720 the impression Mariah Meis was writing this when people for 0:18:07.760 --> 0:18:10.359 good reason, when the research hadn't been done, and people 0:18:10.359 --> 0:18:12.400 thought that we were talking about like millions and millions 0:18:12.400 --> 0:18:16.040 of women being killed instead of like, eh, thirty thousand 0:18:16.200 --> 0:18:19.920 or whatever. This is the idea that Sylvia Federici is 0:18:19.960 --> 0:18:24.000 expanding upon, the idea that primitive accumulation continues to this day, 0:18:24.280 --> 0:18:26.720 and one of the places it does so is women. 0:18:27.240 --> 0:18:29.000 And one of the big examples of this is the 0:18:29.040 --> 0:18:33.560 witch hunts. That which cannot be controlled will be exterminated, which, 0:18:33.680 --> 0:18:37.159 to be clear, is absolutely what the Catholic Inquisition was 0:18:37.200 --> 0:18:40.840 all about. Convert what you can, exterminate what you can't. 0:18:41.840 --> 0:18:44.000 So Federici talks about the witch hunts as a war 0:18:44.040 --> 0:18:48.080 against women who don't participate properly in capitalism. She also 0:18:48.119 --> 0:18:50.800 describes the medieval world as a world in revolt against 0:18:50.840 --> 0:18:54.879 the masters, against nobility in the church, future veterans of 0:18:54.920 --> 0:18:57.240 the pod, the peasant revolts were kicking off all over 0:18:57.280 --> 0:19:00.560 the place, and heretical Christian sects that believe in it autonomy, 0:19:00.600 --> 0:19:03.160 basically communism, free love, and all kinds of cool shit 0:19:03.520 --> 0:19:06.720 were just everywhere you looked, and some of them were like, 0:19:07.400 --> 0:19:10.040 I don't know, heretical Christian sects that were only mildly 0:19:10.080 --> 0:19:15.080 better than the Catholic Church or whatever. But it's fine. Again, 0:19:15.440 --> 0:19:18.000 this is the kind of stuff that the Inquisition absolutely 0:19:18.040 --> 0:19:24.000 wanted to destroy and existed to destroy. Those movements, Federici says, 0:19:24.040 --> 0:19:27.240 were often led by women. Then you've got the Black Death, 0:19:27.600 --> 0:19:30.000 and suddenly there weren't so many workers, and wages go 0:19:30.119 --> 0:19:32.680 up and rents go down, and there was this spirit 0:19:32.720 --> 0:19:35.560 of revolt in the possibility of change. Maybe the workers 0:19:35.560 --> 0:19:40.280 would finally throw off their chains. But then capitalism showed 0:19:40.359 --> 0:19:43.439 up as a counter revolution, something that shut down this 0:19:43.520 --> 0:19:48.760 other revolution that was happening. To quote Federici, capitalism was 0:19:48.800 --> 0:19:52.000 the response of the feudal lords, the patrician merchants, the 0:19:52.000 --> 0:19:55.399 bishops and popes to a century's long social conflict that 0:19:55.480 --> 0:19:59.160 in the end shook their power. Capitalism was the counter 0:19:59.240 --> 0:20:02.240 revolution that to destroyed the possibilities that had emerged from 0:20:02.240 --> 0:20:06.199 the anti feudal struggle, possibilities which, if realized, might have 0:20:06.240 --> 0:20:08.919 spared us the immense destruction of lives in the natural 0:20:09.000 --> 0:20:12.879 environment that has marked the advance of capitalist relations worldwide. 