Elizabeth Anderson on the Tyranny of Being Employed

Are you the free citizen of a liberal democracy? Or are you the relatively powerless subject of a ruthless, private dictatorship?

These are the questions posed by contemporary philosopher Elizabeth Anderson in her famous 2014 Tanner Lectures, later compiled into a short but compelling book, Private Government: How Employers Rule Our Lives (and Why We Don’t Talk about It) — featuring Anderson’s original lectures, critiques from other thinkers, and Anderson’s response to those critiques.

In her original lectures, Anderson argues that while authoritarianism has seemingly been conquered in the public constitutions of western liberal democracies, it’s alive and well in the private sphere.

Indeed, the modern corporation is as dominant and dictatorial as a totalitarian regime, 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.

Anderson’s claim might seem a bit hyperbolic at first glance, but she asks us to consider the following:

Imagine a government that assigns almost everyone a superior whom they must obey. Although superiors give most inferiors a routine to follow, there is no rule of law. Orders may be arbitrary and can change at any time, without prior notice or opportunity to appeal. Superiors are unaccountable to those they order around. They are neither elected nor removable by their inferiors. Inferiors have no right to complain in court about how they are being treated, except in a few narrowly defined cases. They also have no right to be consulted about the orders they are given.

Anderson goes on to describe this fictional society for two full pages — including, for instance, how:

• The government takes the form of a dictatorship that controls the channels of communication with its own propaganda apparatus.
• All members of this society live under surveillance, with email and phone conversations tracked and inspected.
• Certain clothes and hairstyles are prohibited, and certain political views may be encouraged.
• The government owns all the means of production, and organizes itself via central planning.
• Those higher up the chain tend to enjoy greater freedoms, and thus show more support for the regime.
• Even those lower down the chain, though they may be subordinate to some superiors, enjoy dominion over inferiors and may otherwise identify with and profit from the regime…

Would we describe the people living in such a society as free? Anderson thinks: probably not.

In fact, their freedoms seem to resemble those of people living under the communist dictatorships of, say, Soviet Russia — a system of government surely proven inferior to the free market principles of the USA.

Nevertheless, Anderson maintains, while the American Dream may be celebrated as superior to the communist dictatorship, “Most workers in the United States are governed by communist dictatorships in their work lives”:

Usually, those dictatorships have the legal authority to regulate workers’ off-hour lives as well—their political activities, speech, choice of sexual partner, use of recreational drugs, alcohol, smoking, and exercise. Because most employers exercise this off-hours authority irregularly, arbitrarily, and without warning, most workers are unaware of how sweeping it is…

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

Despite Anderson’s vivid illustrations, perhaps we might feel resistant to the strength of her language — and, indeed, Anderson thinks the reason we might struggle to acknowledge the extent of the power dynamic in our working lives is because of 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 on this narrative. She presents a novel history of free market ideals, invoking theorists like Adam Smith, John Locke, and Thomas Paine, to suggest that the original vision of the free market was not one of big international firms; rather, it involved lots of independent, predominantly 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 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.

Because: what happens next? In many cases, stringent non-compete clauses limit the possible options — and, even if a worker is free to join a competitor without the threat of a lawsuit, it’s like telling someone in one dictatorship they are free to migrate to another.

Anderson draws a powerful analogy with the law of coverture here. Under coverture, as soon as a woman marries a man, she loses all rights to own property and make contracts in her own name. Even if we made it easy for women under coverture to divorce their husbands (which, historically, it wasn’t at all), we can see how the institution of marriage would remain fundamentally imbalanced and unjust between men and women.

Ditto modern employment, Anderson thinks. It is not the case that workers are free and equal just because they have the right to leave their employer. As soon as they wish to be employed again (which, if they want to eat and pay their bills, will be quite soon), they must accept unnecessary, unaccountable limits to their freedom with a new employer. As Anderson puts it,

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

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 incredibly 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 — a tool for advancing 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 a warehouse worker being tracked and monitored constitute freedom?

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?
• 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.

You might also enjoy the following related articles:

• Byung-Chul Han’s Burnout Society: Our Only Imperative is to Achieve
• Hannah Arendt on the Human Condition: Productivity Will Replace Meaning
• John Rawls: How a ‘Veil of Ignorance’ Can Help Us Build a Just Society
• Political Philosophy: the Best 14 Books to Read

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