The constitution of wage labor hides some major historical enigmas. With the generalization of wage labor, capitalism is presented, as compared to the systems that preceded it, as a bearer of freedom. However, it enshrines a dependency on the economic level, no matter how much it operates between legally "free" people. The tension between capitalism and democracy manifests itself from primitive accumulation and reappears endlessly. Historically, free wage labor is not, otherwise, but the visible tip of the iceberg of dependent labor. The slavery of the plantations, the second servitude, the work under contract of the migrants, the forced colonial work or in concentration camps, are recurring and lasting anomalies. Did not the labor movement claim in its statutes the abolition of the slavery of wage labor? How can it be explained that the development of capitalism operates at the same time in favor of the construction of the "normal" contract and the opposite devices of slavery? This book proposes an answer: the search for the control of the escape of servants, slaves, deceits and the poor represents the main element that will determine the birth of the labor market. The escape of workers is the dynamism of creation and destruction of labor market institutions, but also that of capitalist competition and accumulation. The unilateral rupture of the labor relationship has to be explored if we want to understand the true collective subjects of history, as well as the economy, and reintegrate the history of the XVI-XVIII centuries into the global history of capitalism and the world economy.