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Title: Private Government
Author: Iain McKay
Date: 2018
Language: en
Topics: government, book review, Anarcho-Syndicalist Review
Source: Retrieved on 28th January 2021 from https://syndicalist.us/2019/12/19/private-government/
Notes: From Anarcho-Syndicalist Review #73, Spring 2018

Iain McKay

Private Government

Elizabeth Anderson, Private Government: How Employers Rule Our Lives

(and Why We Don’t Talk about it. Princeton University Press, 2017,

$27.95 hardcover.

This is both an important book which raises a key issue and one which

simply states the obvious. It is both a well-researched work and one

which ignores a school of thinkers who were pioneers on the subject. It

is one which both challenges assumptions and takes them for granted. In

short, it is both perceptive and frustrating.

Elizabeth Anderson is a professor of philosophy and women’s studies at

the University of Michigan and her book seeks to raise the issue of

workplace hierarchy and its negative effects. Her book comprises a

preface, two essays (“When the market was ‘Left’” and “Private

Government”) and a “Reply to the Commentators,” plus an introduction by

Stephen Macedo and four comments by various academics.

It states the obvious by chronicling the extensive power employers have

over their workers both within and outside the company. That she feels

the need to provide substantial evidence for what should be an obvious

fact speaks volumes – it is the elephant in the room of our so-called

“free” (i.e., capitalist) economies: “in purchasing command over labor,

employers purchase command over people.” (57) She rightly notes that

workers in the new industrial economy called it “wage slavery,” rather

than the “free labor” of the liberals, for they were well aware that it

was “a relation of profound subordination to their employer.” (35) She

is also right to note that “[t]o be egalitarian is to commend and

promote a society in which members interact as equals” (3), and so to be

an egalitarian is to be a libertarian, someone who promotes liberty –

there is little liberty when you are subject to hierarchy.

Anarchists have been noting all this since 1840, when Proudhon

proclaimed property to be both “theft” and “despotism.” Yet, for all her

impressive research, she almost completely fails to mention the

libertarian analysis – “anarchism, syndicalism” are mentioned only in

passing. (6) Given that libertarians have placed the issues she raises

at the center of their ideas for nearly 200 years, it is simply

staggering that Anderson ignores us. While she may bemoan how “workers

largely abandoned their pro-market, individualistic egalitarian dream

and turned to socialist, collectivist alternatives,” (59) she fails to

discuss those like Proudhon with pro-market, collectivist egalitarian

dreams in spite of his mutualism meeting her (unstated) criteria of

being pro-market and being explicitly aware of the issues which arose

with the rise of large-scale industry. Socialism appears to be equated

with Marxism and this centralized system is, rightly, dismissed but

there is no engagement with libertarian visions of socialism. Nor is

there any mention of the work by Carole Pateman or David Ellerman, not

even Noam Chomsky who regularly raises the same issues and is by far the

best known libertarian writer today.

Anarchism is mentioned once more, when Hobbes’ brutish “State of Nature”

is equated to anarchist communism, which is an “unregulated commons”

where anyone can take anything from whoever they wish. (46) Yet simply

consulting any libertarian communist thinker would quickly show that

they advocate use rights combined with social overview. This would be a

“regulated” commune for, regardless of myths, unregulated communes are

rare in human history (and generally reflect a breakdown in society due

to actions of state or wealth). So people would not expect their

possessions to be arbitrarily taken from them in any anarchist system.

Anderson, then, seems blissfully unaware of the anarchist critique of

property, equating property with the right to exclude others and

proclaiming the arguments for property “impeccable.” (45–6) Surely an

awareness of the ideas being critiqued should be considered as essential

research before commenting upon it? Similarly, if she had read

Proudhon’s What is Property? she would understand how the “impeccable”

theory of property produces the very evils she indicates and denounces

as well as the anarchist use-rights theory which ends them without

creating a worse problem in state capitalism.

She does mention and discuss “libertarians” (60–2) but these are strange

lovers of freedom because, as Macedo notes, they ignore that employment

“brings with it subjection to arbitrary power that extends beyond their

work lives.” (xi) Anderson herself notes that these self-proclaimed

“libertarians” seem to have no problem with private tyranny and that “it

is surprising how comfortable some libertarians are with the validity of

contracts into slavery” (66) as well as non-compete contracts, yet at no

point raises the obvious point that these people have no concept of what

liberty actually is.

