a chain or manacle used to restrain a prisoner, typically placed around the ankles
what Brecht and Weill dramatised on stage was not the traditional Marxist hell of exploitative production relations, but one of unfettered consumerism
on City of Mahoganny
removed the fetters from
The boot-strapping expansionary process of technology, once liberated from capitalist fetters, can potentiate both positive and negative freedoms. It can form the basis for a fully postcapitalist economy, enabling a shift away from scarcity, work and exploitation, and towards the full development of humanity.
At a certain stage in the development of these means of production and of exchange, the conditions under which feudal society produced and exchanged, the feudal organization of agriculture and manufacturing industry, in one word, the feudal relations of property became no longer compatible with the already developed productive forces; they became so many fetters. They had to be burst asunder; they were burst asunder.