Tutu: Anderson and Arbitrariness

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In Private Government, Anderson argues that the current American workplace operates under private government. Anderson defines “private government” as “arbitrary, unaccountable power” that employers hold over employees. This is due to a pervasive ideology that Anderson argues “misrepresents the situation of workers in the economy, and that is thereby unable either to appreciate their complaints or to generate and properly evaluate possible remedies.” I agree with Anderson’s account of employees’ exploitation due to this structure, but I have one question about how she defines it.


Anderson, I argue, defining private government’s power as arbitrary weakens her argument about the exploitation of this structure. It is not that private government is arbitrary; the danger with private government is that it systemically allows the exploitation of workers to enter the American workplace. For widespread harm to occur across several workplaces, I believe it weakens Anderson’s argument by claiming it is arbitrary. Instead, for the ideological part of her argument to stand, I argue she must redefine/remove the arbitrary claim from her definition of private government.


As Anderson highlights in her response to Cowen, workers report numerous accounts of abuses. The real issue of private government is that it allows, no matter who your boss is, to believe they are allowed to enable these abuses. In other words, these exploitations are allowed to happen, leading to the unaccountable nature, but it is not due to arbitrariness. To support her argument that this ideology led to private government, Anderson must argue the deliberate nature instead of claiming arbitrariness.


In his paper, “Racism, Moralism, and Social Criticism,” Thommie Shelby argues that ideologies are “those commonly held beliefs and implicit judgments that legitimize stratified social orders or imperial projects.” (67) Following from his argument, I agree with Anderson’s claim that the distortion and subsequent implementation of the early thinker’s theory/vision led to a social structure, or ideology, that allows employers to exert unjust power/control over their employees. My main question for Anderson is: Isn’t it counterintuitive to argue that a form of government, in this case, private government, that stems from a toxic/exploitative ideology is arbitrary? Yes, whoever one’s boss might be or whether or not their bosses choose to engage in exploitation is arbitrary. But is it not intentional/deliberate that whoever occupies the role of a supervisor in a private government has the right to exploit those “below them?”


In regards to Kolodny and the question of “what’s especially problematic about being under the governance of another person…” in addition to Anderson’s counterargument that her claim is about the form of government in the workplace, seeing the abuses that occur in the workplace not as a result of arbitrary power but a systematic structuring of the workplace that disadvantages employees, the risk and harm to our freedom is more easily recognized as simply unjustifiable. It becomes not a question of how much harm should be allowed under another’s control, but instead questioning why harm towards one’s employees is considered an endowed “right” of the workplace.


Regarding Cowen, let us redefine all the workplace harms that Anderson argued as non-arbitrary results of unfair workplace practices, which are justified by “private government” informed by an ideology that fundamentally sees workers as a means to an end. It is now clear that no matter the “benefits” Cowen might claim, they are not enough to justify the dehumanization of employees. In other words, no benefits are worth justifying a system that non-arbitrarily exploits workers by allowing exploitative workplaces justified by bad ideology.


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