The Future of Democracy and Work: The Vote in Our Economic Constitution

Abstract

What should be the future of democracy? COVID-19 has exposed a desperate need, not just for a green recovery, and a social recovery, but a political recovery, to remake our institutions for the future, for justice on living planet. Today we are seeing that the vote, ‘a most transcendent thing’, is becoming an essential part of our economic constitution: votes at work, votes in capital and votes in public services. This is already practised, however imperfectly, however forgotten, in universities like Toronto, Cambridge, Oxford or Harvard, and the movement is growing, as it should. The evidence shows we are more productive, innovative, happy, and less unequal, when we have voice. Having moved ‘from status to contract’ in the industrial revolution, the future of work involves a move ‘from contract to membership’. The ‘right to take part in the government’ of our societies is depending less and less on holding money, or ‘other people’s money’, but is becoming universal. The days where shareholders monopolize the votes in the economy, and asset managers or banks monopolize votes on shares, are numbered. The true investors in the wealth of nations, people at work, savers for retirement, and all members of our society, are the future of democracy.

Keywords: Democracy, work, capital, economic democracy, industrial democracy, universities, governance, contract, membership, property, human rights, vote, green recovery, social recovery, political recovery

JEL Classification: K00, D00