RELACIÓN CONTRACTUAL O DERECHO DE DOMINIO. UNA CONTROVERSIA SOBRE LA NATURALEZA JURÍDICA DEL TRABAJO EN EL SIGLO XX CHILENO

Among the foundational elements of a society, there will always be the ones that concerns the legal forms of the human economic work, specially, the link of the workers with their productive center and with the ownship of the product resulting from their performance. In Chile, as in much of the world, the form of individual labor bonding has been invariable since the beginning of the 20th century, the figure of the “employment contract”, notwithstanding to some characteristics and contents of this contract that have been more mutable. This article reviews the trajectory in Chile of legal theories about alternative employment relationships from cooperative or communitarian views, with proprietary workers without an employment contract involved, reserving intra-company legal relations and the direct incorporation of the product to the private sphere of the workers. This idea was received by Chilean jurists between the 1920s and 1950s, expressing it in highly critical writings in a theoretical and academic format. However, in 1964, several of these jurists acceded to the Chilean government declaring their intention to put into practice those same labor ideas formulated by themselves, but at a very different time that did not allow such projects. In a constituent period such as that experienced in Chile during 2021-2022, the study of the trajectory of legal ideas, whether successful or not, is necessary in the search for definitions and political legitimacy.