| Ideas on the Relation of Consumer and Labour Law - Preliminary Draft of a Paper presented at IACL Conference in Capetown RSA April 2007 |
Udo Reifner (Hamburg)
Some ideas on the Relation of Consumer and Labour Law
Paper presented at the IACL Conference in Capetown, ZA April 2007
REDISCUSSING CONSUMER LAW: “LEGAL SOCIOLOGY”
Consumer law is the historical answer of the legal system to deficits consumers experience when trying to satisfy their basic needs in the market economy. Its existence proves the blind perplexity of the bourgeois idea of contracts with regard to basic human needs. If this deficit of the invisible hand shall be remedied consumer lawyers have to leave the realm of legal dogmatics and ask sociological questions about the functioning and limits of contract law as such to trespass its form of abstraction and find more adequate forms. Such sociological research on law has its own rules in so far as it is atypically normative. It has the constitutional obligation to share two believes with legal science: first that with the existence of the law there is a generally accepted historic quest for (social) justice able to give the global human society a peaceful future without wars, second that this idea has to be furthered exclusively through the rule of law which restricts the pursuit of justice to what this legal form of communication can achieve. Consumer law and as we will see later all contract law concerning the transformation of basic human needs into offer or demand on the market is therefore a task for “legal sociology” as a part of legal science. This kind of research lies between behavioural social and formal legal sciences between normative and empirical approaches to law.
In a sociological perspective consumer law orders, prevents and solves economic and social conflicts of communities wherein direct communication between suppliers and consumers is impossible or inefficient. Such peace keeping with the law should be achieved with abstract and general legal forms that respond to the idea of formal justice.
Legal forms require abstractions. They redefine reality within a comprehensive ideology (“bounded rationality”). These sanctioned “ways of seeing” guarantee the smooth functioning of society. People find it “normal” to obey to the mostly unknown legal norms if they think likewise. Religious feudal as well as rational market societies developed a self-executing legal ideology where legal sanctions were only necessary to provide an occasional stage on which the super-ego harbouring this ideology is publicly strengthened against the wishes and wants of the ego. The abstraction in contract law required that the consumer turned his existential needs into a desire to buy or to rent. This historically necessary liberalisation of law from personal elements has fulfilled its function and turned into an obstacle to its own implications. Its freedom turns legal relations back into a new dependency from profit driven economic mechanisms. Law can and has to liberate itself form outdated abstractions.
Legal abstractions are temporary tools. They can even be used to further injustice and racial discrimination. Germany and South Africa are two historic examples. Both systems did not officially refrain from the idea of justice. Legal sociology can demystify the ideological claims to justice within present law and develop forms within the legal system that can better respond to the basic normative aspirations. In so far traditional contract law is an unnecessary and exaggerated abstraction from consumer needs which require the development of more socially enriched abstractions in law.
The four basic questions from the 1970ties discussion have to be revisited: a) What are the problems of consumption in a market society (as well as in contract law) in conflict with the idea of social justice? b) How does “consumer law” define such problems with regard to law and justice? c) Are its solutions adequate? d) How can legal tools be developed that are more in line with social justice?
The last twenty years experienced an enormous roll back in the discussion through participants with answers without questions. There answers: consumer information, education and choice assume that justice is an inherent function of markets which has to be uncovered. If the market is the solution then the market is not the problem. The neo-liberal approach in consumer law has nearly totally absorbed all efforts to further a comprehensive theory of consumer law. We should overcome this deadlock. There is a sufficient large scientific community who shares the assumptions underlying the first three questions in order to be able to start a more fruitful discussion on the fourth. These assumptions are:
a) Social discrimination where “the poor pay more, get less and are partially excluded” is the pitfall of a market driven approach to the distribution of goods and services for personal consumption.
b) Most existing consumer law is empirically ineffective with regard to these problems. It does not address consumption and needs as such. It targets the well-functioning of markets drilling consumers to play roles that may be necessary for the markets but will ever less help them to achieve justice in globalised markets.
c) Neo-liberal consumer law principles kill the idea of consumer protection. Those (usury) rules that directly guarantee social justice in market economies for weak consumers are denounced as anti-competitive hindering globalization and a common European market. The draft for the EU Consumer Credit-Directives as well as the papers for a European Contract Law replace consumer protection by the quest for enlarged markets ignoring its effects on social justice, cultural diversity and small scale competition.
