Imagine a government where citizens face limited autonomy, strict hierarchies, and personal monitoring by a superior, where a routine is mandated for those on the lower rungs of the social order to follow. In this system, supervisors operate with unchecked power, often issuing arbitrary orders that may change without notice or opportunity for appeal. Subordinates, stripped of the ability to challenge their treatment or contribute to decision-making, are bound to comply, creating a society ruled by centralized authority. The only way to escape that system of government is to leave everything behind, potentially losing your livelihood and no longer provide for yourself or your family.
As Elizabeth Anderson writes in Private Government: How Employers Rule Our Lives (and Why We Don’t Talk about It), “I expect that this description of communist dictatorship in our midst, pervasively governing our lives, often to a far greater degree of control than the state, would be deeply surprising to people. Certainly many U.S. CEOs, who think of themselves as libertarian individualists, would be surprised to see themselves depicted as dictators of little communist governments.”
When thinking about this review, I remembered being intrigued by the concept of “private government” in the title of Anderson’s work. Then I went to my Amazon account to see when exactly I bought the book: December 2019, a few months after it came out in paperback. I imagined myself sitting in a chair reading Private Government while news plays in the background about a flu overseas. It felt like the beginning of a disaster movie.
Looking back at the last four years, a time when millions of managers in private businesses across the country prodded employees about getting vaccines, social media posts, or monitored who they came into contact with, Private Government seems to have a broader scope today, as we sort through the aftereffects of the pandemic, than it did when it first hit university bookstores in 2017.
The term “private government,” Anderson admits, seems to be a contradiction, particularly to those used in political debates, where “the private sector” and “public sector” appear to occupy two separate spheres. She asks readers to move beyond those simple constructions, characterizing “government” as an institution in which individuals are subjected to arbitrary and unaccountable authority. Although we generally associate the concept of government with the public domain, she highlights that comparable power dynamics are present in private workplaces, where employees often lack meaningful influence over decisions that directly affect their lives on a regular basis.
Private Government comprises two lectures, three responses from other philosophers, and then a reaction by the author. The first lecture documents a period when the free market was considered to be “on the left.” Anderson deftly shows how early proponents of free markets, such as Adam Smith and Thomas Paine, envisioned them as mechanisms for dismantling feudal hierarchies and advancing individual liberty. Initially, free markets were seen as instruments for fostering a more egalitarian society by curbing monopolies and inherited privilege, thereby empowering small producers and workers. However, the rise of industrial capitalism markets evolved from forces of liberation into systems that reinforced new forms of hierarchy, particularly within the employer-employee dynamic. Anderson critiques contemporary libertarian perspectives on free markets, contending that they fail to recognize how modern economic structures often perpetuate the very forms of domination that early market theorists sought to eradicate.
In her second lecture, Anderson critiques the authoritarian structure of modern workplaces, arguing that employers wield extensive and often unchecked power over employees, effectively functioning as “private governments.” She highlights the stark contrast between the way Americans demand democratic liberty from their elected government and the undemocratic nature of private employment, where workers often have little say in decisions that profoundly impact their lives on a daily basis.
Anderson challenges the conventional assumption that employment contracts ensure worker freedom, demonstrating instead that these agreements frequently serve as instruments of employer dominance, permitting extensive surveillance and behavioral regulations that extend beyond the workplace into employees’ personal lives. She further critiques the widely accepted notion that free markets inherently promote individual liberty, illustrating how they facilitate the rise of private governments that operate without democratic accountability.
By exposing the authoritarian dynamics embedded within employment relationships, Anderson calls for a fundamental reexamination of workplace governance and advocates greater worker participation and protections to align private employment structures with democratic principles. Any conservatives who experienced the censorship of social media outlets over the past few years or have felt the need to keep opinions to themselves lest they be “canceled” will likely find themselves nodding in agreement.
Anderson envisions a future where labor is less coercive and more just, and her proposals to remedy the problem of “private government” come in the form of typical left-wing fare that has failed when tried outside the comfortable confines of the hypothetical. She calls for more workplace democracy, stronger legal protections, the implementation of universal basic income, and increased public awareness. Unlike some on the left who make these kinds of criticisms, however, she never advocates the elimination of capitalism, at least.
The problem she names, however, is one that people of all kinds feel, and this book provides a useful language for discussing it. The response to the pandemic laid bare the ways individual liberty can be affected by “private government.” What does one do when the “private government” becomes tyrannical and the public government has shut down huge portions of the economy, closing off exits? What about those who, due to things other than lack of motivation, cannot exit even in good times?
TRACKING WHAT DOGE IS DOING ACROSS THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT
Private Government’s criticism that the free market, at least in some cases, acts as a constraint to individual liberty should be something with which free-market thinkers reckon. And as the new ascendant Trump coalition brings labor into the conservative movement, there’s an opportunity here for those who support individual empowerment and free enterprise to return to their roots as a force for the working class.
Whether it’s licensing and regulation, which often fuels the power and control Anderson describes and laments, or an education system that often ignores skilled trades that can foster individual freedom in work, supporters of the free market have the tools to take on the challenges laid down by Anderson several years ago.
Carl Paulus is a historian from Michigan and the author of The Slaveholding Crisis: The Fear of Insurrection and the Coming of the Civil War.
This article was originally published at www.washingtonexaminer.com
Author
