Editing Employment contract (section)

==Criticism==
{{Main|Wage slavery}}
{{Syndicalism sidebar}}
{{Anarchism sidebar|sp=uk}}

[[Anarcho-syndicalism|Anarcho-syndicalists]] and other socialists who criticise [[Labour economics#Wage slavery|wage slavery]], e.g. [[David Ellerman]] and [[Carole Pateman]], posit that the employment contract is a legal fiction in that it recognises human beings juridically as mere tools or inputs by abdicating responsibility and [[self-determination]], which the critics argue are inalienable. As Ellerman points out, "[t]he employee is legally transformed from being a co-responsible partner to being only an input supplier sharing no legal responsibility for either the input liabilities [costs] or the produced outputs [revenue, profits] of the employer's business."<ref>{{Harvnb|Ellerman|2013|p=11}}.</ref> Such contracts are inherently invalid "since the person remain[s] a de facto fully capacitated adult person with only the contractual role of a non-person" as it is impossible to physically transfer self-determination.<ref>{{Harvnb|Ellerman|2013|p=9}}.</ref> As Pateman argues:

{{Blockquote|
The contractarian argument is unassailable all the time it is accepted that abilities can 'acquire' an external relation to an individual, and can be treated as if they were property. To treat abilities in this manner is also implicitly to accept that the 'exchange' between employer and worker is like any other exchange of material property.&nbsp;.&nbsp;. The answer to the question of how property in the person can be contracted out is that no such procedure is possible. Labour power, capacities or services, cannot be separated from the person of the worker like pieces of property.<ref>{{Harvnb|Ellerman|2013|p=16}}.</ref>
}}

According to some law scholars, generally, the contract of employment denotes a relationship of economic dependence and social subordination. In the words of the controversial labour lawyer Sir [[Otto Kahn-Freund]],

<blockquote>
"the relation between an employer and an isolated employee or worker is typically a relation between a bearer of power and one who is not a bearer of power. In its inception it is an act of submission, in its operation, it is a condition of subordination, however much the submission and the subordination may be concealed by the indispensable figment of the legal mind known as the 'contract of employment'. The main object of labor law has been, and... will always be a countervailing force to counteract the [[inequality of bargaining power]] which is inherent and must be inherent in the employment relationship."<ref>''Labour and the Law'', Hamlyn Lectures, 1972, 7</ref></blockquote>