Labour Law, Capitalism and the Juridical Form: Taking a Critical Approach to Questions of Labour Law Reform

Abstract

This article seeks to demonstrate the potential contribution that a closer attention to structural factors can make to our understanding of some of the practical problems, such as the problem of personal scope, facing labour law today. This means engaging closely with questions about labour law’s socio-economic function and, in turn, the socio-economic function of its juridical form. Having shown the importance of engaging with these issues, drawing on the works of Karl Korsch, Karl Renner and Evgeny Pashukanis for this purpose, the article shows how we can use this structural understanding of law, and labour law, to constructively inform our interventions in contemporary debates about labour law’s personal scope.