Anti-Labor Philosophy and Birth Control

Santorum, from February's ginned up controversy on birth control:

"When government gives you rights, the government can tell you how to exercise those rights," Santorum said during his victory speech in St. Charles, Mo. "And we saw that just in the last week, with a group of people, a small group of people — just Catholics in the United States of America! — who were told you have a right to health care, but you will have the health care that we tell you you have to give your people, whether it is against the teachings of your church or not."

This is the language of subordinate control, of having a train of dependents whose lives are structured not by their own autonomous decisions and their own self-chosen values, but by yours. The "your people" Santorum is referring to, of course, are the employees at Catholic institutions, many of which serve public purposes, and who are themselves often not Catholic.

This is core of anti-labor philosophy: the belief that an employer's relatively legitimate authority (control over the means and ends of a discrete decision area) over employees in the workplace extends outward into the private and social life of the worker. The fight between the 'free labor' liberal and more radical labor philosophies was, in one sense, about the authority of the employer in the demarcated work space. It's good to know that we've so conceded the authority of the employer in the 'workplace' that we can once again make room for the fight over the employer's authority in the total life of the worker.

This, by the way, is why I am always reluctant to embrace the "fiscal liberal/social liberal" dichotomy.