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In Anderson’s Hijacked , she provides a careful account of the economic, political and moral downfall that have led to large oppressive mechanisms in society today. She identifies the root of these losses to be “neoliberalism” though she expresses unimportance about the exact term used, “Call it what you will - neoliberalism, classical liberalism, libertarianism, free-market capitalism - the ideological rationale for these changes is at root a revival of the conservative work ethic,” (256). I find two critical areas of analysis from this quote: 1. The subject of ideology, and 2. The “revival” of the conservative work ethic. I will focus on the later first: Though Anderson claims to find some overlap of ideas with Marx towards the end of Chapter 10, her ideas lack the marxist understanding of the state. She claims that great success was had during the three decades following the second world war yet this success is incredibly context dependent. If success is seen by the implementation o...

The goal of the progressive work ethic is to create a society in which "all workers must be honored and paid decently, regardless of their occupation" (252) and a dignified life is that not dependent on market performance. However, the mechanism Anderson describes runs in the opposite direction when she explains how social democracy actually maintained itself. Benefits had to be rated according to earnings, and the middle class had to find the system appealing on their terms. The only way to achieve decommodification was to commercialize the appeal of the welfare state. This implies that the conservative work ethic's central tenet—that what you get should be consistent with what you have earned—is the only way the progressive work ethic could gain political power. According to Anderson, the Scandinavian approach was "generous enough to prevent middle-class defection to private insurance" (252). However, keeping people from leaving is not the same as convincing t...

     In Chapter 9 of Elizabeth Anderson's Hijacked, she defines neoliberalism as "an ideology that favors institutional arrangements that maximize the wealth and power of capital investments relative to labor" (272). In Hijacked, Anderson differentiates between a conservative and progressive work ethic. While a conservative work ethic, as developed in Chapter 8, demonstrates a conception of moral desert predicated on demonstrated labor, a progressive work ethic mandates background conditions of security in order to work at all. Specifically, she states that "the progressive work ethic, by contrast, urges us to consider how access to material goods may be a prerequisite to the ability to work and access other virtues" (262). While a conservative work ethic justifies systemic injustice, neoliberalism operationalizes it. In Chapter 9, Anderson discusses how welfare policies and privatized corporations function to embody a conservative work ethic, and in doing so, s...

  In Chapters 8 and 9 of Elizabeth Anderson's Hijacked, she outlines the dangers of the conservative work ethic, now manifest in neoliberalism, and draws on social democratic theory to combat it. However, I find clear tensions in her use of Marx as the foundation of both social democracy and the progressive work ethic. Anderson rightly defines neoliberalism as an ideology that replicates deep structural injustices and perpetuates the fracturing of workers from meaningful existences across all strata of society. When presenting social democracy as the solution, she outlines that its socialist foundations rest in Marxist thought. Socialists adopted a pragmatic approach to address class concerns once the possibility of revolution was empirically undermined. Here Anderson makes clear that theorists must abandon Marxist class conflict because "if the proletariat will not eventually include everyone, then it cannot represent the universal interests of humanity" (238). Under soc...

In Chapter 8 of Hijacked , Anderson advocated for Locke’s labor mixing requirement. Neoliberals like Nozick argue against this line of thinking. Nozick, mocked Locke’s labor mixing requirement, by attempting a reductio with his tomato soup example. He claimed that by dumping a can of radioactive tomato soup into the ocean, under the labor mixing requirement you are the owner of the ocean. Instead, Nozick uses the enough as good proviso to argue that if you can prove you acquired land without harming others (harming is narrowly defined to include extreme material difficulties), you should own it. I thought Anderson’s interpretation of Lockean labor mixing was much better than Nozick’s neoliberal view. Anderson writes: “When individuals mix their labor with the land, it follows that they are entitled to the value added by their labor to the land. They are not entitled to the value of the natural product of the land, to which everyone retains a claim. To compensate everyone for their excl...

