Democratic Worker-Owned Firm: A New Model for the East and West

by David P. Ellerman

A democratic firm is a company owned and controlled by all the people working in it, just as a democratic government at the city or state level is controlled by all its citizens. This book is about the ideas, structures, and principles involved in the democratic firm and in economic democracy.

Genres: Economics

224 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1990

Reviews

[Tom · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is very useful if you want to understand the philosophical basis and experiments related to "economic democracy" or privately owned worker cooperatives. The author is very clear his aim is democracy in the workplace without being "anti-business" or against private property. He also interprets "labor" in such a way that everyone employed in a capitalism firm is "labor". He thus has no concept of the class antagonism between the working class and the managerial or coordinator class. But some of his distinctions and discussion in the first couple chapters are worth checking out.