Removing worker domination in contemporary capitalist corporations

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Removing worker domination in contemporary

capitalist corporations

MSc Thesis

Written by

Jef De Wit

Student ID: 11832843

Under the supervision of Dr. Paul Raekstad (supervisor) and Dr. Marcel Maussen (second reader), and submitted to the Board of Examiners in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the

degree of

MSc in Political Science

Specialisation: European Politics and External Relations

At the University of Amsterdam

Graduate School of Social Sciences Academic year 2017-2018 Hand in date: 29th of June 2018

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Abstract

One of the most profound republican insights on freedom is the establishment that in contemporary capitalist corporations, most workers are dominated by their employers. This study proposes a solution that is consistent with capitalist economy. A system of checks-and-balances is required to free workers from the arbitrary power they are subject to in the making of the contract and in the workplace. It resources workers to ensure that they are not subject to some employer’s will, and protects workers from arbitrary interference in the workplace. Doing so, this system relies on an unemployment pay unrestricted in time, unionization, exit rights, legally enforced regulations and workplace democracy.

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Introduction

One of the most widely remarked developments in political theory in the last decades is the revival of republicanism. Rather than an antique approach to politics and our society in general, it offers us a valuable “new” perspective of our societal challenges of the 21st_{century. Taking up this perspective,} we consider some useful political and economic implications (Dagger, 2006). We do so by problematizing workplace relationships, which is also an area of renewed interest in political theory. Since the start of the Great Recession, the call for democratization of these social relationships has been increasingly louder (Gonzalez-Ricoy, 2018). While people might have the capacity to make good decisions regarding the policies of their firm, this cannot be considered a basic right as such. A basic right of workers, however, is being free in work. Institutionalizing this basic right requires the enforcement of additional policies. In such an attempt, considerations like productive efficiency are important in evaluating possible economic regimes (Hsieh, 2007). This is the subject of this thesis, on which I will elaborate in the research design below.

Research design

In our capitalist societies, most workers1_{are unfree because they are dominated by their employers.} Workers generally have no choice but to sell their labour on terms that are not their own, effectively ceding all rights over to their employer on terms they cannot refuse. As a consequence, they are subject to the arbitrary power of their employer, over whose position they have no control (Anderson, 2017; Gourevitch, 2014). In order to amend this situation, the research question of this thesis is:

How can we remove domination in contemporary capitalist corporations?

Hypothesis

I try to find a way to remove domination that is not contradictory to capitalist reality. To do so, it is crucial to consider both the effect on worker domination and economic effects. In this thesis, I will argue that for domination to be removed, a system of checks-and-balances should be implemented. This system allows for hierarchy without domination, and is compatible with capitalist economy. As I will show, it is the most feasible way to ensure non-domination, and comprises different aspects of which some already exist in modern welfare states. This system of checks-and-balances resources

1_{When I speak of workers, I allude to employees with a labour contract in the traditional and most common}

sense. I will use the term workers and employee interchangeably throughout this thesis, and the two terms mean the same thing here.

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workers to ensure that they are not subject to some employer’s will and protects workers from arbitrary interference in the workplace. It relies on an unemployment pay unrestricted in time, exit rights, legally enforced regulation and workplace democracy, and unionization. Doing so, this thesis focusses on why workplace democracy is vital in a system that removes worker domination while being consistent with capitalist economy. Within this system, the different stakeholders within a firm (i.e. workers and shareholders) must be granted equal power over management, and should include worker participation at the shop-floor level. This avoids fundamental problems attributed to a strategy aiming at removing worker domination by transforming all companies to worker-cooperatives. Most notably, these are problems regarding investment and expansion. At the same time, this system still effectively removes the existing domination. Furthermore, this system of checks-and-balances positively affects the fair value of political liberties. It should be noted that when I discuss worker domination, I do not claim that all workers are dominated, rather that the vast majority of workers employed by medium-to-large scale enterprises are.

Relevance

The focus of this thesis is theoretically relevant considering the lack of attention for labour issues in contemporary political theory. This despite the centrality of labour issues such as the organization of the workplace in classic republican thought (González-Ricoy, 2014, p. 234). More specifically, the question of how to avoid worker domination has been too often unexplored from a perspective that tries to develop an answer based on feasibility constraints. Furthermore, it is of social importance to try and advance existing labour rights in order to enhance the lives of citizens. This theoretical research is thus fundamentally linked to the reality we live in today, focusing on an important part of people’s daily lives: their jobs.

Outline

In the first chapter I will explain the idea of republican freedom, and why it is important to consider in relationships between the state and citizens, and between citizens themselves. Using the notion of domination, I will argue that the vast majority of workers in contemporary capitalist corporations are unfree. Starting the second chapter, I will focus on the question of how to remove this domination in our capitalist society. I distinguish the different strategies to remove worker domination, and evaluate their viability in a capitalist economy. In chapter three, I conceptualize hierarchy without domination, and give substance to this system of checks-and balances.

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Chapter one: Republican freedom and worker domination

In this chapter I will explain why republican freedom is important and how it is to be understood. I will also explain how domination is practiced, raising the question of domination in our capitalist societies. I will elaborate on this question in the third section, concluding that workers are indeed dominated. A final section summarizes.

1.1. Republican freedom

Freedom, as a concept, is very important in political theory and, consequently, extensively debated. It should thus not be a surprise that different conceptions of freedom exist. One conception, republican freedom, is of particular relevance because it offers government a guideline on how to govern in a way that allows citizens to be free in relation to each other, without the government becoming intrusive. It is certainly not the only principle for a government to consider, but it is the most fundamental one (Pettit, 2012, pp. 2–3). Before delving into the question how this is the case, I will explain what is meant by republican freedom.

Freedom, in the liberal tradition, has often been described as the absence of constraints. In this sense, you enjoy freedom when you are able to act as you please without anyone interfering with your possible actions. Interference in this sense, is the restriction of choice by other human beings. This conception of freedom is referred to as ‘negative’ freedom (Carter, 2016; List and Valentini, 2016; Skinner, 2002). In the same vein, the republican conception of freedom is a negative one, as it is defined by the absence of some measure of constraint (Skinner, 2012, pp. 82–83). The difference lies in the idea of constraint, with the republican tradition adding two important characteristics to the concept of negative freedom. First, a moralized exemption clause is added to what counts as constraints. That means that only uncontrolled interference raises unfreedom.2_Uncontrolled interference is exercised at the will of the interferer while the receiver has no control over the interference. At this point, I find it important to emphasize that with uncontrolled interference, we refer to the lack of control by the receiver. Related to this, it is essential to specify that I write about social freedom. Consequently, I allude to interference by others, and do not include natural or physical constraints. In contrast to republican freedom, the liberal conception considers interference always as

2_{It should be noted that this kind of interference is often referred to as “arbitrary” interference in republican}

theory. While I mean the same, I follow Pettit’s (2012, p. 58) argument that uncontrolled interference is a better term for the concept. Writing about (non-)arbitrary interference gives the impression that the arbitrariness of interference depends on whether it conforms to certain rules. To avoid any misunderstanding, I use the term uncontrolled interference, which clearly points to interference that is not controlled by the receiver.

