Lindblom - The Market System - Afghan Journalists' Committee

184 What To Make of Itentirely in the hands of the state, yet broadly practices consumerfree choice.The Authoritarian EnterpriseA second qualification on the alleged tie between marketsystem and liberty is that many employees see themselvesas free only when they are not at work. Any claim that marketssupport freedom has to take account of the unfreedomof the workplace, itself a command system, as we haveseen—an island of authority in a market sea.The conventional defense against the charge that workplaceauthority curbs the employee’s freedom is that theemployee freely agrees to accept that authority in return fora wage. And the conventional response to that defense isthat the market system requires that people thus agree tosurrender some of their liberties each workday. Even if thetransaction is freely entered into, it is a transaction to sellsome of one’s freedom. With some qualifications that donot challenge their basic rough truth, both positions arecorrect.Of course, workplaces in nonmarket societies are alsocommand systems. Workplace authority is after all not distinctiveto market systems. If hierarchical organizations arenecessary for at least some lines of production, then there isno escape from authority-obedience relations in them, marketsystem or not. Some observers dismiss this prospect asan unhappy fact of life that says nothing about freedom.Others see hierarchy, authority, and obedience, howevernecessary, as profoundly limiting freedom—and tragic inthat they cannot be escaped even in the market system. Thetwo positions do not necessarily disagree on the facts. But