Although this analysis is shared by an increasing number of lawyers their propositions to overcome the dilemma of a misused consumer law are still so contradictory that it guarantees its inefficiency:
(1) Social science (Bourdieu) anti-globalization movements as well as behavioural economics denounce the ideological character of the “information model”. They ask for substantive legal interventions, protectionism or a more behavioural approach to consumer rights.
(2) Others want to drive consumer information and choice to its ends by asking for advice, education and legal representation to make information more effective.
(3) A third group wants to protect consumers from the consequences of their choice through discharge of debts or protection against early cancellation.
(4) A model influenced by the Germanist tradition in law favours a case by case approach where the “good” judge gets the right to intervene with contractual relations under a general principle of good faith or the clausula rebus sic stantibus.
This cacophonie is due to the fact that the true discussion takes place with those who misuse consumer law instead of developing it. None of these solutions is able to transform the growing political critique of purely market driven developments into adequate legal forms. If the market itself is unjust, remedies that cure its outcomes are insufficient. If globalised markets cannot afford too much diversity small suppliers taking information rights serious will not be able to produce the necessary diversity in offer and supply. If on the other hand enlarged markets make the most efficient forms of production accessible to all and if a certain consumer autonomy helps to allocate resources more properly a return to protectionism and regulated markets will not be in the general interest of consumers.
These problems are not new to the law. A hundred years ago the same questions arose in labour law and later on in tenants’ law. Could the market provide for a just price? Would the individual worker have enough power on the market to get fair conditions? Can the market provide for solutions to illness, death, hunger, infancy, disablement etc? Can protection against errors, the then only informational remedy the civil codes provided, help to create responsible contracts? How should good faith be applied to protect the workers and what kind of moral limits should be upheld in contract law? How can contract law help those who are entangled in long-term relations and at the mercy of greedy capitalists?
In his two volumes on the “labour contract” already in 1902 Philipp Lotmar has treated nearly all those questions with which we are concerned today in consumer law between freedom of contract and social justice. It dealt with poverty and social discrimination, attacked the problems of basic needs with regard to formalised and abstract contractual language and especially addressed the questions of incomplete markets where the demand side of labour exercised a form of natural cartel just by being able to refrain from any individual contract even in a situation where collectively there was no choice at all. No comparable work has been done in consumer law since.
LABOUR LAW AND CONSUMER LAW
Learning from labour law is not easy. Labour law is different, employs feudal forms to shelter the weak, is mostly market averse, has mighty additional players and a state support which fixes the holes the market has afflicted to basic needs of the workers through social security systems and care.
Labour law is collective consumer law is individualistic
Unlike consumer law labour law has not developed out of individual contract law. From its very beginning it was forced onto the legal community by political facts set by collective actions that breached individual contracts to exercise collective power. The legal community was more of a notary to this process and tried to withstand. This is why with the exception of some few like Lotmar no individual contract theory developed that could give an answer to the quest for social in labour contracts.
Without the chance of organised power which according to Olson’s free-rider syndrome cannot be duplicated in consumer affairs the power necessary to introduce social justice into the contractual relation is lacking. But are trade unions still the main subject of introducing social justice elements into labour law? A decreasing number of industrial workers are organised, a decreasing number of workers are employed in the industry. Self-employment, unorganised small business employees, liberal professions and a black labour market as well as part time and seasonal labour or work at domicile have developed outside collective agreements but not without a response of labour law to its social problems. It is understandable that trade unions claim the whole of social rights as theirs but is it true and is it wise to ignore other effective mechanisms of collective influence into individual contract law to further social justice.
Most workers’ rights have since the beginning of collective action been implemented into statutory law leaving basically price regulation to collective bargaining. This is not the core of social contract law. Instead this technique addresses the difficulties of long term incomplete contracts to adapt individual contracts to changed conditions through inflation or higher productivity. Similar mechanisms develop where official commissions overlook pricing in transport, mass communication, utilities or where courts use existing public awareness to adjust unilaterally decided prices in consumer relations. Usury ceilings play an important role in financial services and rent contracts. This model has recently served the German government to develop the idea of a “usurious” low wage. Public opinion as expressed by the mass media or political parties sometimes exercise a more important influence onto employers in questions of job cuts than trade unions. Workers have here learned from the consumer side where complaints thus get a collective dimension in public.
