ABSTRACT
The whole movement, therefore, seems to turn in a vicious circle, out of which people can only get by supposing a primitive accumulation preceding capitalistic accumulation. The legend of theological original sin tells people certainly how man came to be condemned to eat his bread through the sweat of his brow; but the history of economic original sin reveals to people that there are people to whom this is by no means essential. Free labourers, in the double sense that neither they themselves form part and parcel of the means of production, as in the case of slaves, bondsmen, etc., nor do the means of production belong to them, as in the case of peasant-proprietors. The immediate producer, the labourer, could only dispose of his own person after he had ceased to be attached to the soil and ceased to be the slave, serf, or bondsman of another.
