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Private Government: How Employers Rule Our Lives (and Why We Don't Talk about It) (The University Center for Human Values Series) Hardcover – May 23, 2017

by Elizabeth Anderson (Author)

8 customer reviews

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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.

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Editorial Reviews

Review

"Elizabeth Anderson is a philosopher on the warpath. Her Tanner Lectures . . . take aim at the unelected, arbitrary and dictatorial power that employers, particularly in the US where labour laws are flimsy, hold over their work-forces. . . . [Anderson's argument has] subtlety and force."--Philip Roscoe, Times Higher Education

"In Private Government, Elizabeth Anderson . . . explores how the discipline of work has itself become a form of tyranny, documenting the expansive power that firms now wield over their employees in everything from how they dress to what they tweet. . . . [Private Government] highlight[s] the dramatic and alarming changes that work has undergone over the past century--insisting that, in often unseen ways, the changing nature of work threatens the fundamental ideals of democracy: equality and freedom."--Miya Tokumitsu, The New Republic

"[Private Government] gives a clear, powerful argument for ideas that many people will have already had in only inchoate form."--Nate Holdren, History News Network

"[Private Government] is a well-documented, captivating discussion that should be addressed in an interdisciplinary manner, and an excellent starting point to make that happen."--Choice

"In Private Government, 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 hand, we allow ourselves to be tyrannized by our bosses, who enjoy broad powers of micromanagement and coercion."--Joshua Rothman, NewYorker.com's Page-Turner blog

"Elizabeth Anderson’s bold Private Government is a firm foundation for twenty-first-century civic education in workplace democracy. Anderson exposes the inevitably political dimensions of work. And she leaves us in no doubt that for employees the workplace is tyrannical, ruled by the whims of exploitative and mercurial bosses."--Frank Pasquale, The Hedgehog Review

From the Back Cover

"The extent of the arbitrary authority of owners and managers over employees is surprisingly neglected by political thinkers, given how much time we spend at work and how little in the polling booth. Elizabeth Anderson provides a much-needed, important, and compelling account of this overlooked subject. Private Government deserves to be widely read and discussed."--Alan Ryan, professor emeritus, University of Oxford

"This is a very exciting and extremely important book that presents a major challenge to philosophers and social scientists to think about the modern workplace as a form of private government. It is strange that, in a liberal society, there is so little discussion of the relations of power that characterize the workplace. Anderson deftly brings together history, economic theory, and philosophy to have just that conversation. This book unsettles some very deep, unjustifiable assumptions we have about the nature and organization of work today."--Alexander Gourevitch, Brown University

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Product details

Series: The University Center for Human Values Series
Hardcover: 224 pages
Publisher: Princeton University Press (May 23, 2017)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0691176515
ISBN-13: 978-0691176512
Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 0.8 x 8.8 inches
Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 8 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #56,990 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #4 in Books > Law > Specialties > Labor Law
- #4 in Books > Law > Business > Labor & Employment
- #7 in Books > Business & Money > Economics > Unemployment

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Paul E CriderTop Contributor: Philosophy

A persuasive extension of the concepts of freedom and domination

May 23, 2017

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

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.

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N Pfeifer

Extremely interesting perspective on firm/labor relationships in America, but hardly comprehensive.

September 20, 2017

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

"Private Government" is an intriguing look at how American companies suppress the rights and control the lives of their employees through nearly unlimited private power. Essentially a repost of her own important lectures on the matter, Elizabeth Anderson splits her time between establishing a historical perspective on how labor has changed from England's fiefdoms in the 17th century and how it gradually influenced American labor through the Industrial Revolution while also describing how modern firms have been able to consolidate their power to affect their employees' lives far beyond the workplace. Almost counter-intuitively, Anderson invites a philosopher and an economist to provide a foil to her lectures with a conclusion in turn that argues their points.

There's an irony that Anderson uses the conclusion to explain that handling these "private governments" should be an ongoing conversation because just as the conversation becomes interesting, the book ends. A short read, Anderson explains the problem in detail, but offers little in the way of solutions, hinting slightly at employee-owned firms in Europe. Anderson acknowledges this, but that makes this book feel less like a comprehensive take on the matter and more like the first few chapters for what could've been a great book.

Comment 8 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you?

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Ian Murray

As someone who put in over a decade in a ...

July 21, 2017

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

As someone who put in over a decade in a Fortune 500 firm and worked on K Street in DC, EA is spot on with respect to elucidating the unacceptable authoritarianism in workplaces in the US and elsewhere due to the legal regime that's created corporate governance. Liberty is dead, corporate managers have killed it.....

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Claudia Moscovici

American labor and the dictatorship of the private enterprise elite

May 18, 2017

Format: Kindle Edition

One of the main right-wing arguments against the formation of strong labor unions in the US is that they will slip into socialism and eventually lead to communism (the dictatorship of the proletariat). Professor Anderson's book, Private Government, relies upon political theory and real-life examples to show that, on the contrary, it's the hierarchical leadership structure in American companies that leads to a kind of dictatorship by the elite. American workers are often prescribed what to wear, when they can take bathroom breaks, and even what social and political beliefs they must hold if they want to keep their jobs. While hierarchy, to some extent, is necessary in private companies--to maintain order and some authority--Elizabeth Anderson compellingly argues that this kind of autocratic control of workers by company bosses is incompatible with the American principles of autonomy and equality. In this case, the dictatorship is not that of the Marxist proletariat, as the right fears, but of the the private enterprise elite. This book makes an important contribution not only to political philosophy, but also to our public discourse about private enterprise and the role of labor in the American economy.

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No name

Five Stars

January 1, 2018

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

Extremely good.

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Most recent customer reviews

ezeques

I’m not sure what this has to do with anything?

Published 6 months ago

Dr. D' Domains

Two Stars

A series of university lectures; not for general public distribution

Published 8 months ago

Zygote

A Searing & Overdue Critique of Our Tragically Dysfunctional Work Environments

Wow. This book is a revolution -- and hopefully will help cause one. The way we work is so tragically dysfunctional and we simply don't know how to talk about it.Read more

Published 10 months ago

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