  Anderson closes chapter 9 with an extended metaphor comparing neoliberalism to a game of chutes and ladders. In the original board game, good deeds carry you up and bad deeds send you down (terms purported by the conservative work ethic). Moves, however, are actually determined by chance. Anderson reimagines this game under neoliberalism, where those at the top get to “stretch the ladders higher, remove middle rings, add longer chutes, attach stumbling blocks on rungs beneath them, and disguise chuts as higher rungs.” (283). The top players claim that “everyone’s place is determined by what they deserve” and that any collective redesign would “interfere with the most natural or most efficient order of things. She then poses the question, : “should anyone believe the top players’ claims, once everyone sees how they have rigged the game?” (283).  The implication is that they shouldn’t. However, I think that in practice many people do accept the framing, even when they are los...

Anderson’s conclusion in chapter 10 argues that recovering the progressive work ethic can help revive democracy against neoliberalism through workplace democracy. By giving workers direct experience of codetermination and union governance, they will be “better informed and organized to revive democracy in their local, state, and national governments” (297). She justifies this through the success of postwar Scandinavia, where strong unions and codetermination correlated with robust civic participation and welfare states. However, in chapter 9, in describing the failures of Marx’s material conditions predication, she writes that since the “proletariat itself is highly differentiated … it is hopeless to expect them to revolt as a unified body” (237). In fact, she goes on to describe Bernstein’s skepticism in democratically organized workers’ cooperatives, explaining that “once an enterprise grows large enough, it will need a hierarchy of offices to function effectively. This will generate...

Anderson's account is as prescriptive as it is historical. Throughout Chapter 8, she discusses the advent of social democracy in the 20th century, which she credits to the ascension of political parties that “began as the political arm of various national trade union movements, and aimed to represent the working classes more broadly.” (223). She details how, as the zeitgeist of political economy came to be dominated by the progressive work ethic, both governments and private corporations shifted their approach to being more egalitarian. For the latter, she provides the postbellum policies of the Labour Party, which adopted “comprehensive social insurance facilitation of labor unions and collective bargaining, determination, dramatic expansion of public higher education offered at low or no cost, and guaranteed paid vacations and family leave” as part of its mainstream agenda. (243) In a similar vein, she also recounts how Volvo, in an attempt to increase co-determination and manage...

Elizabeth Anderson, in her book Hijacked, makes an intriguing case of social democracy as the successor of classic liberalism. She grounds the progressive work ethic in reciprocity and democratic citizenship, using examples from Paine, Condorcet, and Bernstein. But what really interests me is Anderson’s definition of efficiency.  Interestingly enough, Anderson does insist that she doesn’t “disparage considerations of efficiency, economic growth, and the usefulness of markets”, and makes it clear that she intends to “expand the range of normative concerns in economics” (286). But on the other hand, in her denouncement of neoliberalism, she uses this same idea of efficiency (that she claims to not be hostile towards) to reduce such workers to “interchangeable and disposable parts, without bargaining power” (255). This reduction is meant to signify the lower cost. Similarly, she details how private prisons claim to operate under the name of efficiency, cutting “salaries, staff numbers...

  Posner begins in Chapter 3 (Utilitarianism, Economics and Social Theory) by distinguishing between wealth maximization and utilitarianism. Where utilitarianism judges actions by their effect on aggregate happiness, normative economics judges them by their effect on social welfare. He believes that he addresses many of the issues that plague utilitarians, such as the animal problem (sheeps), the boundary issue, the foreigner issue, and that “the perils of instrumentalism are also less acute in a system of wealth maximization” (80).  I think, however, that the way in which Posner defines “value” brings up serious questions about whether his alternative is actually any less “monstrous” than that of the utilitarian.  My main issue is Posner’s reliance on willingness to pay as the measure of value. As he writes, “the most important thing to bear in mind about the concept of value is that it is based on what people are willing to pay for something rather than on the happiness...

  Richard Posner outlines a theory of wealth maximization as the central principle of the economic analysis of law. I understand where Posner’s argument falls in as a mix between Utilitarianism and other ethical theories of free markets and distribution, while he prioritizes economic efficiency as a guidepost for the value of things. If markets depend on property rights and exchange, but property rights cannot be bought and sold because there are absolute rights that are required to be initially vested. And  wealth-maximization principles cannot be used to determine the initial distribution of rights, because willingness to pay (value based on income) presupposes an efficient distribution.  Take Posner’s house example he uses to explain willingness to pay: Professor Hurley owns a house that has a market value of $100,000, and he would not sell the house for less than $125,000. If he didn’t own the house, he would only be willing to pay $75,000 because that is all Hurley ...

