Alex and Tyler raise some good points on the CT post about libertarianism and the workplace, which is probably getting way more attention than it merits.
At the risk of exacerbating the problem above: the CTers’ basic argument is that the employee-employer relationship is asymmetrical. The simple counterargument is that asymmetrical relationships aren’t an excuse to curtail liberty, and the attempt may not make society better off overall anyway. Berman argues this is wrong, because he defines “freedom” in Marxist terms in which freedom is maximized by reducing such asymmetries — his entire argument rests on this flawed premise.
Now, the CT authors point to various things that employers have required as evidence that employee freedoms are being curtailed. This is the part that really seems to confuse people — in truth, employers cannot reduce employee liberties, they have absolutely zero power to compel any employee to do anything, they can only contract for certain behavior. Since employees are always free to not contract, there is no question of liberty here.
That’s where the Marxist definition of freedom comes in — if “freedom” merely means being free from harm, then it’s obvious the employer cannot affect your freedom merely by offering employment terms employees do not like, as long as those terms aren’t actually harmful and employees can always refuse them. It’s only by defining freedom the way Marxists like G.A. Cohen do — as the availability of choices — that one can arrive at their conclusions.
The untenable Marxist definition of freedom (under which I lack freedom because I am denied my optimal career choice of being paid millions of dollars for sleeping with beautiful women) is the basic problem here. When you start defining freedom in terms of the things you’re prevented from doing because of a lack of choices rather than in terms of being free from harm you come to the kinds of nonsensical conclusions that explain why Marxist regimes have such an unblemished record of failure. The more interesting questions here are what more Marxism could possibly do at this point to further discredit itself empirically, and why anyone still pays attention to such arguments.