ABSTRACT
Politicians, economists and sociologists all have assumed that, over time, capitalism creates certain, so-called normal employment relationships and that these correspond best with profitability and capital accumulation. The idea that normal employment relationships actually exist in capitalism has become entrenched in the thinking not only of the defenders of social market economy but also of radical social critics. For a long time, research in social history, like social policy itself, was based on the assumption that ‘normal employment relationships’ were the logical result of capitalist development and that all other forms of dependent employment would gradually disappear. The concept is a ‘prevailing fiction’ and is based on a form of wage labour characterized by: continuity and stability of employment, and a wage that enables an employee to support a small family. The similarities between the various criticisms of the old paradigm of normal employment relationships have become more evident.
