Equality Means Ending Domination, Including Workplace 'Private Government'
Source: Matt McManus. "Equality Is About Who Rules." November 6, 2026. jacobin.com
The Gist
The author says equality isn't about everyone getting the same stuff but about no one being able to boss others around without accountability. Since most workers live under bosses they didn't choose and can't vote out, which would be called tyranny if a government did it, we should extend democratic checks to the workplace.
Conclusion
Egalitarians should understand equality not as identical outcomes or equal bundles of goods but as a relational ideal of freedom from domination and hierarchy, and should therefore treat unaccountable workplace authority as a central injustice to be remedied through workplace democracy and extending democratic norms to private firms.
Premises
- Egalitarian theories that focus on distributing equal bundles of goods (e.g., compensating for gloominess or envy-free resource distribution) trivialize equality and reinforce the conservative charge that egalitarianism is about resentment.
- Egalitarian movements fundamentally oppose social hierarchies that enable domination, and assert the equal moral worth of all persons and their equal status as moral agents.
- Inequality arises from social relations between groups rather than from intrinsic characteristics of individuals, though ruling ideologies obscure this by attributing inferiority to the dominated (e.g., 'natural slaves').
- Most workplaces function as 'private governments' in which bosses issue arbitrary, unappealable orders and are neither elected nor removable by those they rule.
- Firms are collective enterprises, not realms of individualism, so the domineering power capitalists and managers hold over workers is a form of unaccountable rule comparable to that of the state.
- People would regard comparable state control over daily life (when to wake, eat, use the bathroom, speak) as intolerable tyranny, so consistency requires treating private workplace control the same way.
- The conservative work ethic is an ideology that justifies this arrangement by stressing worker discipline and frugality while rewarding capitalists.
Assumptions
- Domination, understood as unaccountable power over others, is the core wrong that egalitarianism aims to address.
- Relevant moral and political norms (accountability, consent of the governed, rule of law) apply equally to private and public forms of authority.
- Employment relationships are sufficiently non-voluntary or structurally coercive that worker consent does not legitimize managerial authority.
- The analogy between the firm and the state is apt despite differences such as exit options and voluntary entry.
- Workplace democracy is feasible and would reduce domination without unacceptable costs.
- Anderson's relational account is basically correct, and criticisms of it concern only supplementing it with a view of flourishing.