Again, this points to serious flaws in her scholarship in-so-far as she

appears unaware of the American right’s deliberate theft of the word

“libertarian” from anarchists in the 1950s. Worse, she makes no attempt

to understand this obvious paradox of “libertarians” advocating deeply

authoritarian social relationships. After all, it is not “surprising” at

all that these “libertarians” advocate voluntary slavery for John Locke,

founder of classical liberalism, did so under the term “drudgery” –

amongst the many “subordinate relations” he defended, including actual

slavery.

Anderson misreads Locke completely, proclaiming him an egalitarian (16)

when in fact the equality he postulates at the dawn of his state of

nature is simply the opening paragraph of a “just-so” story weaved to

justify current inequalities in wealth and power in order to secure the

“subordinate” relationships of master-servant, husband-wife,

governor-governed, these produce. Consent was the means to do this and,

needless to say, she does not tarry over Locke’s contractual defences of

slavery and serfdom: he did not contradict himself in defending slavery

nor in drafting The Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina as she claims.

(176) For it is to Locke that we must trace the notion of “subjection as

freedom,” (62) as shown by yet another author who goes unmentioned,

Carole Pateman (most obviously in The Sexual Contract).

Locke, then, sought to justify inequality by means of just-so stories

and the liberal use of the word “consent.” So she is wrong to suggest

that the advocates of laissez-faire “failed to recognise that the older

arguments [premised on self-employment] no longer applied” after

industrialisation and that it is from this “arose the symbiotic

relationship between libertarianism and authoritarianism that blights

our political discourse to this day.” (36) Read so-called “libertarian”

writers like Nozick and Rothbard and you will see that private tyranny

is recognized – and defended with gusto. In this they follow Locke and

his defense of the hierarchical social relationships of the agrarian

capitalism he was familiar with.

The selective perspective Anderson bemoans is more apparent than real,

being more than an “error.” (57) It is not in fact a “bizarre

combination” at all for the laissez-faire liberals to have “hostility

toward state power and enthusiasm for hyperdisciplinary total

institutions.” (58) This is because they were interested in property,

not liberty – as seen by Locke and his ideological descendants. Indeed,

it is the few classical liberals (most obviously, John Stuart Mill) who

are notable exceptions in this who need to be accounted for, although

she does not – Mill’s support for cooperatives is relegated to an end

note while his pioneering feminism goes unmentioned (perhaps his later

market socialism is the reason for this?).

Still, her sketches of pre-industrial liberals – the Levellers, Adam

Smith, Thomas Paine, Abraham Lincoln – are useful examples of her thesis

on the changing nature of market freedom. She rightly reclaims Adam

Smith from the right, noting his egalitarian tendencies and his obvious

preference for self-employment. (17–22) She quotes him on how all have

“an equal right to the earth” and how a “tenant at will” is “as

dependent upon the proprietor as any servant” and “must obey him with as

little reserve.” Similarly, Paine’s writings could be classed as

“broadly libertarian” (24) in the paradoxical and self-contradictory

American sense precisely because he lived in a pre-capitalist society

yet he was well aware of the need for land reform and progressive income

tax, anathema for today’s so-called “libertarians” of the right. His

writings do “not display a trace of the anti-capitalist class conflict

that characterized nineteenth century politics” because there was no

industrial capitalism and this is why “it does not make sense to pit

workers against capitalists.” (25, 26) In short, social context matters

when evaluating ideas – as can be seen, most obviously, with certain

aspects of certain (American) individualist anarchists within our

tradition.

As far as the evidence and logic of her case go, Anderson has done an

excellent job with both even if she ignores the anarchist tradition. In

terms of the conclusions she draws from these, there is less to

recommend. However, before discussing this, the other contributors to

the book should be mentioned. Three of the commentators (Hughes,

Bromwich and Kolodny, particularly the latter) bring little to the

discussion, the fourth (Tyler Cowen) is of interest simply because as an

economist (and quasi-“libertarian”) he shows that her account of the

mental blinkers associated with workplace hierarchy is correct. His

reply – “Work Isn’t So Bad After all” – is staggering in its

unwillingness to understand the point being made. By definition workers

do toil under the supervision of communist dictators, regardless of

Cowen’s smug final sentence.

