"This sphere that we are deserting, within whose boundaries the sale and purchase of labour-power goes on, is in fact a very Eden of the innate rights of man. There alone rule Freedom, Equality, Property and Bentham. Freedom, because both buyer and seller of a commodity, say of labour-power, are constrained only by their own free will."
While the abolition of Jim Crow laws might have removed barriers to the commodification of labor, Marxists don’t view this is some kind of capitalist plot. It is in the interest of workers to remove all legal/political barriers to their full right to sell their labor power, even if this brings them closer to some kind of 19th century liberal economic ideal. After all, Jeremy Bentham advocated the elimination of slavery for his own reasons. On the other hand, radical abolitionists in Great Britain saw emancipation from slavery as related to the general emancipation of the working class. We must not recoil from emancipation because Jeremy Bentham favored it, should we?
full: http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2007/10/09/de-jure- discrimination-and-the-capitalist-system/