But are there no collective agreements in consumer law? Collective agreements have already been concluded between banks and consumer groups under the Community Reinvestment Act in the USA. In other parts of the world banks formulate unilateral collective principles of “credit responsible” like Cetelem in France or GE Money in Switzerland. Ethical principles concerning the treatment of clients or employees are enumerated in the latest EU enterprise disclosure legislation. Such principles are increasingly discussed and adapted publicly. They still have no direct effect on the individual consumer contract. But with regard to English labour law this is not necessary for its legal efficiency. But also in comparison with Continental labour law consumer contracts are influenced by the collective expression of a social will. Courts cut ever growing holes into the individual contract using general clauses of good morals, good faith, general customs, ordre public, or unconscionability to be able to access generally accepted and published collective standards. The German constitutional court even ordered the courts to do so by creating an obligation to tame the freedom of contract where it grossly conflicts with requirements of social justice to shelter the weak against economic power. EU directives insert notions like “usual”, “typical”, “adequate”. “fair” into consumer law. This gives the judge additional discretion to investigate existing collective standards in society. With the French law on “social modernisation” from 17th of January 2002 where the « harcèlement moral » has been added to the limits of contractual freedom also labour law has been amended in article L 120-4 of the Code of Labour which reads « Le contrat de travail est exécuté de bonne foi ».
Standardization boards like DIN or ISA have started to develop social norms instead of technical applications only. “Good practices” for quality management and good advice like DIN EN ISO 9001:2000 go far beyond standardisation into the realm of law. In this process representatives of the industry include consumer representatives so that standards applied in malpractice cases and contract interpretation come close to the way and effects of collective agreements. Now unilateral collective declarations have first been made binding in individual contracts. Promises made in advertising with regard to the quality of sold goods are turned automatically into contractual rights if the supplier has not revoked the information in due time before. The variety of collective forms of law in consumer contracts is comparable to the way the collective will of the working class made its way into labour contracts before collective agreements were officially accepted and monopolised in the organisational form of trade unions.
Consumer protection relies on markets, labour protection on the state
While consumer law in its present form seems to reduce its instruments to market choice labour law has never even discussed to use the informational approach which seems to make consumer protection incomparable with labour protection.
One could simply argue that labour law is less vulnerable to ideological assumptions. The existing power of labour organisations reduces the amount of ideological definitions for everyday reality. Trade unions in the right to early termination would scarcely take it serious if the employer side would promise to disclose if no such right exists instead. But the ideological hegemony of free market advocates in consumer affairs does not explain all of it. The information model in consumer law comes from a sales economy where consumers mainly acted through spot contracts in short term relations. This has changed since. Sales law although ideologically still the dominant model of consumer law does not (as this conference reveals) play the dominant role in empirically applied as well as scientifically researched consumer law. Nearly all modern consumer problems relate to long term contracts in a service and credit society. It is only a question of time that legislators and the legal science will have to admit that cooling-off periods and the right of early withdrawal just as specially designed information requirements are used in long term relations never to cure overhasty decisions but only to find formal errors in court to cure substantive problems of the contract much later where the law lacks any other remedy. The information overflow and the slight move of the EU Commission to admit that they want to employ insights of behavioural economics to reduce the information overload of their present directives start the demystification process.
On the other hand labour lawyers discuss more contractual autonomy for workers with regard to the law and collective agreements. Labour markets develop and its increased differentiation of qualifications strengthen the role of individuals in labour law. Collective agreements and strict workers rights are reproached of discriminating against unemployed and first time job seekers. Their their equal and collective form of regulation restricts justice to those who are already inside. A more flexible form of labour contracts could ameliorate the fate of especially elderly unemployed and help young applicants to gain a job history just as credit systems provide for a credit history.
Workers are suppliers, consumers are users
Within contractual ideology the workers seems to offer his labour while the employer is on the demand side. Instead in consumer relations including tenant landlord relations the consumer is on the demand side. The labour contract sees the individual as the active while in consumer contracts it is the more passive side. The legal definitions of labour contracts underline the “offer of services” in the respective articles of the law.
Indeed the formal structure of a social contract which comprises labour, tenant and consumer relations seems to be impossible. But there is much reason that labour law is misrepresenting the true meaning of the labour contract.
