Marxist ideology in Anderson's Hijacked: an incomplete account?

 


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 social democracy, society can retain class and private property, and "inequalities will be approved just so long as they redound to everyone's advantage" (247). Anderson thus uses Marxist ideas to bridge socialism and liberal democracy while rejecting Marx's empirical claims.

Anderson does not explicitly address the ideological foundations of "work ethic," and instead seems to use it as the moral basis for socioeconomic reform. Yet dominant ideas about work ethic plainly shape the structure of the economy and the social division of labor, reproducing unjust conditions at the level of individual consciousness. Anderson uses Marx genealogically to trace how work ethic has shifted as material conditions changed historically, but rejects his empirical and theoretical applications in favor of liberal democratic theory. This creates an internal contradiction: Marx's account of ideology holds that it is inescapable until revolutionary transformation, and that there is no independent moral basis for ideology because it is intertwined with the material conditions of labor. Anderson cannot fully borrow the genealogical insight without inheriting that tension.

Anderson does offer a more explicit critique of the ideological forces perpetuating the unjust basic structure. Her discussion of progressive welfare reforms notes that "children…showed increased conscientiousness and agreeableness" as a result of greater material security (261). This example seems to fall within a Marxist account of material conditions as the determining factor of social character. 

This raises the question of whether Anderson could retain Marx's conception of ideology (as Shelby does) while rejecting his empirical, class-based, and revolutionary claims. Separating these would actually strengthen her normative account: it frees her from the failed historical prediction about the proletariat while preserving the explanatory power she needs. More specifically, establishing "work ethic" as an ideology reproduced by the basic structure, rather than a descriptive moral premise, would give her framework greater internal consistency. Insofar as Anderson's account of the basic structure extends beyond material distribution to encompass how unjust institutions shape workers' self-understanding and moral identity, her framework would benefit from explicit engagement with Marx's ideology critique as the mechanism explaining that reproduction. Rather than a weakness, incorporatHing this move would render her normative claims more coherent and her use of Marx more defensible.

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