The condition of extreme labour exploitation often observable in current global capitalism is described by many studies in social sciences as ‘forced labour’. However, by depicting an ahistorical picture detached from its capitalist social forms, such definitions often reproduce shallow analyses of labour and moralistic knowledge, which conceal the structural determinants of labour exploitation. Trying to problematize the concept of labour freedom through a Marxian historical materialist perspective and drawing on mixed methods, this chapter uses the case of agrarian labour in Uzbekistan of post-Soviet independence to investigate the empirical, methodological and epistemological complexities underpinning such concept. Finally, while making explicit the policy implications the country faces to regulate and protect labour, the chapter provides some reflections on the contradictions of late capitalist accumulation in low-income countries.

The immediate producer, the labourer, could only dispose of his own person after he had ceased to be attached to the soil and ceased to be the slave, serf, or bondsman of another. To become a free seller of labour power, who carries his commodity wherever he finds a market, he must further have escaped from the regime of the guilds, their rules for apprentices and journeymen, and the impediments of their labour regulations. (Marx 2011: 786)