Capitalism and Confinement

A dynamic system of perpetual movement, Capitalism is paradoxically dependent on means of confinement— in land, labor, and life

Goods, capital, and people move around the world faster and over greater distances than ever before. But capitalism’s voracious expansion violently imposes confinement at every turn in the form of border walls, prisons, police, and property lines. Our lives are constricted in more subtle ways as well, through wages, the state, and social reproduction. Capitalism and Confinement examines why confinement seems to be intensifying, who benefits, and what we can do about it.