Workplace Democracy Implies Economic Democracy

Abstract

This paper mounts a defense of economic democracy that piggybacks on arguments for workplace democracy. It is addressed to those republicans and egalitarians who are committed to workplace democracy. The paper argues that those workplace democrats should, first, be opposed to private property in the means of production, and, second, be committed to economic democracy, or socialism. I first identify the fundamental normative principles that ground the main contemporary arguments for workplace democracy: republican and political-egalitarian. I then argue that the full realization of these principles is undermined by the existence of private property in the means of production and that avowal of workplace democracy on the basis of these principles commits those who avow them to economic democracy.

Keywords: economic democracy, workplace democracy, cooperatives, joint ownership, market socialism

JEL Classification: P31, P14, P26