Silvia Federici has been one of the most influential and widely cited Marxist feminist scholars of the last 50 years. Her landmark work, Caliban and the Witch, argued that witch hunts were an organized campaign of mass murder of women who defied the increasing implementation of a patriarchal, authoritarian order under a rapidly developing capitalist state. In this article, Emily Janakiram argues that her work, and particularly her essay “On the Meaning of Gossip" can help shed light on a much maligned yet invaluable part of solidarity among workers and women.
