Beyond Subordination: Four Arguments

The thesis of the paper is that labour law is, and above all must be, a law related to work in general. It is therefore necessary to overcome the binary system in which all social guarantees are in the field of subordination and no social protection is in that of self-employment. The Author use four arguments to support this thesis: a sociological argument, a historical-juridical argument, an economic argument, and a comparative argument. These arguments have different disciplinary bases and have different functions, but they converge in the belief that labour law is currently, and should be in the future, the law of the work “in gen- eral” and not only that of employment.