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freedom-restricting, not dependent on whether the interference is controlled or not (List and Valentini, 2016; Pettit, 2012).

Second, a modal robustness requirement is added to the concept, meaning that if someone has the power to interfere in your actions, it counts as freedom-restricting (List and Valentini, 2016). In other words, it is not the actual interference of someone with your actions that makes you unfree, but the mere possession of the power to do so that makes you unfree (Pettit, 2011). All in all, you are free only when no alien will (i.e. a will that is not your own) is able to interfere with your possible actions on an arbitrary basis (i.e. at their pleasure) (Laborde and Maynor, 2009, p. 5).

Proponents of republican freedom, argue that some forms of interference are permitted. As noted, interference is only inimical to freedom when it is uncontrolled (Irving, 2017; Pettit, 2012). So what does it mean to be free? Republican theory lends substance freedom by approaching it as non-domination. Philip Pettit, one of the most influential proponents of republican freedom, offers a definition of domination:

Someone, A, will be dominated in a certain choice by another agent or agency, B, to the extent that B has a power of interfering in the choice that is not itself controlled by A. When I say that B has a power of interference I mean that B has the unvitiated and uninvaded capacity to interfere or not to interfere. And when I say that that power of interfering is not controlled by A, I mean that it is not exercised on terms imposed by A: it is not exercised in a direction or according to a pattern that A has the influence to determine (Pettit, 2012, p. 50).

Again, the point here is that interference is uncontrolled by the receiver. When someone has the power to interfere with your options, and that interference is imposed on you by an arbitrary power, you are subject to a master and, consequently, dominated. Domination is traditionally seen as the opposite of freedom (Pettit, 2012). To show how republican freedom is useful when attempting to remove worker domination, we first have to take a closer look to how republican freedom evaluates citizens’ freedom in their relationships with others, and how it tries to protect them from domination.

1.1.1. Freedom and status: citizenship

Adding a robustness requirement and a moralized exemption clause, allows republican freedom to include the idea of status. Status is a crucial aspect of republican theory, and looking at this feature brings the differences between negative and republican freedom to the surface. To exemplify, let us use the classic example of a slave and his master. We apply the two concepts of freedom to two different master-slave relationships. In the first scenario, you are a slave and, as is common for a slave, you are heavily constrained in your actions. In this relationship, both your negative freedom and your republican freedom are reduced because your master not only has the power to interfere with your

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choice of actions, but actually does interfere. We move now to the second scenario. Suppose, again, that you are a slave with a master. The only difference in this scenario is that your master is now benevolent, meaning he does not impose any constraints on your actions. Although the master-slave relationship seems contradictory to freedom, we have to conclude that your negative freedom is not infringed by being a slave with such a benevolent master since your master does not actually interfere with your choices. In the liberal understanding of freedom, you are left alone in your course of actions. While the probability of someone imposing constraints on your actions might be higher in a slave-master relationship, you can still be considered free when there are no constraints actually imposed on you. Nevertheless, your master has the power to interfere with your choice of actions at any moment. The lack of constraints is a privilege granted to you in this relationship. You do not enjoy your ‘freedom’ of actions by right, but merely by grace of your master. Consequently, your republican freedom is reduced in this second scenario. As long as you, and the options available to you, are subject to someone’s will, and that person can impose his will at his pleasure, you are dominated, and not considered free. In other words, it is not relevant whether someone actually subjects you to his will, nor whether someone has the intention to do so. Rather, it is the possession of power to subject you to someone’s alien will, that in fact makes you unfree (Laborde and Maynor, 2009; List and Valentini, 2016; Pettit, 2011; Skinner, 2002).

The problem with negative freedom lies in the ability of people to adopt a certain strategy in order to enhance their freedom. You could make yourself more free by doing your chores in a way that pleases your master, hoping that he, being in a good mood, would pose less constraints on your actions. More generally, you could make yourself more free by convincing someone with the power over your options, to allow you those options. While it would certainly improve your well-being in a way, you should not be considered (more) free. If freedom is to count as liberation, accommodating yourself to an abusive situation should not enhance your freedom (List and Valentini, 2016; Lovett, 2017; Pettit, 2011). When approaching freedom, republican theory stresses the importance of structural relationships, rather than the dependent components of such relationships (Lovett, 2017). The only way for you, as a slave, to be free, is by being granted the same status as your master, namely that of a citizen. In modern republican theory, this idea of status is very important. Republican freedom requires all members of a society to have been allocated a single, equal status of citizenship (Laborde and Maynor, 2009, p. 18).3_{That is, equal citizenship with associated political rights, but we will}

3_{It should be noted that this egalitarian view on citizenship, where everyone is granted full citizenship, has been}

developed in neo-republican theory. For example, in 19th_{century England women were considered free, even}

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explore that second aspect more fully in chapter 1.1.3. Allowing one to stand on equal terms with other citizens, is what makes a person free (Pettit, 2012).

