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[...] Marx and Polanyi among others have amply shown how the conditions for proletarianisation emerged, notably through the enclosure of the commons. In the wake of that act of the most complete, organised immiseration, people were left with only one option, the sale of their undifferentiated labou…

Capitalism inherited this layering of markets that evolved over the long term. But it could only truly take form by closing off the last avenues of independent individual or (small-scale) collective production, thus raising material heteronomy to an unprecedented level.

[...] Free enterprise, in the most general sense of the freedom to undertake – that is, in the sense of the conatus – is consequently nothing other than the freedom to desire and to set out in pursuit of one’s desire. That is why, outside the restrictions a society deems it appropriate to stipulate…

Spinoza calls ‘conatus’ the effort by which ‘each thing, as far as it can by its own power, strives to persevere in its being.’