     Shelby makes the nuanced claim that while the current U.S. system of mass incarceration is "grossly unjust" and functions as a tool of racial and economic oppression, incarceration itself is not inherently insidious, acting as a preventative force against those who commit "the most serious and egregious crimes”(115). He notes that any self-governing society “could come to consensus that the practice of imprisonment is the most effective, most humane, and fairest way to limit serious wrongs" (66), whilst maintaining that prison must only be a “preventative force" and not a system that punishes individuals for the sake of punishing them. To this end, Shelby introduces the idea of deterrence through "hard treatment" that induces people not to commit crimes. Deterrence creates a system of "negative incentives" where a person, being a rational agent, weighs the costs of a penalty against his proclivity to commit a crime (Shelby dubs this a p...

Tommie Shelby lays out demanding conditions for abolition through functional critique. Historical and current harms are insufficient, since institutions can change and harmful consequences can be removed through reform. Rather, to justify abolition, it must be proven that prisons persist because they serve oppressive functions and therefore contribute to an "unredeemably unjust” system (91, 102). In Shelby’s words, “The explanatory claim must ground the critical claim”: the oppressive function must explain the institution’s survival (91). Shelby introduces a “master function” of prisons: that prisons serve to stabilize unjust social systems (105). All other functions of a prison, including racial domination, obscuring capitalism’s social issues, and economic exploitation are subsidiary to the master function (105). He then argues that unjust modern societies that persist over time “tend to develop and maintain prisons, which enable the survival of [these] oppressive social systems...

Shelby argues that imprisonment can be legitimate because criminal offenders possess rational agency, "Forewarned by the public legal proscription and equipped with the capacity for rational and free action, offenders had an adequate opportunity to avoid this unwelcome and unpleasant treatment. They could have refrained from serious wrongdoing but chose not to" (61). Yet he simultaneously acknowledges that "prisons are full of people who were socioeconomically disadvantaged prior to their imprisonment" (82) and that "much crime is a symptom of underlying structural injustices that demand redress" (53). I feel like there is a tension between these two facts. Shelby dismisses the objection that oppression compromises agency by noting that "skepticism about the agency of those who themselves have been victims is not, in any case, something Davis could consistently endorse, as she calls for social movements centered on achieving justice; and this call pre...

In The Idea of Prison Abolition by Tommie Shelby, he offers a strong critique of the prison system. He begins chapter two with an overview of the varying kinds of incarceration facilities and their purposes: “An incarceration facility whose primary purpose is pretrial detention is a jail. . . whose primary purpose is is prisoner rehabilitation a penitentiary. . . that aims to treat and house those who suffer from serious psychological disorders is a psychiatric hospital. . . that functions to impose punishment is a prison” (48-49). These aims are classified as “detention, rehabilitation, treatment, and punishment” (49).  But, as Shelby makes clear, “punishment, whatever form it takes [must] be understood as unwelcome and unpleasant treatment” (49). While he discounts the retributivist account, he clarifies that punishment is justified only when it is used to prevent massive crimes themselves. It is important to note, here, that while Shelby claims that there is a difference betwee...

Shelby opens Chapter 2 by distinguishing between types of incarceration facilities: jails for pretrial detention, penitentiaries for rehabilitation, psychiatric hospitals for treatment, and prisons for punishment. However, he collapses them: “Davis and other abolitionists oppose jails, penitentiaries, and prisons. So, for simplicity, I will refer to all three practices as ‘imprisonment’ or simply ‘prison’” (49). Shelby further defines punishment as “unwelcome and unpleasant treatment,” what he calls “hard treatment” (49). His defense of imprisonment depends on this definition. He rejects retributivism and insists punishment is justified only as a method for preventing crime (52).  One of the most compelling reasons he gives for imprisonment for the protection of others. As he puts it, “there is on occasion a need to protect the vulnerable from imminent harm. Imprisonment is a way of temporarily incapacitating a dangerous individual” (55). However, Shelby also insists that there is ...

