ABSTRACT
In this chapter, Lucas Stanczyk contends our political imagination is warped by a series of errors he terms ‘marginal liberalism’. By this, he means that liberals are committed to everyone enjoying the same basic rights and freedoms and yet accept as normal work practices that severely undercut the equal enjoyment of those basic rights and freedoms. Thus, many liberals display a marginal commitment to their own orientating values, something we can see most starkly as regards the unequal authority relationships within contemporary workplaces. These relationships are thought acceptable by liberals, and yet they originate from gross inequalities generated by the capitalist market and state-sanctioned employment law that enable a privileged few to lord over the many, thereby contravening equal freedom for all. The only way to achieve such freedom and a truly liberal society, Stanczyk counsels, is to staunch the wellsprings of unjust privilege and equalize participation in socially cooperative activities.
