Source: The Invention of Capitalism: Classical Political Economy and the Secret History of Primitive Accumulation (2000), p. 3
“Most people in Britain did not enthusiastically engage in wage labor—at least so long as they had an alternative. To make sure that people accepted wage labor, the classical political economists actively advocated measures to deprive people of their traditional means of support.”
Source: The Invention of Capitalism: Classical Political Economy and the Secret History of Primitive Accumulation (2000), p. 2
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Michael Perelman 3
American economist 1939Related quotes

1930s, Speech to the Democratic National Convention (1936)
Context: The hours men and women worked, the wages they received, the conditions of their labor — these had passed beyond the control of the people, and were imposed by this new industrial dictatorship. The savings of the average family, the capital of the small-businessmen, the investments set aside for old age — other people's money — these were tools which the new economic royalty used to dig itself in. Those who tilled the soil no longer reaped the rewards which were their right. The small measure of their gains was decreed by men in distant cities. Throughout the nation, opportunity was limited by monopoly. Individual initiative was crushed in the cogs of a great machine. The field open for free business was more and more restricted. Private enterprise, indeed, became too private. It became privileged enterprise, not free enterprise.

Source: 1860s, Second State of the Union address (1862)
Context: Labor is like any other commodity in the market — increase the demand for it and you increase the price of it. Reduce the supply of black labor by colonizing the black laborer out of the country, and by precisely so much you increase the demand for and wages of white labor.

Twitter Post https://twitter.com/thehill/status/1134631705153802241, (31 May 2019)
2019, Twitter Quotes (2019), May 2019
Joel Blau and Mimi Abramovitz, The Dynamics of Social Welfare Policy (Oxford University Press: 2010) p. 68

Source: 1860s, Second State of the Union address (1862)

1930s, Message to Congress on establishing minimum wages and maximum hours (1937)
Source: Europe and the People Without History, 1982, Chapter 12 The New Laborers, p. 354.

1870s, Second State of the Union Address (1870)