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The story of modern capitalism is one of contradictions, hidden in plain sight. On the surface, it appears as a grand system of progress, constantly driving humanity forward through innovation, production, and profit. But beneath this façade, it is haunted by a profound reliance on two forces: the movement of people and the birth of new generations. Without these, the relentless march of capitalist growth falters. And yet, the very strategies needed to sustain it—immigration and reproduction—are bitterly contested, exposing the system’s fragility and hypocrisy.

Capitalism, as Silvia Federici argued in Caliban and the Witch, is built not only on the exploitation of workers but also on the subjugation of women. It emerged in the aftermath of feudalism, shaped by a brutal process of primitive accumulation, where peasants were driven from the commons, and women’s autonomy was violently dismantled. The witch hunts of early modern Europe were not simply religious purges; they were part of the machinery that transformed women into producers of labour power—first by destroying their communal roles as healers and midwives, and then by subordinating them to the domestic sphere. This history is not a distant memory. It is embedded in the very DNA of modern capitalism, dictating how women’s bodies and labour are controlled, even today.

The system depends on a steady supply of workers, yet the sources of this labour are not infinite. In many industrialised nations, declining birth rates and ageing populations have become a pressing crisis. Economists, politicians, and business leaders point nervously to demographic charts showing a future where there simply aren’t enough young people to sustain the economy. The solution, on paper, seems simple: either bring in workers from other countries or encourage women to have more children. Yet both options are fraught with resistance, not least from the very political forces that claim to defend capitalism’s interests.

Immigration offers a quick fix. By allowing the movement of people across borders, nations can immediately replenish their labour force, particularly in low-wage sectors like agriculture, construction, and care work. Migrants are often willing to take on jobs that native populations refuse, and their vulnerability—due to precarious legal and social status—makes them an ideal source of cheap, exploitable labour. But this solution collides head-on with the rise of populist right-wing movements. Figures like Donald Trump, with his declaration of a “state of emergency” at the southern border of the United States, and political parties across Europe, preaching against the so-called invasion of immigrants, have turned migration into a flashpoint for cultural anxiety. These movements present themselves as defenders of national identity, promising to shield their followers from the supposed chaos of globalisation. And yet, in their rejection of immigration, they sabotage the very mechanism that could sustain capitalist growth. It is a self-defeating ideology, one that seeks to preserve a way of life while simultaneously undermining the economic foundations that support it.

At the same time, there is a growing call for women to return to “traditional roles.” Figures like Jordan Peterson frame this as a moral imperative, a way to restore order to a chaotic, postmodern world. Women, they argue, must embrace their biological destiny as mothers and caretakers. This narrative taps into a deeper historical pattern, one that Federici identified in the transition to capitalism: the systematic confinement of women to the domestic sphere. In the early days of capitalist development, this was achieved through violence—the witch hunts, the enclosure of the commons, the redefinition of women’s roles as subordinate to men. Today, it is couched in the language of cultural preservation and moral responsibility. Pro-natalist policies encourage women to have more children, not for their own fulfilment, but as a patriotic duty. Birth rates are framed as a measure of a nation’s vitality, a bulwark against the demographic decline that threatens the capitalist machine.

Figures like Andrew Tate take this rhetoric to its extreme, promoting a vision of society where women are little more than commodities, valued for their physical appearance and their willingness to submit. Tate’s worldview is a caricature of patriarchal capitalism, where power and control are celebrated, and exploitation is rebranded as strength. His followers see him as a truth-teller, cutting through the noise of progressive politics to reveal the “natural” order of things. But what they fail to see is that this so-called natural order is a constructed reality, one designed to extract value from women’s bodies and labour while maintaining the dominance of a privileged few.

The contradiction at the heart of all this is clear. Capitalism cannot survive without women’s reproductive labour, yet it refuses to value or support it. In Federici’s analysis, this is a defining feature of the system. Women’s unpaid work in the home—bearing children, raising them, and caring for the household—is the hidden foundation on which waged labour rests. It is a form of exploitation so deeply ingrained that it is often invisible, framed as a natural part of life rather than a source of economic value. By encouraging women to have more children, right-wing populists and capitalist elites are essentially asking them to bear the burden of sustaining the system, without addressing the structural inequalities that make this work so demanding and undervalued.

And so, the system oscillates between these two strategies: importing labour through immigration or creating it through reproduction. Both come at a cost. Immigration sparks cultural and political backlash, while reproduction reinforces gender inequalities and places immense pressure on women. Neither solution addresses the deeper contradictions of capitalism, which depends on infinite growth in a world of finite resources. The pursuit of profit, the driving force of the system, demands an ever-expanding labour force, yet the means of achieving this expansion are unsustainable.

What we see today, with the rise of figures like Trump, Peterson, and Tate, is not a solution but a desperate attempt to paper over these contradictions. Their rhetoric appeals to a nostalgia for a mythical past, a time when society was orderly, men were strong, and women knew their place. But this vision is a fantasy, one that ignores the systemic exploitation and violence that underpin it. It is a narrative that seeks to preserve the status quo by doubling down on the very inequalities that have brought us to this point.

Federici’s work reminds us that capitalism has always relied on division—between men and women, between waged and unwaged labour, between citizens and migrants. These divisions are not accidents; they are essential to the system’s functioning. And yet, they are also its greatest weakness. The same forces that capitalism exploits—women’s unpaid labour, migrant workers’ vulnerability—are sources of resistance and potential transformation. The question is whether we can imagine a different future, one that breaks free from the cycles of exploitation and inequality that have defined the last 500 years.

In the end, the story of capitalism’s reliance on immigration and reproduction is not just an economic one. It is a story about power, about who gets to define the roles we play and the value of our labour. And it is a story about resistance—about the ways in which people, throughout history, have challenged these roles and fought for a different kind of world. The answers are not simple, but they begin with recognising the contradictions at the heart of the system and refusing to accept them as inevitable. For if capitalism cannot survive without these forms of exploitation, perhaps it is time to question whether it deserves to survive at all.

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