Private Government: How Employers Rule Our Lives (and Why We Don't Talk about It)

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Elizabeth Anderson

Private Government

How Employers Rule Our Lives (and Why We Don't Talk about It)

Elizabeth Anderson

$72.99

Hardback

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English

Princeton University Press
31 July 2017

Social & political philosophy; Political science & theory; Employment & unemployment; Employment & labour law

Series: The University Center for Human Values Series

"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."

By: Elizabeth Anderson
Imprint: Princeton University Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 216mm, Width: 140mm, Spine: 25mm
Weight: 397g
ISBN: 9780691176512
ISBN 10: 0691176515
Series: The University Center for Human Values Series
Pages: 224
Publication Date: 31 July 2017
Audience: General/trade , Professional and scholarly , General/trade , ELT Advanced , Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

"Introduction vii Stephen Macedo Author's Preface xix 1 When the Market Was ""Left"" 1 2 Private Government 37 3 Learning from the Levellers? Ann Hughes 75 4 Market Rationalization David Bromwich 89 5 Help Wanted: Subordinates Niko Kolodny 99 6 Work Isn't So Bad after All Tyler Cowen 108 7 Reply to Commentators Elizabeth Anderson 119 Notes 145 Contributors 183 Index 185"

Elizabeth Anderson is Arthur F. Thurnau Professor and John Dewey Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy and Women's Studies at the University of Michigan. She is the author of The Imperative of Integration (Princeton) and Value in Ethics and Economics. She lives in Ann Arbor.

Reviews for Private Government: How Employers Rule Our Lives (and Why We Don't Talk about It)

[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 [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 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 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