The labour law uses the words “Arbeitgeber”, “Employer”, “employeur”, “datore di lavoro” to define the specific task this part of the labour contract has to fulfil. Instead the word “Arbeitnehmer” assumes that the worker “takes” labour. This is in contrast with the basic definition of “services” and assumes that the worker is “demanding” something from the employer who “supplies” the wanted good. The labour movement has therefore criticised this ideological reversal of “facts” in which the employer who according to Socialist believe “exploits” the workforce of the worker is turned into somebody who “gives” such work to the employee. The labour movement has even argued that the worker is forced to “sell” his labour force to the employer (instead of renting it out) so that the capitalist can exploit it. Labour, it is argued, has turned into a commodity which is alienated from the operating individual through the foreign destination of the employer. It therefore seems as if the original formal contract definition in the civil codes which abstracts from personal labour is more adequate than the existing socially informed labour law.
There is much reason to believe the contrary. 100 years of labour movement have probably not culminated into legal notions which have falsified the more adequate exchange ideology of 19th century contract law. The notion “Arbeitgeber” “Employer” as all legal notions have proved effective as bounded rationalities because they successfully mirrored the ways workers see and reflect in labour relations.
If we turn to a more sociological view it is obvious that the public sees the employer as the “supplier of jobs”. On the “job market” employers are owners and retain the property rights to jobs to which ordinary workers “apply”. In German the language is clear when a worker tells that “I found a job”, “I am looking for a job” instead of “I am offering my labour”. “My boss has given me another job or work”, “I have asked for a better job”. “Nachfrage nach Arbeit” , “demand of labour” “demande du travail” makes the worker appear as somebody who “asks for labour” and not who supplies it. In fact “Arbeit”, “labour”, “lavoro” is not identical to what the law calls a “service” or “Dienstleistung”. The true meaning of “Arbeit” is the “job” or the “Arbeitsstelle” or the “Arbeitsgelegenheit” (“job opportunity”). The “job” is the incarnation of the “means of production” which includes the specific organisation of combined and parted labour an entrepreneur can offer to job seekers. German labour law has developed an institution that comprises the totality of what a “job” is about: the “ausgeübter und eingerichteter Gewerbebetrieb” to which the entrepreneur has an absolute right protected like individual property by tort law.
Those who queue up at the employment centre or historically at the market place where employers looked for daytallers do not believe that they are suppliers. They think in categories of demand and see the other side as the true supplier of labour.
The general definitions of the labour contract omit this obviously crucial element of labour relations from the contract. They instead focus on the “obligation to work” as the core element derived from the service and sales doctrine. Only in common law there seems to be a more nutual description of the contract.
There is some evidence that the civil law approach to labour law has to be made more consistent in order to harmonise the contradiction of two opposing definitions of the individual within the same definition of the labour contract: “Arbeitgeber” versus “Diensleister” or “Employeur” versus “donneur d’activité”. If we assume that a basic element of the labour contract is the offer of the employer to let an individual use its machinery and organisational facilities in order to be able to make the most profitable use of one’s own labour force the labour contract comes close to such consumer contracts where the consumer rents other capital like money (consumer loans) or real estate (renting a home) to use it for his or her needs. Those who refer to the Marxist doctrine of exploitation should remember that Marx himself identified the exclusion from the use of the means of production as the most problematic aspect of dependant wage work. So if exclusion through private property is the problem for the worker then the labour contract is the partial renouncement to this exclusivity. Labour contracts then join the definition of credit or rent agreements where in favour of the borrower or tenant the donor of the capital renounces to its use during the lifetime of the contract.
Such reintegration of labour law into a modern social contract law that is able to provide adequate abstractions for social needs would not only help to better understand labour law and its fruits for general contract law but it would also help to give the legions of social rights developed in labour law a new and modern outfit.
A number of workers’ rights could be better explained as for example the right to access the workplace, the right to an adequate workplace and the right to effectively being able to work. Such rights would be a logical consequence of renting the “job” which always includes the right to effectively accessing and using these opportunities. But also his duties become more clear. As the worker is “renting” the use of the means of production from the employer (“the job opportunity”) he implicitly agrees to subordinate to the rules of this productive ensemble just as a landlord can fix certain rules connected with the use of his flat which reflect not only his concern for its well-being but also his concern for the whole of the tenants living in this structure. Both aspect also occur in a company.
The employer’s right to direct the worker (“Direktionsrecht”) is therefore not a reminiscent of feudal status hierarchy but a logical implication of the rent agreement.
