The theme of this thesis is the contradictory character of labour and employment as it occurs in modernity. In this respect the thesis starts with the phenomenological reading of labour as it is expressed in its relation to property in the employment relation. The point the thesis makes is that employment in capitalism is a dialectical relation of conflict and interdependence that cannot be reduced in terms of exchange. This relation despite the efforts to the mutation of its substance by the market and the suppression of its conflictual character by the welfare state persists in its contradictory character and is expressed as a paradox in the complexity of its practice in modernity. The thesis suggests an understanding of employment that recognises it as power relation that creates relations that are very similar in their normative logic to those of a political community. The aim is by unveiling the complexity of the relation to strive for a legal understanding that whilst socially taming and conditioning domination allows the normative potential of employment to be legally expressed.