The revival of interest in the works of Karl Marx against the backdrop of social and economic upheavals at the beginning of the 21st century became the reason for the rethinking and development of a number of classical Marxist concepts from the standpoint of feminist criticism. Based on Marxist theory and methodology as a research basis, Silvia Federici suggests paying attention to gender issues that have not been sufficiently developed by the German philosopher. Federici focuses on the problem of unpaid female labor, which, in her opinion, became one of the pillars of capitalism at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. The emergence of a family based on female domestic labor laid the foundations for a new informal contract between the sexes and a new order, which the author calls wage patriarchy. The researcher shows that class struggle can also be waged within the proletariat itself, when men agree to take the position of representatives of the state in relation to women within the family (and wider community). Silvia Federici is an American scientist, teacher and activist, professor emeritus at Hofstra University.