Summary of Private Government

Private Government: How Employers Rule Our Lives (and Why We Don't Talk about It), by Elizabeth Anderson, examines how dominant forms of power structure the relationships between employers and employees and how this structure affects the lives of individual workers. Anderson argues that employers exercise a kind of private government over their employees, and that these unaccountable structures should be subject to public criticism and regulation, just like conventional systems of government. Anderson delves deeply into the matter, using concepts from economics, philosophy, sociology, and history to peculiarly defend workers and their rights to freedom, fairness, justice, and political power. She argues that the common view of workplaces as voluntary contractual relationships between individuals reduces the corporate power structure to a mere benign condition instead of a coercive form of power. In discussing the various ways that employers shape and influence our lives, Anderson sheds light on the impersonal forces of workplace regulation. Ultimately, she provides us with a newfound understanding of power in the workplace and presents our society with a new approach to work and the rights of employees.