One in four American workers says their workplace is a 鈥渄ictatorship.鈥� Yet that number almost certainly would be higher if we recognized employers for what they are鈥攑rivate governments with sweeping authoritarian power over our lives. Many employers minutely regulate workers鈥� speech, clothing, and manners on the job, and employers often extend their authority to the off-duty lives of workers, who can be fired for their political speech, recreational activities, diet, and almost anything else employers care to govern. In this compelling book, Elizabeth Anderson examines why, despite all this, we continue to talk as if free markets make workers free, and she proposes a better way to think about the workplace, opening up space for discovering how workers can enjoy real freedom.
Elizabeth Anderson is Arthur F. Thurnau Professor and John Dewey Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy and Women鈥檚 Studies at the University of Michigan. Her books include The Imperative of Integration (快色直播).
鈥淎nderson explores a striking American contradiction. On the one hand, we are a freedom-obsessed society, wary of government intrusion into our private lives; on the other, we allow ourselves to be tyrannized by our bosses.鈥濃�擩oshua Rothman, NewYorker.com
鈥�Private Government is a welcome and important call to bring workplace governance back into political theory and discourse, and should be taken seriously if we are to promote greater democracy in the workplace.鈥濃�擠avid Cowan, Times Literary Supplement
鈥淗ighlight[s] the dramatic and alarming changes that work has undergone over the past century鈥攊nsisting that, in often unseen ways, the changing nature of work threatens the fundamental ideals of democracy.鈥濃�擬iya Tokumitsu, New Republic
鈥淭he extent of the arbitrary authority of owners and managers over employees is surprisingly neglected by political thinkers, given how much time we spend at work and how little in the polling booth. Elizabeth Anderson provides a much-needed, important, and compelling account of this overlooked subject. Private Government deserves to be widely read and discussed.鈥濃�擜lan Ryan, professor emeritus, University of Oxford