His defense of factory fascism is replete with the invocation of “very

often” – “very often” workers are fired for putting racist, sexist

comments on the internet to protect other workers (ignoring, for

example, the well-documented firings for political opinion Anderson

provides) – while “abuses are relatively few in number” and the gains

“outweigh those costs.” (112–3) No evidence is provided, unlike with

Anderson who provides overwhelming evidence to support her position.

Likewise, he asserts that cooperatives and such like are often “less

efficient” (115) when the empirical evidence suggests otherwise, which

raises the awkward question of why a less efficient mode of production

dominates society.

Cowan is dismissive of the notion that workplace tyranny is an issue,

for if it says what he wants to hear then the voice of the people is

truly the voice of god: “I do not see the evidence that suggests such

events are a major concern of the American public.” (113) It would be

churlish to note that indifference is one of the issues Anderson raises

– why do we not talk about it? – and would not the threat of being fired

for raising such issues explain this? Likewise, concerns can and do

change, particularly if advanced minorities raise the issue. After all,

we can be sure that sexual and racial inequality did not concern “the

American public” much before the rise of the civil rights and women’s

movements.

It is worth discussing one paper Cowan draws upon to show the flaws of

his comment. He suggests that German codetermination “costs about 26

percent of shareholder value” which he puts down to “lower

productivity.” (116) Yet German workers are more productive than

American ones in terms of GDP per hour worked. Nor does the paper he

cites argue this. It does suggest “codetermination reduces MTB

[Market-To-Book] by 27% and ROA [Returns On Assets] by 5 basis points”

but notes this is due to the “transfer of some control rights from

equity holders to employees [which] results in a different set of

choices for the firm.” (Gary Gorton and Frank Schmid, Class Struggle

inside the Firm: A Study of German Codetermination, Working Paper 7945,

National Bureau of Economic Research, 25) The MTB ratio suggests that a

company’s share value will be greater than its book value because the

share price takes into account investors’ estimate of the profitability

of the company.

Productivity, as Cowan surely knows, is different than profitability.

Profitability is the difference between costs and prices. Productivity

is the value workers create – how it is distributed is where it

intersects with profitability. Any arrangement which increases the

workers’ bargaining power will by definition reduce profitability

(because workers keep more of the value they create) but may increase

productivity (for precisely the same reason). Thus Cowan completely

misunderstands the paper he cites, for Gorton and Schmid are discussing

the distribution of surplus rather than its size. They conclude that

“codetermination does empower employees, and that they use their power

in ways that contradict the desires of shareholder” and “the ability to

influence decision-making via supervisory board seats is valuable to

employees, allowing them to redistribute firm surplus towards

themselves.” (6) Also “unionization is associated with lower firm

profitability” for “unions are successful in redistributing firm surplus

towards workers.” (8–9)

In other words, Cowan is attacking codetermination because German

workers retain more of the value they produce instead of funnelling it

upwards into the hands of shareholders – and Anderson makes the same

obvious point. (142) Apparently the German 1% is being exploited by the

99% and “liberty” means that inequality there should rise to U.S.

levels. Sadly for Cowan, Gorton and Schmid are not as strong in their

conclusions: “None of this is to say whether codetermination is socially

optimal or not.” (32)

Overall, Cowan’s comments show that it takes substantial educational

effort to become so blinkered. Of course he is fine with wage-labor – at

least for other people, he being a tenured economics professor at George

Mason University. As Anderson notes (134), being near the top of the

wage-labor hierarchy, obviously he would be happy with it and she writes

a wonderful response to his platitudes which is well worth reading for

its focused anger and destructive power. An example:

“He worries that we can’t have nice things if workers don’t submit to

the dictatorial power of their employers. This is the same argument

British West Indies sugar growers made in Parliament in defense of

slavery, during the debates over abolition.” (142)

Kolodny’s comments are of note purely because he gets Anderson to admit

to not endorsing full workplace democracy, a decision based on

“pragmatism” and because there “are enough disanalogies between state

and workplace governances.” (130)

So in spite of her detailed and well referenced account of workplace

tyranny, she fails to advocate its abolition and while talking of

“republican freedom” (64) she baulks at (to use Proudhon’s words)

“industrial associations, small worker republics” – and for no good

reason beyond the rather vague comment that “some of its costs may be

difficult to surmount” (66) and a cryptic reference. Few would so easily

dismiss a move from (political) dictatorship to democracy by noting it

“is challenging” and those involved may “have a hard time agreeing”!

