The shortcomings of Anderson's analogy and how it jeopardizes her response to critiques - Josh Morganstein

At the beginning of Chapter 2, Anderson lays out an engrossing narrative about the modern workplace—comparing it with an authoritarian dictatorship. Her description is important to her argument about private government as a whole. Nevertheless, I’d like to make three important points about the analogy (two of which will be potential shortcomings of it). 

First, I think Anderson’s argument would benefit from engaging with the idea of structural violence. Indeed, the monopoly on the legitimate use of force separates the state from private corporations, and really any other entity (a distinction that Weber makes and Anderson concedes). The use of violence is then employed in states to constrain negative freedom. Anderson posits that private “sanction” does effectively the same thing, but I think the underlying mechanism for why that is true depends on a broader definition of violence (one that includes structural violence, to be specific). If republican freedom is ultimately about non-domination, and domination functions through violence, then protecting individuals from violence ought to be the highest goal of a free society. Then, if the harsh sanctions employed by private companies, which force individuals into poverty or terrible working conditions, constitute structural violence, the state’s imposition on the negative liberty of companies to use real violence is not sufficient to protect republican freedom.

Now, onto the shortcomings of Anderson’s analogy.

First, this may seem counter-intuitive, and certainly against our Western liberal intuitions, but there is a case to be made for technocratic authoritarianism in the workplace. Political science boasts six decades worth of literature, starting with Lipset, analyzing the relationship between regime type and economic growth. Most analyses (including Lipset’s) tend to correlate democracy with economic growth, but those lack nuance (the reason that correlation is made is not only because of historical colonialism by the West, but because most of the analyses do not distinguish between kleptocratic and technocratic authoritarian regimes). A complete and nuanced review of the literature actually indicates that for developing countries, the best way (that has been tried) to promote economic growth and lift people out of poverty is a combination of free markets and technocratic authoritarianism. The state’s restrictions on negative liberty are actually necessary to promote positive freedom from increased material resources and republican freedom from a growing middle class that suffers less from the domination and exploitation of the rich. Through this lens, a full extension of Anderson’s analogy means that a private company, whose stated purpose is to grow in order to make everyone in the company (including the workers) richer, could actually reasonably adopt a technocratic authoritarian model, and workers could reasonably accept it over the alternative. Applying this idea to Chapter 7, Anderson's response to Kolodny's critique is less compelling. Anderson states that she takes issue with private government because it forces individuals to "subject to it vulnerable to unjustified and abusive forms of power." It seems her response then, is very much grounded in republican freedom. But what if the constraints on negative liberty imposed by the company are ones that employees consent to (as they almost always do) and are ones that are subject to the regulation of the state and shareholders (as they almost always are to some extent): then the power is not arbitrary, and it's not unaccountable. If the political science literature, and thus the gains to positive and republican freedom, is conceded, then it seems to me that operating under Anderson's own framework, the loss to negative freedom in the workplace can be easily outweighed by the gains in other freedoms in society. Anderson could respond by saying that individuals never really consent to workplace conditions since it is poverty that forces them to work for companies and that therefore the power that companies hold is arbitrary and unaccountable (and it thus constitutes an infringement on republican freedom in the workplace that cannot be outweighed by increases in freedom in society). I would then respond to that by saying that then generating positive freedom in society (through growth and poverty alleviation) are a pre-requisite to consent, and thus a pre-requisite to obtaining republican freedom (since non-domination requires only subjecting yourself to legitimate forces of power, and legitimacy, at least in the political sense, can really only be derived from consent in my view), and thus we return to the need for technocratic authoritarianism. 

Second, on a less important note, Anderson’s description of the workplace as a dictatorship doesn’t seem quite right. She argues that the CEO is a dictator, but that would not make sense as dictators are not subject to the will of the legislature or the judiciary (they control it). In most large companies, however, CEOs are subject to the will of the shareholders, and if they do not obey, they too lose their jobs. As Anderson actually almost seems to recognize, perhaps an authoritarian oligarchy is a more fitting metaphor (she even directly compares shareholders to an oligarchy). Although I admit this doesn’t take much away from Anderson’s argument, I think it might make my first objection more potent once the moniker of “dictatorship,” and thus the connotation that comes with it, is removed.