What do you think?
Rate this book
The University Center for Human Values Series
Private Government: How Employers Rule Our Lives
Why our workplaces are authoritarian private governments--and why we can't see it
One in four American workers says their workplace is a "dictatorship." Yet that number probably would be even higher if we recognized most employers for what they are--private governments with sweeping authoritarian power over our lives, on duty and off. We normally think of government as something only the state does, yet many of us are governed far more--and far more obtrusively--by the private government of the workplace. In this provocative and compelling book, Elizabeth Anderson argues that the failure to see this stems from long-standing confusions. These confusions explain why, despite all evidence to the contrary, we still talk as if free markets make workers free--and why so many employers advocate less government even while they act as dictators in their businesses.
In many workplaces, employers minutely regulate workers' speech, clothing, and manners, leaving them with little privacy and few other rights. And employers often extend their authority to workers' off-duty lives. Workers can be fired for their political speech, recreational activities, diet, and almost anything else employers care to govern. Yet we continue to talk as if early advocates of market society--from John Locke and Adam Smith to Thomas Paine and Abraham Lincoln--were right when they argued that it would free workers from oppressive authorities. That dream was shattered by the Industrial Revolution, but the myth endures.
Private Government offers a better way to talk about the workplace, opening up space for discovering how workers can enjoy real freedom.
Based on the prestigious Tanner Lectures delivered at Princeton University's Center for Human Values, Private Government is edited and introduced by Stephen Macedo and includes commentary by cultural critic David Bromwich, economist Tyler Cowen, historian Ann Hughes, and philosopher Niko Kolodny.
One in four American workers says their workplace is a "dictatorship." Yet that number probably would be even higher if we recognized most employers for what they are--private governments with sweeping authoritarian power over our lives, on duty and off. We normally think of government as something only the state does, yet many of us are governed far more--and far more obtrusively--by the private government of the workplace. In this provocative and compelling book, Elizabeth Anderson argues that the failure to see this stems from long-standing confusions. These confusions explain why, despite all evidence to the contrary, we still talk as if free markets make workers free--and why so many employers advocate less government even while they act as dictators in their businesses.
In many workplaces, employers minutely regulate workers' speech, clothing, and manners, leaving them with little privacy and few other rights. And employers often extend their authority to workers' off-duty lives. Workers can be fired for their political speech, recreational activities, diet, and almost anything else employers care to govern. Yet we continue to talk as if early advocates of market society--from John Locke and Adam Smith to Thomas Paine and Abraham Lincoln--were right when they argued that it would free workers from oppressive authorities. That dream was shattered by the Industrial Revolution, but the myth endures.
Private Government offers a better way to talk about the workplace, opening up space for discovering how workers can enjoy real freedom.
Based on the prestigious Tanner Lectures delivered at Princeton University's Center for Human Values, Private Government is edited and introduced by Stephen Macedo and includes commentary by cultural critic David Bromwich, economist Tyler Cowen, historian Ann Hughes, and philosopher Niko Kolodny.
196 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2017
159 people are currently reading
4772 people want to read
About the author
Elizabeth S. Anderson
6 books138 followersElizabeth Anderson is the John Rawls Collegiate Professor of Philosophy and Women's Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She is the author of Value in Ethics and Economics.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 139 reviews
October 8, 2021
The Newest Industrial State
The world we live in is neither capitalist nor socialist but corporate. This world conforms to none of the theories of economics or politics that are commonly used to justify corporate action or government policy. The corporate economy combines the hierarchical bureaucracy of extreme communism with the ideological force of extreme free enterprise to create a culture which now rules the planet. John Kenneth Galbraith predicted a half century ago in his The New Industrial State what we now experience in daily life. No one paid much attention. Not enough people had yet felt the pain. More do now; perhaps enough will be moved by Elizabeth Anderson’s analysis.
Accountability for this de facto government is vague. Yet the corporation establishes the regime in which we live. Most of the daily lives of most people in most regions of the world are spent in the service of the corporation and are subject to its particular form of carrot and stick brutality. The illusion that such subjugation is voluntary is part of the corporation’s governmental power. A small minority of corporate employees may be able to move advantageously from one corporate employer to another. But the vast majority are simply stuck with the corporate regime as ‘the way things are.’
Outside of employment, the corporation dominates our existence far more thoroughly than any elected government. Corporate legislative lobbying is the tip of an iceberg of highly technical international standards and agreements that determine what will be done where and to what level of personal and ecological safety. We might object to corporate funding of political campaigns but it is the hidden non-legislative commitments made by government acquiescence to ‘corporate expertise’ that creates the real clout for corporate control over markets from food to high-tech components.
Elizabeth Anderson is a political philosopher and one of the few social critics who has recognized the modern economy, society, and government for what it is: life totally controlled by the singular institution of the corporation. She reminds us that it was not always so. Neither Marx nor Adam Smith knew anything about the corporation. Its institutional growth was promoted as a means to eliminate monopoly and its attendant inequities. According to liberal theory, the corporation is a mere way station to perfect markets. Yet it is in fact an intentional suspension of market forces that has ‘internalized’ decision-making permanently within itself.
The issues of globalization, immigration, trade pacts, ecological destruction, and the nature of liberal democracy itself, are all subsidiary to the issue of the corporation. Yet the corporation controls the discussion, not just in annual jamborees like Davos, but through the literally thousands of meetings, fora, and working groups that constitute normal corporate life. What Anderson offers in these lectures and her responses to their critics is away to begin talking about this form of private corporate government and how to bring it to heel.
The world we live in is neither capitalist nor socialist but corporate. This world conforms to none of the theories of economics or politics that are commonly used to justify corporate action or government policy. The corporate economy combines the hierarchical bureaucracy of extreme communism with the ideological force of extreme free enterprise to create a culture which now rules the planet. John Kenneth Galbraith predicted a half century ago in his The New Industrial State what we now experience in daily life. No one paid much attention. Not enough people had yet felt the pain. More do now; perhaps enough will be moved by Elizabeth Anderson’s analysis.
Accountability for this de facto government is vague. Yet the corporation establishes the regime in which we live. Most of the daily lives of most people in most regions of the world are spent in the service of the corporation and are subject to its particular form of carrot and stick brutality. The illusion that such subjugation is voluntary is part of the corporation’s governmental power. A small minority of corporate employees may be able to move advantageously from one corporate employer to another. But the vast majority are simply stuck with the corporate regime as ‘the way things are.’
Outside of employment, the corporation dominates our existence far more thoroughly than any elected government. Corporate legislative lobbying is the tip of an iceberg of highly technical international standards and agreements that determine what will be done where and to what level of personal and ecological safety. We might object to corporate funding of political campaigns but it is the hidden non-legislative commitments made by government acquiescence to ‘corporate expertise’ that creates the real clout for corporate control over markets from food to high-tech components.
Elizabeth Anderson is a political philosopher and one of the few social critics who has recognized the modern economy, society, and government for what it is: life totally controlled by the singular institution of the corporation. She reminds us that it was not always so. Neither Marx nor Adam Smith knew anything about the corporation. Its institutional growth was promoted as a means to eliminate monopoly and its attendant inequities. According to liberal theory, the corporation is a mere way station to perfect markets. Yet it is in fact an intentional suspension of market forces that has ‘internalized’ decision-making permanently within itself.
The issues of globalization, immigration, trade pacts, ecological destruction, and the nature of liberal democracy itself, are all subsidiary to the issue of the corporation. Yet the corporation controls the discussion, not just in annual jamborees like Davos, but through the literally thousands of meetings, fora, and working groups that constitute normal corporate life. What Anderson offers in these lectures and her responses to their critics is away to begin talking about this form of private corporate government and how to bring it to heel.
June 14, 2021
Somebody doesn't like their employer and this book is the result of feeling it. Really feeling it!
If one puts aside the jokes, there are too many faults with this book to list here. Therefore I'll try to list only the major grumbles.
I'll start with the good thingy:
🎓 Yes, there are awful employers.
🎓 Yes, we live in capitalist times and market rules our lives. Or does its level best (or worst) to.
🎓 Yes, this is an unfair world.
🎓 The major point for me is that I would have dearly liked to not have to go to work or have to accommodate people... Yeah, my pet projects won't get themselves done so that time I could've employed far better than...
