Slavery and peasantry is essentially abolished in the modern world, but from a political and economic point of view, what did that actually accomplish? Did a peasant living in rural Russia circa 1700 enjoy higher living standards than a slave on the Caribbean plantations at the same time? Did they have more political rights? Did they even understand the difference between each other? And what about ‘wage slaves’ from Gilded Age America and elsewhere? What made them different from peasants or real slaves?