The interpretative framework here provided stressed the continuity of primitive accumulation and its fundamental persistence in mature capitalist economies. The foundation of this continuity is found once we recognise what Marx calls the “oppositional nature of the capitalistrelation”. The result is, I believe, a picture of Marx’s theory of primitive accumulation which gives us insights into the essential character of capitalist accumulation itself −− the divorce between producers and means of production −− and about the limits posed on capitalist accumulation by social struggles. Reformulating Marx’s theory of primitive accumulation in this way contributes to rescue Marx’s theory of capitalist mode of production from its political irrelevance at best and its instrumentality for capitalist oppression at worst. Indeed, to consider "primitive accumulation" as an
historical phase rather than a recurrent strategy vis-á-vis the continuous character of struggles, has opened the way even for "revolutionaries" to welcome it and promote it as a necessary stage
towards "socialism".

The emphasis here put on the basic conceptual similarity between those processes occurred in the period regarded by historians as the dawn of capitalist era and the age regarded by simple common sense as a mature capitalist system, did not mean to downplay the obvious remarkable
differences. The modern forms of primitive accumulation occur in contexts quite different from the ones in which the English enclosure movement or the slave trade took place. Yet, to emphasise their
common character allows us to interpret the new without forgetting the hard lessons of the old. Socio-economic rights and entitlements are in most cases the result of past battles. State institutions
have developed and attempted to accommodate many of these rights and entitlements with the priorities of a capitalist system. The entitlements and rights guaranteed by the post-war welfare state
for example, can be understood as the institutionalisation in particular forms of social commons.

Together with high growth policies, the implementation of full employment policies and the institutionalisation of productivity deals, the welfare state was set to accommodate people's expectations after two world wars, the Soviet revolution, and a growing international union
movement. Therefore, the global current neoliberal project, which in various ways targets the social commons created in the post war period set itself as a modern form of enclosure, dubbed by some as “new enclosures”