Capitalism’s ideological defenders like to tout the liberal virtues of bourgeois equality: you may not be guaranteed equal outcomes under capitalism, but everyone is guaranteed equality before the law.

But what happens when the theory of equal protection meets the reality of capitalism, in which workers are forced for their own survival to depend on capitalists for a wage?

There’s hardly a better example than “mandatory arbitration,” which is when a corporation contractually strips you of your right to sue them in court, forcing you to go through a private arbitration process instead. Though troubling in principle, perhaps it wouldn’t be cause for alarm if it were rare and exceptional. But in a society where corporations have unprecedented power over most aspects of our lives, the practice is escalating and expanding into new territory, separating many of us from the protection of the courts.