Book Review- Anderson

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Private Government

Book Review

The book, “Private Government” by Elizabeth Anderson is an argument regarding coercive nature and hierarchical institutions of modern workplaces. It is a collection of facts that are camouflaged by the facades of contractual equality and market freedom. The author has profoundly narrated actual nature of work by privileging free market and the impact of current policies and occlude discourse, by leaving a blank impact on readers who are left speechless to articulate their problems (Anderson, 2019). Anderson ensures and directs readers to view capitalist firms as representative of arbitrary governments that are antithetical to moral commitments and are meant for equality and freedom (Anderson, 2019). This book provides a detail explanation on original free markets as well as private properties that were defended on the egalitarian grounds. It is asserted that markets were meant to decompose the monarchial as well as the feudal organization that was promoted by institutions, crown, church, and guild, as a result, freeing people from the material dependencies and social hierarchies that such instructions buttressed.

According to the author, the market has failed to cast any kind of effect on egalitarian dreams because of the inequalities that are created between workers and bosses (Anderson, 2019). The problems do not end with the acceptance of the inequality but real problem is the human attitude that asserts that individual lives in a world of small, and self-employed proprietors who are trading with each other. As noted by the author, the Chicago Schools economics and law movement were more like deployment of the ideology of free-market that was meant to erase the insight that is defined by the suppression of the mechanism and characterizes market forms that exist. It is asserted that the underlying understanding of market was established by authors such as Ronald Coase who attempted to reimagine firm as a nexus of contracts, as well as a catalectic distribution and managing of individuals who are organizing themselves as per their will in a free market. However, Anderson perceives it as a pathology of free-market ideology (Anderson, 2019). It is more like the insistence upon thinking about this world by using the ideology of free market that resultantly makes it hard for an individual to see the dynamics of power while being at work. Moreover, there is no authority, no dignity and no domination of workplace that is just a voluntary chosen contract existing among autonomous and equal agents.

In this book, Anderson has offered her titular concept in which private governments are the other way of understanding firms (Anderson, 2019). However, workplaces are traced as government offices having an environment of some sanction backed authority over the other employees. Moreover, workplace governments are private not by the context that they are found in same private spheres but by the fact that their exercise is understood as something to be treated as a concern only by those who are managing them. Also, firms are the private governments in which management can even give some sanction-based commands to the workers without any accountability and justification (Anderson, 2019).

It would not be wrong to say that Anderson has made both, provocative and compelling analysis, still, there are many things to quibble with such as, either Anderson considers the theory of firm-as-market as an influential topic in public discourse or there are some other dimensions associated with it (Anderson, 2019)? Moreover, are private firms actually private, as they are quote or not? These questions direct Americans to accept workplace arrangements as legitimate because they don’t recognize the authority therein because almost everyone knows about the one who is giving orders. However, the question of the public and private working framework is also controversial because publicly and privacy are not just limited to proximate accountability because, in larger social and instructional contexts, there is a complete check and balance on a decision that ultimately affects other decisions (Anderson, 2019). It is significant to note that Anderson does not emphasize on the market competition and the structure of industry despite, it plays a major role in keeping a check and balance in managements as well as managers.

Moreover, Anderson explores different institutional remedies for de-privatizing private governments, along with a major emphasis on the importance of mechanism for influencing workers and keeping control (Anderson, 2019). Anderson dismisses the option of abolishing firms entirely by considering it implausible. Contrary this cannot be true with transaction-cost-reducing nature, digital technology and the rise of gig economies (Anderson, 2019). It is informative that Anderson introduces the language of post-industrial revolution economy that is becoming less relevant or almost extinct in the smartphone age. The explanation of this ideology can be found in Uber that faced major criticism in the context of turning of pricing between taxi drivers who refused to provide services to airports in the protest of Donald trump’s Muslim Travel ban. This example is well suited for the traditional firms, where price was only mediating the transaction between administered enterprise as well as customers. Consequently, lowering the price was not just an incentive for riders, it was a disincentive for the drivers who were offering a ride. This type of arrangement is getting more emphasis but it is equally less eligible as if one is interpreting economy through the private government.

In a nutshell, with “Private Government’, Anderson has offered a significant corrective to influential libertarian theories by bringing a sharp relief to the government nature of firms. There could be more downplaying in terms of how distinctive such governments can be, thereby obscuring the underlying conditions that are presupposed. However, the stakes Anderson elucidates in a highly convincingly way is too high to be affordable.

Work Cited

Anderson, Elizabeth. Private government: How employers rule our lives (and why we don't talk about it). Vol. 44. Princeton University Press, 2019.