The New Helots

Originally published in 1987 and now reissued with a substantial introduction by Robin Cohen, this wide-ranging work of comparative and historical sociology argues that a major engine of capital’s growth lies in its ability to find successive cohorts of quasi-free workers to deploy in the farms, mines and factories of an expanding international division of labour. These workers, like the helots of ancient Greece, are found at the periphery of ‘regional political economies’ or in the form of modern migrants, sucked into the vortex of metropolitan service or manufacturing industry. The regions of Southern Africa; the USA and the circum-Caribbean; European and its colonial and southern hinterlands, are systematically compared – yielding original and, in some cases, uncomfortable analogies between countries previously thought to be wholly different in terms of their political structures and guiding values. The New Helots has been written with both an undergraduate and professional readership in mind. Students of history, sociology and economics as well as those interested in patterns of migration and ethnic relations will find it of interest.