Hijacked

Elizabeth Anderson is the Max Mendel Shaye Professor of Public Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at University of Michigan. She is the author of Value in Ethics and Economics (1995), The Imperative of Integration (2010), and Private Government: How Employers Rule Our Lives (and Why We Don't Talk about It) (2017). She is a MacArthur Fellow and Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2019, The New Yorker described her as 'a champion of the view that equality and freedom are mutually dependent […] Anderson may be the philosopher best suited to this awkward moment in American life.'

• Preface; 1. The dual nature of the Protestant work ethic and the birth of utilitarianism; 2. Locke and the progressive work ethic; 3. How conservatives hijacked the work ethic and turned it against workers; 4. Welfare reform, famine, and the ideology of the conservative work ethic; 5. The progressive work ethic (1): Smith, Ricardo, and Ricardian socialists; 6. The progressive work ethic (2): J. S. Mill; 7. The progressive work ethic (3): Marx; 8. Social democracy as the culmination of the progressive work ethic; 9. Hijacked again: Neoliberalism as the return of the conservative work ethic; 10. Conclusion: What should the work ethic mean for us today?; Acknowledgments; Major works cited; Notes; Index.

'Hijacked is an important and fascinating book that tells the spellbinding story of the struggle between conservatives and progressives over the Protestant work ethic. Nobody matches Anderson's distinctive combination of historical, political, and philosophical insight.' Stephen Darwall, author of Modern Moral Philosophy: From Grotius to Kant