Now, the awfulness starts:
🎓 This book seems to have been written by a person very far from understanding how the world operates. Let's make it simple: trashpicking - had the workers been setting their comfy times to do it, it's doubtful that our streets would be their immaculate current selves. For trash to be taken out on schedule, people have to manage the workers, maintain plans and, yes, sometimes not let some people to have the rest they really want. Sorry! And similar things happen virtually everywhere.
🎓 Companies are not private government. While this reference could be read as innovative, it isn't all that it's cracked to be. We sell our skills and time and patience and whatnot to the companies. Deal with it.
🎓 The format is not the best ever: Opponents Rationalization and Response to it, along with all the overview of academia... Is this a PHD research developed into smth else?
🎓 Yes, some work is horrible. But! Where are the actionable solutions? What and who needs to do to get things right? At what point will we consider that things are right? What exactly does the author suggest that we do to get things right or at least to improve this situation to some extent? This could have been split into something like this gradation:
- you and me and our neighbor... etc (at the granular level),
- companies, overseers, HRs, operational managers, supervisors, internal auditors... etc (at the micro level)
- stakeholders, professional bodies, researchers, scientists... etc (at the mid-level),
- government, lawmakers, regulators, states... etc (at the macro level).
The multifold thingys:
🎓 While the author raises valid questions, she's not really covering all the topics that could have been discussed here. Let's think about it:
- psychological implications of the employer-employee relationships,
- professional orientation,
- the curse of management from hell (most management is from there),
- law implementation and development and maybe even something like legal requirements' effectiveness measurement,
- authority issues (incl. responsibility for those who wield it and how to develop it),
- professional deformation,
- the government protection and lack thereof,
- lobbying and its deleterious effects on legal, corporate and ethical structures,
- mono-, olygo- and other -polies and their power,
- behaviouristical approaches and how they could be used to motivat humanization of labor,
- postindustrial labor development,
- productivity and effectiveness and ways to optimize this all (yep, modern office is one of the worst environments to be productive, it's like it was specifically designed that way),
- automatization and standardization (let's imagine we all are allowed to spend 6 min in a bathroom once per 2 hrs, happy?)
- how to make work fair in terms of time and pay and effort and reward,
- culture - How did we come to that point that people need to wear diapers to do some jobs due to lack of bathroom breaks? Is our culture conductive to work abuse? Why are we not backing our people to be able to protect their dignity and just say no to shit employers?
- job accessibility, career transfers and accessible education,
- society acceptance and definition and prevention of failure, bullying, abuse and insecurity,
- need to change identification and change management.
All these and many other point would have been better considered and ranked in terms of achievability, SMART-ability, doability, time and effort needed to implement the much needed change...
This is a cornucopia of a topic and it has been barely scratched. All along the most naïve and theoretical lines. Yes, I want a lot. I know. I am that reader who expects to see some discourse and a lot of crossectional thinking.
Q:
To see the difference authority makes, consider the one-day strike of Skylab astronauts on December 28, 1973. Days before the strike,
NASA began sending extremely specific instructions about minute-by-minute tasks for the astronauts to accomplish.… They tried to keep up for two weeks but found themselves falling behind, as there was no room in the schedule for the natural delays that happen at work. Moreover, they were exhausted with these 16-hour days. When they fell behind, NASA began demanding less sleep and working through their meal breaks. So the astronauts began to complain to Mission Control. But NASA’s response was that they were whining.… [Mission Commander Gerry] Carr and his crew demanded a day off. NASA refused. So Carr simply shut off the radio and the astronauts took the day off they wanted.… After the 1-day strike, NASA finally came to terms with the astronauts. The next day, December 29, NASA agreed to quit micromanaging the astronauts, allowed them to take their full meal breaks, and just send them a list of tasks for the day and let them figure out how to get it done. You know, treat them like adults. And it worked. All the projects got done before the mission ended. (c)
Q:
It is not merely “unpleasant” to be denied a rest break when one needs it. When some authority denies it (as opposed to when some natural constraint prevents it), the restriction demeans one’s agency. (c)
Q:
Aggregate statistics are hard to come by, because complaints about employer abuse and oppressive working conditions are so diverse, and cross-industry surveys on qualitative issues are expensive and rare. Moreover, academic research on labor is marginalized and underfunded, as workers themselves are. Here are some indications. Among restaurant workers, 90 percent report being subject to sexual harassment. Between 2007 and 2012, the Department of Labor conducted more than 1,500 investigations of garment factories in Southern California, discovering labor violations, including “sweatshoplike conditions,” 93 percent of the time.20 A recent study of workers in the poultry industry found that the “vast majority” were not allowed adequate bathroom breaks. Many are forced to wear diapers.
Employers threaten to fire workers who complain, indicating that their free speech as well as their basic physiological needs and dignity are infringed by their employer. This is just one part of a long and continuing struggle by workers in the United States to gain the right to use the bathroom at work—a right workers in other rich countries have long taken for granted.
A recent study, based on a survey of managers and employees, estimates that about seven million workers have been pressured by their bosses to favor some political candidate or issue, by threats of job loss, wage cuts, or plant closure. (c)
If one puts aside the jokes, there are too many faults with this book to list here. Therefore I'll try to list only the major grumbles.
I'll start with the good thingy:
🎓 Yes, there are awful employers.
🎓 Yes, we live in capitalist times and market rules our lives. Or does its level best (or worst) to.
🎓 Yes, this is an unfair world.
🎓 The major point for me is that I would have dearly liked to not have to go to work or have to accommodate people... Yeah, my pet projects won't get themselves done so that time I could've employed far better than...
Now, the awfulness starts:
🎓 This book seems to have been written by a person very far from understanding how the world operates. Let's make it simple: trashpicking - had the workers been setting their comfy times to do it, it's doubtful that our streets would be their immaculate current selves. For trash to be taken out on schedule, people have to manage the workers, maintain plans and, yes, sometimes not let some people to have the rest they really want. Sorry! And similar things happen virtually everywhere.
🎓 Companies are not private government. While this reference could be read as innovative, it isn't all that it's cracked to be. We sell our skills and time and patience and whatnot to the companies. Deal with it.
🎓 The format is not the best ever: Opponents Rationalization and Response to it, along with all the overview of academia... Is this a PHD research developed into smth else?
🎓 Yes, some work is horrible. But! Where are the actionable solutions? What and who needs to do to get things right? At what point will we consider that things are right? What exactly does the author suggest that we do to get things right or at least to improve this situation to some extent? This could have been split into something like this gradation:
- you and me and our neighbor... etc (at the granular level),
- companies, overseers, HRs, operational managers, supervisors, internal auditors... etc (at the micro level)
- stakeholders, professional bodies, researchers, scientists... etc (at the mid-level),
- government, lawmakers, regulators, states... etc (at the macro level).
The multifold thingys:
🎓 While the author raises valid questions, she's not really covering all the topics that could have been discussed here. Let's think about it:
- psychological implications of the employer-employee relationships,
- professional orientation,
- the curse of management from hell (most management is from there),
- law implementation and development and maybe even something like legal requirements' effectiveness measurement,
- authority issues (incl. responsibility for those who wield it and how to develop it),
- professional deformation,
- the government protection and lack thereof,
- lobbying and its deleterious effects on legal, corporate and ethical structures,
- mono-, olygo- and other -polies and their power,
- behaviouristical approaches and how they could be used to motivat humanization of labor,
- postindustrial labor development,
- productivity and effectiveness and ways to optimize this all (yep, modern office is one of the worst environments to be productive, it's like it was specifically designed that way),
- automatization and standardization (let's imagine we all are allowed to spend 6 min in a bathroom once per 2 hrs, happy?)
- how to make work fair in terms of time and pay and effort and reward,
- culture - How did we come to that point that people need to wear diapers to do some jobs due to lack of bathroom breaks? Is our culture conductive to work abuse? Why are we not backing our people to be able to protect their dignity and just say no to shit employers?
- job accessibility, career transfers and accessible education,
- society acceptance and definition and prevention of failure, bullying, abuse and insecurity,
- need to change identification and change management.
All these and many other point would have been better considered and ranked in terms of achievability, SMART-ability, doability, time and effort needed to implement the much needed change...
This is a cornucopia of a topic and it has been barely scratched. All along the most naïve and theoretical lines. Yes, I want a lot. I know. I am that reader who expects to see some discourse and a lot of crossectional thinking.
