ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines the Hegelian critique of the assumptions underlying the employment contract. Karl Marx accepted Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s critique—which centers on the idea of individual personality—only in part, with fateful results for his social theory. The chapter examines the meaning of “personality” in Hegel. It argues that Hegel’s terminology in the Philosophy of Right is illuminated by his 1831 analysis of electoral reform. The chapter shows that a fundamental goal of Hegel’s state is regulation of the labor contract, including abolition of child labor and restrictions on working hours. It also outlines the Hegelian connection between property and abstract personality, which deals with Hegel’s theory of the family. Hegel saw the employment contract as the defining instance of bourgeois “insanity of personality”. Hegel described the conditions giving rise to extremes of wealth and poverty in the external state, using England as his focus.
