Work · Political Philosophy & Ethics (20th–21st c.)
Private Government
Employers rule workers like governments – unaccountable ones; why liberal theory has failed to see it.
Introduction
The book is based on Anderson’s Tanner Lectures at Princeton and was published in 2017 with comments by David Bromwich, Tyler Cowen, Ann Hughes and Niko Kolodny and a reply by the author. Anderson argues that most employees live under a form of government at work: employers can regulate their speech, dress and toilet breaks and sometimes even their life outside work, with little accountability. She explains why liberal and libertarian thought has overlooked this. Early advocates of free markets, such as the Levellers, Adam Smith and Thomas Paine, imagined a society of independent small producers; their ideals were carried over to the industrial economy, where they no longer fit. She calls for giving workers a real voice in the governance of the workplace.
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