Q:
To see the difference authority makes, consider the one-day strike of Skylab astronauts on December 28, 1973. Days before the strike,
NASA began sending extremely specific instructions about minute-by-minute tasks for the astronauts to accomplish.… They tried to keep up for two weeks but found themselves falling behind, as there was no room in the schedule for the natural delays that happen at work. Moreover, they were exhausted with these 16-hour days. When they fell behind, NASA began demanding less sleep and working through their meal breaks. So the astronauts began to complain to Mission Control. But NASA’s response was that they were whining.… [Mission Commander Gerry] Carr and his crew demanded a day off. NASA refused. So Carr simply shut off the radio and the astronauts took the day off they wanted.… After the 1-day strike, NASA finally came to terms with the astronauts. The next day, December 29, NASA agreed to quit micromanaging the astronauts, allowed them to take their full meal breaks, and just send them a list of tasks for the day and let them figure out how to get it done. You know, treat them like adults. And it worked. All the projects got done before the mission ended. (c)
Q:
It is not merely “unpleasant” to be denied a rest break when one needs it. When some authority denies it (as opposed to when some natural constraint prevents it), the restriction demeans one’s agency. (c)
Q:
Aggregate statistics are hard to come by, because complaints about employer abuse and oppressive working conditions are so diverse, and cross-industry surveys on qualitative issues are expensive and rare. Moreover, academic research on labor is marginalized and underfunded, as workers themselves are. Here are some indications. Among restaurant workers, 90 percent report being subject to sexual harassment. Between 2007 and 2012, the Department of Labor conducted more than 1,500 investigations of garment factories in Southern California, discovering labor violations, including “sweatshoplike conditions,” 93 percent of the time.20 A recent study of workers in the poultry industry found that the “vast majority” were not allowed adequate bathroom breaks. Many are forced to wear diapers.
Employers threaten to fire workers who complain, indicating that their free speech as well as their basic physiological needs and dignity are infringed by their employer. This is just one part of a long and continuing struggle by workers in the United States to gain the right to use the bathroom at work—a right workers in other rich countries have long taken for granted.
A recent study, based on a survey of managers and employees, estimates that about seven million workers have been pressured by their bosses to favor some political candidate or issue, by threats of job loss, wage cuts, or plant closure. (c)
August 10, 2022
I think the basis of this book was interesting and challenges the idea that American workers are free, when in reality they are often controlled by the private government of their employer. As someone who has spent the last 30 or so years as a once hourly employee and now manager, I witnessed firsthand how one's employer could let their opinions and personal whims dictate who received better or worse treatment. Who got promoted or pushed out, based on the employers own feelings or desires. I enjoyed those aspects of the book. However, I felt this was written more on a political philosophical level rather than one of practicality. Picture a group of detached intellectuals sitting around a table discussing a reality they have not experienced as philosophy. It wasn't without merit and made valid points, but was bogged down in the history of the Levellers and focused less on modern day scenarios.
I enjoyed reading it but found myself somewhat bored at the repetitive nature of the writing and lack of bringing these facts into current work culture. The best part of the book was Anderson's Reply to Commentators which had statistics and examples to back up her lectures.
I enjoyed reading it but found myself somewhat bored at the repetitive nature of the writing and lack of bringing these facts into current work culture. The best part of the book was Anderson's Reply to Commentators which had statistics and examples to back up her lectures.
January 21, 2019
Anderson may just be my new favorite thinker. I don't actually fully agree with her theory of private government here, but there is so much here in the history and the thinking thru the pre-industrial capitalist thinkers like Smith and how the industrial revolution completely changed the assumptions they had made about markets and where power of domination would be most dangerous--spoiler: it's the sweatshop bosses and not the government who has dominion over you day to day
February 9, 2018
"Consider some facts about how employers today control their workers. Walmart prohibits employees from exchanging casual remarks while on duty, calling this 'time theft.' Apple inspects the personal belongings of their retail workers, who lose up to a half-hour of unpaid time every day as they wait in line to be searched. Tyson prevents its poultry workers from using the bathroom. Some have been forced to urinate on themselves, while their superiors mock them. About half of US employees have been subject to suspicionless drug screening by their employers. Millions are pressured by their employers to support particular political causes or candidates.
"If the US government imposed such regulations on us we would rightly protest that our constitutional rights were being violated. But American workers have no such rights against their bosses. Even speaking out against such constraints can get them fired. So most keep silent."
So begins the preface to Elizabeth Anderson's Private Government. This book was a revelation. Americans prize their freedom, but the truth is that many sacrifice their liberty the moment they get hired. Of what value are our Constitutional rights if they don't protect us from private tyranny?
Anderson examines the ways that employers rule our lives. While American government may be democratic, most American corporations are top-down totalitarian regimes. As "at will" workers, the Americans who are not in a union can be fired at any time for any reason outside of some very narrow limitations. It is within this power imbalance that workers are forced to accept shabby treatment and work regulations that far exceed concerns about productivity or efficiency in the work place.
The counterargument is that since the at-will worker is allowed to quit any time they wish, workplaces aren't really dictatorships. As Anderson points out, this is like saying that Mussolini wasn't a dictator because Italians could always emigrate.
American workers don't possess the language to readily discuss these concepts. We are buried so deeply inside this problem that we have become blind, unable to see how bad it really is. Anderson is attempting to give us the language to start grappling with this topic. I love the ideas that she is putting out there.
The format of this book was very strange. I don't read a ton of academic writing but I doubt this is common. First a fellow academic introduces and summarizes Anderson's book. Then Anderson has a preface and the two lectures that make up the bulk of her volume. Next, four other academics critique the lectures from their areas of expertise. Finally, Anderson responds to the critiques. I thought it was a weird way to pad out the page total. I found the summary and three of the academic critiques pretty disposable. The last critique, by Tyler Cowen, was totally worth reading - but only because Anderson's reply completely ripped this free-market-loving ivory tower boob to shreds. She went up one side of him and down the other! It was my favorite part.
I liked this book a great deal. The writing could be a bit dry and scholarly, but the ideas that Anderson teases out are pure fire.
"If the US government imposed such regulations on us we would rightly protest that our constitutional rights were being violated. But American workers have no such rights against their bosses. Even speaking out against such constraints can get them fired. So most keep silent."
So begins the preface to Elizabeth Anderson's Private Government. This book was a revelation. Americans prize their freedom, but the truth is that many sacrifice their liberty the moment they get hired. Of what value are our Constitutional rights if they don't protect us from private tyranny?
Anderson examines the ways that employers rule our lives. While American government may be democratic, most American corporations are top-down totalitarian regimes. As "at will" workers, the Americans who are not in a union can be fired at any time for any reason outside of some very narrow limitations. It is within this power imbalance that workers are forced to accept shabby treatment and work regulations that far exceed concerns about productivity or efficiency in the work place.
The counterargument is that since the at-will worker is allowed to quit any time they wish, workplaces aren't really dictatorships. As Anderson points out, this is like saying that Mussolini wasn't a dictator because Italians could always emigrate.
American workers don't possess the language to readily discuss these concepts. We are buried so deeply inside this problem that we have become blind, unable to see how bad it really is. Anderson is attempting to give us the language to start grappling with this topic. I love the ideas that she is putting out there.
The format of this book was very strange. I don't read a ton of academic writing but I doubt this is common. First a fellow academic introduces and summarizes Anderson's book. Then Anderson has a preface and the two lectures that make up the bulk of her volume. Next, four other academics critique the lectures from their areas of expertise. Finally, Anderson responds to the critiques. I thought it was a weird way to pad out the page total. I found the summary and three of the academic critiques pretty disposable. The last critique, by Tyler Cowen, was totally worth reading - but only because Anderson's reply completely ripped this free-market-loving ivory tower boob to shreds. She went up one side of him and down the other! It was my favorite part.
I liked this book a great deal. The writing could be a bit dry and scholarly, but the ideas that Anderson teases out are pure fire.
May 23, 2017
In Private Government Elizabeth Anderson presents a compelling case that our political ideologies have been shaped by historical contingencies. Specifically, it made perfect sense for egalitarian reformers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to enthusiastically embrace free markets. State-backed monopolies were one among many forms of unjust hierarchy and domination, others being the clergy (who could forcibly extract tithes), the patriarchal family structure, chattel slavery, monopolist guilds, and the landed aristocracy. In an environment where freer markets meant more opportunities for individuals to tend their own land or their own shops and crafts, they represented an important source of independence and freedom from domination by masters (what she calls republican freedom).
