The book uses a Marxian inspired social ontological framework, and a genealogic method to explore the relationship between labour law, the market, and capitalist social relations. It advances a constitutive conception of the law–market and law–society ‘relationship’ that stresses law’s contradictory roles in the emergence and reproduction of capitalist social relations—and, relatedly, in the emergence, and reproduction, of the (capitalist) market, and explores this role in depth through a genealogical analysis of the social category of the wage. Tracing the evolution of the wage through legal discourse and the shifting repertoire of legal concepts (the ‘wage’, the ‘salary’, ‘remuneration’) through which it has been denoted over time, the book sheds new light on the problems of low pay and under-inclusive employment status, and on the role of the legal system in perpetuating, and potentially constituting, these problems. Spanning from the Norman conquest to the present day, and exploring issues as diverse as the decasualization of the docks; sweated labour; the truck system; tax credits, tips, and minimum wages, the book provides one of the most in-depth and comprehensive analyses of the wage to date, while, at the same time, offering a number of practical suggestions for labour law reform.