Public discussion of factory legislation of the Russian Empire

In the 18th to early 20th centuries, the Russian Empire saw the formation and development of factory and plant (factory, labor) legislation, the prototype of modern labor law. An important legal and social factor influencing the rule-making process was the public understanding of this phenomenon. Its modern study allows us to form an idea of ​​the perception of labor norms by their immediate addressees, to study the feedback in the mechanism of legal regulation of social relations. Methodologically, the formulation of the topic implements a sociological approach based on the history of labor law. The general sequence of the historical development of the controversy about the regulation of hired labor was its gradual acquisition of moral legitimacy, publicity, and pluralism. The first meant the admission in the mass consciousness of the very possibility of discussing government measures in the field of labor. Publicity is understood as the rooting of the practice of public expression. Pluralism implied a diversity of opinions, a departure from the loyalist complementary discourse of the 18th and first half of the 19th centuries in favor of structuring the controversy. In terms of content, the discussion of the legalization of labor relations consisted of two major areas: political-philosophical and legal-technical. The first covered the discussion of conceptual issues: the extent to which factory legislation was necessary, the admissibility of state intervention in labor relations, and the relationship between the rights and interests of the employee and employer. Within the political-philosophical discourse, conservative, progressive, and socialist currents were distinguished. Conservatives defended the idea of ​​the employer's dominance over the employee and the rejection of equality of their interests, progressives developed the idea of ​​the archaism of the patriarchal model and the need for socially compromise labor legislation, and socialists postulated the impossibility of any acceptable regulation of labor under monarchy and capitalism. The legal-technical direction contained an analysis of specific legal norms and problems of their implementation, criticism of gaps, proposals for improving factory legislation, and essentially formed the beginnings of the science of labor law in Russia.