But she argues no one could have predicted the Industrial Revolution or its ramifications. With the advent of factories employing hundreds of workers in repetitive tasks, the division between wealthy and powerful capitalists and poorer workers with few options became not a source of independence but just another form of oppressive hierarchy. Anderson argues that we have inherited the earlier rhetoric of free markets as a source of freedom--appropriate once upon a time--and continue to apply it today. By doing so we extend moral cover to employers to tyrannize workers anyway they see fit. Anderson laboriously documents examples of such tyranny, noting that it applies especially to poor and lower-skilled workers who are easily replaced and not so much to skilled workers and academics, who tend to have cushier careers.
Importantly, Anderson is not just another leftist anti-capitalist with their head in the clouds. She endorses not only strong (but not absolute) property rights, but also acknowledges the value of market freedom as an important arena of agency and self-development. She embraces the market economy as a vital engine of wealth creation. She even acknowledges that firms in the market have solid reasons to need hierarchical organization and relatively open-ended authority of the bosses.
But the regulatory contours of markets and property rights are socially established, and there is nothing intrinsic to the vigorous operation of a market economy that requires workers to check their dignity and so many basic rights at the door of the workplace.
I don't agree with all of Anderson's suggestions. Tyler Cowen (one of the four responders) in particular landed some well-targeted criticisms of Anderson's argument. But at the very least Anderson has succeeded in obliterating the common knee-jerk defense of absolute employer freedom with respect to how they treat workers and organize the workplace. Notions of freedom and tyranny apply to the workplace.
But she argues no one could have predicted the Industrial Revolution or its ramifications. With the advent of factories employing hundreds of workers in repetitive tasks, the division between wealthy and powerful capitalists and poorer workers with few options became not a source of independence but just another form of oppressive hierarchy. Anderson argues that we have inherited the earlier rhetoric of free markets as a source of freedom--appropriate once upon a time--and continue to apply it today. By doing so we extend moral cover to employers to tyrannize workers anyway they see fit. Anderson laboriously documents examples of such tyranny, noting that it applies especially to poor and lower-skilled workers who are easily replaced and not so much to skilled workers and academics, who tend to have cushier careers.
Importantly, Anderson is not just another leftist anti-capitalist with their head in the clouds. She endorses not only strong (but not absolute) property rights, but also acknowledges the value of market freedom as an important arena of agency and self-development. She embraces the market economy as a vital engine of wealth creation. She even acknowledges that firms in the market have solid reasons to need hierarchical organization and relatively open-ended authority of the bosses.
But the regulatory contours of markets and property rights are socially established, and there is nothing intrinsic to the vigorous operation of a market economy that requires workers to check their dignity and so many basic rights at the door of the workplace.
I don't agree with all of Anderson's suggestions. Tyler Cowen (one of the four responders) in particular landed some well-targeted criticisms of Anderson's argument. But at the very least Anderson has succeeded in obliterating the common knee-jerk defense of absolute employer freedom with respect to how they treat workers and organize the workplace. Notions of freedom and tyranny apply to the workplace.
June 21, 2017
"Exercising autonomy-directing oneself in tasks, no matter how exacting and relentless they are-is no ordinary good. It is a basic human need. No production process is inherently so constrained as to eliminate all exercise of autonomy. Elimination of room for autonomy is the product of social design, not nature. It is not merely "unpleasant" to be denied a rest break when one needs it. When some authority denies it (as opposed to when some natural constraint prevents it), the restriction demeans one's agency. Having a genuine say in how one's work is directed, even when one must adjust to the claims of others, as in a collectively governed workplace, and even when one doesn't get one's way, still is an exercise of autonomy in the decision-making process, if not the outcome." (p. 128)
August 19, 2017
This is a deeply, simply radical book. As a philosopher, Anderson approaches her subject - why we submit ourselves to a 24/7 dictatorship of our bosses and why we don't even notice most of our lack of rights and power- from a fresh, historically-researched point of view.
This is essential reading for anyone working on the socialist project in the 21st century.
This is essential reading for anyone working on the socialist project in the 21st century.
January 3, 2022
The bloodbath that is this book cannot be described by words. If you remain unconvinced by Anderson’s demolition of libertarianism in the first part of the book, then you must read the critical reviews by other authors in the second part and her final response at the end. [By the way, this a standard format of presentation at philosophy conferences, something more fields should adopt IMO] No amount of popcorn will be able to distract you from the ruthlessness with which all of their arguments are taken apart.
What’s especially great is that Anderson’s point isn’t even a first-principles rejection of libertarianism. In fact, most of the ideals of classical liberalism are strongly supported. So this book is perfect for people whose understanding of libertarianism comes from 4chan and Ayn Rand but want to be educated about the historical context under which it was invented and how it applies (or rather doesn’t apply) to today’s labor situation.
What’s especially great is that Anderson’s point isn’t even a first-principles rejection of libertarianism. In fact, most of the ideals of classical liberalism are strongly supported. So this book is perfect for people whose understanding of libertarianism comes from 4chan and Ayn Rand but want to be educated about the historical context under which it was invented and how it applies (or rather doesn’t apply) to today’s labor situation.
June 16, 2020
remarkably clear defense of the dignity of the employee. the different perspectives offered by the Commenters were (mostly) enlightening as well. what I most liked honestly was her Response section -- three of the four commenters were essentially handled with "they bring some excellent points up for consideration, although i want to stress that their critiques aren't very relevant in that my aim is X, not Y" and stuff like that -- until she caps it with her response to Tyler Cowen's (absolutely garbage) Comment. just eviscerates the stupid man for all to see....RIP dude
June 25, 2017
Brilliant analysis, as always, from Anderson, who once again demonstrates why she's one of our great living social/political philosophers. (I also took great pleasure in her demolition of Tyler Cowen's response--that asshole needs to be knocked off the pedestal he's placed himself on.)
Want to read
July 7, 2025Private Government, Library-of-Congress HD4904 .A495 2017 College Library rm. 1191
On 4/23/2024, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) voted 3–2 along party lines to ban the noncompete agreements that prevent workers from minimum-wage earners to top executives from changing jobs within the industry in which they work; senior executives can still be bound by such agreements. Initially used to protect trade secrets, noncompete clauses have expanded to cover what the FTC estimates to be 30 million people—one in five U.S. workers. They take away workers’ ability to improve their wages and conditions by quitting their jobs and moving to another company or starting their own. The FTC estimates that the end of such clauses could add almost $300 billion a year to workers’ wages.
“Robbing people of their economic liberty also robs them of all sorts of other freedoms,” FTC Chair Lina Khan said. Neil Bradley, head of strategic advocacy for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, countered: “If they can issue regulations with respect to unfair methods of competition, then there’s really no aspect of the U.S. economy they couldn’t regulate.” The U.S. Chamber of Commerce plans to sue over the rule. --Heather Cox Richardson, "Letters from an American" blog https://heathercoxrichardson.substack...
July 14, 2018
the history in this book is bad. the philosophy in this book is bad. the conclusions of the book are bad. folks, if it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a bad book. do not buy. it has two stars because it's so bad it's kind of interesting:
https://creepingmarxist.wordpress.com...
https://creepingmarxist.wordpress.com...
August 29, 2017
The contradiction between working for any organisation and living in a democratic society should be obvious to anyone who has ever been an employee, public or private sector. Organisations by their very nature have their own rules and regulations, incentives and desires. A person who would now be called a middle manager used to exit my public service workplace with a farewell that cheerfully addressed us as "wage-slaves" and this caused no comment. This same person at one point exhorted his staff to be on call 24 hours a day; this was the Department of Customs and Excise and he was asking us to spy on people at parties and gatherings we attended and report them if they were using or selling drugs. He was somewhat taken aback when one of my pithier colleagues asked whether our pay would be appropriately adjusted to cover this extra time on duty.
Somewhat later, in what was then called a Government Business Enterprise, I was involved in organisational change known as "industrial democracy" aimed to involve workers in various aspects of decisionmaking, as it turned out, usually banal and irrelevant issues. Part of the process was to get workers to spend more time at the workplace, even for social occasions. The non-social aspects of this were already self-evident at sub-executive levels where your promotion would only be approved if you agreed to having no paid overtime. This enabled people to show their professionalism by spending their weekends in the same place as their weekdays: some bosses held meetings on Sundays and if you weren't there you couldn't find out what had gone on. Naturally, you were also supposed to be available 24/7.
