Much has been written in recent years about the how the growing income gap between the “top 1 per cent” and the rest of the population is a potential threat to democracy in rich capitalist societies. A less debated yet equally important problem within these societies is the seemingly excessive power employers can exert on their workers. This is particularly the case in the United States, where weak labour laws and low unionization rates increase the power of firms on their workforce, especially in less protected areas of the economy such as agriculture, food processing, and the low-wage component of the service industry. In this context, it is not rare for companies to exert intrusive surveillance on their workers and to regulate their personal behaviour regarding issues ranging from conversation time to bathroom breaks.

From a liberal democratic perspective, the power of employers on the citizens working for them is a most relevant issue for political theory, something that philosopher Elizabeth Anderson puts front and centre in Private Government: How Employers Rule Our Lives and Why We Don't Talk about It. The book is based on two lectures delivered in 2015 as part of the Tanner Lectures on Human Values at Princeton University. Anderson's short lectures are preceded by an introduction by political scientist Stephen Macedo and followed by comments from historian Ann Hughes, English professor David Bromwich, philosopher Niko Colodny and economist Tyler Cowen, to which Anderson responds in the final chapter of the book.

The starting point of Anderson's reflection is the fact that, in the United States, public discourse is largely silent “about the regulations employers impose on their workers. We have the language of fairness and distributive justice to talk about low wages and inadequate benefits. We know how to talk about the Fight for $15, whatever side of the issue we are on. But we don't have good ways to talk about the way bosses’ rule workers’ lives” (xix-xx). According to Anderson, one key problem is the emphasis of US political discourse on the idea that “government” (here understood as the state) is the main threat to personal liberty while private businesses are associated with “freedom.” For her, depicting capitalist markets as sources of freedom for workers is part of a misleading ideology grounded in an historical experience that has long ceased to exist.

Anderson's “Lecture 1” addresses this issue “by delving into the history of free market ideology” (xxii). Discussing the writings of the Levellers during the English Civil War before turning to the work of John Locke and, especially, Thomas Paine and Adam Smith, who exalted the freeing power of capitalist markets over the remnants of feudalism. Yet, as Anderson shows, Smith's association between capitalist markets and personal freedom was grounded in an economic vision characterized by the domination of “small-scale enterprises, run by independent merchants and artisans, with at most a few employees” (21). In this context, for Smith as for the Levellers before him and Paine after him, self-employment within a market economy became synonymous with freedom. However, as Anderson points out, this ideal became increasingly at odds with the actual functioning of the economy during the nineteenth century, as the Industrial Revolution triggered a multiplication of large firms and armies of low-paid, dependent wage workers. Although this reality proved inconsistent with Smith's vision, the idea of a close relationship between personal freedom and the market economy has remained central to US political discourse, a situation that helps conceal the concrete power of employers over their workers in a contemporary US society where large firms are ever present.

In her “Lecture 2,” Anderson stresses the prevalence of “authoritarian governance” in US firms, a topic she thinks deserves much more attention from political theory (40). Central to her discussion is the concept of “private government,” which gives her book its title. This is how she defines this key concept: “A government is private with respect to a subject if it can issue orders, backed by sanctions, to that subject in some domain of the subject's life, and that subject has no say in how that government operates and no standing to demand that their interests be taken into account, other than perhaps in narrowly define circumstances, in the decisions that government makes.” (45). Here the concept of “government” is detached from the one of “state,” as it simply relates to the reality of being governed. This is important because Anderson seeks to break from the ideological association between capitalism and freedom, and between state regulation and a decline in freedom. From a policy standpoint, she seeks to legitimize stronger government regulations that would empower workers by increasing their say in economic life.

This is a provocative book that aims at moving the power of employers over their workers to the centre of political theory. From this angle, Anderson's project is consistent with the Marxist tradition, although her emphasis is on business authoritarianism rather than on capitalist exploitation, which was the most important issue for Karl Marx, an author she engages with in her book. Curiously absent from her discussion, however, is the work of Michael Foucault and his followers on governmentality, which could have helped the author further theorize the concept of “private government.” More generally, the book's conciseness also means that some ideas such as the concept of private government itself could have been more developed. Other limitations include an overly sketchy analysis of Locke's work and a lack of engagement with the work of Gøsta Esping-Andersen on capitalism, social class, and de-commodification.

Overall Private Government is very well-written and the inclusion of commentaries by four other scholars adds much to the book, as does the detailed response by Anderson, who clarifies her main arguments as she addresses their criticisms. This is a provocative book that, despite its conciseness and some underdeveloped ideas, should stimulate debate among political theorists and informed readers alike about the power of firms and the freedom of workers in the United States and other advanced industrial societies.