It misses its central dynamic, and so underestimates its transformative power, and it does so precisely because it interprets capitalism as a form of patriarchy, and places the notion of man-the-hunter/warrior at the centre of its analysis. But although its critique of global capitalism is both radical and uncompromising, it is not radical enough. As Silvia Federici suggests, in a foreword to this 2014 reissue, Mies 'speaks directly to the crisis that many are currently experiencing faced with the constant destruction of human lives and the environment, especially when the seeming inability of even powerful mass movements to bring about positive social change generates a quest for new paradigms' and it 'recuperates, for a younger generation radicalised by the Occupy movement and the movements of the squares, the radical core of feminism, buried under years of institutional co-optation and postmodern denial of any ground of commonality among women' (ix). The claim it makes regarding the necessary and therefore perennial reliance of capitalist accumulation on non-wage labour, and in consequence its dependence on the 'housewifization' of women, is a powerful one that still has resonance, and the same is true of its flat-out rejection of growth, trade, and capitalist consumption. So it is with Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale, a text that is challenging, compelling, inspiring, puzzling and perverse in equal measure.
A book can be a classic, and essential reading today, even if its principal argument is fundamentally wrong.
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