Labour and the Wage: A Critical Perspective

Abstract

Over the past two decades, an emerging generation of Marxist writers has revisited old ideas about class, production and the legal form, in order to shed new light on our understanding of international (China Mieville, Robert Knox) and corporate law (Grietje Baars). That generation has lacked a counterpart in the field of labour law. They have one now, in the figure of Zoe Adams, a lecturer at the University of Cambridge, whose book challenges deep-held notions of the sanctity of the employment contract, and provides intellectual ballast to those resisting new forms of managerial power. Adams begins Labour and the Wage at a level of some abstraction, by insisting on the role of law as a force that constitutes social relationships. Such categories as ‘employer’ or ‘worker’ are not empty shells waiting for academic lawyers or judges to fill them with content. They are the embodiment of past practices. They...