These examples, in what might be called the deep past (at least from an employment perspective), are brought into sharp relief in today's workplace, with technological advances. In addition, the encouragement to be an individual entrepreneur (thus leading to the collapse of things like internal training, or training of any kind provided by the workplace) makes it difficult to turn away from work and do something else, with another person or group of people, or just by yourself. Leading companies making billions of dollars spend their time making sure you either don't want to leave the workplace, or that you can't do so.
These personal experiences and observations are of particular white-collar workplaces, and fairly benign compared to the nature of the topic discussed in Private Government, comprising two lectures by the philosopher Elizabeth Anderson, an introduction and four responses by people from various academic specialties and a final comment by Anderson. However mundane, these experiences, and life as a teacher and consultant in the field of organisations, made this book an immediate purchase.
The overall flavour of the book is philosophical, which means a particular approach to the presentation of ideas and facts. Anderson is apparently known for an influential article on Inequality, which appears a core interest. Here, she wants to talk about why the notion of government isn't applied to the interactions between bosses and workers, at least in public or academic discourse.
Part of her method is to look at ideas about the free market from the past, when there were different circumstances and understandings of society, and of work. The Leveller John Lilburne is in the mix (somewhat surprisingly for me as an ex-student of 17th Century English history),, as well as the usual suspect in Adam Smith, John Locke, as well as Abraham Lincoln and Thomas Jefferson in smaller roles.
A theme here is the nature of the workplace, and the presumptions of all the above that it's comprised by and large by small entrepreneurs (a favourite American term it seems) or families. Jefferson's well-known ideal of the USA as an agrarian commonwealth is relevant here as a perspective.
Anderson points out that the Industrial Revolution changes all this, if not the thought of some economists. She provides historical examples of the control masters had over apprentices, or of other workers and the moral supervision of a Henry Ford over his workers. The lectures are relatively short and clearly written.
The comments are mostly friendly after the fashion of a particular kind of academic discourse where disagreement is masked by a particular prose style. The historian Ann Hughes questions Anderson's view of Lilburne, with regard to his views on equality as well as what he thought the free market to be; David Bromwich, known to me via the pages of The London Review of Books, comments about Anderson's approach, the place of liberalism and market theory in American thought, politics and society( an Australian lawyer/author has recently commented that his countrymen have never really been sold about the free market, unlike other places) and astutely mentions "power" as something not discussed here; the philosopher Niko Kolodny wants to distinguish between the political and employment landscape in a philosophical manner; and the academic economist Tyler Cowen takes the perspective one might expect, arguing that work conditions aren't all that bad, and, with others, that workers can always leave.
I found the latter comment astounding, given the current situation of large numbers of unemployment and information about working conditions in general. Power relations are not taken into account and there's a complete lack of understanding of people who work for wages at any level. Many people I worked with, in an era of full employment, regularly explained that they did not enjoy their work at all and found it soul-destroying, but the job was permanent and they had a family to feed and educate.
Anderson clearly also finds Cowen's view astounding, as she spends most of her reply attacking his presumptions, suggesting he has no idea what workers experience who are on perhaps 10% of what he gets paid and presenting several harrowing, sometimes familiar, examples of exploitation of workers by large organisations. It's worth the price of the book just to read this part, actually, because she's clearly annoyed and her response is to provide data. It's a useful riposte to those who think the world is completely explained by theory of any kind, in this case a particular economic theory where human beings are seen as machines.
Before she gets to that, Anderson responds to the other commentators, explaining her perspective and showing where she agrees and disagrees.
This was a very interesting read, which I mostly read in sections. It's a slim text, with many pages of notes. The topic is important and relevant, particularly in an age where "scientific management" and neo-behaviourism has returned to prominence after an expected decline a couple of decades ago, where the rise of surveillance of any kind, whether in workplaces or in the streets has risen alarmingly without a deep discussion, and where those who proffer more liberal (in the general sense) methods in the workplace appear to be colluding in this situation, consciously or unconsciously.
Somewhat later, in what was then called a Government Business Enterprise, I was involved in organisational change known as "industrial democracy" aimed to involve workers in various aspects of decisionmaking, as it turned out, usually banal and irrelevant issues. Part of the process was to get workers to spend more time at the workplace, even for social occasions. The non-social aspects of this were already self-evident at sub-executive levels where your promotion would only be approved if you agreed to having no paid overtime. This enabled people to show their professionalism by spending their weekends in the same place as their weekdays: some bosses held meetings on Sundays and if you weren't there you couldn't find out what had gone on. Naturally, you were also supposed to be available 24/7.
These examples, in what might be called the deep past (at least from an employment perspective), are brought into sharp relief in today's workplace, with technological advances. In addition, the encouragement to be an individual entrepreneur (thus leading to the collapse of things like internal training, or training of any kind provided by the workplace) makes it difficult to turn away from work and do something else, with another person or group of people, or just by yourself. Leading companies making billions of dollars spend their time making sure you either don't want to leave the workplace, or that you can't do so.
These personal experiences and observations are of particular white-collar workplaces, and fairly benign compared to the nature of the topic discussed in Private Government, comprising two lectures by the philosopher Elizabeth Anderson, an introduction and four responses by people from various academic specialties and a final comment by Anderson. However mundane, these experiences, and life as a teacher and consultant in the field of organisations, made this book an immediate purchase.
The overall flavour of the book is philosophical, which means a particular approach to the presentation of ideas and facts. Anderson is apparently known for an influential article on Inequality, which appears a core interest. Here, she wants to talk about why the notion of government isn't applied to the interactions between bosses and workers, at least in public or academic discourse.
Part of her method is to look at ideas about the free market from the past, when there were different circumstances and understandings of society, and of work. The Leveller John Lilburne is in the mix (somewhat surprisingly for me as an ex-student of 17th Century English history),, as well as the usual suspect in Adam Smith, John Locke, as well as Abraham Lincoln and Thomas Jefferson in smaller roles.
A theme here is the nature of the workplace, and the presumptions of all the above that it's comprised by and large by small entrepreneurs (a favourite American term it seems) or families. Jefferson's well-known ideal of the USA as an agrarian commonwealth is relevant here as a perspective.
Anderson points out that the Industrial Revolution changes all this, if not the thought of some economists. She provides historical examples of the control masters had over apprentices, or of other workers and the moral supervision of a Henry Ford over his workers. The lectures are relatively short and clearly written.
The comments are mostly friendly after the fashion of a particular kind of academic discourse where disagreement is masked by a particular prose style. The historian Ann Hughes questions Anderson's view of Lilburne, with regard to his views on equality as well as what he thought the free market to be; David Bromwich, known to me via the pages of The London Review of Books, comments about Anderson's approach, the place of liberalism and market theory in American thought, politics and society( an Australian lawyer/author has recently commented that his countrymen have never really been sold about the free market, unlike other places) and astutely mentions "power" as something not discussed here; the philosopher Niko Kolodny wants to distinguish between the political and employment landscape in a philosophical manner; and the academic economist Tyler Cowen takes the perspective one might expect, arguing that work conditions aren't all that bad, and, with others, that workers can always leave.
I found the latter comment astounding, given the current situation of large numbers of unemployment and information about working conditions in general. Power relations are not taken into account and there's a complete lack of understanding of people who work for wages at any level. Many people I worked with, in an era of full employment, regularly explained that they did not enjoy their work at all and found it soul-destroying, but the job was permanent and they had a family to feed and educate.
Anderson clearly also finds Cowen's view astounding, as she spends most of her reply attacking his presumptions, suggesting he has no idea what workers experience who are on perhaps 10% of what he gets paid and presenting several harrowing, sometimes familiar, examples of exploitation of workers by large organisations. It's worth the price of the book just to read this part, actually, because she's clearly annoyed and her response is to provide data. It's a useful riposte to those who think the world is completely explained by theory of any kind, in this case a particular economic theory where human beings are seen as machines.
Before she gets to that, Anderson responds to the other commentators, explaining her perspective and showing where she agrees and disagrees.
This was a very interesting read, which I mostly read in sections. It's a slim text, with many pages of notes. The topic is important and relevant, particularly in an age where "scientific management" and neo-behaviourism has returned to prominence after an expected decline a couple of decades ago, where the rise of surveillance of any kind, whether in workplaces or in the streets has risen alarmingly without a deep discussion, and where those who proffer more liberal (in the general sense) methods in the workplace appear to be colluding in this situation, consciously or unconsciously.
