Examined here are recent contributions to an important and longstanding debate in political economy, about the link between capitalist development, the employment of unfree labor, and its role in a transition to socialism. These contributions maintain that, because Marxist theory failed to understand the centrality of unfreedom to modern capitalism, a new explanation of this link is needed. It is argued here that, although many of these new characteristics are in fact no different from those identified earlier by Marxist theory, the latter has been shorn of its revolutionary content and outcome.
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