“If,” says Wakefield, “all members of the society are supposed
 to possess equal portions of capital... no man would have a motive for
 accumulating more capital than he could use with his own hands. This is
 to some extent the case in new American settlements, where a passion for
 owning land prevents the existence of a class of labourers for hire.” [6]
 So long, therefore, as the labourer can accumulate for himself — and this
 he can do so long as he remains possessor of his means of production —
 capitalist accumulation and the capitalistic mode of production are impossible.
 The class of wage labourers, essential to these, is wanting. How, then,
 in old Europe, was the expropriation of the labourer from his conditions
 of labour, i.e., the co-existence of capital and wage labour, brought about?
 By a social contract of a quite original kind. “Mankind have adopted a...
 simple contrivance for promoting the accumulation of capital,” which, of
 course, since the time of Adam, floated in their imagination, floated in
 their imagination as the sole and final end of their existence: “they have
 divided themselves into owners of capital and owners of labour.... The division
 was the result of concert and combination.” [7] In one 
 word: the mass of mankind expropriated itself in honor of the “accumulation
 of capital.” Now, one would think that this instinct of self-denying fanaticism
 would give itself full fling especially in the Colonies, where alone exist
 the men and conditions that could turn a social contract from a dream to
 a reality. But why, then, should “systematic colonisation” be called in
 to replace its opposite, spontaneous, unregulated colonisation? But - but -
 “In the Northern States of the American Union; it may be doubted whether
 so many as a tenth of the people would fall under the description of hired
 labourers.... In England... the labouring class compose the bulk of the people.”
 [8] Nay, the impulse to self-expropriation on the part 
 of labouring humanity for the glory of capital, exists so little that slavery,
 according to Wakefield himself, is the sole natural basis of Colonial wealth.
 His systematic colonisation is a mere pis aller, since he unfortunately
 has to do with free men, not with slaves. “The first Spanish settlers in
 Saint Domingo did not obtain labourers from Spain. But, without labourers,
 their capital must have perished, or at least, must soon have been diminished
 to that small amount which each individual could employ with his own hands.
 This has actually occurred in the last Colony founded by England — the
 Swan River Settlement — where a great mass of capital, of seeds, implements,
 and cattle, has perished for want of labourers to use it, and where no settler
 has preserved much more capital than he can employ with his own hands.”
 [9]