March 15, 2020
The American workplace is marked more by hierarchy and domination than any other abstract idea concerning freedom and democracy. Managers can, and do, impose, for almost any reason, sanctions including job loss, demotion, pay cuts, worse hours, worse conditions, and harassment. Millions are pressured by their employers to support particular political causes or candidates and subjected to suspicion-less drug screenings. Soon employers will even be empowered to withhold contraception coverage from their employees’ health insurance. They already have the right to penalize workers for failure to exercise and diet, by charging them higher health insurance premiums. Making the top managers of firms, therefore, the heads of little governments, who rule their workers while they are at work — and often times, even when they are at home. Yet despite the presence of this vast realm of domination, contemporary economists and political theorists have largely been silent about the social relations of work. Philosopher Elizabeth Anderson, however, aims to change all of that.
In her book Private Government: How Employers Rule Our Lives (And Why We Don’t Talk About It). Anderson explores a striking American contradiction. On the one hand, we are a freedom-obsessed society, wary of government intrusion into our private lives; on the other, we allow ourselves to be tyrannized by our bosses, who enjoy broad powers of micromanagement and coercion. Anderson believes that many American workers are constrained by rules that would be “unconstitutional for democratic states to impose on citizens who are not convicts or in the military.” And she asks whether this might be a failure of our political system—a betrayal of America’s democratic promise.
Anderson’s critique also invokes the authoritarian communism of the Soviet Union and other countries. And this “dictatorship” interconnection makes sense, since companies are organizations ruled through a hierarchical command structure. Leaders at the top issue orders that flow down to subordinates, with no meaningful democracy for those on the bottom. Moreover, it’s “communist” in that companies successfully employ internal central planning. So the “free market” is, strangely enough, a network of competing, centrally-planned dictatorships.
Even worse, we typically think of workers as empowered free agents who, if they don’t like a job, can simply walk away from it. In surveying the economics literature, Anderson finds that economists often cite workers’ ability to quit as proof that companies have no real power over their employees. “This is like saying that Mussolini was not a dictator, because Italians could emigrate,” she writes. It’s absurd, she argues, to imagine that “wherever individuals are free to exit a
relationship, authority cannot exist within it.”
She raises a good point. Because quitting typically imposes great costs on the worker while imposing minimal costs on the boss. Workers are often worse off for quitting than getting fired, since in many cases they wouldn’t qualify for unemployment benefits. Thus “Exit” is a poor way to discipline the tyrant at work. Not to mention that by quitting they would just be moving to another job, laboring under yet another dictator.
Which makes the stakes that Anderson so convincingly elucidates, far too high for us to afford to ignore. Because private government is rule by authorities who tell the governed that the rules to which they are subject to are none of their business, that they aren’t entitled to know about how their government operates, that they have no standing to insist that their interests be taken into account in how they are governed, that their rulers are not accountable to them.
We are so used to rhetoric that casts “government” as a threat to our liberties. But by making it clear that the workplace is a form of government (that the state is not the only government that rules us), we can make clear how the authority that employers have over workers threatens their dignity and autonomy. By naming that government as “private” — that is, as kept private from the workers, as something employers claim is none of the workers’ business — we can make more vivid the fact that workers are laboring under arbitrary, unaccountable dictatorships.
I think most workers, i.e, fellow wage slaves, would agree with Anderson’s arguments. And yet, finding ourselves in agreement, why don’t more people talk about it? Because we don't see it. And we don't see it because of ideology. We don’t want to acknowledge how much the rhetoric of American freedom outruns the constraints of private government. And for many, this defeat is hard to admit. Which is why we still, mistakenly view, the corporate world through an eighteenth-century lens. To large corporations, we lend the liberatory aura that, in Adam Smith’s day, surrounded small businesses. This allows CEO’s to “think of themselves as libertarian individualists,” even though they are more like “dictators of little private governments.”
But it may simply be that the human race is not ready for real freedom. The air of liberty may be too rarefied for us to breathe. The paradox seems to be, as Socrates demonstrated long ago, that the truly free individual is free only to the extent of his own self-mastery. While those who will not govern themselves are condemned to find masters to govern over them.
In her book Private Government: How Employers Rule Our Lives (And Why We Don’t Talk About It). Anderson explores a striking American contradiction. On the one hand, we are a freedom-obsessed society, wary of government intrusion into our private lives; on the other, we allow ourselves to be tyrannized by our bosses, who enjoy broad powers of micromanagement and coercion. Anderson believes that many American workers are constrained by rules that would be “unconstitutional for democratic states to impose on citizens who are not convicts or in the military.” And she asks whether this might be a failure of our political system—a betrayal of America’s democratic promise.
Anderson’s critique also invokes the authoritarian communism of the Soviet Union and other countries. And this “dictatorship” interconnection makes sense, since companies are organizations ruled through a hierarchical command structure. Leaders at the top issue orders that flow down to subordinates, with no meaningful democracy for those on the bottom. Moreover, it’s “communist” in that companies successfully employ internal central planning. So the “free market” is, strangely enough, a network of competing, centrally-planned dictatorships.
Even worse, we typically think of workers as empowered free agents who, if they don’t like a job, can simply walk away from it. In surveying the economics literature, Anderson finds that economists often cite workers’ ability to quit as proof that companies have no real power over their employees. “This is like saying that Mussolini was not a dictator, because Italians could emigrate,” she writes. It’s absurd, she argues, to imagine that “wherever individuals are free to exit a
relationship, authority cannot exist within it.”
She raises a good point. Because quitting typically imposes great costs on the worker while imposing minimal costs on the boss. Workers are often worse off for quitting than getting fired, since in many cases they wouldn’t qualify for unemployment benefits. Thus “Exit” is a poor way to discipline the tyrant at work. Not to mention that by quitting they would just be moving to another job, laboring under yet another dictator.
Which makes the stakes that Anderson so convincingly elucidates, far too high for us to afford to ignore. Because private government is rule by authorities who tell the governed that the rules to which they are subject to are none of their business, that they aren’t entitled to know about how their government operates, that they have no standing to insist that their interests be taken into account in how they are governed, that their rulers are not accountable to them.
We are so used to rhetoric that casts “government” as a threat to our liberties. But by making it clear that the workplace is a form of government (that the state is not the only government that rules us), we can make clear how the authority that employers have over workers threatens their dignity and autonomy. By naming that government as “private” — that is, as kept private from the workers, as something employers claim is none of the workers’ business — we can make more vivid the fact that workers are laboring under arbitrary, unaccountable dictatorships.
I think most workers, i.e, fellow wage slaves, would agree with Anderson’s arguments. And yet, finding ourselves in agreement, why don’t more people talk about it? Because we don't see it. And we don't see it because of ideology. We don’t want to acknowledge how much the rhetoric of American freedom outruns the constraints of private government. And for many, this defeat is hard to admit. Which is why we still, mistakenly view, the corporate world through an eighteenth-century lens. To large corporations, we lend the liberatory aura that, in Adam Smith’s day, surrounded small businesses. This allows CEO’s to “think of themselves as libertarian individualists,” even though they are more like “dictators of little private governments.”
But it may simply be that the human race is not ready for real freedom. The air of liberty may be too rarefied for us to breathe. The paradox seems to be, as Socrates demonstrated long ago, that the truly free individual is free only to the extent of his own self-mastery. While those who will not govern themselves are condemned to find masters to govern over them.
July 17, 2023
A reminder that after the industrial revolution about 80 percent of Americans participate in private dictatorial governments with few rights or autonomy.
March 21, 2020
This book gained a whole star in my estimation in the last section of the last chapter. To explain why, I should give the context of this book's structure - Anderson presents an introduction and two lectures (the first on a progressive vision of free markets among pre-industrial social reformers including the Levellers [boy do I know more about the Levellers now!] and the second about the titular role of Private Government in contemporary economic life).
After the two lectures there are four short essay responses by academics from disciplines, each raising fairly specific and circumscribed commentary on some point or assumption of one of the lectures. The last chapter is Anderson's itemized response to each of the commentator. I should say that I really liked this structure and want to consume more academic non-fiction in this kind of context, because having knowledgeable respondents (not to mention from different disciplines) really helps throw the actual argument/specific contribution of the lectures into relief, and Anderson's recapitulation of her argument in the last chapter is where she is clearest in articulating what she is really trying to contribute with the volume (which is meaningful!).
