Still, there is no doubt that the idea of the employee’s openended duty to obedience and fidelity shows vitality up to this very day. Still, there is no doubt that Swedish law students today are taught that the contract of employment is essentially a relationship of inequality and obedience. Against this background, the central issues of this study can be specified as follows. ) How did the doctrine about the worker’s far-reaching duty of obedience emerge in Swedish labour law? In what manner had Swedish legislators and legal scholars treated the relationship between master and servant, and between employer and employee, before the labour court made its decisive decisions around ? ) For what reasons canWinroth’s opinions about the form and content of a labour contract and the master-servant relationship be characterised as a breakthrough of “the modern thinking about contract law”? Labour law may seem to have a relatively short history when focusing on the social-political significance of wage labour and industrialisation. In most Western countries it became recognised as a distinct division of law only after the Second World War. Not until the end of the 19th century, did wage labour and the employment relation become the “socially typical” and indispensable means of subsistence for the vast population. Not until then did the historical genuine and central issues concerning the balance between economic efficiency and protection of the worker become focused on making corresponding legal rules. One of the central issues concerned the legal character and regulation of wage labour. However, as soon as one starts looking for the ideological foundations of its general principles, there is reason to pay attention to the European legal history of pre-industrial time and its underlying assumptions, which can make the legal rules of our own time more understandable. In doing so, we c o n t i n u i t y a n d c o n t r ac t 31 1. 3 central i s sue s and plan
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