Elizabeth Anderson

Elizabeth Anderson is an American philosopher at the University of Michigan who works on political philosophy, ethics, feminist epistemology and the history of economic thought. Her essay 'What Is the Point of Equality?' (1999) criticised luck egalitarianism and argued that equality is about relations between people. In The Imperative of Integration (2010) she defended racial integration. Private Government (2017) argues that most workplaces are governed like small dictatorships, and that the early defenders of free markets imagined a world of independent producers, not one of mass wage labour.

Key ideas

• The point of equality is to end oppression and let people relate as equals, not to compensate for bad luck.
• Employers exercise broad, unaccountable authority over workers' lives, a form of private government.
• Early market advocates such as the Levellers and Adam Smith saw free markets as a path to independence for ordinary people.
• Democracy is a way of life and a means of collective inquiry, not only a voting procedure.

Major works

• Private Government (2017)
• Value in Ethics and Economics (1993)
• The Imperative of Integration (2010)
• Hijacked (2023)

In the Book corner

• Private Government 2017 · Beginner
  A short book based on Anderson's Tanner Lectures of 2015, with four commentaries and her reply. Anderson argues that most workers live…

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