But the reason I smiled throughout the end of this book has less to do with the content and more with the form. Much of the back and forth between the contributors is collegial, spirited, and even admiring. It's characterized with phrases like "I'm not sure what the answers are. But I am sure that we're in Anderson's debt for spurring us to ask the questions" and "It's an honor to comment on Elizabeth Anderson's lectures" (both from Kolodny). Anderson's responses are gracious in turn, up until she gets to responding to Tyler Cowen and GOES OFF on him in the most delightful way possible.
Cowen, a neo-classical economist at the famously libertarian George Mason U (I just looked most of this up), essentially spent his response arguing that the unaccountable, arbitrary power wielded by employers is a good thing, because workplaces are actually incentivized to provide comforts and shared-governance models are failures. It's a specious argument though the kind that probably comes across really compellingly in economics classes and can be deployed effectively by people (I think you know the kind of people) who spend a lot of time thinking of rational arguments for supporting a status quo predicated on suffering they'd rather not think about. That's why I am so glad someone like Anderson exists to call those people to task.
Her last section starts out by clarifying (helpfully) the main goals of her argument before turning to Cowen's rebuttal, at which point she gives us this delectable take down: "Consider first the extent of the problem. I am not surprised that Cowen - a highly esteemed superstar tenured academic with wages, job security, working conditions, autonomy, and esteem near the peak of what is available for nonexecutive employees in the United States-is delighted with how great the wage labor system works for him."
This goes on for a while - it may still seem like tame academic shade, but it really struck me as a breath of fresh and direct air after 130 pages or so of polite and technical academic discourse. But it's also worth saying that what follows is something that I actually found missing in Anderson's lectures themselves - a relatively detailed account of the extent and variety of abuses and indignities that are created by the private government of the workplace that is the subject of her inquiry. I think it actually helped me identify something I was longing for earlier in the book, which is a fuller context to give stakes and context to the point she is advancing.
Ultimately, this is an academic book that is on the accessible side but still has somewhat limited utility outside of the context of the disciplinary debates in which it takes part. I think the most relatable/extensible ideas can probably be gleaned from reading the second lecture or listening to her talk about the core idea in a podcast interview (of which I'm pretty sure there are several).
After the two lectures there are four short essay responses by academics from disciplines, each raising fairly specific and circumscribed commentary on some point or assumption of one of the lectures. The last chapter is Anderson's itemized response to each of the commentator. I should say that I really liked this structure and want to consume more academic non-fiction in this kind of context, because having knowledgeable respondents (not to mention from different disciplines) really helps throw the actual argument/specific contribution of the lectures into relief, and Anderson's recapitulation of her argument in the last chapter is where she is clearest in articulating what she is really trying to contribute with the volume (which is meaningful!).
But the reason I smiled throughout the end of this book has less to do with the content and more with the form. Much of the back and forth between the contributors is collegial, spirited, and even admiring. It's characterized with phrases like "I'm not sure what the answers are. But I am sure that we're in Anderson's debt for spurring us to ask the questions" and "It's an honor to comment on Elizabeth Anderson's lectures" (both from Kolodny). Anderson's responses are gracious in turn, up until she gets to responding to Tyler Cowen and GOES OFF on him in the most delightful way possible.
Cowen, a neo-classical economist at the famously libertarian George Mason U (I just looked most of this up), essentially spent his response arguing that the unaccountable, arbitrary power wielded by employers is a good thing, because workplaces are actually incentivized to provide comforts and shared-governance models are failures. It's a specious argument though the kind that probably comes across really compellingly in economics classes and can be deployed effectively by people (I think you know the kind of people) who spend a lot of time thinking of rational arguments for supporting a status quo predicated on suffering they'd rather not think about. That's why I am so glad someone like Anderson exists to call those people to task.
Her last section starts out by clarifying (helpfully) the main goals of her argument before turning to Cowen's rebuttal, at which point she gives us this delectable take down: "Consider first the extent of the problem. I am not surprised that Cowen - a highly esteemed superstar tenured academic with wages, job security, working conditions, autonomy, and esteem near the peak of what is available for nonexecutive employees in the United States-is delighted with how great the wage labor system works for him."
This goes on for a while - it may still seem like tame academic shade, but it really struck me as a breath of fresh and direct air after 130 pages or so of polite and technical academic discourse. But it's also worth saying that what follows is something that I actually found missing in Anderson's lectures themselves - a relatively detailed account of the extent and variety of abuses and indignities that are created by the private government of the workplace that is the subject of her inquiry. I think it actually helped me identify something I was longing for earlier in the book, which is a fuller context to give stakes and context to the point she is advancing.
Ultimately, this is an academic book that is on the accessible side but still has somewhat limited utility outside of the context of the disciplinary debates in which it takes part. I think the most relatable/extensible ideas can probably be gleaned from reading the second lecture or listening to her talk about the core idea in a podcast interview (of which I'm pretty sure there are several).
April 16, 2018
A little too much time in the ivory tower, not much in the real world. If they still taught business ethics, kept religion in schools, and if central banks halted financial repression 90% of workplace problems would be solved. Don’t mistake a few sadistic managers you hear in the news degrading employees as an authoritarian norm. Most intrusive behaviors shown by companies is due to regulation from government, not the results of free trade and manufacturing of scale. If the government forces a business to provide health insurance don’t cry when they demand better health habits from employees. When you get Facebook for free don’t be surprised when that information you post is sold and snooped on. Tyranny in the work place is almost always due to poor management, government regulations, and a disgusting hyper materialistic culture that’s incubated in the university’s themselves by over indebtedness of the student body that needs to push the poor people they eventually manage just to pay debt and keep an unaffordable lifestyle they picked up while living in luxury student housing, climbing a rock wall, and getting student discounts on everything. The free market is alive and well and it’s reacting to the disjointed malaise of our generation.
December 26, 2017
This will please readers wearied by engaging with libertarians who rail against governmental regulations while extolling the free market. Anderson presents a picture of American workplaces as private dictatorships where the majority of workers are anything but free.
(The four stars indicates exasperation that some of her commenters missed her thesis and chose to focus on their own interests rather than on her argument.)
(The four stars indicates exasperation that some of her commenters missed her thesis and chose to focus on their own interests rather than on her argument.)
Read
March 14, 2020A great discussion of contemporary and historical workplace governance, offering a framework and language to revise how we imagine the intersection of politics, economics, and the reality of work. It is sad that in a country that we imagine to be a democracy with freedom of expression, we have such a narrow and stifling bounds for political conversation and debate. This book provides an opening, a way out of a lot of dead ends.
Aside from the new set of ideas and terms that allow us to think of freedom and democracy in a more expansive way that includes employment, the most interesting discussion contained here is the debate over how the expansion of private property and markets in 17th-19th centuries interacted with personal freedom and democratic accountability in terms of employment.
Aside from the new set of ideas and terms that allow us to think of freedom and democracy in a more expansive way that includes employment, the most interesting discussion contained here is the debate over how the expansion of private property and markets in 17th-19th centuries interacted with personal freedom and democratic accountability in terms of employment.
May 31, 2017
At first I was a bit put off by some of Anderson's use of terminology, but overall I find her argument convincing and important.
The book contains a pair of lectures by Anderson on the concept of "private government," followed by responses from scholars in four different fields. The last chapter is Anderson's response to these other scholars' critiques.
My favorite part came in this final chapter: after economist Tyler Cowen defends the system that allows power abuses, Anderson offers a beautiful take-down that I'd like to see as the academic equivalent of telling him that he lives in fairy tale land.
The book contains a pair of lectures by Anderson on the concept of "private government," followed by responses from scholars in four different fields. The last chapter is Anderson's response to these other scholars' critiques.
My favorite part came in this final chapter: after economist Tyler Cowen defends the system that allows power abuses, Anderson offers a beautiful take-down that I'd like to see as the academic equivalent of telling him that he lives in fairy tale land.
August 8, 2023
Short but extremely dense and academic. She makes an exceptional argument for worker voice in the labor market. She also opened my eyes to the ways in which pre-Industrial Revolution thinkers advocated for free-market principles in the context of self-employment and as a means to egalitarianism that no longer worked once the economies of scale exploded. However, I found her arguments underdeveloped in the realm of the intersectionality of the modern day labor market and how worker disenfranchisement has always disproportionately impacted women and minorities.
July 23, 2017
The second lecture is probably the clearest statement I've read on why arbitrary domination in the workplace should be one of the defining issues for those who care about social justice in the 21st century. We've internalized the notion that democracy is good at the level of the *state*, yet most people spend 8 hours of every waking day subject to the arbitrary whims of their superiors, and this system remains almost universally unquestioned.