(131)

While it is right to say that she cannot propose what the workplace

constitution ought to be (133) for that is up to workers to determine

how to manage their affairs, we can outline principles for a solution.

Yet her suggestions are woefully weak. After chronicling how wage-labor

is private tyranny, she dismisses the obvious solution of workers

control in favour of co-determination on the German model. This is about

as convincing as a critic of slavery or monarchy proclaiming the

solution cannot involve ending them but somehow tempering them with

forums for discussion. Indeed, those who opposed these purely on the

“pragmatic” position that it was not economically efficient or hard to

abolish would be considered almost as bad as the aristocrats and slave

drivers (who could, at least, call upon god to justify their position).

Another option mooted is something like a company union, dismissing

independent unions because they are “adversarial” and so misses her own

point. (70) Any union activist will tell you that being “adversarial” is

essential; otherwise the union becomes another extension of management’s

power and, as she proves, there is a lot to be “adversarial” about!

Similarly, while suggesting that firms “vigorously resist unionization

to avoid a competitive disadvantage with non-unionized firms,” (70)

perhaps a more realistic analysis would be that bosses like to be

dictators and like to appropriate as much as they can from their

employees’ labor? After all, the decline of unions since 1980 has been

marked by productivity and wages separating, with the latter stagnating

as the former grows (so disproving the platitudes of free market

economists who had suggested in the 1950s and 1960s – and even today! –

that unions were not required to secure decent wages).

Needless to say, she does not address the issue of reform or revolution

– a topic which provoked some debate amongst the libertarians who long

ago noticed the problem she raises. She proclaims that worker ownership

“is far out of reach for most firms, given the size of capital

investment needed.” (131) This is true but this option is hardly the

only available – there is also expropriation (direct action) and

nationalization (political action) – and so a bit like suggesting that

the only way to end slavery was for the slaves to buy themselves back

from their masters.

Similarly, there is no discussion of socialization and instead we get

“independent contractors acting without external supervision, who rent

their capital” postulated – and rightly rejected – as an alternative.

(51) Strangely, she proclaims this universal self-employment as

“amount[ing] to anarchy as the primary form of workplace order” before

dismissing this because organization is needed for “large-scale

production” rather than “market relations within the firm.” (64) Here

are lack of research becomes (again) obvious as no anarchist thinker has

ever suggested such a solution to the social question. Indeed,

anarchists have been aware than collectivism “decisively” defeated

individualism in production (65) since 1840 and advocated workers

associations as a result.

A similar blindness can be seen from Anderson’s (correct) comment that

many of the earliest radicals and socialists were “artisans who operated

their own enterprises” but that does not mean “they were simultaneously

capitalists and workers.” (25) Failing to recognize capital is a social

relationship, she fails to see that this description of meaningless: it

is like saying in 1865 that all American workers were now simultaneously

masters and slaves.

Ultimately, it is her apparent unawareness of the authoritarian roots of

liberalism which makes her comments against the so-called “libertarians”

of the right ultimately toothless. She may bemoan the perspective that

“wherever individuals are free to exit a relationship” then “authority

cannot exist” (55) but she can only completely reject it by moving

beyond liberalism into socialism (as Mill did), something she refuses to

do along with refusing to advocate workplace democracy (and the

socialisation that requires). In short, while lamenting the abuses of

wage-labor she has no principled objection to it.

Yet she unknowingly restates Joseph Déjacque’s reasoning for coining the

term libertarian for “employers have always been authoritarian rulers,

as an extension of their patriarchal rights to govern their households.”

(48) Listing the horrors of the patriarchal marriage contract, (61) she

does not suggest that feminists were wrong to call for its abolition

rather than be “pragmatic” and ponder “trade-offs” – why is wage-labor

considered different? Perhaps because she, like Cowan, is not directly

affected by it but is by patriarchy? If Déjacque urged Proudhon to be

consistent in extending his opposition to workplace hierarchy to the

family, can we not urge Anderson to be consistent in extending her

opposition to household hierarchy to the workplace?