While negative freedom is undermined by any interference in the options available to you, republican freedom is undermined by the possibility of uncontrolled interference (List and Valentini, 2016). The reason why republican freedom goes beyond negative freedom in this respect, is that living at the constant mercy of an alien will, is considered a form of constraint. This condition of dependence can alter your own will – you are not sui juri (i.e. ‘your own person’) (Pettit, 2012, p. 7; Skinner, 2012, p. 84). You might become unwilling to resist that will, leading to self-constraining effects (Roberts, 2016, p. 63). Or, you might slide into blind dependence, desiring only what is known to you, what is permitted by your master (Skinner, 2012, p. 93). As Quentin Skinner (2002, p. 260) puts it: “Servitude breeds servility”. Thus, we must recognize that living in a condition where no one has the mere power to subject you to his will, is freedom itself, instead of simply freedom-securing (Skinner, 2012, p. 84). Elaborating on the differences with negative freedom allows us to understand republican freedom more profoundly. As the aim of this study builds on this republican conception of freedom, it is important to ensure that we grasp fully what the implications of being a free citizen are. Furthermore, showcasing the differences with negative freedom makes us notice that republican freedom is a highly demanding principle for two reasons, both of which have been explained above. First, its interpretation of citizenship is radically inclusive as it aims at protecting all citizens from the arbitrary power of other citizens and groups. And second, it demands the protection of potential interference, rather than only the absence of interference (Irving, 2017; Laborde and Maynor, 2009, p. 18). At the same time, the concept is important to the reality we live in today, as considerations about republican freedom are able to guide government. It allows government to balance the constraints it imposes on people with the amount of protection that citizens need to ensure their freedom. To protect citizen’s freedom against the uncontrolled interference of others, republicans introduce the idea of costs. This aspect of republican theory will prove very important throughout the present study, making it desirable to expand on it.

1.1.2. Freedom and citizen relationships: introducing costs

To demonstrate how republican freedom ensures the absence of arbitrary power in citizen relationships, we consider a scenario where you try to kill me. You enjoy negative freedom if there is no one interfering with you trying to do so. If, say, the police is able to prevent you from killing me – to stop you from the act of killing me –, they constrain your action, and your negative freedom decreases. However, if you are really committed to killing me, and the police has no idea of your intent, you are likely to succeed in your purpose. That you are able to interfere with my actions by killing me,

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does not make me less free however. Contrary to the slave-master relationship mentioned above, I am not subject to your alien will which you can impose on me more or less without costs. Far from it, the rule of law imposes considerable costs on any attempt to kill someone else. It is not unlikely that you would be sentenced to live behind bars for the rest of your days. The law promotes my freedom by protecting me against assault, or, in other words, against your uncontrolled interference. Your interference is adequately checked by the law, promoting overall freedom in society (Laborde and Maynor, 2009, p. 8). The requirement here is, again, that you, the killer, and me, the victim, have to be part of the same criminal justice system, in which we both have a say, or voice, in the penalties imposed on criminals (Braithwaite and Pettit, 1992). That way, the legal rules themselves are not uncontrolled by you (González-Ricoy, 2014, p. 237). The interference that the government imposes on you by jailing you, is the outcome of popular control over the government, and consequently, over the rule of law (Pettit, 2012).

Thus, negative freedom is about actual interference with your choices, while republican freedom is about not being subject to arbitrary power. Less negative freedom does not necessarily mean less republican freedom, and the other way around. If power is not arbitrary, you are not dominated while it is still possible you are being interfered with (Carter, 2016).

This example exemplifies how government is able to protect citizens from the uncontrolled interference of others. Simultaneously, it already reveals that government can only enhance citizens’ freedom by not becoming intrusive itself. To prevent that from happening, republican freedom values democracy, or popular control over government. That is the case for two reasons. First, the constraints government imposes on you (e.g. the policies around criminal offences) have to be the result of collective decision-making. Only that way, the interference of the government is controlled by the group of people under governmental authority. Second, the legal system cannot comprise every action possible. Recognizing this inevitable shortcoming of regulations, is vital to understand the democratic support of republican theory, and will prove a focal point throughout the rest of this thesis. That is why, the next section elaborates on the significance of popular control, or self-government, for republican freedom. This enables governments to possess power over its subjects, without that power being arbitrary.

1.1.3. Freedom and popular control: non-dominating governance

As republican freedom provides a guideline for government on how to govern, it also prevents government from public domination. Government has to aim at protecting citizens against forms of domination from other citizens while not dominating them itself. To ensure non-domination of government, it has to be politically legitimate. In other words, republican freedom demands popular

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control over government through democratic processes, or self-government. Only when including all citizens, in a way that they are each given an equal share of kratos (i.e. power) or control over government, it can be legitimatized by the demos (i.e. ‘people’) (Pettit, 2012, pp. 1–25).

Notice that republican freedom does not have a problem with power, but with arbitrary power (Carter, 2016). To ensure power is not arbitrary, it has to be accountable (Pettit, 2011, p. 715). Or, in other words, interference in the choices of citizens has to be controlled by those same citizens (Pettit, 2012). As republicanism requires non-dominating laws, the laws under which citizens live have to be the result of collective decision-making (Pettit, 2011, p. 715). Rather than approaching freedom as freedom from government, republicanism stresses the possibility of freedom through government (Dagger, 2006, p. 153). As Richard Dagger (2006, p. 155) notes:

On the republican view, freedom is not so much a matter of being left alone as it is of living under the rule of laws that one has voice in the making.

To achieve this, neo-republicans support democracy as a way to check the power of the government. To summarize, democracy is crucial in modern societies for preventing sovereign power from becoming dominating (Irving, 2017). While it is necessary for citizens’ freedom to live under a non-dominating state government, it is not sufficient, as we will see in the subsequent chapter.

Up to this point, we have shown how republican freedom guides government in ensuring freedom in state-citizen relationships as well as in citizen-citizen relationships. In its defence of citizenship as non-subjection to arbitrary power, republican freedom entails the ideal of egalitarian social relations as it aims to improve each one’s freedom to the same level as those who are best off in a society, equalizing their status. As a consequence, republican freedom is not only interested in the relationship between states and its population, but also in the relationship between citizens themselves (Braithwaite and Pettit, 1992, pp. 65–66; Laborde and Maynor, 2009). The idea here is not that nobody is ever allowed to have any power over your actions but that the power should not be arbitrary. This evaluation of power will prove very important in the aim of this study, i.e. removing worker domination within contemporary capitalist society. In the next section, we first extrapolate the idea of republican freedom to the core theme of this thesis: worker domination. By introducing Elizabeth Anderson’s (2017) notion of private government, we stress the inherent connection between state-citizens relationships and management-workers relationships.

1.2. Worker domination in contemporary capitalist corporations

To ensure citizen’s freedom, people have to be free from domination of others. It stands as no surprise then, that a republican approach to the workplace offers valuable insights (Dagger, 2006, p. 155). The

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aim of this chapter is to explain how most workers are dominated in contemporary workplaces in capitalist society. When attempting to remove worker domination, it is vital to understand why and how workers are dominated in the first place. In an attempt to provide the reader with this knowledge, I will argue that labour is different from other market commodities, and, subsequently, that people are dominated in their work (Anderson, 2017, p. 39; Gourevitch, 2014).

