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Democratize Work: The Case for Reorganizing the Economy
An urgent and deeply resonant case for the power of workplace democracy to restore balance between economy and society.
What happens to a society—and a planet—when capitalism outgrows democracy? The tensions between democracy and capitalism are longstanding, and they have been laid bare by the social effects of COVID-19. The narrative of “essential workers” has provided thin cover for the fact that society’s lowest paid and least empowered continue to work risky jobs that keep our capitalism humming. Democracy has been subjugated by the demands of capitalism. For many, work has become unfair.
In Democratize Work, essays from a dozen social scientists—all women—articulate the perils and frustrations of our collective moment, while also framing the current crisis as an opportunity for renewal and transformation. Amid mounting inequalities tied to race, gender, and class—and with huge implications for the ecological fate of the planet—the authors detail how adjustments in how we organize work can lead to sweeping reconciliation. By treating workers as citizens, treating work as something other than an asset, and treating the planet as something to be cared for, a better way is attainable. Building on cross-disciplinary research, Democratize Work is both a rallying cry and an architecture for a sustainable economy that fits the democratic project of our societies.
What happens to a society—and a planet—when capitalism outgrows democracy? The tensions between democracy and capitalism are longstanding, and they have been laid bare by the social effects of COVID-19. The narrative of “essential workers” has provided thin cover for the fact that society’s lowest paid and least empowered continue to work risky jobs that keep our capitalism humming. Democracy has been subjugated by the demands of capitalism. For many, work has become unfair.
In Democratize Work, essays from a dozen social scientists—all women—articulate the perils and frustrations of our collective moment, while also framing the current crisis as an opportunity for renewal and transformation. Amid mounting inequalities tied to race, gender, and class—and with huge implications for the ecological fate of the planet—the authors detail how adjustments in how we organize work can lead to sweeping reconciliation. By treating workers as citizens, treating work as something other than an asset, and treating the planet as something to be cared for, a better way is attainable. Building on cross-disciplinary research, Democratize Work is both a rallying cry and an architecture for a sustainable economy that fits the democratic project of our societies.
139 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 2020
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
April 22, 2023
This book is a quick romp through a bunch of reasons why we need to make workplaces more democratic—that is, give more power to the actual workers who do the work and less to executives and shareholders. It also explores why work should be less focused on profit and growth, and instead focused on the things we actually need to do as a society. As the icing on the cake, work should be focused on reducing our carbon footprints, mitigating the worst effects of climate change, and generally treating the environment with care and respect, rather than as a commodity from which resources can and should be endlessly extracted.
All of that sounds great to me; if it sounds great to you, you’ll probably like this book.
Democratize Work is built around the manifesto (of the same name) written in the heady COVID days of May 2020 by a group of women academics (and signed by many more people with various genders and occupations). Supplementing the manifesto are a bunch of essays, each using a line or idea from the manifesto as a jumping off point into a more detailed discussion.
I really liked the manifesto itself—it’s the reason I bought this book in the first place. I highly recommend going to democratizingwork.org and reading it. It’s pretty short and highly accessible.
The supplemental essays didn’t grab me, though. Most of them simply reaffirmed ideas from the manifesto without elaborating on them in particularly interesting ways. One of the essays (“The Subaltern Worker-Body Speaks; Will the Privileged Listen?”) was so full of academic jargon and nonsense that I couldn’t make sense of it at all and had to abandon it after a few pages. All of the other essays at least contain cogent arguments and are easy to read. The problem is that most of them aren’t particularly engaging or challenging. Most pieces just felt like docile echoes of the main manifesto.
For example, the authors are all about making workplaces more democratic through means like unionization, codetermination, tax incentives for cooperatives, and so on. But then everyone just kinda takes for granted that once workers are democratically empowered, other problems will kinda melt away, and that workers will automatically make choices that are better for the surrounding community and for the environment. This assumption goes completely unchallenged until the very end of the book, where it is brushed aside because offering a jobs guarantee and a transition to green jobs will be enough that all workers will want to go along with it.
This is a pretty generous assumption and I was disappointed that most of the essays didn’t mention it at all. I am as pro-worker and pro-cooperative as they come, but workers aren’t automatically saints. There is no guarantee that workers will be more focused on reducing the impact of climate change, or less obsessed with short-term profits, than shareholders and CEOs currently are. Obviously, I would very much like to give it a shot and let workers take the reins anyway. But it seems like the authors assume that workers will always have a political paradigm similar to theirs (work should be decommodified and environmentalism should be prioritized, even if it means a radical shift in our way of life). I get it, I love it, I’m down with it. But there didn’t seem to be a serious attempt to imagine that not all working people might feel the same way and how we should handle that.
My other bone to pick with this book is with the idea of a “right to work” (but not in that nasty, union-busting right wing way) and a governmental jobs guarantee. The idea is that everyone has the right to a good, well paying job where they are treated with respect and dignity and get to do work that’s important for keeping the human project going. And if the private sector can’t provide those kinds of jobs (let’s face it, it’s not doing a great job so far), then the government should give a job to anyone who wants one. This can empower workers by allowing them to walk away from private sector jobs when they are treated poorly; they’ll always have a government job to rely on. These jobs prevent the floor of the labor market from having horrible conditions. They also make sure that useful work actually gets done. Okay, sounds good, I guess.