January 13, 2025
Even if you don't agree with the ideas in this book, you will find it interesting. Anderson takes on the topic of authority in-and more importantly outside of- the workplace. The oversteps that that incurs, and how that amounts to private government.
Private government, in Anderson's terms, is a government, something that has authority over others backed by sanctions, that's reasoning is private and you have no say in their decisions or authority. Basically, the workplace is often a private government as they hold authority over you that they can exercise indiscriminately, giving orders on a whim and --importantly-- extending that authority outside of the workplace. They can do this through monitoring social media posts, political activity, or other lifestyle choices.
The most interesting part of the book to me was Anderson's explanation for how the current system came into place. In the first lecture of the book Anderson argues that the original idea and thinkers behind the free-market movement were progressive; that the movement was based on the idea of giving more power from the workers and taking it away from those in power. The basis of this idea was the concept that (in their day) self-employment is the most efficient option. This stemmed from the idea that those who were self-employed would care more about their own operations, enough so that they would make the "small savings and small gains" that larger operations wouldn't. This grew out of the idea of yeoman farmers, who owned the land they farmed on instead of farming on a lords land. What Anderson argues ruined this was the industrial revolution. The industrial revolution allowed for economies of scale to become viable and out-compete self-employed operations, hence the shift to wage labor. The industrial revolution may have wiped out the gains made by the free-market movement, but it kept its ideals using them to justify the idea of a laissez faire system that ended up abusing the workers; ideas that are still used to justify our system today.
Something interesting about the book was its structure. First was two of Anderson's lectures, then four responses coming from academics of different studies, followed by a final response from Anderson. Personally, I really enjoyed three of the responses, as well as Anderson's final response. Loved when she was thrashing the response from Tyler Cowen, an economist, for being out of touch, self-serving, and putting profits above people. shit was fire.
Overall would recommend book.
Private government, in Anderson's terms, is a government, something that has authority over others backed by sanctions, that's reasoning is private and you have no say in their decisions or authority. Basically, the workplace is often a private government as they hold authority over you that they can exercise indiscriminately, giving orders on a whim and --importantly-- extending that authority outside of the workplace. They can do this through monitoring social media posts, political activity, or other lifestyle choices.
The most interesting part of the book to me was Anderson's explanation for how the current system came into place. In the first lecture of the book Anderson argues that the original idea and thinkers behind the free-market movement were progressive; that the movement was based on the idea of giving more power from the workers and taking it away from those in power. The basis of this idea was the concept that (in their day) self-employment is the most efficient option. This stemmed from the idea that those who were self-employed would care more about their own operations, enough so that they would make the "small savings and small gains" that larger operations wouldn't. This grew out of the idea of yeoman farmers, who owned the land they farmed on instead of farming on a lords land. What Anderson argues ruined this was the industrial revolution. The industrial revolution allowed for economies of scale to become viable and out-compete self-employed operations, hence the shift to wage labor. The industrial revolution may have wiped out the gains made by the free-market movement, but it kept its ideals using them to justify the idea of a laissez faire system that ended up abusing the workers; ideas that are still used to justify our system today.
Something interesting about the book was its structure. First was two of Anderson's lectures, then four responses coming from academics of different studies, followed by a final response from Anderson. Personally, I really enjoyed three of the responses, as well as Anderson's final response. Loved when she was thrashing the response from Tyler Cowen, an economist, for being out of touch, self-serving, and putting profits above people. shit was fire.
Overall would recommend book.
June 14, 2021
Anderson helps us clearly see how our workplaces are in fact private governments. “Private” because they are not open to scrutiny or accountability (especially by the governed), and “governments” because the governed (the workers) are subordinate to their bosses, both inside and outside the workplace. Despite social pressure, government regulation, and human decency preventing most employers from exercising the full extent of their authority, we still get Amazon workers fainting from excessive heat, 90% of waitresses experiencing sexual assault, and slaughterhouse labor being denied bathroom breaks. Compare this to the public government of our democracies where the government is in large part transparent to the governed and makes decisions in their interest. Or compare it to a seventeenth century household, another form of private government where slaves, or even women, were governed “privately”.
The book does not offer many answers other than that we should try and make those private governments more “public”—have the governed have some influence over how they are governed—but it puts the spotlight on this neglected sphere of ethics, and enriches our vocabulary so that we can finally start talking about it. One example I’ve found useful is her breakdown of “freedom” into “negative freedom” (no outside interference), “positive freedom” (vast choice), and “republican freedom” (freedom from subordination), and her examples of how we constantly make tradeoffs between them, for example by renouncing some negative freedom in exchange for great positive and republican freedoms.
I thoroughly enjoyed the book: it rigorously explores its themes and the author allows her points to be challenged by other economists and philosophers, and answers their concerns. I just ordered one of her other books (The Imperative of Integration) and I can’t wait to read it!
The book does not offer many answers other than that we should try and make those private governments more “public”—have the governed have some influence over how they are governed—but it puts the spotlight on this neglected sphere of ethics, and enriches our vocabulary so that we can finally start talking about it. One example I’ve found useful is her breakdown of “freedom” into “negative freedom” (no outside interference), “positive freedom” (vast choice), and “republican freedom” (freedom from subordination), and her examples of how we constantly make tradeoffs between them, for example by renouncing some negative freedom in exchange for great positive and republican freedoms.
I thoroughly enjoyed the book: it rigorously explores its themes and the author allows her points to be challenged by other economists and philosophers, and answers their concerns. I just ordered one of her other books (The Imperative of Integration) and I can’t wait to read it!
July 27, 2019
Enjoyed this book, though I think the best parts are at the end, when Anderson responds to counterpoints made by Tyler Cowen and Niko Kolodny. Anderson’s main argument is that, contrary to the libertarian belief that free markets promote individual autonomy, most workers in capitalist societies find themselves constrained to a dictatorial form of “private government” at the workplace - one that dissolves their freedoms and rights, expect those guaranteed by law.
Her explanation for this is simple but interesting: most workers before the Industrial Revolution were self-employed. That meant promoting free trade and pro-market theories could promote equality by helping workers become self-sufficient “masterless men”, free from the oppressive rule of feudal lords. However, in the modern era where most workers work for large, bureaucratic organizations and have managers, pro-market advocacy only reinforces unequal power relations between the employer and the employee that leads to worker exploitation, such as monitoring posts away from work or neglecting poor working conditions.
Ultimately, Anderson does a good job defending this premise, but there isn’t much discussion about solutions other than increased regulations, nor an acknowledgment about the positives of private government (e.g., a company may ban a racist FB post to protect other employees’ negative freedoms). Still, I really liked the inclusion of comments from other academics and her response to them. It begins an important conversation about issues inherent to the modern workplace, and what can be done about them.
Her explanation for this is simple but interesting: most workers before the Industrial Revolution were self-employed. That meant promoting free trade and pro-market theories could promote equality by helping workers become self-sufficient “masterless men”, free from the oppressive rule of feudal lords. However, in the modern era where most workers work for large, bureaucratic organizations and have managers, pro-market advocacy only reinforces unequal power relations between the employer and the employee that leads to worker exploitation, such as monitoring posts away from work or neglecting poor working conditions.
Ultimately, Anderson does a good job defending this premise, but there isn’t much discussion about solutions other than increased regulations, nor an acknowledgment about the positives of private government (e.g., a company may ban a racist FB post to protect other employees’ negative freedoms). Still, I really liked the inclusion of comments from other academics and her response to them. It begins an important conversation about issues inherent to the modern workplace, and what can be done about them.
November 10, 2024
I can’t help but complain about the way that books about issues in the U.S. are written and marketed – as though we are all of us Americans. That is who is meant by the “we” and “our” in the subtitle of this book and in much of the rest of it. This is a very general trend, of course, and so not particular to this book. And, to be clear, there is nothing wrong with books about America for Americans. This one, for instance, is informative and interesting enough. But there is something wrong with pretending these books are about something more.
February 25, 2025
Not exactly what I expected but well worth the read. Loved that the structure had responses and a reply for the author.
August 26, 2020
Zaujímavá téza, filozofický, odborbnejší jazky, ale stále asi dostupné a čitateľné.
November 14, 2021
got the spirit but a little confused
Displaying 1 - 30 of 139 reviews