Capital confers power over workers only when workers lack land alternatives

Evidence

Peel’s undoing came when something unexpected happened: his workers abandoned him en masse, an Antipodean nineteenth-century version of the Great Resignation. They simply moved on, got themselves plots of land in the surrounding area, and went into business for themselves. It was a disaster Peel was ill-prepared for by his English background. Lulled into a false sense of control by the situation in the British Isles, he assumed that the capital he had brought along from Mother England vested in him all the power he needed over his English employees. — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 254

Categorization

• corroborated: 3 independent passages support this claim — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, 254
• XREF: connects to: Land-based reciprocity offers an alternative to capital’s promised security. — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 244; Waged labour obedience rests on workers having no exit option; Worker-run factories across Brazil and Argentina refute the necessity of private capital — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism: An Intervention, 401 (+8 more)

Broader Connections

• Fear of unemployment disciplines workers into subordination to capital. #exemplifies (0.80) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 250
• Worker-run factories across Brazil and Argentina refute the necessity of private capital #exemplifies (0.75) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 401
• Postwar workers rejected labor as a commodity and demanded democratic control of production #exemplifies (0.75) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 185
• Capitalism requires disciplining workers into accepting private property and wage relations #exemplifies (0.72) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 834