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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.

— Michael Perelman The Invention of Capitalism: Classical Political Economy and the Secret History of Primitive Accumulation (2000)

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Alongside their work on pure economic theory, the classical political economists engaged in a parallel project: to promote the forcible reconstruction of society into a purely market-oriented system.

The Invention of Capitalism: Classical Political Economy and the Secret History of Primitive Accumulation (2000)

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