I think Tom Brass's work on "deproletarianisation" and unfree labour is relevant here (cf/eg):
'... Brass (1990, 1992, 1997a) and Miles (1987) take an opposing view that unfree relations are compatible with capitalism, comprising part of capitalists' assault on the autonomy and wages of labour. Brass has argued that convict labour and indentured labour were subject to capitalist exploitation.' 'Contract Labour and Bondage in Andhra Pradesh (India)1 Wendy K. Olsen and R.V. Ramana Murthy, Journal of Social and Political Thought , Volume One, No. 2 | June 2000. http://www.yorku.ca/jspot/2/wkolsenrvramana.htm "A persistent issue...is the social content of bonded and other unfree labour. Views of such labour as `pre-' or `non-'capitalist were challenged by the argument of Tom Brass (1986b, 1990, 1997, also Brass and Bernstein 1992) that unfree labour `deproletarianization' is a characteristic strategy of capitalist restructuring rather than an index of a `persistent' pre-capitalism." Henry Bernstein And Terence J. Byres, 'From Peasant Studies to Agrarian Change', Journal of Agrarian Change, Vol. 1 No. 1, January 2001, pp.? Http://www.blackwellpublishers.co.uk/pdf/JOAC1C001%20(2).pdf. [And an attempt at a bibliography of Brass on deproletarianisation: ] Brass, Tom, 1980. `Class Formation and Class Struggle in La Convencion, Peru'. Journal of Peasant Studies, 7 (4): 42757. Brass, Tom. (1986). "The Elementary Strictures of Kinship: Unfree Relations and the Production of Commodities," in Social Analysis. No. 20. Brass, Tom, 1986. `Cargos and Conflicts: The Fiesta System and Capitalist Development in Eastern Peru'. JPS, 13 (3): 4562. Brass, Tom, 1986. `Unfree Labour and Capitalist Restructuring in the Agrarian Sector: Peru and India'. JPS, 14 (1): 5077. Brass, Tom. (1990). "Class Struggle and Deproletarianisation of Agricultural Labour in Haryana (India)," in Journal of Peasant Studies. Vol. 18, No. 1. 36-67. Brass, Tom, 1989. `Trotskyism, Hugo Blanco and the Ideology of a Peruvian Peasant Movement'. JPS, 16 (2): 17367. Brass, Tom, 1990. `Class Struggle and the Deproletarianisation of Agricultural Labour in Haryana (India)'. JPS, 18 (1): 3667. Brass, Tom. (1991). "Market Essentialism and the Impermissibility of Unfree Labour: A Reply to Shlomowitz," in Slavery and Abolition. Vol.12, No. 3. 225-244. Brass, Tom, 1991. `Moral Economists, Subalterns, New Social Movements, and the (Re)Emergence of a (Post-)Modernised (Middle) Peasant'. JPS, 18 (2): 173205. Brass, Tom, and Henry Bernstein. (1992). "Introduction: Proletarianisation and Deproletarianisation on the Colonial Plantations," in Journal of Peasant Studies. 19. 1-40. Brass, T. (1993) "Some Observations on Unfree Labour, Capitalist Restructuring, and Deproletarianization", pp. 31-50 of Brass, T., ed., Conference on the History of Free and Unfree Labour, International Institute for Social History, Amsterdam Brass, Tom, ed., 1994a. New Farmers' Movements in India. JPS, 21 (34). Brass, Tom, 1994b. `The Politics of Gender, Nature and Nation in the Discourse of The New Farmers' Movements'. JPS, 21 (34): 2771. Brass, Tom, 1994c. `Post-script: Populism, Peasants and Intellectuals, or What's Left of The Future'. JPS, 21 (34). Brass, Tom. (1995). "Unfree Labour and Agrarian Change: A Different View," in Economic and Political Weekly. 1 April. 697-699. Brass, Tom, 1996/7. `Popular Culture, Populist Fiction(s): The Agrarian Utopiates of A.V. Chayanov, Ignatius Donnelly and Frank Capra'. JPS, 24 (12): 15390. Brass, Tom. (1997a). "Some Observations on Unfree Labour, Capitalist Restructuring and Deproletarianisation," in Brass and van der Linden, eds. (1998). 57-76. Brass, Tom, 1997. `The Agrarian Myth, the "New" Populism and the "New" Right'. JPS, 24 (4): 20145. Brass, Tom, and Marcel van der Linden, eds. (1998). Free and Unfree Labour: The Debate Continues. Berlin/Paris/Bern: Peter Lang AG. Brass, Tom, 1999. Towards a Comparative Political Economy of Unfree Labour. London: Frank Cass.
