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Elizabeth S. Anderson

Friday 26th of April 2024

Communism The economic system of the modern workplace is communist, because the government – that is, the establishment – owns all the assets, and the top of the establishment hierarchy designs the production plan, which subordinates execute. There are no internal markets in the modern workplace. Indeed, the boundary of the firm is defined  as the point at which markets end and authoritarian centralized planning and direction begin. Elizabeth Anderson Private Government © 2018 Kwiple.com
Decision making Consent to an option within a set cannot justify the option set itself. Elizabeth Anderson, Provate Government  © 2018 Kwiple.com
Egalitarianism By egalitarian, I refer to an ideal of social relations. To be an egalitarian is to commend and promote a society in which its members interact as equals. This vague idea gets its shape by contrast with social hierarchy, the object of egalitarian critique. Elizabeth Anderson, Private Government  © 2018 Kwiple.com
Egalitarianism [W]e must get beyond a narrow interpretation of egalitarianism in terms of current ideas about distributive justice. Egalitarianism, more fundamentally, is about dismantling or taming social hierachy. Elizabeth Anderson, Private Government  © 2018 Kwiple.com
Employment [Armen] Alchian and [Harold] Demsetz appear to be claiming that whenever individuals are free to exit a relationship, authority cannot exist within it. This is like saying that Mussolini was not a dictator, because Italians could emigrate. While emigration rights may give governors an interest in voluntarily restraining their power, such rights hardly dissolve it. Elizabeth Anderson, Private Government  © 2018 Kwiple.com
Employment [A]t-will employment, which entitles employers to fire workers for any or no reason, grants the employer sweeping legal authority not only over workers' lives at work but also over their off-duty conduct. … The state  has established the constitution of the government of the workplace: it is a form of private government. Elizabeth Anderson, Private Government  © 2018 Kwiple.com
Employment In the employment contract … the workers cannot separate them- selves from the labor they have sold; in purchasing command over labor, employers purchase command over people.  Elizabeth Anderson, Private Government  © 2018 Kwiple.com
Government [G]overnment exists wherever some have the authority to issue orders to others, backed by sanctions, in one or more domains of life. The modern state  is merely one form of government among others. Elizabeth Anderson, Private Government  © 2018 Kwiple.com
Government Government is everywhere, not just in the form of the state, but even more pervasively in the workplace. Elizabeth Anderson, Private Government  © 2018 Kwiple.com
Markets In ordinary markets, a vendor can sell their product to a buyer, and once the transaction is complete, each walks away as free from the other as before. Labor markets are different. When workers sell their labor to an employer, they have to hand themselves  over to their boss, who gets to order them around. The labor contract, instead of leaving the seller as free as before, puts the seller under the authority of their boss. Elizabeth Anderson, Private Government  © 2018 Kwiple.com
Markets People continue to deploy the same justification of market society – that it would secure the personal independence of workers from arbitrary authority – long after it failed to deliver on its original aspiration. … a political agenda that once promised equalizing as well as liberating outcomes turned into one that reinforced private, arbitrary, unaccountable government over the vast majority. Elizabeth Anderson, Private Government  © 2018 Kwiple.com
Private government A government is private with respect to a subject if it can issue orders, backed by sanctions, to that subject in some domain of that subject's life, and that subject has no say in how that government operates and no standing to demand that their interests be taken into account, other than perhaps in narrowly defined circumstances, in the decisions that government makes. Private government is government that has arbitrary, unaccoun- table power over those it governs. This of course is a matter of degree. Its powers may checked in certain ways by other governments, by social norms, and by other pressures. Elizabeth Anderson, Private Government  © 2018 Kwiple.com
Private government We are told that our choice is between free markets and state control, when most adults live their working lives under a third thing entirely: private government. Elizabeth Anderson, Private Gvoernment  © 2018 Kwiple.com
Private government You are subject to private government  wherever (1) you are subordinate to authorities who can order you around and sanction you for not complying over some domain of your life, and (2) the authorities treat it as none of your business, across a wide range of cases, what orders it issues or why it sanctions you. Elizabeth Anderson, Private Gvoernment  © 2018 Kwiple.com
Work [I]t is the state that establishes the default constitution of workplace governance. It is a form of authoritarian, private government, in which, under employment-at-will, workers cede all  their rights to their employers, except those specifically reserved for them by law. Elizabeth Anderson, Private Government  © 2018 Kwiple.com
 
Work Most workers in the United States are governed by communist dictatorships in their work lives. Elizabeth Anderson Private Government © 2018 Kwiple.com