1.2.1. The labour market

As we have seen in chapter 1.1, non-dominating governance, and consequently political equality, is a central aim of republicanism. One important feature of non-dominating governance is the ability to control possible interference, i.e. the ability to be self-governing. Republican theory values market economies for this and other reasons. A market economy enables people to be self-governing in the sense that they are able to decide on how they want to live their lives, as people can engage in free exchanges in the marketplace. Private property guarantees the independence of citizens and their ability to be self-sufficient. A second, more straightforward reason for the appreciations of markets, is their instrumental value (Dagger, 2006, p. 158; Laborde and Maynor, 2009, p. 21). Markets hold crucial information on how much to produce by means of the price mechanism sensitive to supply and demand. At the same time, they create incentives for producers to be efficient and innovative alike (Schweickart, 2002, p. 49). However, when market relations corrupt parts of life and lead to domination, as they do in the labour market, intervention is necessary (Laborde and Maynor, 2009, p. 21; Schweickart, 2002, p. 49). As Alex Gourevitch (2014, p. 103) puts it:

Whether one man’s subjection to another was legal or economic, and however that domination was exercised, was a separate question from whether it counted as servitude in the first place.

Gourevitch (2016, 2014, 2013) also explains how the labour market results in forms of structural and personal domination of workers. These forms of personal and structural domination are not entirely distinct. They happen in the making of the labour contract as a result of the asymmetrical (and structural) dependence of employees on employers, and during the contract itself. The latter form points to the transfer of arbitrary power to an employer, while the first points to the ability of employers to extract concessions of workers as they are dependent on some employer. The difference between the two forms is that structural domination occurs indirectly. Employers have arbitrary power over employees when the terms of the contract are offered because of workers’ dependence on the class of employers. I will expand on this below, after I have explained what exactly is meant with structural domination. Structural domination is based on the notion that workers are unfree in their choice of whether they are willing to sell their labour. You, as a worker, might have the option to choose between employers, but still you are compelled to sell your labour. When workers do not have the option to

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retain their labour from the market, their property rights over their labour is in effect fictional. Translated to the example of the master-slave relationship, you would be free to choose between masters, but you couldn’t choose not to have any (Gourevitch, 2014, pp. 106–109). Gourevitch (2013, p. 602) calls this domination structural as it happens indirectly because the domination that arises is not the product of an employer “his situation vis-à-vis a specific employer, but rather of his dependence on some employer or another”. As republican freedom is concerned with social freedom (Pettit, 2006, p. 132), you might argue that domination only occurs when people can influence the situation, and the dependence on employers is the “unintended effect of people’s mutual adjustments” (Pettit, 2006, p. 139). However, the domination that arises is not the particular economic outcome as such. This is a form of domination because employers do have the ability to alter this situation that gives rise to kinds of power that subjects individuals.

After all, employers could choose to make hiring, investment and production decisions on a cooperative basis [and] even hand over decisions on the day-to-day operations to a workers’ collective itself (Gourevitch, 2013, p. 605).

Thus, we have to ask ourselves how this structural dependence on employers gives rise to worker domination, in the sense that workers are subject to another person’s will. It passes into domination (i.e. arbitrary power over others) when employers can extract concessions of workers when the terms of labour are set (Gourevitch, 2014, p. 111). This is what happens in the making of the contract.

Some workers will accept jobs at going wage rates and hours, others will be unable to bargain for what they need, and most can be made to work longer hours, at lower pay, under worse conditions than they would otherwise accept. Many employers know this and will take advantage of it. Even if employers do not intentionally take advantage of it, they do so tacitly by making numerous economic decisions about hiring, firing, wages, and hours that assume this steady supply of economically-dependent labour. (Gourevitch, 2016, p. 314).

Workers are obligated to sell their labour, and cannot retain their labour from the market or seek distant markets until they can sell their labour under better terms, harming their bargaining position. This is unlike the possibilities of sellers of other market commodities, who are able to retain their commodity or look for different markets if the terms under which they have to sell in one market are not favourable. This results in workers having to accept compulsory rates and conditions. Additionally, these harmful conditions are exacerbated by the nature of labour: the conditions imposed by the employer, might be destructive to the workers themselves, lowering the value of their labour (Gourevitch, 2014, pp. 110– 111). In sum, the problem is not that workers need a job as such, but that this necessity enables employers to exploit workers (Gourevitch, 2016, p. 314).

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This idea asymmetrical dependence is often disputed on the argument that in modern welfare states, these forms of domination do not occur. Gourevitch (2014, p. 107) argues that unions are only able to alleviate the pressure on workers temporarily, mitigating rather than eliminating workers’ compulsory need to choose an employer. However, unions do improve their bargaining position, as wages are generally bargained collectively. In combination with the unemployment pay that exists in modern European welfare states, workers are able to count on generous welfare provisions, such as “very long periods of unemployment pay” without “active policies to push the unemployed into work” (Nickell, 1997, p. 73). Employers are also constrained by legal provisions that protect workers from exploitation. In short, as these countries display “strict employment protection legislation, high labour market standards (legally enforced), high unionization and high benefit replacement rates,” we could argue that the power of employers to extract concessions of workers in the making of the contract, is heavily constrained (Nickell, 1997, p. 73). That does not mean that this form of domination should be disregarded. The period of unemployment pay is still restricted in time in many countries or decreases in time in others, eventually pushing workers into selling their labour in one way or another. So even though workers are protected to a considerable extent, they are still dependent on some employer. Before moving on to domination in the workplace, we must explore the special character of labour, as opposed to other market commodities. Even though arguing that within the labour market you are as free to act as you are within any other kind of market, is a popular objection to any critique on the labour market, this view nevertheless disregards the obvious discrepancies between the market of consumer goods and services on the one hand, and the labour market on the other. The pervasiveness of the observation that you are obligated to choose an employer, can be brought back to the special character of labour, that is, its inextricability from the physical person (Gourevitch, 2014). Unlike sellers of other market transactions, workers are still dependent on their “consumers” (i.e. their employers) after selling the command over their labour. Any other salesman is independent from his consumer after selling his good (Anderson, 2017, p. 57). This differentiation also allows us to critique employer-employee relationships without equating market economy in general with domination. Hence, it is the personal form of domination, occurring during the performance of the labour contract, that is the most profound one. Because of the inextricability of labour from the physical person, labour contracts always entail subjection of workers to employers. Accepting the terms offered by the employer, does not mean consent of the worker to every order he issues. The contract is, in fact, an agreement of subjection where the workers have no control over future decisions (Gourevitch, 2014, pp. 110–114).

