Elizabeth Anderson on Corporate Tyranny

  Going to Work, by L. S. Lowry (1943), via Wikimedia Commons

In her famous 2014 Tanner Lectures, later compiled into a short but compelling book, ​Private Government​, the philosopher Elizabeth Anderson argues that while we may think of citizens in western liberal democracies as relatively ‘free’, most people are actually subject to ruthless authoritarian government: not from the state, but from their employer.

Corporations, masquerading under ‘free market’ principles, are as dictatorial as totalitarian regimes, Anderson declares:

Most workplace governments in the United States are dictatorships, in which bosses govern in ways that are largely unaccountable to those who are governed. They don’t merely govern workers; they dominate them. This is what I call private government.

To illuminate her case, Anderson asks us to imagine a society where the government assigns almost everyone a superior whom they must obey, where orders are arbitrary and may change at any time, where the government is unelected and controls the channels of communication with its own propaganda apparatus, where all members of society live under surveillance, with email and phone conversations tracked and inspected, where certain clothes, hairstyles, and even political views are prohibited…

Would we describe the people living in such a society as free? Anderson thinks: probably not. In fact, we would most likely see them as subject to merciless dictatorship.

Nevertheless, their situation represents how many ‘free’ people are governed in their work lives today.

Can workplaces – which we are free to enter and exit as we please – really be compared to authoritarian regimes?

In case we feel resistant to the strength of her language, Anderson offers a number of reasons for why we might struggle to recognize the extent of the power dynamic at work.

One is because we ourselves might be higher up the chain of command, happily profiting from and enjoying greater freedom within the regime. Another is because we might be ignorant of how legally dominated we really are by our employers, who exercise their true authority “irregularly, arbitrarily, and without warning”, rendering us “unaware of how sweeping it is”.

The final and most important reason is ideology. Rather than see corporations as dictatorships, we learn to see them as the manifestation of free market ideals.

A business’s hierarchy and chain of command represent efficiency and productivity, sculpted by the invisible hand of the market.

Unsurprisingly, Anderson wants to push back against this narrative.

She suggests the original vision of the free market for theorists like Adam Smith, John Locke, and Thomas Paine was not one of big international firms; rather, it involved lots of independent, mainly self-employed individuals coming together to exchange goods.

The dream of the free market was in fact to liberate small independent farmers, artisans, and tradespeople from the tyranny of monopolies and an overbearing state.

What these theorists didn’t foresee, Anderson notes, is how the industrial revolution would upend trade as we know it by introducing economies of scale.

Consequently, the egalitarian ideal never arrived: the free market quickly became dominated by large, sprawling firms to whom formerly independent workers had to sell their labor.

But aren’t firms themselves the product of the free market?

In the 20th-century, free market theorists attempted to justify the dominance of the firm by claiming that firms themselves are governed by free market principles.

Employees are independent agents who freely enter contracts with firms for mutual benefit, the story goes: the employee is free to go somewhere else any time.

Accordingly, just as firms compete to attract customers, firms must also compete to attract top talent, driving up the standard of working conditions. The market governs all. Everybody wins.

But this narrative – persuasive as it may be – is awfully convenient for large corporations, Anderson thinks.

Yes, employees freely enter into contracts; but those contracts are drawn up and decided by the firm. Aside from those near the top of organizations, most workers have very limited leverage in negotiating any kind of change to a firm’s default employment contract.

And yes, employees are free to quit; but the freedom to exit does not equate to actual freedom. That’s like telling someone in one dictatorship they are free to migrate to another.

As soon as we wish to be employed again (which, if we want to eat and pay our bills, will be quite soon), we must hand over our autonomy to a new employer. As Anderson observes:

Consent to an option within a set cannot justify the option set itself.

Or, as Shakespeare puts it:

there is small choice in rotten apples.

So, what’s the alternative? Is Anderson saying we should abolish all employment and hierarchy?

We might think, “but of course businesses need employees to agree to a certain level of corporate governance and hierarchy. Otherwise, how could they possibly operate? How could they compete in the market? If employees want to be paid, they have to cede at least some of their liberties to their superiors. If everyone did whatever they wanted all the time, production would grind to a halt, and nobody would be able to pay their bills.”

Anderson would agree: she recognizes that the hierarchical structure adopted by most modern firms is often efficient and productive.

She’s not concerned about that; rather, she simply wants to kickstart a conversation about corporate overreach.

Anderson wants us to recognize that firms have far more power over their employees’ lives than can be justified by mere efficiency and productivity, but that we aren’t equipped with the right language to properly scrutinize these problems. She claims that

we don’t have good ways to talk about the way bosses rule workers’ lives. Instead, we talk as if workers aren’t ruled by their bosses. We are told that unregulated markets make us free, and that the only threat to our liberties is the state. We are told that in the market, all transactions are voluntary. We are told that, since workers freely enter and exit the labor contract, they are perfectly free under it: bosses have no more authority over workers than customers have over their grocer.

Hence Anderson’s introduction of the term private government, which she hopes will advance the discussion around worker dignity and autonomy.

This is how we should view the modern workplace, Anderson argues: not as a manifestation of free market ideals, but as a private and rather ruthless form of government.

How can private governments be held to account so that workers are not humiliated, exploited, dominated, inappropriately surveilled, pressured, or abused? Anderson is not calling for revolution; she just wants us to think carefully about what a free market really looks like.

Does monitoring warehouse workers’ toilet breaks, measuring remote workers’ mouse movements, or tracking the real-time location of employees really constitute the kind of freedom we want our economic system to afford us?

As Anderson concludes ​Private Government: How Employers Rule Our Lives​:

My point is simply that workers need some kind of institutionalized voice at work to ensure that their interests are heard, that they are respected, and that they have some share of autonomy in workplace decisions. Subjecting them to private government – to arbitrary, unaccountable authority – is no way to treat people who have a claim to dignity, autonomy, and standing no less than that of their employers.

What do you make of Anderson’s arguments?

• Does Anderson’s analysis ring true for you?
• Could the problems of corporate tyranny be remedied with stronger work councils or unions? What other regulation might be needed?
• Has employment sometimes made you feel like an unfree subject rather than a free citizen?
• Or does Anderson exaggerate both the unaccountable power of the employer, and the indignities and unfreedoms faced by workers?

Learn more about Anderson’s private government and related philosophy

If you’re interested in learning more about Anderson’s arguments, Private Government: How Employers Rule Our Lives (and Why We Don’t Talk about It) is a compelling read, featuring Anderson’s original lectures, critiques from other thinkers, and Anderson’s replies to those critiques.

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