Learning from labour law requires an open discussion with labour lawyers about the compatibility of their ideologies with other areas of social contract law where needs are turned into market driven demand. If labour law admits that the basic need of workers is to use the means of production which are the property of the other side then labour law is only one form in which basic needs are brought to the market place where they apply for the use of capital which is organised differently from personal consumption and work.
This development would also help to free labour law from those other feudal elements where workers’ rights and duties are termed in the language of subordination and feudal boundage like care, fidelity, obedience.
Defining the core of the labour contract as a credit relation in which the worker rents the use of the means of production does not yet solve the problems of the other rights and duties. There is obviously another credit relation involved where the employer gets access to labour renting equally its productive use.
Instead of a mutual agreement to sell services for money a labour contract would therefore more adequately be viewed as a mutual rent agreement linked together in a form of a labour partnership. Both parties agree to further the joint goal of a productive use of their respective capital contributions. The salary of the worker is then only the predefined and fixed part of his share in the profit of the partnership. Such legal view would be more democratic than the traditional hierarchy. Instead of requiring “personal dependency” the contractually defined mutual use of labour and means of production and its implications for decision making and obedience could bring the labour contract closer to other forms of social contracts.
CONSUMER CREDIT – TOWARDS LEGAL ECONOMICS IN CONSUMER LAW
Labour law approaches social contract law via the idea of renting foreign capital. In this it shares its forms with consumer loans as well as with rent agreements. A comparative analyses of these three forms which in Roman and Germanic law were still identified as “locatio” or “Miete” show may features and problems in common which either are related to their long term quality or to the fact that they deal with basic needs in a market economy. All three of them do not apply directly the rule of exchange, give rights to and protection against early termination, provide for adaptation, are concerned with social problems, accept the necessity of access, define remuneration pro rata temporis, uphold quasi-contractual relations even after cancellation and see contractual relations highly influenced by general principles or collective values.
Economic impact and legal form of social contracts
As we have seen above all three areas of law have a common economic basis: credit which in legal terms is addressed as lending or renting. Consumers rent money or lease goods or services, tenants rent flats and workers rent means of production while they rent out their labour force.
EU law following the English and American example has obscured the true relation between contract and social interest by introducing economic notions into contract law without regard to its legal form. If the EU would go on and introduce a general definition for all mentioned contractual relations as credit contracts regardless of its legal form it could probably harmonise European contract law by replacing national contract law with only one definition.
But at least civil law does not accept “credit contracts”. Such notions reflect the enormous powers of judges in common law and the direct economic involvement of case law. Thus common law seems to have replaced loan contracts by credit contracts although the first is the formal legal definition while the latter is a purpose driven economic definition which fits to many more contractual relations especially to any kind of deferred payment relations or commercial papers. A “credit contract” is legally unthinkable just as there is no such thing as a “consumer contract”. The rule of law requires formal and not simply purpose driven definitions in order to remain predictable. If not law would depend on the ideology of its applicants who get the power to define the inherent, supposed or ideologically superposed purpose of human action.
But purpose driven law can attach certain consumer, worker or tenants rights to an economic intention like “consumption” and “credit” either separate or combined.
The advantage of such law is its economic effectiveness and flexibility. Its disadvantage is the shift of power from the parties to the judge. While legal forms depend on the will of the parties who choose or develop them purpose driven definitions are objective and cannot be circumvented through the choice of different forms. This is why the legislator wherever state intervention for the protection of social interest is at stake covers formal contracts with a second layer of legal definitions. While the individual contract itself addresses the form of the action protective law addresses its economic or social function. The distinction is crucial for the rule of law. If the purpose driven contract definition would totally overtake the definition of the contract the shift of power from the parties to the judge would be total so that the judge under the pretext of expressing only the will of the parties could also intervene to stir both parties into politically wanted behaviour or disfavour even the weak. Both tendencies have been legion in authoritarian German contract law decisions of the Reichsgericht, the Supreme Labour Court and even the Bundesgerichtshof.
Many especially socially engaged lawyers do not recognise that there is no labour, consumer or tenant contract as such. Because courts and the legal profession are mostly only involved where protection is required consumer law has emerged at the surface of contract law as if it had its distinct character. Seemingly new contracts like the labour contract, the consumer credit contract or the tenant landlord contract are sometimes taken as an alternative to the underlying legal form. But there is no such thing as a labour contract, a consumer credit contract or a special landlord tenant rent agreement. It is still the original legal form which describes its basic character as service, loan or rent agreements. Such service contracts are addressed as labour contracts, sales agreements as consumer contracts or rent agreements as tenant-landlord contracts only where the law interferes to shelter the weaker party and the judge has to apply the law. Consumer, credit, labour or tenants’ law is therefore statutory (or collective) interventionist law.