The basic logic of any contract to sell property was that sale of a commodity involves giving over ownership and control rights of that commodity to the buyer. But the special character of the labour

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commodity – as a physical commodity (the body) inseparable from the seller’s person – meant the labour contract was necessarily an agreement to give up control over the seller’s will for the duration of the working day (Gourevitch, 2014, p. 113).

Regarding the labour contract as an agreement of subjection to an alien will in the workplace, is the foundation of the idea of worker domination, and, consequently, this thesis. To take a closer look at this aspect, we introduce the notion of private government in the next section.

1.2.2. Private government

In its aim of non-dominating governance, republicanism, at its core, revolves around publicity and self-government. Dagger (2006, p. 153) explains us how we can give substance to this. He explains that publicity is a matter of openness and publicness, as the opposite of what is personal and private. Thus, public matters “must be conducted openly, in public”. What counts as being public matters then, are those matters that are the proper concern of “people who are bound together by a common interest in how they are to live” (Dagger, 2006, p. 153). This understanding allows us to introduce the notion of private government, which we will use to elaborate on the domination that arises from the inextricability of labour from the physical person, as well as on the relationship between uncontrolled interference and workers in contemporary capitalist corporations. In order to understand the idea of private government, introduced by Anderson (2017), she first explains when we can speak of government:

Government exists wherever some have the authority to issue orders to others, backed by sanctions, in one or more domains of life (Anderson, 2017, p. 42).

As we have noted, people are not free when living under government they have no control over (Pettit, 2012, p. 22). In the same vein, Anderson (2017) argues that you are unfree whenever you are subject to government that is unaccountable, and imposes its alien will on you, whether it is state government or other kinds of governments.

This point generalizes to all governments, not just governments run by the state. You are subject to private government wherever (1) you are subordinate to authorities who can order you around and sanction you for not complying over some domain of your life, and (2) the authorities treat it as none of your business, across a wide range of cases, what orders it issues or why it sanctions you (Anderson, 2017, pp. 44–45).

Note that Anderson (2017), in line with Dagger (2006), views the private-public distinction not as relative to the state, but relative to those that are governed. In other words, whether government is private or public, depends on the control the governed has over that government. Government has a private status when it is treated as none of your business, when it is kept private from you. Public

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government entails collective decision-making and accountability of those elected to power. Government can be public with respect to some people while being private in respect to others. To translate private government to the way workers are subordinate to management, we have to identify the different sanctions an employer has at its disposal. Most notably, employers generally have the right to hire and fire you at will. But that should not disguise the fact that they have various sanctions at their disposal. Nien-hê Hsieh (2005) distinguishes three categories of decisions affecting the lives of workers. First, an employer can make decisions regarding the performance of tasks or limitations of actions. In terms of sanctions, these can include assigning employees inconvenient, too many or too few hours, and also increasing the workload during those hours. The second category comprises those decisions that affect the working conditions of employment such as compensation, promotion criteria, training opportunities or the risks of tasks that ought be to performed. Third, there are those decisions that indirectly affect workers, like the company’s strategy. These include the relocation of (parts of) the company, choice of produced products, investment policies, etc. Any decision within these three categories can be a reaction to the employer’s behaviour on the job, but may as well be a reaction to the employer’s private life. For instance, when the employer expresses political views or posts a certain social media status. Although worker domination is not absolute – a comprehensive system of laws exists regulating work live (e.g. safety standards, discrimination and wage laws) –, it still exists. An employee hands over all of his rights to his employer except those guaranteed to him by law. As a reminder: whether the domination is actually exercised is a separate question (Anderson, 2017; Breen, 2015, p. 476; González-Ricoy, 2014, p. 238; Gourevitch, 2014; Hsieh, 2005, pp. 122–123). This satisfies the first condition of private government.

Workers on the other hand, are kept out of decision-making and have no power to appoint or remove their boss from his position. The only “power” at their disposal, is quitting their job, causing more harm than the worst sanction an employer has at its disposal, namely firing an employee (Anderson, 2017, pp. 37–71). This satisfies the second condition of private government.

The employers’ will to exercise and maintain this authority lies in their material benefits of this dominating relationship. The individualism on which the current system is founded, supposedly guaranteeing freedom, is used against workers. Employers cooperate in securing as much labour-at-lowest-cost as possible, and in securing their domination over workers in legal terms. Competition led to the opposite of individualism, namely large corporations and cartelization (Gourevitch, 2014, pp. 114–117).

The notion of private government, and the idea that you are unfree when subject to government that is kept private from you, is a fine-grained analysis that exposes the domination of workers in capitalist

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corporations. Clearly, the freedom of workers is undermined because of the special character of the labour commodity. To recapulate, I will emphasize the most important features of this verdict from the perspective of republican freedom in the next section.

1.3. Conclusion

As intended, I have explained the value of republican freedom in analysing citizens’ freedom. It also has proven to be an important guideline for any government that desires to avoid subjection of its citizens towards others as well as towards the state. This raises issues of domination in the governance of large capitalist companies in our modern-day societies. Next, we have established that the majority of workers, those who are subject to managerial authority, are unfree. That is to say, workers are dominated because they are subject to arbitrary power. To avoid this, they should either not be subject to power, or that power has to be checked. In other words, interference may only occur when it is adequately controlled by the receiver.

We can conclude that republican freedom does not problematize power in general, it only problematizes arbitrary power. This offers opportunities to remove domination within contemporary capitalist society, without subverting capitalist economy. We have presented two ways introduced by republican theory to ensure power is not arbitrary, namely introducing costs or instituting non-dominating governance. In the next chapter, I present different strategies to remove domination within capitalist society, drawing on republican theory and parallels between the state and the workplace.

