The Case for Economic Democracy

The idea that the people have a right to shape political decisions through democratic means is widely accepted. The same cannot be said of the decisions that impact on our everyday economic life in the workplace and beyond.

Andrew Cumbers shows why this is wrong, and why, in the context of the rising tide of populism and the perceived crisis of liberal democracy, economic democracy's time has come. Four decades of market deregulation, financialisation, economic crisis and austerity has meant a loss of economic control and security for the majority of the world's population. The solution must involve allowing people to 'take back control' of their economic lives. Cumbers goes beyond older traditions of economic democracy to develop an ambitious new framework that includes a traditional concern with workplace rights and collective bargaining, but shifts the focus to include consideration of individual economic rights and processes of public engagement and deliberation beyond the workplace.

This topical and original book will be essential reading for anyone interested in radical solutions for our economic and political crises. Introduction

The economic roots of the democratic crisis

The retreat from democratic scrutiny in economic policy

Making the case for economic democracy in the twenty-first century

Notes

1 A Brief History of Economic Democracy as Industrial Democracy

Introduction

Struggles for economic democracy in the nineteenth century

The growth of a social democratic labour politics in the twentieth century

The Meidner Plan and the high tide of twentieth-century social democracy

The convenient fiction of Thatcher’s property-owning democracy

‘Stale, male and pale’: the exclusions of twentieth-century industrial democracy

Conclusion

Notes

2 The Three Pillars of Economic Democracy

Individual economic rights and self-government

Democratic, collective and diverse public ownership

Creating a deliberative and participatory economic democracy

Conclusion

Notes

3 Putting Economic Democracy into Practice

Institutions for implementing individual self-governance and economic freedom

Emergent tendencies in democratic collective ownership

Practising participatory economic decision making

Conclusion

Notes

Conclusion

Constructing the democratic economy

A summary of the main arguments and their policy implications

Mobilizing for economic democracy

Notes

References

Andrew Cumbers is Professor in Regional Political Economy at the University of Glasgow