Also, it is worth noting that she equates decision making with

government, government with hierarchy – much like Engels, so showing the

liberal nature of “On Authority.” Yet agreeing does not equate to

authoritarian, no matter what Engels asserted, and “governance” (how

decisions are made) does not equal “government” (delegation of power

into the hands of a few). This uncritical perspective on forms of

organization is a significant limitation, particularly in a work

interested in what freedom means and extending it. Still, unlike Engels

she recognizes that “[n]o production process is inherently so

constrained as to eliminate all exercise of authority. Elimination of

room for autonomy is the product of social design, not nature.” (128)

This is a significant, if undeveloped, step forward from Engels.

Ultimately, for a book which, at bottom, is about class, it is woefully

lacking in class consciousness. She seeks to explain our current

societal blindness to workplace despotism by suggesting it is a

misapplication of pre-capitalist market positions to post-industrial

revolution realities. Yet is no “misdeployment,” (65) for it is hardly

in the interests of capitalists to acknowledge the source of their power

and profits – hence a pre-capitalist vision of the market being used to

describe a much different, capitalist, reality would be encouraged by

those with an interest in obscuring the authoritarian and exploitative

social relationships produced by property. So you would expect given

class interest that this would not be discussed – and so the peculiar

condition she deplores and explores is easily explained. So it is no

coincidence that – as she notes – these questions rose with organized

labor and declined with it. (40–1)

Likewise, her main thesis – that a pre-capitalist perspective is being

grafted upon a capitalist reality – is hardly new. As Marx noted long

ago, from “Locke to Ricardo” the defenders of capitalism invoke “a mode

of production that presupposes that the immediate producer privately

owns his own conditions of production” while “the relations of

production they describe belong to the capitalist mode of

production.”(Capital [Penguin Books: London, 1976] I: 1083) Her account

of pre-industrial America would have benefited from Marx’s writings on

“Primitive Accumulation” in Capital (Part 8, Chapter 33) and how, to

quote Marx, “the anti-capitalist cancer of the colonies [was] healed,”

(938) but then she does not draw upon any socialist writers –

libertarian or authoritarian – who discuss these issues. Marx is quoted

on the nature of the workplace (4–5) but the earlier, market-based,

perspective of Proudhon goes unmentioned – a strange omission given her

position.

Another flaw in her argument arises with the state. She rightly notes

that the American state determines the power of the employer, given its

support for “employment at will” and the power that goes with it. (53–4,

57) Yet she downplays the obvious point that changes in this situation

would involve changes in property rights – in the direction of the

use-rights and socialization advocated by Proudhon in 1840. Yet this

discussion makes it clear that she thinks the state is some neutral body

above classes, representing the people and so could be used to empower

the many at work. This ignores that the state is currently a capitalist

state and it will not pursue a transformation in the bargaining power of

classes just because it would be fairer or because we ask nicely. Yes,

the German capitalist state has decided upon a different set of options

to secure the exploitation of labor but this was a product of many

things, not least a mass Social-Democratic movement. Co-determination

and strong unions were forced upon it from outside. This was the case in

America as well, with direct action being the means by which labor

issues came to the fore in the 1930s. So if we do take private

government seriously (and Anderson shows why we must, assuming you need

more than the daily grind of wage slavery to convince you) then we must

look to our fellow workers for its solution – then the public government

will belatedly catch up (assuming we are unable to get rid of both once

and for all). In other words, class struggle – something Anderson does

not discuss as much as she should.

Anderson, to conclude, has produced a well-documented account of

something libertarians have been arguing since 1840 – proprietor

despotism –without mentioning this tradition. Like us, she recognizes

that social relations matter, that equality and inequality matter, that

liberty and equality are mutually supportive rather than mutually

exclusive. Yet, by failing to discuss anarchism, she has failed to do

the research an academic of her level would be expected to do. Much

worse, she fails to embrace the obvious conclusions of her evidence

against wage-labor in favor of the kind of mealy-mouthed “pragmatism”

she would rightly denounce if applied to chattel-slavery or patriarchal

marriage. Still, she should be thanked for the evidence and arguments

she provides if not for her conclusions.