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Chapter two: Removing worker domination in capitalist society

Any attempt to remove worker domination in contemporary capitalist corporations must take into account different variables when assessing possible strategies. The most important of those variables are of course its effect on worker domination, but also its economic effect and feasibility. Before doing so, I explain in this chapter why workplace freedom is necessary for the freedom of citizens, and I show how labour issues are central in evaluating their freedom. This is an elaboration on the social relevance of this thesis. In the following sections, I suggest different ways of removing worker domination within capitalist society, and asses their viability. I do so in a similar sequence as chapter 1.1 was built up. First, I suggest abolishing contemporary corporations and only allowing worker self-employment. Even though this would ensure that structural power relationships in the workplace would not arise in the first place, this is not achievable in our capitalist economy. Rather, I make a case for hierarchy in the workplace, using the theory of the firm. Second, I consider imposing costs on unjust or illegitimate interference. This could be achieved by perfecting exit rights, so that it would work as an implicit threat to interference, or by strengthening regulations through the legal system, constraining managerial power. While both strategies are necessary to remove domination, they are hardly sufficient. Third, I try to introduce non-dominating governance, analysing the alternative of worker-owned cooperatives. While this too seems a way of abolishing worker domination, the theory of the firm teaches us, again, that reforming all corporations to cooperatives is unfeasible without at the same time developing an alternative to capitalism. Since the aim of the article is to find ways of removing domination within capitalist society, this goes beyond our scope. Finally, I conclude that the only way of ensuring the freedom of workers in contemporary capitalist corporations, is developing a system of checks-and-balances, incorporating the existing welfare system put in place in Western Europe.

2.1. Free citizens only if not dominated in the workplace

Before delving into the question of how we can remove domination in contemporary capitalist corporations, we must present two justifications for this attempt. First, I demonstrate the applicability of republican theory in the search for solutions, by drawing on the idea of the freedom of bodies politic (i.e. group of people under one governmental authority). Second, I demonstrate the immediacy of domination in the workplace, which is very important as to understand why worker domination deserves our full attention.

Using the idea of private government, we can see the importance of the republican concept of freedom in employer-employee relationships. It is no surprise that republican thinkers have primarily

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approached freedom by focusing on the analogy between natural and political bodies. A loss of freedom of an individual person is, to them, the same as a loss of freedom of a body politic (Skinner, 2012). In other words, individual citizens are free only if their will is incorporated in the will of their entire community, the state. I emphasize “only if” because the state governed by the will of each citizen is a necessary condition for their freedom, but not a sufficient one.4_{This is important, because if} citizens are dominated in the workplace, they cannot be considered free.

Members of a community can only be considered free if the actions of a state are determined by the sum of the wills of each individual citizen. Otherwise, the power of the state’s government would be arbitrary, and its members therefore dominated. To prevent arbitrariness, the state should be governed by the people’s consent. Republican thinkers refer to the will of the majority, since government would be impossible if each member has a right to hinder the whole body. They did not suggest that this self-government ought to be achieved necessarily through direct participation. On the contrary, republicans generally argued that the mass of the people should be represented in national assemblies (Skinner, 2012). At the same time, a system of checks-and-balances is required to ensure each individual’s rights.

It might mean taking steps to guard against the possibility of a loose collection of individuals – say, a belligerent minority or a potentially oppressive majority – incorporating to form a dominating presence in the lives of others (Pettit, 2012, p. 68).

This view has been translated into contemporary democracies. We can draw upon this idea when looking at workers who are subject to private government. They are not free, since the actions of corporations are not determined by their political bodies, meaning the will of their members. In other words, a corporation is only free if it is self-governed, that is, governed by the will of its members as a whole (Skinner, 2012). There is no reason why this should be seen as inconceivable in a democratic society:

Just like states, economic enterprises are cooperative associations governed by general rules applying to all members and endorsed in terms of their mutual advantage. And just like citizens, because workers are members of an economic enterprise, have the ability to judge the appropriateness of its general rules and, no less decisively, are subject to the coercive enforcement of these binding rules, they, too, ought to have the right to participate in its collective governance (Breen, 2015, p. 472).

It would be a contradiction that we deem citizens competent enough to participate in state government, but not to participate in the government of their economic lives (Schweickart, 2002, p. 46). Especially

4_{The understanding of the difference between if (indicating a sufficient condition), only if (indicating a necessary}

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considering the importance of work in people’s lives (Breen, 2015, p. 473). Work does not only constitute a major part of the amount of time people have at their disposal, it is also vital in worker’s sense of identity and meaning:

In the human quest for meaning, work occupies a central position. Most adults spend the majority of their waking hours at work, which often serves as a primary source of purpose, belongingness, and identity (Michaelson et al., 2014, p. 77).

The immediate implications of worker domination are not to be underestimated: people spend a great amount of time, on a daily basis and for most of their lives, under the domination of an employer (Gourevitch, 2014, p. 112). Worker domination has a severe impact on people’s lives.

At its core, work involves the physical presence of individuals, which means that severe interference within the context of work can be visited upon her physical self with little or no justification in terms of her interests. Furthermore, work competes with the time and energy that individuals are able to devote to the pursuit of personal projects and commitments outside of work (Hsieh, 2005, p. 124).

Therefore, domination in the workplace is in many ways even more pervasive than any other kind of domination. Drawing parallels between citizens in a state and employees in a company, also referred to as the parallel-case argument, is only one way of exposing the evident link between our democratic society and freedom. In response, some objections have been formulated against this analogy. For instance, critics argue that there is a difference in the magnitude of power between the two associations, in that the state can legitimately resort to violence while the company cannot (Breen, 2015, pp. 474– 475). I agree that the sanctioning powers of employers are certainly lower than those of a state, but their powers are far more extensive in the different domains of their employees’ lives compared to citizens in a democratic state (Anderson, 2017). Likewise, one of the most common objection to any parallel between companies and states is that workers’ subjection to the rules of a company is voluntary, while citizens’ freedom of exit depends on other states allowing them residency. However, as we have argued in chapter 1.3, the reality is that the freedom of workers in this regard is limited. The freedom of entry is nullified because of the reality that workers must choose between employers, and the extreme inequalities that characterize capitalism result in only a few workers being able to exit a firm as they please more or less without costs. Thus, in reality, the freedom of exit is undone by the costs involved when leaving a company (Breen, 2015, pp. 473–477).

The parallel-case argument is not based on the proposition that companies and states are the same, because they are not. Essentially, corporations operate with the aim of making profit while states are non-profit associations. Therefore, we cannot contend that workers ought to participate in the companies’ policies based only on the participation of citizens in state policies. Nevertheless, when

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we concentrate on the uncontrolled interference that occurs as a consequence of a lack of adequate checks, some striking similarities can be drawn (González-Ricoy, 2014, p. 244). This is of great significance considering the immediacy of domination in the workplace, which contributes to its pervasiveness. Having shown why worker domination is such an important issue for evaluating the freedom of citizens, and having demonstrated the applicability of republican thought to employer-employee relationships, we can now move on to assessing different strategies to remove this domination within capitalist society.

2.2. Hierarchy in the workplace

As we will see in this chapter, a classic republican solution to the domination inherent to the labour contract, is abolishing managerial authority by returning to self-employment (González-Ricoy, 2014; Gourevitch, 2014). It is important to take this strategy into account when searching for a way to remove worker domination in contemporary capitalist society. This might turn out to be the most feasible way of removing this domination, and prove to be an effective one. However, abolishing the wage-labour system gives rise to additional problems, that cannot be solved within capitalist society. The theory of the firm shows us why hierarchy is such an important feature of contemporary corporations. Before explaining this, we elaborate on the effects of self-employment on worker domination.

2.2.1. Self-employment

One possible response to worker domination, is ensuring that dominating relationships are not able to arise in the workplace. This might be done by abolishing hierarchy altogether. In any hierarchical work environment, some people inevitably have power over others. The employee subjects himself to the will of his employer, and to those higher-up in the hierarchy. You might suggest that this transfer is an inherent feature of wage-labour, so the only solution is to abolish the labour market. This is most certainly a plausible response, even a classic one in republican thought on wage-labour (Gourevitch, 2014, pp. 107–109).

However, as we have emphasised from the outset of this study, we assess strategies on more variables than solely the removal of worker domination. Its economic effects and feasibility are as important as its effect on domination in the workplace. Eliminating the source of worker domination, as would be the case when everybody is self-employed, has some severe implications for capitalist economy (González-Ricoy, 2014, pp. 251–253). Managerial authority exists with reason, and the theory of the firm explains why.

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There are two reasons why firms operate as they do and why the existing company structures are so successful. First, the efficiency of hierarchy in the coordination of specialized sub-units and managing goal congruence. Second, economies of scope and scale. I will elaborate on both aspects in the following section.

Specialization of workers is important for the efficiency of knowledge production. It is a natural result of the possibility to introduce low-cost communication between specialists and the large numbers of other workers who are specialists in other fields. However, not all knowledge is explicit, and the different types of knowledge need coordination to utilize them for production. Markets are not able to cater this necessary coordination. Production creation requires the integration of various individuals’ (specialist) knowledge. What is important to understand, is that it is not the firm but the members of the firm that give rise to knowledge, and a firm offers the necessary direction and incentives. The firm offers the organizational structure – procedures rules, technologies, etc. – in which individuals engage. This makes knowledge indeed firm-specific, but the firm, as an organization, is not the body that creates knowledge. An organization owns knowledge only to the extent its members own knowledge. The strength of the firm is that it benefits from the specialization of multiple individuals because it permits workers to share and integrate their individual understanding, comprising the common knowledge of a firm (Grant, 1996, pp. 111–116).

The firm consists of interdependent substructures, making it, as an institution for knowledge application, easier to achieve goal congruence. Still, the interaction within those substructures is better than between the different substructures that comprise the firm. Hierarchy offers a solution to such problems, ensuring goal congruence of complex systems of interdependent substructures and the coordination of knowledge within the firm. It is because of those reasons that hierarchy seems like a given aspect of any medium to large firms’ structure (Grant, 1996).

At this point, we could ask ourselves why, if the benefits of specialization are so great and integrating knowledge within a firm is the firm’s biggest challenge, single-product companies are not dominating economic activity. The answer is rather simple: knowledge is rarely product-specific, and economies of scope apply (i.e. the cost savings that emerge when distinct products are produced by one firm instead of separate firms) (Grant, 1996, p. 120; Panzar and Willig, 1981). In combination with economies of scale (i.e. the possibility of larger production due to specialization within international trade, results in more cost-efficient production) driving the concentration of capital, for instance to facilitate technological innovation, we can understand why large multi-product firms with huge capital recourses are so successful (Anderson, 2017, pp. 50–51; De Cnuydt and De Velder, 2013, p. 292).

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Since production and innovation require the integration of specialist knowledge, and markets are not able to ensure this coordination between different self-employed workers, we can conclude that abolishing managerial authority in corporations is most certainly unfeasible. Hierarchy is an important feature of workplaces in contemporary capitalist society, and the theory of the firm has shown us why. In respect to hierarchy, economically successful enterprises require the possibility of substantial interference in workers’ lives (Hsieh, 2005, p. 122). Thus, the remainder of this study focusses on addressing the issue of worker domination where managerial authority does exist. A remaining solution in this respect, might be protecting workers from possible domination. That can be achieved by introducing the idea of costs, which is an important aspect of republican freedom as we have seen in chapter 1.1.2. It might be possible to impose certain costs to ensure the power to which workers are subject to is not arbitrary. This would protect workers from dominating governance in the workplace. The next section deals with this topic.

2.3. Introducing costs

Different strategies aim at introducing costs to certain acts of employers, limiting their power to the extent that they are not able to dominate employees. The first strategy is enhancing the workers’ exit rights. As I have shown in chapter 1.2 by showcasing the differences between the labour market and market commodities, the exit rights of workers in contemporary capitalist society are far from perfect. However, it might be a strategy to perfect them, so that they serve as an implicit threat. Advocates of this strategy argue that employers would have a strong incentive not to behave arbitrarily because workers can quit their jobs at any time (González-Ricoy, 2014, p. 239). I will show that exit rights are a necessary component of any strategy attempting to remove worker domination, but merely focussing on exit rights proves insufficient to remove that domination. Second, I take a closer look at worker constitutionalism, which attempts to remove domination in the workplace as well, but by constraining the power of management. This strategy aims at expanding current regulation. Similar to the first strategy, I will argue that focusing exclusively on regulations is a necessary element in removing worker domination, but not a sufficient one.

2.3.1. Perfecting exit rights

As explained, most workers do not have complete freedom of entry and exit in capitalist society. Joseph Stiglitz and Carl Shapiro (1984) even show that unemployment works as a disciplinary device, and argue that involuntary unemployment is a persistent feature of labour markets. In modern labour markets, only those with scarce and valued skills might be able to benefit from exit rights to the degree that it works as an implicit threat against worker domination. If that is the case, the costs an exit

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imposes on an employer must be sufficiently high to ensure that the employee can control possible interference. As this prevention changes between workers and across firms, place and time, we can conclude that the existing exit rights are insufficient to ensure the freedom of workers. For the majority of workers quitting their jobs comes with a high cost (González-Ricoy, 2014, pp. 240–241). On top of that, workers are sometimes stigmatized as unproductive when ‘suffering’ long-term unemployment (Breen, 2015, p. 477).

You might still propose to perfect the entry and exit rights of workers in labour markets. In response to such proposal, I refer again to the work of Shapiro and Stiglitz (1984). They have also demonstrated that without an unemployment rate, labour markets cannot remain competitive:

The equilibrium unemployment rate must be sufficiently large that it pays workers to work rather than to take the risk of being caught shirking (Shapiro and Stiglitz, 1984, p. 433).

Labour markets need a pool of unemployed workers, overturning any attempt aimed at optimizing workers’ right to quit their jobs. Perfecting exit rights would require amending this situation, which would result in undermining the capitalist economic system. Moreover, because of the centrality of people’s jobs in their lives – workers build up a network of co-workers, costumers, etc. – and psychological costs associated with unemployment – negative effects on self-esteem –, unemployment will remain a disciplinary device even when the bargaining position of workers is enhanced (e.g. by lowering the searching and transitioning costs of unemployment) (González-Ricoy, 2014, pp. 240– 241). It is exactly the centrality of a job in one’s life that republicans do not take into account when proposing a basic income to remove worker domination. A basic income on which workers can fall back on does indeed strengthen workers’ ability to challenge managerial power by the threat of resignation. But, while is does remove the asymmetrical dependence on employers, it does not reduce other costs related to quitting a job, such as losing ties to communities and losing other relationships. Enhancing workers’ bargaining position is not sufficient to make their exit rights fully credible (Gourevitch, 2016, pp. 23–24). This makes that freedom of exit cannot justify the domination that occurs in the workplace.

Freedom of entry and exit from any employment relation is not sufficient to justify the outcome. (…) Consent to an option within a set, cannot justify the set itself (Anderson, 2017, p. 61).

Alternative workplaces may be as dominating as people’s current work environment (González-Ricoy, 2014, p. 241). The fact that workers can choose between employers, cannot answer for the domination in the workplace. That does not render exit rights unnecessary. Exit rights are most certainly necessary, but they are not sufficient. Building on the parallel-case argument, this arguments holds for states as

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well. To illustrate, you would not consider me free because I am free to choose between several authoritarian governments.

That [would be] like telling the citizens of the Communist bloc of Eastern Europe that their freedom could be secured by a right to emigrate to any other country – as long as they stayed behind the Iron Curtain (Anderson, 2017, p. 60).

Only those citizens living under non-dominating governance can live as free citizens. At the same time, even someone who lives in a democratic regime, has to dispose of a certain degree of exit rights (Skinner, 2012). Thus, though having a choice between different states cannot guarantee non-domination, having that choice is still important. Exit rights are not perfect in states nor in corporations, but, as we will argue in chapter 3, they remain relevant even so.

This section explained why the existing exit rights are insufficient to prevent worker domination, and why improving those exit rights is not a good strategy to remove that same domination. At the same time, the parallel-case argument exposes the necessity of exit rights. The conclusion of our analysis of exit rights as a protection from worker domination is that these are insufficient, but nevertheless necessary. In an attempt to protect employees from domination in their workplace, we can still distinguish another strategy. This strategy entails limiting the power of employers by setting up democratic legal rules, and is the subject of the next section.

2.3.2. Workplace Constitutionalism

Another strategy often suggested to protect workers from uncontrolled interference, is creating sufficient restrictions on the managerial authority. Even though managerial interference is substantial in workers’ lives, the interference would then be controlled by the checks on the exercise of power. This strategy is referred to as workplace constitutionalism and knows application to a certain extent in contemporary welfare states. It would thus be a mistake to argue that unrestrained domination of employers in the workplace exists. Management is to some extent restrained in their power to close plants, lay off workers, etc. (Jensen and Meckling, 1979, p. 472). Furthermore, minimum wage and anti-discriminations laws as well as specific restrictions restrict employers’ decisions (Hsieh, 2007). However, as we will see in this section, this strategy proves insufficient, impossible even in capitalist economy.

To demonstrate this, we start with distinguishing two approaches within workplace constitutionalism. First, one could argue that workers are not dominated if all the specific activities that workers are asked to perform are described in the labour contract. In that case, there would be no transfer of the will of the employee to the employer. The employer could only interfere in those ways spelled out in the

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contract, effectively restricting his power. However, there are very sound economic reasons that explain why labour contracts are not specific enough to ensure that all required activities of employees are spelled out in the contract. Not only is some flexibility in the labour contract desirable, specifying all possible activities of an employee also does not comply with capitalist reality, which is so complex and unforeseeable that it would be too costly to specify all worker activities at the outset of the contract. The constantly changing circumstances in which economic organizations operate would make this strategy prohibitively costly, rendering it impossible to implement. That is why the employer retains decision-making rights over those aspects that are not specified at the outset of employer-employee relationship (González-Ricoy, 2014, p. 246; Hsieh, 2005, pp. 121–122). It is exactly the involvement of those unspecified decisions that distinguish the labour contract from other market contracts (Hsieh, 2007, p. 32). Narrowly defining the activities that an employee has to conduct has a positive effect on worker domination, but defining all activities is contradictory to economic reality. That does not mean that defining workers’ activities in a labour contract is not necessary, but this strategy can never be implemented to the extent that it offers sufficient protection against the domination of employers. A second approach proposes to expand the existing regulation in advanced economies. This approach focusses on labour standards, workers’ constitutional rights, etc. Managerial authority would still exist, but the exercise of this authority must conform to specific standards. It attempts to create a situation where workers enjoy civil rights (e.g. ensured by discrimination laws) as well as social rights (e.g. ensured for instance by minimum wage laws). Nevertheless, the power of employers, though heavily constrained, would remain uncontrolled. Shareholders and their managers would still monopolize this power. As republican freedom concerns itself with the possibility of uncontrolled interference, this strategy is not sufficient. That does not mean that employers do not take employees’ interests into account in contemporary capitalist corporations, rather it means that the power at their disposal is still arbitrary (González-Ricoy, 2014, pp. 242–243).

Workplace constitutionalism is most certainly an important feature of any attempt to protect workers from managerial domination. However, a different strategy than constraining managerial power is needed to effectively remove the domination of workers. Within workplace constitutionalism, workers lack the right to participate in decision-making procedures that affect them. The only way for hierarchy, which is vital for our economy, to exist without enabling managers to dominate their subordinates, is by introducing workers’ right to participate.

Removing worker domination in contemporary capitalist corporations