Market relations were established not by voluntary exchange but by enclosure, dispossession, and force, and the origin shapes what follows.
Marx's 1867 account of the English enclosures, which he offered against the idyllic story of accumulation through thrift. The historical record on enclosure largely supports the coercion he described.
In practice
- A common where villagers grazed animals for four centuries becomes one man's field by Act of Parliament, and the villagers become his labourers.
- A market that emerged from a privatisation nobody could contest carries that origin in who owns what, whatever the subsequent trading.
- Further reading
- Wikipedia
- Subject
- Economics & Incentives
- Essay
- The theories behind every argument about money