Freedom, equality, property and Bentham: The debate over unfree labour

Abstract

Definitional disputes may be disregarded as inconsequential aside from getting in the way of communicating substantive positions. In the present instance, such an attitude seems untenable if only because Free Labour and Capitalism are big words in wide currency. And debates involving these terms reflect deeper differences in theoretical and historical interpretation. Though, or perhaps because, a considerable part of the volume in review is energised by such disputes, it makes an eminently valuable contribution and provokes many substantive questions relating to labour and class relations, both contemporary and especially historical. While opinion may vary whether, on balance, the eighteen wide‐ranging case studies in the volume shed useful light on the categories in contention and vice versa, their collective value transcends the debates themselves.

Free and Unfree Labour: The Debate Continues, edited by Tom Brass and Marcel van der Linden, Bern: Peter Lang, 1997. Volume 5 in the series International and Comparative Social History. Pp.602. £52/US$78.95 (hardback). ISBN 3 906756 87 4; 0 8204 3424 8 (US)