Abstract

What is the legal culture and how does it influence the history of labour? The author proposes in this essay a beginning of a possible answer. Points of reference being the labour crossing the law in some crucial moments of history: during the phase of industrialization of national States and in the present post-industrial age of ri-commodification of labour in the global economy. The social and political condition that changes radically the contest is the dissolution of the political parties inspired by the Marxist ideology and the decline of trade unions: both having been promoter and guarantor of labour law. The new social and economic scenario obliges the legal culture of labour, and particularly the left-wing one, to ri-think the grounds of a legal order born to mend the world and not to rebuild it completely.