0:20:14.280 --> 0:20:17.200 So basically shit had to change, but rather than change 0:20:17.200 --> 0:20:19.200 in a cool way, a counter revolution made it change 0:20:19.200 --> 0:20:22.000 in a bad way. Serfdom is out rent and wage 0:20:22.040 --> 0:20:25.960 labor is in and so this new status quo emerged, 0:20:26.040 --> 0:20:29.440 and it wanted to deal with the wild other anyone 0:20:29.520 --> 0:20:33.280 living outside this growing capitalism, basically including women and children 0:20:33.280 --> 0:20:36.480 in colonial subjects, they didn't get to have wages, and 0:20:36.560 --> 0:20:41.240 so they had to be contained as wild others. We've 0:20:41.280 --> 0:20:43.240 talked about this a few times on the show before, 0:20:43.520 --> 0:20:48.680 about how in the European medieval conception women like now 0:20:48.680 --> 0:20:50.760 we tend to think that this misogynist thing is to 0:20:50.760 --> 0:20:53.960 assume that women are like servile and demur whatever. But 0:20:54.160 --> 0:20:57.840 instead the medieval conception of women was that they are 0:20:57.920 --> 0:21:02.240 chaotic and outside of good civilized Christian values, which is 0:21:02.280 --> 0:21:05.680 of course pretty cool. This is an excuse for centuries 0:21:05.680 --> 0:21:09.360 of misogyny. But this framework that women are wild, uncontrollable 0:21:09.400 --> 0:21:12.879 people makes like, I don't know, makes womanhood both like 0:21:12.960 --> 0:21:15.159 cys and trans like all the more interesting to me. 0:21:15.480 --> 0:21:18.199 To declare my womanhood is to declare my affinity to 0:21:18.280 --> 0:21:21.800 the wild world or whatever, much like I've declared my 0:21:21.840 --> 0:21:25.520 affinity to the thing that I just said. I hated 0:21:25.760 --> 0:21:30.719 capitalism because they gave me some money to run their ads, 0:21:31.520 --> 0:21:34.639 and I wanted to eat food, so I run the ads. 0:21:35.040 --> 0:21:48.120 Here they are anyway, we're back. The rise of capitalism 0:21:48.160 --> 0:21:50.960 in this read is tied to the rise of patriarchy 0:21:51.040 --> 0:21:54.879 and stronger gender roles. But I've read criticism of Federici 0:21:54.920 --> 0:21:57.120 pointing out that she's not doing enough work here talking 0:21:57.119 --> 0:22:00.680 about the patriarchal forms that preceded capitalism. And also when 0:22:00.680 --> 0:22:02.880 she was talking about being like and then the popes 0:22:02.920 --> 0:22:07.640 and the lords did a capitalism, I don't she might 0:22:07.680 --> 0:22:09.399 be better read about this than me. I'm not sure, 0:22:09.800 --> 0:22:11.960 But overall I would say that it's like the merchant 0:22:12.000 --> 0:22:14.479 class that really wanted capitalism, and like the lords and 0:22:14.520 --> 0:22:17.960 the popes like really didn't because it undermined their power. 0:22:19.200 --> 0:22:24.919 So it's imperfect, but right. So you have this idea 0:22:25.040 --> 0:22:27.800 that rise of capitalism is the rise of patriarchy and 0:22:27.840 --> 0:22:31.520 stronger gender roles. By this read, instead of the power 0:22:31.560 --> 0:22:33.719 being held by a whole surf family, it is now 0:22:33.760 --> 0:22:35.960 a rental agreement between the head of the household, the 0:22:36.000 --> 0:22:39.600 man and the landlord. Now that ownership is important, women's 0:22:39.600 --> 0:22:43.080 inability to own things is suddenly a big problem. We've 0:22:43.080 --> 0:22:44.879 talked a few times on the show about how the 0:22:44.920 --> 0:22:47.480 invention of the white race is part of the colonial 0:22:47.520 --> 0:22:51.480 project's way of pitting working class people against each other, like, hey, 0:22:51.640 --> 0:22:54.040 mister English working class man, you may be starving, but 0:22:54.080 --> 0:22:56.320 at least you're better than a black man or an irishman. 0:22:56.960 --> 0:23:00.440 And then soon enough, hey mister irishman, you're white now too. Whiteness. 0:23:00.680 --> 0:23:05.080 It's like basically whiteness as a way to destroy class solidarity. Well, 0:23:05.400 --> 0:23:09.920