But because I loathe work in general, this still rubbed me the wrong way. A jobs guarantee is an interesting idea, but I don’t like that one’s socioeconomic well-being is still tied to wage labor. Even if you toil all day in a cushy government job, you’re still toiling all day. I would have liked to see the authors engage seriously with the idea that we should be working much less than we currently do. Rather than making sure “all people have access to work and the dignity it brings,” maybe we could have people just…working less? A jobs guarantee seems like it would undercut the idea of a UBI—just give people what they need to live because we as a society can afford it, without making people do wage labor for it. A jobs guarantee also seems like it would lead to quite a lot of bullshit jobs and make-work after a while. The authors breeze past these difficulties without mentioning them.
While I understand the authors’ dedication to making work and workplaces fairer, more democratic, and more environmentally-friendly, they are still wedded to this idea that work is inherently good and is something everyone should be just thrilled to partake in to the best of their ability. It would have been cool if they had an essay pushing back on this idea of work as a noble, wonderful thing.
Anyway, the manifesto is worth a read. I’d check that out and skip the rest of the book.
All of that sounds great to me; if it sounds great to you, you’ll probably like this book.
Democratize Work is built around the manifesto (of the same name) written in the heady COVID days of May 2020 by a group of women academics (and signed by many more people with various genders and occupations). Supplementing the manifesto are a bunch of essays, each using a line or idea from the manifesto as a jumping off point into a more detailed discussion.
I really liked the manifesto itself—it’s the reason I bought this book in the first place. I highly recommend going to democratizingwork.org and reading it. It’s pretty short and highly accessible.
The supplemental essays didn’t grab me, though. Most of them simply reaffirmed ideas from the manifesto without elaborating on them in particularly interesting ways. One of the essays (“The Subaltern Worker-Body Speaks; Will the Privileged Listen?”) was so full of academic jargon and nonsense that I couldn’t make sense of it at all and had to abandon it after a few pages. All of the other essays at least contain cogent arguments and are easy to read. The problem is that most of them aren’t particularly engaging or challenging. Most pieces just felt like docile echoes of the main manifesto.
For example, the authors are all about making workplaces more democratic through means like unionization, codetermination, tax incentives for cooperatives, and so on. But then everyone just kinda takes for granted that once workers are democratically empowered, other problems will kinda melt away, and that workers will automatically make choices that are better for the surrounding community and for the environment. This assumption goes completely unchallenged until the very end of the book, where it is brushed aside because offering a jobs guarantee and a transition to green jobs will be enough that all workers will want to go along with it.
This is a pretty generous assumption and I was disappointed that most of the essays didn’t mention it at all. I am as pro-worker and pro-cooperative as they come, but workers aren’t automatically saints. There is no guarantee that workers will be more focused on reducing the impact of climate change, or less obsessed with short-term profits, than shareholders and CEOs currently are. Obviously, I would very much like to give it a shot and let workers take the reins anyway. But it seems like the authors assume that workers will always have a political paradigm similar to theirs (work should be decommodified and environmentalism should be prioritized, even if it means a radical shift in our way of life). I get it, I love it, I’m down with it. But there didn’t seem to be a serious attempt to imagine that not all working people might feel the same way and how we should handle that.
My other bone to pick with this book is with the idea of a “right to work” (but not in that nasty, union-busting right wing way) and a governmental jobs guarantee. The idea is that everyone has the right to a good, well paying job where they are treated with respect and dignity and get to do work that’s important for keeping the human project going. And if the private sector can’t provide those kinds of jobs (let’s face it, it’s not doing a great job so far), then the government should give a job to anyone who wants one. This can empower workers by allowing them to walk away from private sector jobs when they are treated poorly; they’ll always have a government job to rely on. These jobs prevent the floor of the labor market from having horrible conditions. They also make sure that useful work actually gets done. Okay, sounds good, I guess.
But because I loathe work in general, this still rubbed me the wrong way. A jobs guarantee is an interesting idea, but I don’t like that one’s socioeconomic well-being is still tied to wage labor. Even if you toil all day in a cushy government job, you’re still toiling all day. I would have liked to see the authors engage seriously with the idea that we should be working much less than we currently do. Rather than making sure “all people have access to work and the dignity it brings,” maybe we could have people just…working less? A jobs guarantee seems like it would undercut the idea of a UBI—just give people what they need to live because we as a society can afford it, without making people do wage labor for it. A jobs guarantee also seems like it would lead to quite a lot of bullshit jobs and make-work after a while. The authors breeze past these difficulties without mentioning them.
While I understand the authors’ dedication to making work and workplaces fairer, more democratic, and more environmentally-friendly, they are still wedded to this idea that work is inherently good and is something everyone should be just thrilled to partake in to the best of their ability. It would have been cool if they had an essay pushing back on this idea of work as a noble, wonderful thing.
Anyway, the manifesto is worth a read. I’d check that out and skip the rest of the book.
July 18, 2022
Democratize work is able to maintain brevity without an over-reliance on jargon and technical terms. Although if someone does not want to read the whole book (~120 pages), they can read the original Manifesto which is quite short. Its title is the main theme, however the authors, all women scholars from around the world, tackle so much more than the workplace. They describe massive problems that humanity faces like inequality and environmental degradation while also acknowledging that there is no silver bullet to solve such issues. They offer many partial solutions that when taken together are capable of transforming our relation to labor, economies, and the world. The goals are to democratize, decommodify, and decarbonize. I highly recommend that everyone read this work.
June 22, 2022
Apparently the world is full of little Stalins, who are not content with living off the taxes collected from the working people, but they want to take more money to engineer the perfect gulag in which you will be happy, and they will be rich.
December 30, 2022
Yep yep yep yep
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews