Why is the workplace a dictatorship?

Chapter 2 has Anderson’s critique of the current tyranny of the workplace. Provocatively, she calls it a “communist dictatorship,” invoking the authoritarian communism of the Soviet Union and other countries. The “dictatorship” part makes sense, since companies are organizations ruled through a hierarchical command structure. Leaders at the top issue orders that flow down to subordinates, with no meaningful democracy for workers. Furthermore, workers are subjected to total surveillance in the workplace, can be punished for their private behavior completely unrelated to work such as political activity, and can even have their restroom visits limited. Moreover, it’s “communist” in that companies successfully employ internal central planning. So the “free market” is, strangely enough, a network of competing, centrally-planned dictatorships. Anderson objects to the lack of public scrutiny of the fact that “Most workers in the United States are governed by communist dictatorships in their work lives.” This applies to, in her estimate, the 80% of the workforce who are not managerial employees, high paid superstars, self-employed, or working under union contracts. Anderson considers the corporate workplace a “private government.” The state is one kind of government but employers are another.