The prison abolition debate has largely been waged around the offender: their desert, their rights, their capacity for rehabilitation. Angela Davis rejects the retributive logic underlying public support for prisons. She does not believe wrongdoers deserve to suffer, or that a criminal's misery carries any intrinsic moral value. For Davis, the idea that bad people deserve prison is ideological, not philosophical. (56) Tommie Shelby draws from Davis’ ideas but argues that prisons are not inherently unjust, but that the conditions under which they operate often are. Where abolitionists argue that imprisonment is inherently dehumanizing, Shelby locates the problem in unjust practices within prisons, not incarceration itself (57). To me, this is persuasive—the case against prisons should be a case against the racist, classist, and degrading conditions that define them in practice, not against the institution as such. Where I want to push further than Shelby is on the question of why ...

In Dark Ghettos , Shelby claims that “serious injustices in the basic structure of a society compromise both the state’s authority to punish criminal offenders and its moral standing to condemn crimes” (228). That means in deeply unjust societies like the United States, the state’s authority to punish seems illegitimate. Shelby distinguishes between authority and enforcement, so even if citizens don’t owe obedience to an unjust state, the state may still punish certain acts like violence because punishment can prevent further harms.  Shelby seems to think that this resolves the legitimacy problem that he raises, but I’m not entirely convinced. If the state lacks the moral standing to demand obedience, why does it still have the authority to incarcerate people? It seems somewhat arbitrary to me, deeming that only certain crimes justify punishment. Where does that line get drawn, and won't that open another massive can of worms in Supreme Court interpretations? Moreover, he uses this...

In his work The idea of Prison Abolition , Tommie Shelby follows Angela Davis and other abolitionist’s clear arguments that are grounded in real perceptions of our current liberal democracy. Shelby seems to agree with much of the basis of the argument for abolition yet he ultimately settles for a nuanced and unfulfilling answer.  Shelby discusses many ways that imprisonment has been oppressive. He distinguishes between the latent and manifest functions which represent the unofficial purpose of an institution compared to its official purpose, respectively (104). He considers why the latent functions of prisons are intrinsically built to be oppressive in societies like ours. He refers to Davis here who would argue that “racial disparity in imprisonment and the racialization of prisoners are not “incidental” features of capitalist society but a necessary consequence of a capitalist system with roots in race based slavery and colonialism” (104). However, Shelby believes that the very ...

In Dark Ghettos , Shelby states that if a state has “not secured basic liberties and has not maintained an equitable distribution of benefits and burdens…when the oppressed violate the law, they do not take advantage of the compliance of others” (244). Thus, the acts of the oppressed cannot be condemned on the grounds of lacking civil reciprocity. Jeffrey Reiman similarly argues that individuals who have been denied their fair share of the benefits of social cooperation have a reduced obligation to obey the law (235).  Additionally, oppressed individuals who rob or defraud those who are unjustly advantaged may be justified in doing so. By acting against the law, they express a refusal to submit to an unjust legal order. This is similar to the idea of harming without wronging. Redistribution of resources may harm unjustly advantaged individuals by depriving them of wealth, but such harm is not morally wrong. In fact, if redistribution were not undertaken, it would constitute a wrong...

     In Tommie Shelby's The Idea of Prison Abolition, he offers what he calls a "functional critique" of the prison in order to conduct a social analysis in line with a Marxist tradition. Angela Davis offers a similar critique, drawing on Marxism as well; she believes that "capitalism is a degrading and despotic system of involuntary servitude."      While both academics rely on Marxism, they draw on different parts of his literature and theory. Davis calls for the abolition of prisons on the account that their latent function is to serve as an "instrument of political repression... [which] serves as a place to warehouse people who represent major social problems" (89). Shelby, however, claims that "It is not enough to show that prisons came into existence to serve these functions. If prisons can be reformed so that they are humane, fair to prisoners, and only perform legitimate functions, than functional critique cannot yield abolitionist conclus...