Credit and Rent – economic contents and legal form
The emergence of consumer loan agreements allows a deepened insight into the common roots of labour, tenants and long term consumer law. Economically all three relate to credit and lifetime. For all of them the legal form has been “renting” (locatio), all of them require respect of personality.
Consumer loans (together with its logical counterparts of investment contracts for retirement and other consumption purposes) are the most advanced legal expression of contractual relations with regard to social issues in industrialised societies. While it seems to focus on mere money relations it is at the same time existential to the well-being of humans next to labour and housing. It adds a third fundamental dysfunction to capitalism which tends to overrule the other two: after unemployment and homelessness, overindebtedness where one has sold his or her own future trying in vain to overcome present disadvantages, mishaps or unmet basic needs turns into the final inescapable state of social deprivation. The three evils together form the unholy trinity of poverty and social discrimination in modern times. Whatever in the name of social justice has been reproached to European contract law concerns one of them.
But this is not reflected adequately in the discussion on social justice. The concepts for more regard for the weak and more social justice in contract law employ pre-capitalist concepts of “protection” instead of developing concepts for more concern in labour, housing and credit law. Although their specific clients mostly suffer especially in this three areas they prefer to ask for protection of consumer interest, women’s rights, data and environment instead before achieving more regard for them at all. Especially in the modern process of harmonising European contract law labour law and housing law has been neglected and even consumer credit law has been excluded from the construction site of a European contract law. that should have been extracted from the Consumer Acquis of the EU.
It is this last institution which in its legal and economic appearance assembles the highest contradiction which contract law can reach: social by its contents and asocial by its form. While labour and housing address the existential impact of their commodities in consumer credit although omnipresent in the real life of the borrowers all social functions remain invisible. While economically it targets the same need as the labour contract to gain money for one’s living and relates its repayment to the future income of the borrower or worker it refuses to pay attention also to the social environment of income and expenditure.
At the time of J.F. Kennedy’s presidential address on consumer rights in the 1960ties there have been extensive discussions whether such a thing as consumer law can exist under a private law doctrine which in capitalist societies assumes that natural and even legal persons have the same rights to enter into freely defined contractual relations dominated by the idea of mutual exchange. In this system consumption remains an external motive to the exchange process as defined in the contract. Consumption is relegated to the private non-interactive sphere of the contracting party.
Consumer credit, the purest capitalist form of “consumer law”, does not even allude to consumption at all. Money exchanges for money while we call it a “consumer” credit contract, a “Verbraucherdarlehen” or a “contrat de crédit à la consommation” according to which ideology (protect consumers or consumption?) underlay the national implementation of the same Directive 67/104/EEC.
Although only the French legal denomination “credit à la consommation” (credit for consumption purposes) is consequent in its wording its concrete regulations focus on persons and is indifferent to the fact whether a consumer lend money to buy a car for leisure or commercial transportation, to gamble or to invest into his or her children’s higher education.
WHAT CAN BE LEARNED FROM LABOUR LAW?
Labour law has already dealt with all social problems that occur in human lives. It has found compromises and solutions between market driven intentions and needs which today occur also in consumer relations. Poverty, needs, lifetime, children, self-determination, individual freedom, shelter, health protection which have become major issues in all kind of long term consumer relations are well known in labour law. While capitalist society assumed that if steady labour income can be guaranteed through protective labour law and social security despite the weak social basis for it total market freedom had been given to the distributive consumption side. While this partition of labour between labour and consumer law is eroding consumer law has to translate the labour law solutions into its own area. For this labour relations have to be redefined in the language of modern contract law which especially requests that (1) the feudal ideology of the “service” (from servus (lat) = slave) contract it totally replaced by modern forms of cooperation, (2) collective law is redefined in terms of individual contract law and (3) the exchange between labour force and money is replaced by a more complex view of mutual use of means of production and capacity to work. |
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39614 |
| Author(s): |
UR |
| Publication date: |
10/04/07 |
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Created: 09/04/07. Last changed: 09/04/07.
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